Giannis Antetokounmpo has started a spiral that has led to the Bucks being investigated and may ultimately cause his exit from Milwaukee. He sat down with Lori Nickel of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel to discuss his future with the team. And while he said that he sees a path for him to stay on the Bucks, some things will need to be changed.
“Everything about my decision is based on winning; culture. As you saw, I talked with [Boston] coach Joe Mazzulla. I said, ‘You had so many opportunities to make excuses, but you didn’t.’ (The Celtics started the season slowly.) And he said, ‘Oh, they’re good players,” said Antetokounmpo.
While fans interpreted this as a hint that Giannis Antetokounmpo likes the culture in Boston and is flirting with the idea of joining the Celtics, Antetokounmpo later also dove into the fundamental rationale behind his decision on his future.
“I will never, ever be in a position to affect somebody’s life. I can’t do it. My heart doesn’t go to that. Sometimes I share my opinion. But I would never push the button. That’s not who I am.”
“To me, it’s about winning, a good system, a system that I can thrive in. But I don’t care about ‘be myself,’ because sometimes, for you to win, you don’t win in your own terms. I just want to feel like I’m part of something bigger. Chasing something,” clarified Antetokounmpo.
Since last summer, there have been discussions that the Greek star is unhappy in Milwaukee and is open to leaving. Giannis denied those rumors several times, but throughout the season, he began hinting that he was having a change of mind.
And while Antetokounmpo played with those rumors like fire, it ultimately burned him as he ended up getting injured and being shut down for the season. The Bucks’ ownership has also begun to become indifferent towards the idea that if Antetokounmpo does not sign an extension this summer, he will be traded.
Giannis read those comments from the Bucks’ ownership, and while he initially felt like it was a slap in his face, he felt that he could eventually reason out his actions with them and hadn’t intentionally done anything to trigger them.
“I am going to tell you my opinion. Then you have to interview them, and then they can tell you their opinion. I carry myself in such a way that it’s very hard for me to upset somebody, even with my teammates. If you walk into the locker room, they will tell you Giannis has never raised his voice. Giannis leads by example. Giannis is not an [expletive].”
“My job is to play basketball. That’s why I get paid. That’s what I love to do. Just play basketball. My job is not to organize things and bring the pieces. That is not my job.”
“I am not one of the guys who ever showed disrespect to the ownership. Why? I came from nothing. Zero, zero, I grew up in a bed that was like this [points to a loading cart in the hallway], my brothers and I had to sleep sideways, like sardines. So, what do I look like if I am going to the owners saying, ‘I want this, I want that, I want that.’ They give me a life that I would never have imagined.”
“I am living an incredible life, and not just for my kids, my nieces, my brothers, my mother, but also for the people that I take care of in Nigeria. So who am I to go and say, ‘This is not good enough, and I demand this.'”
“I’m not American. I’m very sorry that I am saying this to you. But I didn’t grow up with [the mantra of]: ‘I expect … I expect this to come, I expect this. I demand this.’ Never in my life.”
“So, everything they’ve told me, I always said yes. They gave me a contract, I said, yes,” concluded Giannis. Several sources believe that Giannis is simply trying not to be the bad guy while forcing his way out of the Bucks.
But his recent actions have also suggested that he is no longer concerned about his public reputation, as he is clearly throwing his own team under the bus by getting them investigated for violating the player participation policy of the NBA.
Antetokounmpo was arguably playing like a top-three player in the league before injuries plagued him and rendered him ineligible for postseason awards. He ended up averaging 27.6 points, 9.8 rebounds, and 5.4 assists in 36 games this season while shooting 62.4% from the field and 33.3% from beyond the arc.
Bucks’ Growing Rift With Giannis Antetokounmpo
Shams Charania of ESPN recently reported on the growing rift between Antetokounmpo and the Bucks’ front office in the aftermath of his comments about not being happy with the team’s decision to shut him down for the season when he is healthy to play.
“We have a star player in the NBA, a top three to five player in the NBA, who has sparked an NBA investigation into his own franchise. That’s where this situation is at. So, where has it been over the last three weeks since Giannis got hurt on March 15? He wants to play, and the Bucks want him to shut down,” said Charania in his latest appearance on ESPN’s NBA Today.
“So you have two sides with differing interests, not aligned on the same page. So this level of disagreement is now at the desk of the league office. The Bucks are telling the league that “we told Giannis he could do three-on-three for return to play protocol. Giannis is telling the Bucks, from what I’m understanding, that I’m available and healthy; the Bucks never asked me to play three-on-three.”
“I had one person involved in the investigation tell me this is a classic he-said-she-said scenario. Where this is at right now is that Giannis is trying to ramp up his return to potentially play with his brothers in the home finale on Friday. He does want to play with his brothers, Alex and Thanasis, before the regular season ends,” concluded Charania.
Antetokounmpo, in the interview with Lori Nickel, also responded to this visible rift between him and the front office.
“I get it. I’ve been hurt … I was on a minutes restriction when I came back from being hurt. But why don’t I play now? To keep my value high so I can get traded?”
“I don’t care if it’s the right thing. I don’t care if it’s a smart thing. I don’t. I just want to play. This is what I do. “I play when I’m able to play. I didn’t sit out my first season when we only won 15 games. Why, when it was the NBA Finals, did I come back in six days [after a serious knee hyperextension]? Why? It doesn’t change. This is who I am. And now you’re telling me to go against my nature.”
” No. It goes against my nature. My nature is to play. I don’t think about what’s smart. I think about playing and winning. If I thought about it, I probably wouldn’t even be in Milwaukee. I think about playing and winning.”
“I want to maximize my life. I want to live life hard. They can do whatever they want; I want to live my life hard.”
“If it’s a game against the Dallas Mavericks, I want to play. I am sorry. That’s how I was built. Factory settings. You can’t change the factory settings. You can’t. This is how I came from the factory. You know what you got yourself into,” Giannis said in conclusion.
If the Bucks and Giannis Antetokounmpo do not resolve this rift before the regular season ends, I concur with Zach Lowe to say that Giannis Antetokounmpo likely manufactured this rift to justify demanding a trade from the front office without people seeing him as the villain.
He will likely not sign an extension in the summer and will subsequently get traded. Whether or not he joins the Celtics is yet to be seen, but Joe Mazzulla’s team is certainly one of the many potential landing spots that Antetokounmpo will be assessing before deciding on whether to wait for free agency or demand a trade in the coming summer.
But in all likelihood, the Greek superstar’s time in Milwaukee is nearing its end.
