While it didn’t end up helping the Milwaukee Bucks against the Boston Celtics on Monday, star forward Giannis Antetokounmpo returned to action after being sidelined with a right calf strain for more than five weeks.
The injury, his second right calf strain of the season, happened when Antetokounmpo attempted to play through calf discomfort in a Jan. 23 loss to the Denver Nuggets. The calf strain forced Antetokounmpo to miss 15 straight contests, the most consecutive games he’s missed at any point in his 13-year NBA career.
While Antetokounmpo was sidelined, this year’s NBA trade deadline passed, but not before Bucks general manager Jon Horst expressed an openness to trading Antetokounmpo. It’s an idea the Bucks are destined to explore again this summer as they try to figure out their path forward in the lead-up to Antetokounmpo becoming eligible to sign a $275 million supermax extension on Oct. 1.
As of Wednesday morning, the Bucks (26-34) are four games behind the Atlanta Hawks and Charlotte Hornets, who are tied with a 31-31 record and occupy the ninth and 10th spots in the Eastern Conference standings. On Wednesday night, the Bucks will host the Hawks for the first of two meetings remaining between the teams, with the Bucks visiting Atlanta on March 14.
The Bucks are currently closer to securing the eighth-best lottery odds (three games behind the Memphis Grizzlies) than the final spot in the East’s Play-In Tournament. As players around the league are being shut down for the season with injuries, many around the league have been wondering why Antetokounmpo is back on the floor before Milwaukee’s pivotal offseason.
So, why is Antetokounmpo playing?
Antetokounmpo is healthy and available
Let’s start with the simplest reason.
The goal for all NBA teams is to win basketball games. While some teams have prioritized their draft position this season (and have subsequently been fined by commissioner Adam Silver as the league tries to rein in the behavior of tanking teams), every team is supposed to be trying to win games.
For an injury expected to keep him out between four and six weeks, Antetokounmpo was sidelined for five weeks and two days. In his postgame media session on Monday, the Bucks star explained that while he has typically returned from injuries much earlier than projected throughout his career, it just didn’t make sense this time around.
“I’m just stubborn,” Antetokounmpo said on Monday. “I have a lot of smart people around me that tell me the truth, that tell me what to do, but at the end of the day, I’ve been in his position in life by fighting through things, by just listening to my gut.
“And fighting through adversity, sometimes that’s smart, sometimes it’s not smart, right? At times it’s helped me be in a very good position and sometimes it’s helped me be in a bad position. Again, things that I can do in the past maybe I can’t do no more. But yeah, I just gotta be smarter.”
After coming back earlier than expected from a groin strain in November and his first right calf strain in December, Antetokounmpo felt his body had been pushed to its limit and he needed a full recovery from this most recent calf strain.
“I feel like I’ve been playing just at a deficit this whole year and now this is the first time I feel like I have a little bit in my tank, that I’m not risking anything,” Antetokounmpo said. “So, I’m happy that I’m here.”
Antetokounmpo is a ruthless competitor
On the night Antetokounmpo suffered his right calf strain, he made it clear how he envisioned things going forward.
“I’m gonna work my butt off to come back,” Antetokounmpo said. “That will probably be (the) end of February, beginning of March. Hopefully, the team, we’re in a place where we can at least make the Play-In or make the playoffs.”
The Bucks went 8-7 in games without Antetokounmpo. That didn’t put them in playoff position or even into one of the Eastern Conference’s four Play-In spots. It also didn’t eliminate them from a spot in the Play-In Tournament.
On Monday, Antetokounmpo was asked if there was any point in his rehab in which he considered the possibility of being shut down for the remainder of this season. Rather than answer the question, he just shook his head and mouthed one word: No.
Antetokounmpo has made a career out of being one of the NBA’s most competitive people. For years, he was the guy who stood out at the NBA All-Star Game because he was trying while everybody else was going through the motions. His mandate to the Bucks since becoming a perennial MVP candidate has been to compete for championships. Antetokounmpo desperately wants to win.
This Bucks team is not close to good enough to win a championship. They haven’t even competed at a level that suggests they should be a playoff team, but that doesn’t mean Antetokounmpo’s competitive drive has changed.
If you have him start a game, he will do everything in his power to win it. Put him in a single elimination game and he will fight to the end to come out on top. Get him into the playoffs as the eighth seed and he will believe he can topple the best team in the East. It might seem unlikely, but a single injury can turn a playoff series on its head. No one knows that better than Antetokounmpo, who missed more than half of the games of Miami’s first-round upset of the Bucks in 2023.
What might be viewed from the outside as irrational and illogical self-belief is the intense competitive nature that has made Antetokounmpo one of the NBA’s best for the last decade.
The Bucks must continue to work with Antetokounmpo
While others around the league might be hoping for a divorce between Antetokounmpo and the Bucks, he is still a member of the team and the most important person in the organization. If the trade deadline was any indication, the Bucks aren’t all that interested in moving Antetokounmpo, preferring to keep the franchise leader in nearly every category in Milwaukee.
So, if Antetokounmpo wants to continue to play this season and keep fighting to try to make the playoffs, the Bucks should continue to do the same. That relationship is still far more important than a few extra percentage points in lottery odds.
Just take a closer look at what the Bucks would stand to gain by tanking.
The Bucks are five and a half games behind the Dallas Mavericks, who are currently seventh in lottery odds with a 21-40 record. They would need to do a lot of losing and the Mavericks would have to start winning for the Bucks to catch the Mavericks. The same would be true of trying to catch the New Orleans Pelicans, Utah Jazz, Washington Wizards, Indiana Pacers, Brooklyn Nets or Sacramento Kings.
Realistically, the teams the Bucks could pass by forcing Antetokounmpo to sit out for the rest of the season would be the Grizzlies and Chicago Bulls, who are eighth and ninth in lottery odds, but both teams appear to be much more committed to losing games than the Bucks, who, as we noted earlier, went 8-7 without Antetokounmpo.
The odds of getting the No. 1 pick double from three percent to six percent in moving from 10th in lottery odds to eighth and the odds of getting a top four pick double as well (13.9 percent at 10th to 26.3 percent at eighth). But the Bucks are also part of a pick swap that will give them the worst pick between them and New Orleans and the best of those picks to the Atlanta Hawks, so even a move-up scenario could never move them higher than the No. 2 pick.
There is upside in that scenario. Any greater chance at lottery luck to move up in a loaded NBA draft is worthwhile for the Bucks. They could use as much help as possible to upgrade their roster with a higher pick (which they could either use or trade). But is the possibility of slightly better lottery odds worth jeopardizing the organization’s relationship with Antetokounmpo and likely incurring fines for blatant tanking from the league?
That doesn’t leave much room for the Bucks to find a different path forward for the rest of the season. The Bucks need to be careful with Antetokounmpo’s health and ensure he doesn’t try to play through any injuries or push himself to do too much and put himself at risk. But as long as the Bucks have a chance to make the playoffs and Antetokounmpo wants to keep pushing forward, the Bucks should be on the same page as their franchise’s most important person.