CHICAGO — With seven seconds remaining in his return from a right calf strain that had kept him out of eight straight games, Milwaukee Bucks forward Giannis Antetokounmpo secured the rebound of a missed Kevin Huerter 3. Already leading by seven points, Antetokounmpo could have dribbled the clock out in front of his team’s bench to close out a road win, but instead, he decided to send a message.
Quickly picking up speed, Antetokounmpo dribbled to the other end of the floor and threw down a massive windmill dunk in front of the opposing bench to close out a 112-103 win over the Chicago Bulls.
Windy City windmill. pic.twitter.com/oqF4yJ1Z0a
— Milwaukee Bucks (@Bucks) December 28, 2025
The decision immediately drew the ire of the home team’s players as they inbounded the ball to close out the final seconds of the game and immediately made their way for Antetokounmpo. Bulls center Nikoka Vucevic was first to meet him and then it was point guard Coby White. By the time White arrived, so had Antetokounmpo’s teammates, who immediately separated Antetokounmpo from the situation.
With both teams’ coaching and security staffs in between the players, the situation was quickly resolved and everyone headed toward their respective locker rooms. As Antetokounmpo left the floor, though, the United Center crowd let him and his teammates know how they felt about his exclamation point dunk and rained boos upon him as he exited through the visitor’s tunnel.
“What, we’re 11th in the East? Are we 11th in the East or 12th? 11th? Just gotta keep finding our identity,” Antetokounmpo said when asked about his decision to dunk in the waning seconds. “And if that is to get a little bit of scrappy at the end, so be it. Like, we’re not the champs. Why should we play the clock out and have respect and fair play? Like we’re fighting for our lives right now.
“This is real talk, I’ve been 13 years in the league, if we keep on losing, brother, probably half of the team’s not gonna be here. We’re not going to make the playoffs (in 11th). Like I really don’t care. At the end of the day, I just want to be available, be healthy, and help my team win. And if that’s what has to happen for them — everybody — to wake up and understand like we’re fighting for our lives and we gotta get our hands dirty, so be it.”
The Bucks limited Antetokounmpo to just 25 minutes in his first game back since Dec. 3, but from the final dunk to every play in between, he made each second count and loudly reminded everyone of what he can do on the floor. Antetokounmpo scored 29 points and grabbed eight rebounds in his limited time, a clear indication of the MVP-type impact he can make while on the floor.
In the second quarter, Antetokounmpo inspired Bulls coach Billy Donovan to take a timeout by throwing down a dunk on three consecutive offensive possessions. Then after the timeout, he threw down another.
GIANNIS WITH THREE STRAIGHT THROWDOWNS. pic.twitter.com/H4NEIZbiR6
— Milwaukee Bucks (@Bucks) December 28, 2025
Antetokounmpo scored 10 of his 29 points in the fourth quarter, including eight in the final 70 seconds after the Bulls cut the deficit to just three points.
And if his teammate’s reactions are any indication, his final message to close the game seemed to have resonated in the locker room.
“He set the tone. I love it,” Ryan Rollins (20 points, seven rebounds, five assists) said with a smile on his face after the game. “I love him doing that. It just set the tone, so I’m not mad at it at all. And then I love, even after the fact too, when everybody tried to press him, our whole team came out and backed up Giannis. So, I love it, man.”
Bobby Portis, one of the Bucks’ emotional leaders and Antetokounmpo’s longest-tenured teammate, approved of the superstar forward’s dunk and the message it sent to the rest of the team.
“I liked that. I like a little confrontation,” Portis (17 points, 11 rebounds) said. “We’re not shying away from it. I think he said he wanna be a villain, so I guess I’m right there with him. I guess we all right there with him. Just follow his lead, man. We’re just here to get better each and every day and just stack wins, stack confidence, stack good habits and you look up and you’ll be .500 and you go from there.”
To Portis’ point though, the Bucks will need more than exclamation point dunks and a willingness to scrap when teams take exception to their play. They need wins.
Even after Saturday’s, the Bucks are still six games under .500 at 13-19, and they have not won two games in a row since October. For nearly two months, the Bucks have gone without wins in consecutive games and that needs to change immediately.
As Antetokounmpo emphasized during his post-game comments, Milwaukee is 11th in the Eastern Conference standings, 1½ games behind the Atlanta Hawks for the final spot in the play-in. That leaves them 4½ games behind the Philadelphia 76ers, who currently sit in sixth in the East with a 16-13 record.
The Bucks need Antetokounmpo’s return to bring more than just Windy City bluster. With only 50 games remaining in the regular season, Milwaukee needs to make up serious ground in the standings to get itself in playoff position and avoid the hypothetical fate Antetokounmpo laid out, in which the team remains in 11th place and misses the postseason.
After bringing up that hypothetical on Saturday night, a reporter asked Antetokounmpo to move further down that path and consider a world in which the Bucks don’t compete for a playoff spot this season.
You’ve talked about wanting to win, compete for a championship. Do you want to be here if you guys are not going to be able to …
Antetokounmpo cut the question off to make his stance clear.
“I’m here. I’m here. I’m here. Don’t ask me that question,” Antetokounmpo said on Saturday night, when asked if he wanted to remain in Milwaukee if the team struggled to compete at the level he has always desired. “I’m here. It’s disrespectful towards myself and my teammates. I wear that jersey every single day.
“It’s disrespectful towards the organization, my coaching staff, myself and all the people that work hard for me to come out here and say I don’t want to be here. Don’t ask me that question. I’m here. I’m putting on the jersey. And as long as I’m here, I’m gonna give everything I have even in the last second of the game.”
While Antetokounmpo might want that answer to be an exclamation point as forceful as the dunk he threw down to close out the win, the questions about his future in Milwaukee will continue unless the Bucks start to win consistently now that he is back in uniform and ready to lead.