The NBA trade deadline is Thursday at 3 p.m. ET, and the entire league is watching to see if the Milwaukee Bucks deal nine-time All-NBA player and two-time NBA MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo after 12 seasons with the franchise.<\/p>\n
As far as the odds of that happening go, NBA insider Zach Lowe places the chances at 50-50 at the moment, per comments made on Amazon Prime Video.<\/p>\n
“I’ve been talking to teams all around the league, including officials from teams that are in the Giannis chase or would like to be in the Giannis chase. And right now, the consensus is we are in a waiting period. I would say there is a skepticism among those teams that he will get moved at this deadline. A lot of people told me, you know, 75-25 this waits ’til the summer, 80-20, this waits ’til the summer, when more teams have access to more draft picks, when maybe a team with a ton of assets like the Spurs or the Rockets loses in the playoffs earlier than expected and decides to get more aggressive.<\/p>\n
“All that said, when the toothpaste is this far out of the tube like this, it’s hard to put it back in. So if those teams are at 80-20, I think this is a coin flip that he gets moved between now and the deadline because these things just tend to move when it gets out there so publicly like this… <\/p>\n
“If you see a team like Miami, who has two first-round picks to trade, that ain’t enough. If there’s a move where they turn some player into an extra pick or trade for a future first-round pick from another team somehow, that’s obviously a red flag.”<\/p>\n
ESPN’s Shams Charania has previously reported that Antetokounmpo is “ready and prepared” for a trade either by this year’s deadline or during this summer, and he added that the Bucks are currently listening to “aggressive trade offers.”<\/p>\n
We’re at the point where it seems it’s a matter of “when” and not “if” Antetokounmpo is dealt, leaving the remaining questions of “to whom” and “for what.”<\/p>\n