the NBA All-Star Game because he was trying<\/a> 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.<\/p>\nThis Bucks team is not close to good enough to win a championship. They haven\u2019t even competed at a level that suggests they should be a playoff team, but that doesn\u2019t mean Antetokounmpo\u2019s competitive drive has changed.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s first-round upset of the Bucks in 2023.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s best for the last decade.<\/p>\n
The Bucks must continue to work with Antetokounmpo<\/p>\n
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\u2019t all that interested in moving Antetokounmpo, preferring to keep the franchise leader in nearly every category in Milwaukee.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Just take a closer look at what the Bucks would stand to gain by tanking.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s relationship with Antetokounmpo and likely incurring fines for blatant tanking from the league?<\/p>\n
That doesn\u2019t 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\u2019s health and ensure he doesn\u2019t 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\u2019s most important person.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While it didn\u2019t end up helping the Milwaukee Bucks against the Boston Celtics on Monday, star forward Giannis…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":643599,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3775],"tags":[7,103,102,121,3871,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-643598","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-milwaukee-bucks","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-bucks","10":"tag-milwaukee","11":"tag-milwaukee-bucks","12":"tag-milwaukeebucks","13":"tag-nba"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116183413814749696","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=643598"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643598\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/643599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=643598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=643598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=643598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}