{"id":668838,"date":"2026-03-20T14:14:18","date_gmt":"2026-03-20T14:14:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/668838\/"},"modified":"2026-03-20T14:14:18","modified_gmt":"2026-03-20T14:14:18","slug":"bucks-co-owner-edens-giannis-will-be-extended-or-traded","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/668838\/","title":{"rendered":"Bucks Co-Owner Edens: Giannis Will Be Extended Or Traded"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Bucks have no intention of letting Giannis Antetokounmpo<\/a> play out the final guaranteed year of his contract in 2026\/27 and opt for free agency during the 2027 offseason, team co-owner Wes Edens told Ramona Shelburne of ESPN<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"\u201cGiannis is going into the last year (of his contract),\u201d Edens said. \u201cSo one of two things will happen: Either he will be extended or he\u2019ll be traded. The likelihood you\u2019ll let him just kind of play out the last year, we can\u2019t afford that. It\u2019s not consistent with what\u2019s good for the organization. That\u2019s not a Giannis issue. That\u2019s any player that\u2019s in their last year.\u201d<\/p>\n

Antetokounmpo\u2019s contract, which pays him $54.1MM this season, includes a $58.5MM guaranteed salary for \u201926\/27, followed by a $62.8MM player option for \u201927\/28. He\u2019ll become eligible on October 1 to sign a four-year, maximum-salary extension that would be worth a projected $275MM (the exact value would depend on where the \u201927\/28 cap ends up).<\/p>\n

However, if Giannis informs the Bucks this offseason that he doesn\u2019t intend to sign that extension once he\u2019s eligible to do so, it sounds like the team is prepared to reopen trade discussions that began in earnest prior to last month\u2019s deadline, even if the two-time MVP doesn\u2019t explicitly request a change of scenery.<\/p>\n

[RELATED: Giannis Resisting Bucks\u2019 Plan To Shut Him Down For Season<\/a>]<\/p>\n

Still, according to Shelburne, rival executives and insiders around the league are skeptical about whether the Bucks\u2019 choice will be quite that simple.<\/p>\n

As Shelburne explains, the team has an unusual ownership structure that involves the governor title changing hands between co-owners Edens and Jimmy Haslam every five years. In addition to controlling ownership rotating between those two men, another franchise shareholder, Jamie Dinan, is involved in major decisions. The setup has created some confusion among rival teams about who would get the final say in Milwaukee on a roster move as monumental as an Antetokounmpo trade.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis has nothing to do with Giannis and whether he asks out,\u201d one source told Shelburne. \u201cIt\u2019s about who\u2019s making the decision on whether to trade Giannis, and I don\u2019t think anyone knows that. I deal with them all the time and honestly it depends on the day. They\u2019re not even close to being ready to make a decision like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Edens, who will be the controlling owner for two more years before handing the reins to Haslam for five years beginning in 2028, tells ESPN that his partnership with Haslam is \u201cunbelievably good\u201d and that he has no concerns about the arrangement, but Shelburne suggests there have been signs that Haslam\u2019s influence within the organization is growing since he bought Marc Lasry\u2018s share of the team in 2023.<\/p>\n

When longtime Bucks president Peter Feigin left the organization earlier this season, he was replaced by Haslam Sports Group executive Josh Glessing, according to Shelburne, who also hears from sources that one team discussing a potential Giannis trade last month had direct negotiations with Haslam.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe more time goes on, the more power Jimmy\u2019s going to have,\u201d a source close to the team said. \u201cAnd long term, it\u2019 s going to be his anyway, so he\u2019s not going to let the guy that\u2019s [passing controlling ownership on] eventually dictate what it looks like.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe mostly dealt with (general manager Jon) Horst,\u201d added a rival executive whose team pursued Antetokounmpo. \u201cBut our impression was that Jimmy was really the one who would decide this.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although Edens insists that he and Haslam are \u201ccompletely united\u201d on the Giannis situation, other teams and Bucks minority shareholders are keeping a close eye on the situation due to the way in which the relationship between Edens and Lasry fell apart before Lasry sold his stake in the franchise. Notably, Shelburne writes, the two co-owners disagreed on who to hire to replace former GM John Hammond in 2017 \u2014 Horst was eventually promoted to fill the role after the team seriously considered its own assistant GM Justin Zanik and Nuggets executive Arturas Karnisovas.<\/p>\n

Here are a few more items of interest from Shelburne\u2019s story, which is well worth reading in full:<\/p>\n

Multiple sources told ESPN that the Bucks\u2019 asking price for Antetokounmpo prior to February\u2019s deadline was \u201cenormous,\u201d with one team suggesting that Milwaukee was simply gauging the market and sought \u201call our draft picks and good young players.\u201d Another rival executive said there was \u201cno question\u201d that the Bucks wanted to hang onto the star forward. \u201cBecause it never reached a point in time, in any of our discussions with them, where they said, \u2018We will do it if you do X,’\u201d that exec told Shelburne.
\nThe Warriors made an offer for Giannis that included four unprotected first-round picks, but they never seemed to gain any real momentum toward a deal, sources tell ESPN. According to Shelburne, the Bucks were more interested in pursuing concepts that would net them a young cornerstone like Cavaliers big man Evan Mobley<\/a> or Sixers guard VJ Edgecombe<\/a>, though there\u2019s no indication Cleveland or Philadelphia would\u2019ve been willing to discuss those players.
\nWhile the Bucks may be preparing to offer Antetokounmpo another maximum-salary extension during the offseason, multiple league executives believe the club would be better off accepting the best possible trade offer for him, Shelburne writes.\u201cHe\u2019s still a game changer, but he\u2019s 31 with a history of leg injuries,\u201d one exec said. \u201cAnd now you\u2019d basically be trading for a guy on an expiring deal, so I\u2019m not sure the offers they\u2019ll get this summer are going to be better than what they already got.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Bucks have no intention of letting Giannis Antetokounmpo play out the final guaranteed year of his contract…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":563360,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3775],"tags":[7,103,576,123,85595,4601,18152,102,121,3871,6,971,41961],"class_list":["post-668838","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-milwaukee-bucks","tag-basketball","tag-bucks","tag-evan-mobley","tag-giannis-antetokounmpo","tag-jamie-dinan","tag-jimmy-haslam","tag-marc-lasry","tag-milwaukee","tag-milwaukee-bucks","tag-milwaukeebucks","tag-nba","tag-vj-edgecombe","tag-wes-edens"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116261924788148908","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668838","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=668838"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668838\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/563360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=668838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=668838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=668838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}