Giannis Antetokounmpo stood along the sidelines at Barclays Center Tuesday night, dressed in a cream-colored sweater to watch his Cream City Bucks lose to the Brooklyn Nets. It may very well be one of the last few times he\u2019ll represent Milwaukee in any form if the latest rumors are true.<\/p>\n
Those latest rumors, amplified by ESPN\u2019s Shams Charania online and on television<\/a>, are that the 6\u201911\u201d 32-year-old is ready to move on from an increasingly dysfunctional locker room presided over by a coach who looks like a lame duck unable to rally his players. So, the Greek Freakout is upon us, it seems, with Shams predicting that a miniumum of 10 teams will take a look, make a call \u2026 and Brian Lewis predicting<\/a> that Brooklyn will be among them.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019ll make calls,\u201d a source told The Post, Lewis reported Wednesday morning. \u201cThey\u2019ve made calls in the past.\u201d<\/p>\n Indeed, maybe more than once. Giannis has been a Nets target in the past. How seriously is another question, but as Sean Marks said last year, part of the Nets rebuild will be determining whether a superstar acquisition is worth it.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you\u2019re going after max-level talent, they have to automatically and absolutely change the trajectory of your team,\u201d Marks said. \u201cThis can\u2019t be like, \u2018Let\u2019s go get this [guy] and lock ourselves into being a six or seven seed.\u2019 When we go all in, you\u2019re going in to compete at the highest level and contend.\u201d<\/p>\n Beyond that, various pundits, including Lewis, have reported that the Nets are moving from their 20 or so win rebuild to something more akin to a build, using whoever they get in the 2026 draft lottery as a lure for stars and superstars. Whether the Greek Freak is still the latter is still to be determined.<\/p>\n When healthy, he certainly qualifies as a top 5 player in the league, but he\u2019ll soon be 32 years old, has only played 36 games this season and has been dealing with leg injuries all season long, the worrisome kind, and will want a contract worth more than a quarter billion dollars, including $70+ billion in the final and fourth year \u2026. when he\u2019ll be 36. Then, there\u2019s the troublesome question of his relationship with the only team he\u2019s ever played for.<\/p>\n But it shouldn\u2019t be surprising that the Nets would pick up the phone. They had hoped Mikal Bridges and to a lesser degree Cam Johnson would get him interested. Didn\u2019t happen. It\u2019s not often players of his caliber become available. However, as Lewis points out, he wants to play for a winner and the Nets are far from that. Also, the Nets would no doubt have to give up a lot to get him. Shams reports that the Bucks turned down a package from the Heat that included young center Tyler Herro, Kel\u2019el Ware, other players and multiple draft picks and pick swaps. It didn\u2019t stop there, noted Shams.<\/p>\n The reality, Lewis admits, is that the chances of Giannis-to-Brooklyn are small.<\/p>\n To be clear, with teams like the Heat, Warriors and Knicks perceived as likelier landing spots, it\u2019s a long shot Antetokounmpo will end up in Brooklyn.<\/p>\n The odds are just better than the microscopic near-zero they were in February.<\/p>\n So as Jim Carrey once said, so you\u2019re telling him there\u2019s a chance? That\u2019s why you pick up the phone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Giannis Antetokounmpo stood along the sidelines at Barclays Center Tuesday night, dressed in a cream-colored sweater to watch…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":705711,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3767],"tags":[7,670,247,3803,6,671,38899],"class_list":{"0":"post-705710","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-brooklyn-nets","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-brooklyn","10":"tag-brooklyn-nets","11":"tag-brooklynnets","12":"tag-nba","13":"tag-nets","14":"tag-nets-free-agency"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116370551420314012","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705710","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=705710"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705710\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/705711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=705710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=705710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=705710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}