'I cannot recall that meeting': How Giannis and the Bucks managed an awkward offseason

FROM A DIMLY lit room more than 6,000 miles away across the Atlantic Ocean, Giannis Antetokounmpo appeared on a projector screen in the interview room at Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee.

It was Sept. 29, Bucks media day, the first day a team could officially gather before the start of training camp for the 2025-26 season.

Most of his teammates shuffled in and out of the same room to answer questions before they headed to the court to pose for new photos for the year.

Antetokounmpo had come down with COVID the week before and had not yet been cleared to travel. It was after 8 p.m. in Greece and Antetokounmpo's voice was raspy, still recovering, but he dialed in. He sat with his right fist resting on his temple to open the session.

Bucks television analyst and host Lisa Byington asked how he was feeling. "Good," he said, smiling. "I look good on camera."

The room laughed, a temporary reprieve from what had been at times an uneasy, tense summer for the franchise.

An hour earlier, in the same interview room, Bucks governor Wes Edens justified the team's bold summer transaction -- stretching the remaining $113 million on Damian Lillard's contract over the next five years to free up enough cap space to sign free agent Myles Turner -- by pointing to Antetokounmpo's continued commitment to the franchise.

"I had a great conversation with Giannis back in June out here, and he made it clear that he was very committed to Milwaukee," Edens said. "He likes being here, likes his family being here. ... Obviously, we've had some kind of bad fortune in these last couple of years in the playoffs, but there's a lot of positives. If we were really going to make the most of our opportunity with Giannis, we felt that we needed to do something substantial, and that's what we did."

Four seasons removed from the 2021 NBA championship that Antetokounmpo helped deliver to Milwaukee, only he and Bobby Portis remained on the current roster.

Jrue Holiday, Khris Middleton and Brook Lopez, the rest of that championship core, are elsewhere. Lillard saw his two-year tenure in Milwaukee cut short after he tore an Achilles in the first round of the playoffs last season and was waived, an unceremonious end to what was supposed to be a long-term, dominant partnership. The Bucks lost in the first round of the playoffs both years he was there.

Antetokounmpo is now the only player on the roster who has made an All-Star team.

Back in the interview room, he was asked about the meeting with Edens. He paused.

"A meeting? Say that again? I had a meeting with Wes?"

"I ... I really, I cannot recall that meeting."

The uncomfortable disconnect quickly went viral.

The awkwardness of that media day misstep served as an inauspicious start to the season.

A week later, ESPN would report that the Bucks and Knicks had engaged in talks surrounding Antetokounmpo. Those talks never progressed, sources told ESPN, but Antetokounmpo had entertained the idea.

The Bucks have refused to consider a future in which Antetokounmpo is playing elsewhere. Antetokounmpo always had as well. But for the first time, he not only publicly admitted his interest in another franchise but provided an on-the-record timeline for his decision.

"I've said this many times: I want to be in a situation that I can win," Antetokounmpo said. "I've communicated with my teammates, communicated with the people I respect and love, that the moment I step on this court or in this facility, I wear this jersey, the rest does not matter. I'm locked into whatever I have in front of me. Now, if in six, seven months I change my mind, I think that's human, too."

That door, once locked and closed, had been opened.

"We just got to put our heads down, stay locked in all year long and try to win some games," Antetokounmpo said. "Hopefully, get in the playoffs and then don't get eliminated in the first round. That's pretty much it. And then we go from there."

Still, as the Bucks enter the season, they insist they are on the same page as their star. "There's no bigger difference," one team source told ESPN, "than the perception of the outside compared to what's going on in-house."

JON HORST INSISTS the Bucks have been in this position before.

Since he became the team's general manager in 2017, Horst, who received a contract extension in April, has faced questions about how he plans to keep Antetokounmpo in Milwaukee. The level of inquiry hit a crescendo this offseason.

When asked about it, Horst dispelled the premise.

"It's no different than any other offseason," Horst said at media day.

It's the same message the Bucks sent throughout the summer, waving their hands -- there's not much to see here! -- despite Antetokounmpo's own acknowledged wandering eye.

Precedent might fuel Horst's confidence.

Each time Antetokounmpo's future has been in question, the GM has doubled down more of the team's future: first by acquiring Jrue Holiday in 2020, then by using Holiday to trade for Lillard in 2023, and then by waiving Lillard to create space to sign Turner this summer.

In response, Antetokounmpo, who will turn 31 in December, signed extensions both summers.

The unprecedented waive-and-stretch for Lillard was widely panned around the league, but it's viewed much differently internally. Team sources were concerned about whether Lillard, at 36, could return to the player he was -- and did not want to waste a year of contention in a conference decimated by injuries.

Perhaps more importantly, they knew they could not waste another year with Antetokounmpo. "The biggest misconception is that this was a panic move," a team source told ESPN. "It wasn't. It was a basketball decision. Dame on the other end of it, you're not sure what that was going to look like. Meanwhile, Myles is a perfect fit. We want to win here."

But it might be harder to do so now, with this roster, than at any time in Antetokounmpo's prime.

He'll be without an All-Star guard or wing for the first time since 2015-16, perhaps not coincidentally the last time the Bucks missed the playoffs. They entered the season with the eighth-best odds to win the Eastern Conference, according to ESPN BET, behind the 76ers and Celtics despite the injury uncertainty surrounding Joel Embiid and Paul George in Philadelphia and Jayson Tatum in Boston.

The burden on Antetokounmpo has never been higher. Despite playing just 27 minutes in Milwaukee's 133-120 victory over the Washington Wizards on opening night, Antetokounmpo scored 37 points, grabbed 14 rebounds and dished out five assists. But his usage rate, the percentage of Bucks plays that ended with an Antetokounmpo shot attempt, free throw or turnover -- was nearly 49%.

For comparison, Charlotte's LaMelo Ball led the league in usage last season at 35.9% (Antetokounmpo was second at 35.2%).

And the Bucks also lost their starting point guard, Kevin Porter Jr., to an ankle injury in Wednesday's opener that coach Doc Rivers acknowledged "didn't look good."

YET AS ANTETOKOUMPO also openly considers his legacy within the sport, Milwaukee is approaching another reckoning point: the summer of 2026.

Antetokounmpo has two more years remaining on his contract after this one, but the final season is a player option. He will become eligible next summer to sign an extension. It's this window that could dictate what his future holds.

"Always got to hold ownership's feet to the fire," a source close to Antetokounmpo told ESPN.

Antetokounmpo has proceeded to walk the finest of lines once again. He acknowledged his current dedication to the franchise but also publicly gave himself the opportunity to change his mind by spring.

"Ultimately, I'm going to make a decision," he said. "And my decision today is that I'm here and I'm committed to this team."

Such a declaration adds considerable pressure to the 2025-26 Bucks, a team with unproven co-stars who have to give him a reason to stay or at least win enough early to quiet some of the speculation that could surround this squad all season.

Horst, for his part, can make moves to improve the roster. The Bucks aren't in either apron or in the luxury tax, and they have their 2031 and 2032 first-round picks to offer in a trade.

Whether Horst plays those cards, limited though they might be, remains to be seen.

"This team is built to maximize Giannis, but Giannis can actually maximize this team," Horst said. "We understand nothing's been given to us. This is a team that is really hungry to earn whatever we get, and they want to deserve to win. That's going to be our style of play, playing together, and that's going to feature the best player in the world, Giannis, and a bunch of guys that fit him really, really well."

ANTETOKOUNMPO STOOD NEAR center court, his mouth open and head nodding in approval.

It was his first stint of his first preseason game of the season, on the road Oct. 12 against the Chicago Bulls, and the Bucks' offense was rolling.

Milwaukee had knocked down three straight 3-pointers -- a pair from Gary Trent and another from Turner -- to turn a 7-7 tie into a 16-7 Milwaukee advantage in less than a minute, forcing Bulls coach Billy Donovan to burn a timeout with 7:49 remaining in the first quarter.

The Bucks went on to shoot 48 3-pointers in the game, taking more shots from beyond the arc than inside it. They made 20 of them in their 127-121 win.

Cynics might see meaningless stats from a random preseason game. Others might see proof of concept.

"It's a function of what we can do," Rivers said after the game. "Last year, even though we led the league in percentage, we just couldn't create enough. Now we feel like we can create more."

Indeed, the Bucks were the best 3-point shooting team in the league last year, knocking down 38.7% of their shots from deep, but they ranked 18th in attempts (36.6).

In four preseason games, Milwaukee generated an average of 42.6 3-point attempts per game, which increased to 46.5 in the two exhibition games in which Antetokounmpo played.

By leaning more on Antetokounmpo as a playmaker and surrounding him with 3-point shooting, the Bucks believe they have found a formula they can win with.

Their starting lineup alongside Antetokounmpo will be Turner in the frontcourt along with Trent, Porter and AJ Green, who is fresh off a new four-year, $45 million contract extension.

The Bucks experimented with this five-out offense, allowing Antetokounmpo to be the lead initiator and surrounded by space and shooting, down the stretch last season following Lillard's deep vein thrombosis diagnosis on March 20, which ended his regular season.

During that 16-game span, Antetokounmpo recorded five triple-doubles, second in the NBA during that span behind Nikola Jokic (8), according to ESPN Research.