Is This 2021 Finals Champion Wasting His Prime with the Bucks?
The Milwaukee Bucks won their first championship in 1971 with an all-time great leading the team in Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. After winning his first championship, Kareem had to leave Milwaukee to find further success in the postseason. The Bucks then went through a 50-year championship drought until Giannis Antetokounmpo led them to their second championship in 2021. Giannis has been phenomenal for the Bucks; however, if he wants to see any more success in the playoffs, he may need to take a page out of Kareem’s book and find success outside of Milwaukee.
To understand how the Bucks are failing Giannis, it's important to understand how great the 2013 first-round selection truly is. He’s a two-time MVP winner, a defensive player of the year, has nine all-star appearances, and has nine all-NBA selections. For the last three seasons, Antetokounmpo has averaged a 30-point double-double. He’s going to go down in history as one of the greatest to play for the Bucks, and one of the best to ever play the sport. With all this in mind, what the Milwaukee Bucks have done to keep their roster competitive is absurd.
The elephant in the room when looking at the Bucks and their poor decision-making is the waiving of Damian Lillard. After rupturing his Achilles in the 2025 playoffs, the Bucks decided to waive Lillard’s contract over five years, resulting in the Bucks having to pay Lillard $22 million per year. That means for the next five years, Milwaukee will have $22 million in dead cap space. That dead space has the value of a high-end starter player on a competitive team. That dead space is roughly what the Nuggets are paying Cameron Johnson, and the Bucks have ensured they can’t afford a player like this for five years without cutting other contracts.
While the cutting of Lillard is the biggest headline, the rest of the Bucks roster has been mishandled. They let go of Brook Lopez, who was a solid stretch five for the Bucks, signed with the Clippers in free agency. They traded Khris Middleton, whose performance in the 2021 finals helped them win a championship, for Kyle Kuzma, who infamously had an atrocious performance in the playoffs against Indiana. The Bucks replaced their lost center with free agent Myles Turner to a four-year $107 million contract. While Turner is a solid pickup, his success in Indiana came while he was the third-best player on his team. Now, he must handle the responsibility of being the second-best.
Giannis has consistently been a top-three player in the league and has shown to have the ability to lead a team to postseason success, but his current roster is too weak. Aside from Giannis, the Bucks roster has no All-Stars, no All-NBA selections, and less money to spend than their competitors. If Giannis wants to add another championship to his resume, it's in his best interests to do it with another team. With their current roster, they lack both high-end talent and a reliable bench unit, and the dead cap space makes these issues even harder to fix.
