As Damian Lillard crumpled to the floor with 6:11 to go in the first quarter of Game 4, the Milwaukee Bucks’ hopes for the 2024–25 NBA season were extinguished.
The first two games of the team’s first-round series against the Indiana Pacers proved Giannis Antetokounmpo, in all his greatness, wasn’t enough on his own. Lillard missed Game 1 as he recovered from a blood clot and managed to suit up for Game 2, but clearly didn’t have his legs under him after being sidelined since March 18. The Bucks lost both contests despite the “Greek Freak” averaging 35 points, 15 rebounds and four assists. In Game 3, Lillard looked closer to full strength; he did not shoot the ball well at all, but was a +16 in 32 minutes as the Bucks beat the Pacers, 117–101, to bring the series to 2–1.
It all served as a reminder that Milwaukee needs Lillard. The roster needs his steady offensive hand and ability to act as a safety valve, the gravity that his scoring ability brings and how it morphs the floor for the opposing defense. Even on nights when Lillard can’t buy a bucket or gives everything back with a lackadaisical defensive effort, the Bucks just don’t have enough juice to beat top-tier competition without him.
So it lined up that, after Lillard limped off the floor on Sunday night and took the air out of the arena with him, Milwaukee folded. Indiana dominated offensively and took a 3–1 series lead by way of a 129–103 victory. Once Monday brought the suspected news that Lillard tore his Achilles tendon, the star point guard’s injury seems to spell the end of the Bucks’ season—as well as an end to the Giannis era in Milwaukee.
As the team scuffled for momentum in the opening two games of the playoffs, rumors swirled about the Greek superstar’s future. Analysts openly posited it was a manner of if, not when, Antetokounmpo would demand a trade. At 30 years old, his overwhelmingly physical playing style figures to catch up with him eventually, but his MVP-caliber season proved it hasn’t yet, especially after Lillard went down and Antetokounmpo starred in his former role as the primary ballhandler. He may not be ascending anymore, but the All-NBA big man has clearly remained one of the five best players in the league.
The Bucks, on the other hand, have not handled the erosion of their championship core well. The two most important players on the roster after Antetokounmpo are the 34-year-old Lillard and 37-year-old Brook Lopez. General manager Jon Horst’s biggest swing other than the Lillard trade was shipping out Khris Middleton for Kyle Kuzma at this year’s trade deadline; Kuzma has nine fouls and 10 field goals against the Pacers through four games.
The front office has done an all-right job finding value on the margins, getting Gary Trent Jr. and Kevin Porter Jr. for cheap this past offseason and turning them into contributors, but the draft has been a disaster. The last two first-round picks made by Milwaukee, AJ Johnson and MarJon Beauchamp, are both off the team already. AJ Green is the only half-decent young player the Bucks have managed to develop since Donte DiVincenzo was drafted in 2017, and Green tops out as a useful seventh man rather than a star capable of aiding Antetokounmpo in the most important playoff minutes.
In other words, the Bucks failed to put a strong structure around Antetokounmpo and Lillard these past few seasons. They are totally, entirely and 100% reliant on those two and those two alone to win games. Which made the future look a bit dire before Lillard suffered one of the worst injuries in basketball. Now? It looks very dark.
Not only do the Bucks lack any kind of tertiary starpower that could make up for Lillard’s absence with increased opportunity, Milwaukee lacks pretty much all ability to make any notable moves. The team owes its 2025 first-round pick outright to the New Orleans Pelicans from the Jrue Holiday trade. In ’26 the Pelicans can swap their own first-round pick for Milwaukee’s. The ’27 first-rounder again goes to New Orleans if it is more favorable than the Pelicans’ own selection. There are complicated protections around the ’28 first-round pick, but the Bucks will have to give it up to the Portland Trail Blazers or Washington Wizards. The Blazers get Milwaukee’s ’29 first-rounder outright and have the right to swap in ’30.
The Bucks do not have full control of their own draft picks for the next five years. They can’t use those picks to trade for more talent, and if they completely bottom out, they will not be getting a high lottery pick under almost any circumstance. Milwaukee can’t count on any incoming blue-chip talent, which leaves free agency and trades as its only recourse to get Antetokounmpo the help he clearly needs to make deep playoff runs.
Which is where Lillard complicates things. He is owed $54 million next season, which makes up more than a third of the Bucks’ overall cap space. It’s effectively dead-weight money given the point guard will likely spend most, if not all, of the next year off the court rehabbing his injury. The following season he has a player option worth a whopping $58 million and there’s no universe in which he opts out of getting that money even if it would help Milwaukee.
To recap: Of the top eight players in the Bucks’ rotation from 2024–25, five are at least 30 years old. Of the remaining three, one is Kuzma, who hasn’t been a positive on the court since ’20 and will join the age-30 club in July; one is a 26-year-old journeyman on his third team in Trent; and the last is 24-year-old Porter, who has shown talent but proven troubled off the court and pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor reckless assault charge in January ’24.
The Bucks do have draft picks in the next few years but have already traded them as many times as possible and it’s very hard to find good players in the range those picks will wind up. There will be no relief coming in the salary cap department and the NBA’s tax apron rules make it very hard for Milwaukee to quickly tear down and rebuild the roster via trade.
That is dire. That has the making of a team teetering on the edge of a cliff, with only the slightest nudge needed to send them into a freefall. Antetokounmpo is the only thing standing between the franchise and complete disaster. But will he be there to do so?
That’s not to say the context laid out above leads only to the conclusion Antetokounmpo will demand a trade. While the superstar hasn’t shied away from making the occasional side comment about how he wants to be employed by an organization dedicated to winning, Antetokounmpo has reinforced his dedication to Milwaukee and interest in staying with the Bucks at pretty much every given opportunity. At face value, it doesn’t seem like Antetokounmpo wants to leave unless the team reaches a true level of disaster, and his mere presence on and off the court guarantees they can avoid that.
But a trade may be the only way out of the situation for the Bucks. They went all-in using every resource available to get Holiday and win a championship, a formula that worked to perfection. Then they went all-in again to bring Lillard aboard to win another. That didn’t pan out so well. The Bucks have been going “all-in” for six or seven years now, and when a team does that, the resource well eventually dries up. The time comes to pay the piper. The clock strikes midnight. Whatever analogy you want to use, Milwaukee has reached the point where the franchise must face the consequences of the sacrifices it made in the long term for short-term gain.
The quickest, if the most painful, way to deal with that reality is to trade Antetokounmpo. The haul of picks and talented players the Bucks could get in return would completely reset the franchise. The next few years are still far from ideal as far as draft picks and the salary sheet, but there would be a direction, a plan in place to return the Bucks to contention: take their medicine, utilize the resources from the Antetokounmpo trade to build a more complete team and by the time the 2030s are here Milwaukee could be in a good place to compete.
The agony of painting themselves into such a corner would persist for years. But what’s the alternative? Keep desperately trying to strike gold along the margins, hoping a Trent or Green comes along every season? Watch idly as Antetokounmpo toils with a roster better suited for the play-in tournament than the NBA Finals? Hope another GM tries to do their best Nico Harrison impression and gift the Bucks another generational superstar?
For many, perhaps most, fans, those are preferred outcomes to trading Antetokounmpo. He has embraced Milwaukee like few athletes ever have. He brought the franchise its first title in half a century. There may not be a player who loves anything as much as Antetokounmpo loves being a Buck. And maybe that’s enough for him and the organization. It would stand out in this era of ruthless decision-making in pursuit of winning. But maybe both parties are content to play the string out, let Antetokounmpo lead average-at-best Bucks teams until he retires and watch proudly as his jersey ascends to the rafters at the soonest possible moment.
But that’s the big question: Is that enough? Is that enough for the team, the player, the fans? It is a question most thought would come eventually for the Bucks—but not this soon. Unfortunately for Milwaukee, the events of Sunday push it to the forefront immediately.
Lillard’s injury marked the end of his season; it may mark the end of his career as we know it. It’s not easy for point guards pushing 35 to recover from any injury, much less a torn Achilles. It likely marks the end of the Bucks’ playoff run this year. And it may very well mark the end of the Antetokounmpo era that began on draft night in 2013. The Bucks have few options and fewer right answers; Antetokounmpo will be in the middle of it all, one way or another.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Damian Lillard’s Injury Could End the Giannis Era in Milwaukee.