The Milwaukee Bucks finally made their long-awaited Giannis Antetokounmpo trade on Monday. In a blockbuster deal involving five other players and three first-round draft picks, the two-time MVP was sent to the Miami Heat, ending a year-long saga that included several rounds of negotiations with a number of different teams.
Obviously, the two participants will feel the effects of the trade more than anyone else. This trade changes the trajectory of the Heat and Bucks for the foreseeable future. But we’re talking about a two-time MVP here, one of the defining players of both this era and this offseason. His impact on the league is seismic. Even if only two other teams were involved in the trade, 28 others will feel it.
So now that the deal is done, let’s find some winners and losers. Obviously, the Heat and Bucks will factor in here, but we’re also going to focus on some of the tangential effects of the deal on other players teams throughout the league.
Giannis Antetokounmpo trade grades: Heat earn ‘B+’ in blockbuster, while Bucks pay for waiting too long
Sam Quinn
Winner: Miami Heat
Pat Riley got his star, and Miami should be a contender again
The Heat don’t rebuild. They openly oppose tanking. Their roster-building strategy is and always has been “find the next star.” That’s proven difficult in recent years, because frankly, they just haven’t had very much to trade. Portland turned them down for Damian Lillard. Phoenix didn’t send them Kevin Durant.
The Heat have spent the past four seasons in the Play-In Tournament. Tyler Herro is a one-time All-Star whose defense is such a problem that teams openly admit to targeting him in the playoffs. They haven’t made a top-10 pick in 11 years because they never tank, so both their recent picks and future ones held sparse trade value. They’ve been stuck in purgatory.
But the stars finally aligned for them here, and they have the Bucks to thank for that. If Milwaukee had acted sooner, like, say, when Damian Lillard tore his Achilles a year ago, Miami almost certainly would have been outbid. Even at the deadline, Portland was reportedly willing to trade for Antetokounmpo without an extension commitment and had far more to trade than Miami. The Heat waited the situation out and eventually got their man.
For the first time since they traded Jimmy Butler, the Heat have a real direction. They have an MVP-caliber superstar to build around and a path out of that Play-In purgatory they’ve been trapped in for so many years. They didn’t even have to give up their best player, Bam Adebayo, to get that superstar. Most of NBA history supports the idea of trading a handful of dimes for a dollar. That’s what the Heat did here.
The Bucks waited too long to trade Giannis Antetokounmpo, and they still might’ve chosen the wrong package
Brad Botkin
Loser: Miami Heat
Yes, Miami is also a loser because of the huge risk factor
Let’s be clear, the Heat had to do this. They were utterly directionless before this trade and have a path to the title after it. But similar logic guided the Clippers into trading Shai Gilgeous-Alexander for Paul George. We all saw how that worked out.
The risk here is enormous. Antetokounmpo is 31. His playing style doesn’t figure to age especially well. He’s about to sign a supermax extension. He suffered several calf strains last season. And, perhaps spurred by Boston’s presence in the negotiations, Miami gave up almost everything it had to get him. Its most notable young players. Picks in the 2030s. There is no pivot. This is the Heat’s team and their plan. They either make a serious championship push with Antetokounmpo or they move into a potentially bleak future.
That is very often the nature of star trades. Teams understand the risk when they make them. The reward has to be worthwhile. And that’s the fundamental problem here. This is a championship-or-bust trade… and the Heat are not a championship team yet. They don’t have the shooting or the ball-handling. Depth has never been more important than it is today in the NBA, and the Heat don’t have much of it. The core is old. As it stands right now, the Knicks and Pistons certainly have more complete rosters than the Heat do. Indiana likely does as well, assuming Tyrese Haliburton is himself. We’ll see how Boston responds to missing out. They’re miles behind the Spurs and Thunder right now.
Now, we’re talking about the Heat here. They have an all-time coach in Erik Spoelstra and a front office that is used to solving top-heavy roster problems with minimal resources. Think of all the undrafted free agents who helped take them to the 2023 Finals. They can manufacture depth.
But the odds overwhelmingly suggest that the Heat are unlikely to actually win a championship, and if that is the barometer, well, this could get pretty bleak pretty quickly. Even if the Heat had to make this trade, and even if the value they gave up was well worth a player as good as Antetokounmpo, it is ultimately likelier that they regret this trade than it is that they celebrate it. The “handful of dimes for a dollar” philosophy of roster-building may not be as obvious a strategy in the apron and depth era.
Winner: New York Knicks (and other contenders)
The Celtics missed out on Giannis — the Knicks (and Spurs and Thunder) should be happy
The best teams in the NBA can breathe a sigh of relief. Giannis Antetokounmpo is not a Boston Celtic.
Would the Celtics have had problems to solve after trading for Antetokounmpo? Of course. But Boston has been far better than Miami for years now, and the Celtics were a far easier roster fit. Boston’s biggest weakness by far was its inability to generate rim pressure, ranking 27th in paint points last season. Antetokounmpo has led the NBA in paint points per game three years running. Putting him in Boston’s spacing would have been a nightmare for opposing defenses.
Jayson Tatum would have been the perfect theoretical teammate for Antetokounmpo. Giannis is a pretty tricky star to build around. He wants to be the primary ball-handler in his offense, but he needs another star-level shot-maker for the end of close games. Most stars who check the second box also want to be the primary ball-handler, which is part of why the Lillard trade didn’t work. At the best of times in Milwaukee, Khris Middleton filled this role next to Antetokounmpo. Tatum is a better version of that player, and because he is capable of both defending centers and rebounding at the level of most centers, he would have allowed the Celtics to close games without a center on the floor. How on Earth would anyone have stopped the Celtics with Tatum, Antetokounmpo and three shooters on the floor?
The Heat are certainly a threat to New York’s reign atop the East. Boston probably would have been a legitimate favorite over the Knicks with Antetokounmpo in tow. That Celtic team would have posed a real threat to the Thunder and Spurs. This Heat team — for now, on paper, anyway — does not.
Loser: Boston Celtics
Where do the Celtics and Jaylen Brown go from here?
Whether or not the Celtics should have gone all in for Antetokounmpo is a matter of reasonable debate. Obviously, I think they would have been a juggernaut. But the injury and asset concerns Miami now has to deal with would have existed to some extent for them as well. They would likely have been shortening their window. You never feel great going into an all-in year knowing that your two best players combined to play 52 games in the prior regular season. Drawing a line somewhere made sense.
It’s the aftermath that’s murkier. Jaylen Brown was very nearly traded. He’s been the subject of trade rumor for his entire career. He’s coming off of the best season he’s ever had, and he’s made some comments on Twitch streams suggesting that he’d be open to something new anyway. How do the Celtics move forward with Brown? Is the relationship salvageable?
Honestly, a Brown trade made sense with or without Antetokounmpo in the fold. We’re in the most restrictive financial environment in NBA history and the Celtics owe two supermax contracts to Tatum and Brown. That probably wasn’t tenable moving forward, especially given the issues Boston’s depth players had in the first-round loss to Philadelphia. Turning one of those players into a player like Giannis might have justified the cost. The alternative would be turning one of those contracts into a variety of other assets and rethinking the entire construction of your roster.
The Celtics can still do that, but they’re operating from a position of weakness now. The whole league knows that they dangled Brown for Giannis, and every other team knows how awkward it would be to bring him back. Trade negotiations are complex processes where every shred of leverage matters. It’s possible that all of this made Brown a less valuable trade chip for Boston. It’s possible that without a viable deal, they have to bring him back and deal with the fallout of their failed Antetokounmpo pursuit.
Winner: Miami’s free agents
Andrew Wiggins and Norman Powell should get paid to return to a better team
Andrew Wiggins and Norman Powell are functionally irreplaceable to the Heat. There is no other 3-and-D wing on the free agent market as valuable as Wiggins, and they lack the leftover assets to trade for someone like him. Miami currently has basically no shot-creation beyond Antetokounmpo and Adebayo, so retaining Powell following his All-Star season is probably a must. Wiggins has a $30 million player option. Powell is an unrestricted free agent.
Even with the two of them in the fold, Miami is thin and probably needs further upgrades. At this moment, they’re roughly $18 million below their first-apron hard cap with only 10 players signed. Their financial resources are very limited. Wiggins and Powell are set to take advantage of that.
We’ll start with Wiggins. The Heat could really use a lower cap figure than that $30 million option for next season. Wiggins, who is 31, should be eager to accommodate… in exchange for a longer-term deal. Could he turn a one-year, $30 million deal into, say, a four-year, $100 million pact that takes him through his age-34 season? Probably, as doing so would save the Heat several million dollars that could be used elsewhere. Powell is in the same boat, but as a 33-year-old, length is an even more important part of his next contract. He stands to benefit from Miami’s need to use extra years to compensate for lower starting salaries.
How exactly the Heat fill out their roster beyond those two is unclear, but one way or another, Miami needs them back. There is no more desirable place for a free agent to be than on a team with Bird Rights that cannot afford to lose him. If that team happens to be a contender in a no-income-tax state? Then all the better.
Loser: Los Angeles Clippers and Memphis Grizzlies
Kawhi Leonard and Ja Morant were supposed to be Miami’s Plan B (and C)
The Celtics weren’t exactly star-hunting. Antetokounmpo made sense specifically for their needs, so they pursued him. Miami’s situation was a bit simpler. They just badly needed star-level talent. If it wasn’t going to be Antetokounmpo, it would’ve been someone else.
The obvious loser in that respect would be the Clippers. Had Miami missed out on Giannis, Kawhi Leonard probably would have been next on their list. The Clippers could have potentially pitted the Heat and Golden State Warriors against one another in a bidding war. That would have been two teams with lottery picks and other assets at their disposal fighting for a 34-year-old the Clippers should probably be happy to move given the youth movement they started at the deadline. Now, without an obvious secondary suitor in the mix, Golden State would figure to be the clear favorite if the Clippers do elect to move Leonard.
Ja Morant is another star that has been linked to Miami. He makes no sense with Antetokounmpo since he neither shoots 3s nor defends. Moving Leonard shouldn’t be difficult for the Clippers. Wings who shoot and defend are worth their weight in gold. But Morant suitors appear to be minimal, so every lost trade partner hurts the Grizzlies that much more.
TBD: Milwaukee Bucks
The Bucks look like losers right now, but that could change down the road
Look, it would be easy to call the Bucks a loser. I gave them a C- for the trade, and that’s warranted. They dragged this situation out a year longer than they should have and probably lost substantial value for doing so. They gave up the best player in franchise history without getting an obvious replacement as their franchise cornerstone. The next few years are going to be bleak. There’s no getting around that. This trade may end up being a loss. My expectation is that the Bucks do not seriously contend for a championship again at least through the end of this decade and probably beyond it.
But I have to give them a “TBD” here because there’s just so much uncertainty wrapped into this package. It could be great. It could be bad. It’s just way too early too tell. Kasparas Jakučionis hasn’t even played 1,000 NBA minutes yet. We have no idea what he’s going to be. Kel’El Ware has star-level tools but is a long, long way from realizing that potential. It will be years before the No. 13 pick bears fruit.
Really, though, the intrigue surrounding this trade revolves around the picks the Bucks acquired in the 2030s. They now have the right to swap choices with Miami in 2030 and claim the Heat’s unprotected 2031 and 2033 first-round selections. This matters because the Heat are the first team since lottery reform to trade first-round picks in the 2030s. The widespread assumption is that few teams will be willing to do so. Why? Because we literally don’t know what the rules are going to be by then. The reform the NBA passed in May expires after the 2029 draft.
The realty of this trade is that a lot of its value is going to come down to rules that haven’t been determined yet. It’s possible that the Bucks wind up winning this trade because the draft reforms in a way that proves beneficial to teams controlling this sort of external draft control. We just don’t know, and that’s going to make it almost impossible to actually call the Bucks a winner or a loser here for years to come.
