The Milwaukee Bucks and Giannis Antetokounmpo have had one of the messiest seasons any franchise and its star player have shared in recent NBA memory. It has been ugly, it has been public, and now, the full picture is starting to come out.
In a detailed report published by ESPN’s Shams Charania, the story of how this relationship broke down is laid out in full. Before the 2025-26 season even started, Antetokounmpo had told the Bucks he was ready to move on. And if Milwaukee was going to trade him, he had one team in mind: the New York Knicks.
“After back-and-forth discussions — including a meeting in Antetokounmpo’s native Greece in late July after which the New York Knicks became the only team he’d play for other than Milwaukee — and the Bucks refusing to move him, Antetokounmpo agreed to give the new roster a chance to grow. His pledge didn’t last long, however,” Shams Charania wrote.
The Bucks got blown out by 45 in Brooklyn, fell to 9-13 by December, and Antetokounmpo and his agent went back to the front office with the same message they had been sending since May: it was time to go separate ways.
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Antetokounmpo confirmed the Knicks talks himself in a profile by Lori Nickel of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. He told Nickel he kept his family back in Greece because of everything swirling around his future. “There were a lot of rumors about me,” he said. “There was a lot of uncertainty about me, from both sides.”
The confirmation was not exactly a surprise, but hearing it directly from Antetokounmpo made it real. The Knicks and Bucks had genuine conversations, and he was the one driving the preferred destination. Milwaukee just would not budge, and so the season began with a superstar already halfway out the door.
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It never got better from there. Milwaukee finished with 13 losses by 25 or more points, the most blowout losses in a single season in franchise history. They went just 17-19 with Antetokounmpo in the lineup and were eliminated from playoff contention in late March, ending a nine-year postseason streak.
Things got so bad inside the locker room that one team source told Charania it felt like a funeral. The relationship between Antetokounmpo and the organization deteriorated further when the Bucks shut him down after a knee injury in March, a move he publicly pushed back on and one the NBA is currently investigating.
Antetokounmpo has one year left on his deal, and according to Charania, the highest levels of the Bucks organization have now come to terms with a trade happening this summer.
As the February trade deadline approached, the Knicks and Golden State Warriors were among the teams going hardest for a deal, though Milwaukee ultimately held on to him.
The Knicks are expected to push even harder this offseason. Limited draft capital, largely a result of the Mikal Bridges trade back in 2024, remains a real obstacle. But Antetokounmpo’s preferred destination has already been made clear. For New York, that would still mean something.
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