Shams Charania of ESPN dropped a scathing, tell-all report on the Milwaukee Bucks’ disastrous 2025-2026 season today. The story is long. It pulls back the curtain on the Bucks’ alleged mismanagement of assets, players, and relationships. Among many topics, Shams provides a deeper dive on the fissure between Bucks management and franchise legend Giannis Antetokounmpo, who really need to sign the divorce papers already. He also provides new details on a growing despondence in the locker room, and how
head coach Doc Rivers has damaged his reputation with the team.
The Portland Trail Blazers, who possess several of Milwaukee’s draft picks and swaps from the Damian Lillard deal, should be keeping a close eye on how this story ultimately resolves. Will the Bucks reset? Will their lack of ownership over their own assets demand a re-tooling, rather than a rebuild?
The NBA world is intimately familiar with Antetokounmpo’s situation: After the Bucks waived and stretched Damian Lillard’s $113 million contract – the largest waive-and-stretch provision in NBA history – they signed stretch-big Myles Turner to a four-year, $108 million deal. From the outset of the maneuver, the Bucks were on the back foot in regards to convincing Antetokounmpo of the move’s legitimacy and of the team’s larger ability to contend:
“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.”
After the season began, it became immediately clear that the Bucks did not possess the talent necessary to enter the postseason, much less compete for a championship. According to Shams, these defeats reinforced Antetokounmpo’s desires to leave:
“Within two weeks, the Bucks had lost humiliating games in Washington and Brooklyn, received an impassioned plea from one of their leaders, and once again were on the clock with their franchise icon. After dropping to 9-13 on Dec. 1, Antetokounmpo and his agent, Alex Saratsis, reopened conversations with Horst and reasserted the message they had delivered since last May: The time had come to part ways.
Head-scratching losses continued, however, including a 33-point home loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves on Jan. 13, in which Antetokounmpo and the Bucks’ fans exchanged boos.
“It feels like a funeral,” one team source said after that defeat.”
As the NBA approached the trade deadline, trade talks intensified. Charania reports that Antetokounmpo’s camp put increased pressure on both the front office and ownership to secure a move out of Milwaukee. Despite contrary reports from NBA insiders like Jake Fischer and Marc Stein, the Blazers are not reported as having been front-runners for Antetokounmpo this past February.
“Multiple league sources said Antetokounmpo and Saratsis took it a step further in pursuit of an amicable split. In late January, two weeks before the deadline, they met with team owners Jimmy Haslam and Wes Edens about how the Bucks should “do right” by Antetokounmpo. The player and agent recalled a handshake agreement that ownership and high-ranking officials made to trade him collaboratively should the time come, after Antetokounmpo signed contract extensions with the organization in 2020 and 2023.”
Beyond Giannis, the Bucks’ roster and coaching staff were routinely clashing. According to Shams, Head Coach Doc Rivers had difficulty rallying the team to play with the energy and pride he demanded of his past teams. In trying to get his team to understand his expectations and pedigree, he unceremoniously pulled rank:
“Rivers, who won an NBA title as coach of the Celtics in 2008 and will be enshrined in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame later this year, started the meeting by imploring his players to look up his résumé, six people in the room told ESPN.“I took teams to the playoffs and to the championship that weren’t supposed to. I thought this was one of them,” Rivers told players in the session. “Either you’re with us or against us. If you’re not playing hard, we’re not playing you anymore…
Rivers showed clips of forward Kyle Kuzma‘s miscues in recent games. Kuzma was a DNP-Coach’s Decision later that night in the Bucks’ 27-point home loss to the Celtics. It was the first DNP-CD of Kuzma’s career.
The session was among a number of instances that rubbed large parts of the locker room the wrong way and continued the theme of a seasonlong disconnect between Rivers and the players, according to team sources. When asked by ESPN to characterize his relationship with his team, Rivers declined to speak on the record.”
Shams goes on to depict much of the same: mismanagement and misunderstanding within every division of the organization. The roster is unfit for contention, or even competitiveness, yet Rivers expects excellence. Giannis already has one foot out the door, yet the team continues to insist that they can make the necessary maneuvers to convince him to stay. Shams, however, describes Giannis’s eventual departure as “inevitable”:
“Bucks ownership knows it has decisions to make with the franchise’s leadership and then will discuss the most significant choice of them all: moving on from Antetokounmpo or keeping him to call his bluff on bypassing a $275 million extension and again trying to build a competitive team around him with three first-round picks to trade.
The Bucks will be open to trade talks regarding Antetokounmpo, and the highest levels of the organization have come to terms with the inevitability of a likely deal coming to fruition this offseason, sources told ESPN.”
The Bucks’ continued downward spiral spells good fortune for the Blazers. Regardless of how the Giannis Trade Saga concludes, the value of the assets acquired by the Blazers continues to rise. Barring a seismic change to the draft lottery system, the Blazers are primed for a big move in the coming offseason, whether that be for Giannis himself, or another star player.
