The Milwaukee Bucks may be interested in Portland Trail Blazers wing Jerami Grant as a potential trade target, according to The Stein Line’s Jake Fischer (subscription required):
After repeatedly telling teams that Antetokounmpo is not available and that it is not interested in fielding trade offers for him, now Milwaukee is messaging that it wants to be buyers at this deadline to try to get Giannis more help. Even with no clear return-from-injury timetable yet in place for Antetokounmpo, Jon Horst’s
front office continues to hold onto hope that assembling a puncher’s chance contender remains viable in the wide-open Eastern Conference.
One rival general manager I spoke to went so far as to say that the Bucks have convinced him that “they’re going big-game hunting”…
…another player who has been on Milwaukee’s radar under the same premise, both this season and in previous years, is Trail Blazers swingman Jerami Grant.
Grant has two seasons remaining on his deal after this one worth just over $70 million … and Portland already controls Milwaukee’s first-round pick in 2028, 2029 and 2030 as a vestige of the Damian Lillard trade. It’s a combination, incidentally, that has prompted several rival team strategists to point to Portland as a potential participant in an eventual multiteam Giannis trade structure if/when that actually materializes.
In the nearer term, though, it remains to be seen if the Bucks could even get traction on a Grant pursuit if they wanted to, since the 31-year-old has emerged as a favorite of Trail Blazers general manager Joe Cronin.
That’s a chunk of text, and I want to break it down a bit.
My first thought: the Milwaukee Bucks need to see the writing on the wall and refrain from throwing more money at their sinking ship. Jerami Grant is a fine player. He’s not going to save the Bucks’ season, and he’s not going to prevent Giannis from leaving if that’s what he wants to do. This same thinking should apply to any other player the Bucks might want to swing for.
The Bucks already don’t have full control of their own draft, which brings me to a second thought: maybe they are using this as a way to get their own picks back from Portland that they sent out in the Dame trade. Maybe that is helpful for them long-term, but if I were Milwaukee, I would want Grant’s involvement to strictly be as part of a multi-team deal where Grant gets routed elsewhere and I get my (Milwaukee’s) picks back. Maybe that is what this reporting is suggesting.
Last, a bit of insight from our own Timmay that I am too lazy to re-write, so I am deciding to copy-paste it here (thanks, Tim!):
A reminder that Portland can trade back the pick swaps with MIL for 2028 and 2030 but technically cannot trade back MIL’s 2029 unprotected draft pick. That’s now on the hook as part of the Avdija trade, which sent WAS the second-best of the POR-MIL-BOS 2029 picks. Portland could work out some kind of verbiage in a deal that gives MIL back their 2029 pick conditionally. But if the Bucks pick is the second-best one, it’s headed to Washington, even if it’s the second pick in the 2029 draft (which can only happens in a scenario where Portland picks #1).
Phew! This isn’t simple stuff. Fisher’s article goes into way more detail about other angles of what seems to be an inevitable breakup between Giannis and the Bucks, and it’s not unreasonable that for a few reasons – including Portland controlling part of Milwaukee’s future – that the Blazers may be a part of however that breakup happens.
