Abstract
When the Bucks acquired Damian Lillard in 2023 at 33 years old, they probably figured they would get three, maybe four years of high-level play from him, and with him and Giannis, could credibly field a contending team during that time. But then in Game 4 of the 2025 NBA Playoffs, everything changed. After valiantly figthing to return from deep vein thrombosis in his calf
that had sidelined him for the back-third of the season, Lillard tore his Achilles in devastating fashion.Almost instantly, plans
were thrown into a tailspin, and a pivotal decision faced the franchise. It had not been long enough since the acquisition of Lillard for the team to have replenished enough future draft picks to use in another all-in trade, and it wasn’t as if Lillard was an expiring contract either, ruling free agency out. In short, the Bucks were stuck. This triggered rampant speculation about Giannis’ future in Milwaukee, because common sense indicated that after Lillard’s injury, he could no longer contend there. Just about everyone, including me, assumed that Giannis would request a trade.
But, he never did (not forcefully, at least).
Therefore, Jon Horst refused to entertain a deal from the Bucks’ end either, instead reverting to the long-engrained muscle memory he’d developed during the Antetokounmpo era: build around the two-time MVP to the best of your ability.
But as I mentioned, this time was different. This time Horst didn’t have the assets or flexibility to know that, if spent correctly, he could make the team a contender. No, this time he needed to scrounge for spare change in between the couch cushions—and even work outside the rules, allegedly—just to give the team a puncher’s chance. At which point, you surely have to ask yourself, “is this really worth it?” I certainly didn’t think it was, as I weighed the potential upside against the potential downside.
In this two-part series, I’ll be making the case that Horst messed up by not trading Giannis after the 2024-25 season. More or less, my entire argument can be boiled down to a belief that the core job of a general manager is to maximise assets (and not to sound crass, but at the most basic level, that’s what players are: assets). GMs need to evaluate, based on a variety of factors, whether a player is maximised as A. part of their team, or B. as a trade asset. We see it all the time, and it is borne out in many different ways.
For example, the Wizards—as a team whose top priority is peaking 2-4 years from now—would probably not entertain trading Kyshawn George. However, Kyle Kuzma—despite being Washington’s best player when he was there—was best maximised as a trade chip because he did not fit their timeline, which, as I mentioned, was the number one factor driving Washington’s decision-making. Different teams have different priorities, and these priorities explain why they value certain assets differently. The Thunder would not entertain trading Shai Gilgeous-Alexander at any point in the near future because their top priority is winning right now, and, crucially, that is a very realistic expectation for them to have.
Last summer, due to unforeseen circumstances (and some very foreseen ones), Giannis tipped over into being best maximised as a trade chip for the first time ever, and that looked unlikely to change down the road. Sorry, but that is just the cold, hard reality. We all love the big fella, and in an ideal world, he’d have been a Buck for life, but there’s a reason—many reasons, actually—that we rarely see one-team players anymore, no matter how legendary. Contracts exist. Title windows exist. Aprons exist. Generally, elite players cannot spend most of their career contending on the same team, and, well, elite players want to contend!
Unfortunately, this is just how the NBA goes. You can choose to get ahead of it or let it smack you in the face.
Anyway, before I go any further, the one point I want to stress is that this is not intended to be some “anti-Giannis article.” I’ll always appreciate what Giannis gave to the Bucks, but I’m also deeply invested in how the team looks long after he’s gone. This article is about strategy—nothing more, nothing less. If you come at it more from a sentimental point of view, or were simply in the “do everything to try to keep Giannis, and if it doesn’t work, at least we tried” camp, you’ll get zero pushback from me. I personally happen to view things almost exclusively through an asset-maximisation lens. Maybe that’s because I’m not from Milwaukee. Maybe I’m just soulless!? Is that it? Probably. In any event, respectful difference of opinion is what makes Brew Hoop great.
The 2025 offseason: A redux
So, Giannis didn’t request a trade, shocking the basketball world—let’s go from there. The question you start with is why didn’t he ask out? Did GA actually think the roster Horst had assembled could contend? No, he did not. ESPN’s Shams Charania’s reporting from later that offseason indicated that Giannis was by no means oblivious to the state of the team. It almost sounds like he just didn’t have it in him to ask out at that point in time after Horst had jumped through hoops to reconfigure the team on the fly.
Frankly, fair enough. Giannis had—has—a different type of relationship with Milwaukee. He grew up there. He was beloved. It was his home. His city. His state. But reportedly, Giannis was having these conversations about his future; they were just happening with his agent instead of Horst.
“Ever since the NBA draft combine in mid-May, Alex Saratsis, Antetokounmpo’s US-based representative, has fielded rampant interest in Antetokounmpo and conducted serious due diligence on best possible outside fits should the star and his reps push to be traded from the Bucks.”
Now, whether Horst agreed with the seemingly obvious fact that the team had no shot of contending—shockingly, ESPN’s reporting states that he did not—there was clearly no way that he’d be the one to initiate a Giannis trade; the big fella had to do that.
I hate to say it, but if Giannis wasn’t going to blink, Horst absolutely should have.
Horst is paid the big bucks (pardon the pun) to weigh risk vs. reward and make informed, responsible decisions that are in the best interests of the franchise—both in the short and long term. To me, he did not weigh both of those equally. He prioritised the short term and made a high-risk decision with pretty minimal upside—even if everything went perfectly—instead of opting for the low-risk option with enormous upside.
Maybe this is a spicy take, but I reckon Horst should have approached Giannis and said, “look, as hard as it is to accept, we both know this is over. I’m going to send you somewhere you can compete while compensating Milwaukee in droves; everybody wins.” Based on reporting from the past 12 months, I’m quite confident that Giannis would have secretly been relieved if that had happened. But Horst didn’t do that, and entered the summer going all-out to build around GA, once again. Assets be damned.
The Giannis-and-friends Bucks
By the end of the summer, the team consisted of one superstar and a bunch of role players. “Giannis and friends,” as I liked to call it. Any rational person could tell that this team was never going to be in the title picture. Well, if Shams Charania is to be believed, Horst isn’t all that rational.
According to Charania’s aformentioned reporting, when Horst flew to Greece in late July last year to meet with Giannis and assuage concerns the franchise legend had over the roster, he told GA that he believed the team could compete for a championship in the Eastern Conference. Eek.
Now, whether you think that was just something the Bucks GM told Giannis to try to keep him invested is up to you; I’m just relaying what was reported. In any event, Giannis was skeptical, apparently, and had already begun to cast his eyes elsewhere, taking a particular interest in joining the New York Knicks.
“The Bucks picked up the Knicks’ call on Antetokounmpo, and the sides engaged in conversations for a window of time in August, league sources said, but the teams never got traction on a deal.”
While it would be disingenuous to call this a legitimate “trade request,” at a minimum, Giannis was clearly questioning whether he could still win in the Cream City. His eyes were wandering, and chances were that if the first half of the season went poorly (which it did), the “eyes wandering” would turn into a trade request (which it did).
Horst had to see the oncoming train and get off the tracks while there was still time (provided Giannis would be willing to broaden his market of preferred locations, of course). Maybe it was too late in the offseason to make such a monumental move; I don’t know. It should have never gotten to that point anyway. I mean, what did the Bucks GM think was going to happen when he constructed a roster in which Gary Trent Jr. could be ranked the third-best player!? Looking back, the season that ensued was entirely predictable; I should have taken my green-coloured glasses off when I predicted a 47-win season. Sheesh.
Like, we know that Giannis loves Milwaukee, but—again, approaching the final team-controlled year on his contract and with the team in significant pick debt—if you have even minimal doubts that you can construct a legit contender around him, then to me, it’s probably not worth trying. The big fella isn’t going to look at your hodgepodge attempt at creating a contender and give you an A for effort. With only so many years left in his career, he demands the real thing, as he has alluded to repeatedly over the years.
As the general manager, if you can no longer give GA the “real thing,” you need to cut your losses and end things on your terms. You have to. Because if you don’t, he will end things on his. There’s no blind loyalty in this game. Giannis has always operated under the simple premise that if he can win in Milwaukee, he will stay, and if he can’t, he will probably have to leave. Horst allowed himself to be left holding the bag because he was unrealistic about his ability to construct a team that could adhere to this requirement.
These are the moments that separate the great GMs: having the ability to A. be two steps ahead at all times, and B. have the stones to make incredibly tough decisions that may be unpopular in the moment but are in the team’s best long-term interests. I’m sure there were plenty of Thunder fans seething at Sam Presti for trading Paul George, which led to Russell Westbrook’s ouster and ended OKC’s title window, but he recognised that his assets—one of which is a franchise legend—were best maximised as trade chips, and boy, was he right about that. This same opportunity, more or less, could very well have been sitting in front of Horst, but he was clearly so wedded to the idea that he needed to keep his star player at all costs… that he allowed it to pass him by.
Decisions like these show why Presti is widely regarded as the best GM in the game, and Horst is not.
