Giannis Antetokounmpo is approaching a crossroads in his career where he will likely either sign an extension with the Milwaukee Bucks during the 2026 offseason or he will be traded. Antetokounmpo has a player option for the 2027-28 season meaning he can become a free agent in 20227.<\/p>\n
Antetokounmpo has applied pressure to the Bucks ahead of his extension decisions in 2020 and 2023, which resulted in him signing long-term after their trades for Jrue Holiday and Damian Lillard. Antetokounmpo decided to remain with the Bucks this past offseason following their decision to waive-and-stretch Damian Lillard in order to sign Myles Turner.<\/p>\n
“Always got to hold ownership’s feet to the fire,” a source close to Antetokounmpo told ESPN.<\/p>\n
The Bucks and New York Knicks engaged in trade talks on Antetokounmpo in August, but those talks didn’t progress.<\/p>\n
“I’ve said this many times: I want to be in a situation that I can win,” Antetokounmpo said. “I’ve communicated with my teammates, communicated with the people I respect and love, that the moment I step on this court or in this facility, I wear this jersey, the rest does not matter. I’m locked into whatever I have in front of me. Now, if in six, seven months I change my mind, I think that’s human, too.”<\/p>\n
The Bucks, however, insist they are the same page as Antetokounmpo.<\/p>\n
“There’s no bigger difference,” one team source told ESPN, “than the perception of the outside compared to what’s going on in-house.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Giannis Antetokounmpo is approaching a crossroads in his career where he will likely either sign an extension with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":238747,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,132894,142825,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-238746","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-basketball","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-basketball","11":"tag-realgm-wiretap","12":"tag-source-close-to-giannis-antetokounmpo-always-got-to-hold-ownerships-feet-to-fire","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238746","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=238746"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238746\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/238747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=238746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=238746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=238746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}