The Giannis Antetokounmpo trade saga is one of the worst NBA stories in a long time.
Mercifully, on Wednesday morning, ESPN reported that Antetokounmpo is indeed expected to be traded before next Thursday’s NBA trade deadline. The news comes after a miserable trickle of rumors and leaks for the better part of a year, with Antetokounmpo seemingly unwilling to own his desire to leave Milwaukee yet more than comfortable frying his own teammates on the press conference dais.
In the meantime, the entire NBA content ecosystem has embraced a strategy more befitting of an Instagram fan page called something like “GiannisUpdates247.” Zach Lowe has covered the situation on five episodes since December. The Ringer’s social team has clipped out a Giannis trade idea from Bill Simmons once every week or so over the same time. I count a half-dozen Jeff Teague takes from the Club 520 YouTube channel. That’s not to mention all the ink spilled by insiders at ESPN, The Athletic, Bleacher Report, and beyond. The precious few instances of NBA talk on daytime sports shows in the fall and winter have been dominated by what’s brewing in Milwaukee. Aside from maybe LeBron James’ battle with Father Time, the Giannis saga is getting, by far, the lion’s share of coverage.
The story reinforces everything sports fans love to hate about the NBA.
From their angle, we have an oft-injured, overly dramatic superstar about to be paid nine figures, steamrolling an entire season for his own benefit. As if the optics of such a story taking over a season weren’t bad enough, we already did this with Antetokounmpo in 2020 and in 2023.
From another angle, Antetokounmpo is one of the fiercest, most respected competitors in basketball, finally getting a second life in the NBA after trying desperately to make it work in Milwaukee.
Antetokounmpo appears to have burned through that goodwill, becoming the latest all-time great to leave his team in search of personal comfort and professional upside. As with most of the previous empowered players of the NBA, I don’t begrudge him for that.
While Antetokounmpo deserves blame for his flaky handling of potential trade talks this season, the reason that an exhausting story like this snowballs into a negative for the league is that it is so familiar.
The NBA is in a transitional moment, with a new CBA that is forcing teams to trade overpaid stars and build depth rather than star power. The increased physicality and speed of the game have seemingly led to an epidemic of soft-tissue injuries, with superstars like Jayson Tatum and Tyrese Haliburton rehabbing Achilles’ tears. Newcomers like San Antonio, Detroit, Houston, and Orlando are breaking through in their absence. The Thunder have begun to sputter in their push to repeat as champions. The league is wide-open.
Such a moment is challenging for NBA commentators to cover. While we can debate whether dynasties or parity are ultimately best for a sports league’s popularity, the numbers routinely prove that fans flock to stars and stories they know. Even while pulling in tens of millions of viewers for conference championship weekend, the mighty NFL still saw a slight downtick in attention as Drake Maye, Jarrett Stidham, and Sam Darnold took the field. The difference in the NBA is that, aside from clearly sitting on a lower perch than the almighty pigskin, it has repeatedly trained fans and the media to take their eyes off the ball.
When NBA reporters come into a season with unfamiliar narratives and unknown stars, they focus on transactions. An injured Trae Young being traded to the irrelevant, unserious Wizards drew more national attention than many of the teams listed above. Likewise, nobody has yet proved capable of ignoring the Giannis story for more than a week or two at a time.
Even as Adam Silver publicly pushed for more serious basketball talk, the league office and its television partners often leaned the opposite way. The Woj Bomb era was fun for Twitter users, but while it may have increased online engagement, it seemingly corresponded with a downtick in the number of people actually watching basketball.
Antetokounmpo getting traded would be a seismic, historic moment for the league. With just one championship, the “Greek Freak” could fall short of the immense potential shown early in his legendary career. His legacy and the future of the NBA are riding on what happens in trade negotiations over the next week.
But this year? Mid-season trades of this stature almost never result in meaningful postseason success. And Antetokounmpo hasn’t finished a postseason healthy since 2022. The focus on Antetokounmpo’s situation is more likely than not to be a fake-out when it comes to telling the fans the story of the 2025-26 NBA season.
Then, when we get some strange Finals matchup like Pistons vs. Rockets, and Antetokounmpo is in Cancun (or Costa Navarino), the sports media could be right back to concern-trolling about TV ratings and debating the Face of the League.