The Milwaukee Bucks are in a weird place heading into the 2025\/26 campaign. They have one of the best players in the world in Giannis Antetokounmpo, but more frequent injuries have left those associated with the team concerned. Doc Rivers and Darvin Ham, the coaching team, have not generated the success the front office envisioned, and they also waived Damian Lillard in the offseason. So, what\u2019s next for Giannis?<\/p>\n
Things don\u2019t look as bleak as they may seem from the outside. The Eastern Conference has been significantly weakened, with the Celtics and Pacers both losing their franchise players<\/a> (Jayson Tatum and Tyrese Haliburton, respectively) to injuries. The Bucks could make a serious push for the postseason, but their road lies through Giannis, who hasn\u2019t been very reliable as of late.<\/p>\n Giannis<\/a> has played more than 70 games in a season just once in the last five years. That was 73 games in the 2023\/24 season, which also led to him missing the playoffs due to injury, where the Pacers defeated the Bucks. Now, with a weakened team, he\u2019ll be expected to carry a lot more of the load\u2014perhaps even emulating a campaign a former MVP once had.<\/p>\n Given Giannis\u2019 recent injury history, his potentially heavy workload could be the difference between a deep postseason run and an early exit. Tim Bontemps compared the Greek Freak\u2019s upcoming season to what Russell Westbrook<\/a> did with OKC after Kevin Durant left in 2017<\/a>. He\u2019d have to shoulder nearly all the scoring burden, remain the Bucks\u2019 best defender (which he is), and play more than 75 games.<\/p>\n \u201cTo your point, if Giannis can play 75+ games, which he obviously has not done in a long time, he\u2019s got a chance to win MVP,\u201d Bontemps said <\/a>in an ESPN segment. \u201cBecause he\u2019s going to put up astronomical numbers, and if he does that, they could finish third or fourth, they could win a lot of games, and he would get a lot of credit for that. Sort of like the Russell Westbrook MVP season.\u201d<\/p>\n The NBA insider\u2019s colleague Tim McMahon also brought up Giannis\u2019 two-way abilities and questioned how impactful he\u2019d be on the defensive end if he was required to score nearly 30 every night.<\/p>\n \u201cGiannis obviously has been a DPOY. He has the ability to be a massively impactful defender, but how much is he going to have to give you on the defensive end if you need him to go for 32-12 and 8 and have the ball in his hands?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n So dire is the situation in Milwaukee right now that Bontemps believes the team, with Giannis on the sidelines, is a heavy favorite to lose every game they play without the Greek. This whole conversation also brings up the rumors of Giannis leaving Milwaukee, which he made sure to quash when signing autographs for fans<\/a> a few weeks ago.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Milwaukee Bucks are in a weird place heading into the 2025\/26 campaign. They have one of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":107644,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[49,48,459,82],"class_list":["post-107643","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107643","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=107643"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107643\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/107644"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}