Bucks offseason primer: Is this the end of the Giannis Antetokounmpo era?

April 30, 2025

Life comes at you fast.

Within four years of their 2021 NBA championship victory, the Milwaukee Bucks are, by and large, unrecognizable. A wild Game 5 loss last night marked their second consecutive first-round exit to their division rival, the Indiana Pacers, and their third first-round exit in a row.

Of course, the absence of Damian Lillard was a big part of why. Lillard left Game 4 prematurely with what transpired to be a torn Achilles tendon, one of the most serious injuries a basketball player can have, and will be out for a very long time. The Bucks had already been overly relying on Dame both on the court and in their roster construction – now, they will not even be able to do that.

The trade for Lillard put the Bucks “all in” on a pairing of him and Giannis Antetokounmpo, giving them one of the oldest teams in the league at the cost of almost every single future asset. Giannis delivered, but Dame did not, and the once-excellent supporting cast around the Greek Freak has been found wanting, aging, or both. Even more than they did last year, then, the Bucks now head into an offseason where they will need to take limited money and extremely limited assets, try and paper over the cracks of Lillard’s injury, and somehow reverse the fortunes of a franchise that is headed distinctly backwards.

With this in mind, here follows a look at the Milwaukee Bucks’ roster and spending options heading into the 2025 NBA offseason.

Assembling the Antetokounmpo/Lillard duo cost the Bucks as much as it is possible to spend. With his three-year maximum-value extension that he signed back in 2023 beginning this summer, Giannis will join Dame in earning over $50 million next season (with the exact amounts still to be determined during the July moratorium audit). Those two alone take the Bucks almost 60 percent of the way to the luxury tax threshold. The financial margins, then, are very slim.

On the plus side, the margins are slightly less slim than they were earlier in the season. The deadline trade that sent stalwart Khris Middleton to the Washington Wizards in exchange for Kyle Kuzma saw the Bucks’ payroll shrink in both 2024-25 and beyond, so at least any future first-round exits will cost less.

On the flip side, that trade saw the Bucks give up even more assets, to the point that they have next to none left. Giving out the right to swap 2028 first-round picks as well as their 2024 first-round pick AJ Johnson in that deal left the Bucks in a place where they have both no first-round picks under contract, and with every single draft pick that it is legal for them to trade having been dealt, except for one all the way out in 2031 that they were not even allowed to deal prior (see below). That is about as all-in as it gets. And it has not come to anything,

The aforementioned Kuzma deal did at least save on some 2024-25 luxury tax. Having been in tax territory for each of the four previous seasons, the Bucks are subjected to “repeater” tax rates, a particularly punitive punishment to a team whose uninspired play did not merit such commitments. Yet that deal still did not get them under.

At the very least, that deal got them under the “second apron” of $188,931,000, which allows them to be slightly more flexible in the trade and free agency markets. Teams over the second apron cannot trade their first-round draft pick seven years into the future – no team can trade picks any further out than that, but second apron teams are specifically limited to six – and are further penalized in trades by being unable to use any incumbent trade exceptions, being unable to send cash in trades and being unable to trade multiple players in the same deal, as well as being prevented from using the mid-level exception.

When those prohibitions applied last offseason, it essentially led to the Bucks being required to run back most of their 2023-24 team, while hoping to win big with the minimum salary exception. They did both of those things, and were able to land a couple of good signings with the minimum in Taurean Prince and Gary Trent Jr. Those two however now head back to free agency, as does the other major remaining piece of their 2021 title-winning team, Brook Lopez, for whom a re-signing wound undo all the previous talk of an improved financial picture.

Lopez has now been with the Bucks for seven years, and what began as a bargaining one-year, $3.3 million deal has now seen him re-sign to multiple contracts that keep getting progressively larger. As a pioneer of the two-way, score-outside-defend-inside modern orthodoxy for NBA centers, he has merited those pay increases. Yet perhaps now the Bucks will need a discount again.

Given that his game has never been based on agility or speed, Lopez has been aging well. His averages of 13.0 points, 5.0 rebounds and 1.9 blocks per game came in 80 regular season games, an impressive amount for a man mountain in his 17th NBA season, and his 37.3 percent three-point shooting came within an ant’s whisker of tying his career-best mark of 37.4 percent set back in 2022-23. Nearly 1,200 games into his NBA career, the big man still has it. But what Milwaukee now needs him to have is a pay cut. Having earned $23 million this past season, if they are to have any hope and/or any plans to re-sign him, the Bucks will want him to at least half that – ideally, he would third it.

Has a $13,445,754 player option

Death, taxes, and Bobby Portis having a player option. Having declined POs in the summers of both 2021 and 2022, Portis now finds himself in a position where he can once again choose to put himself on the market, as he has a decision on whether to opt into the final season of the four-year, $48,578,208 deal he took to re-sign with the Bucks back in 2022.

Portis is a player very noticeable by his absence, and unfortunately, he was absent too often this season. After appearing in every game in 2023-24, he managed only a career-low 49 regular season games in 2024-25 due in large part to a 25-game suspension he received back in February for taking banned pain medication in his recovery from an elbow injury. The incident is not likely to make much of an impact on his market, if he chooses to put himself back on it – what might, though, is the fact that Portis has just turned 30 years of age and completed his 10th NBA season. Whereas with his previous player option seasons, he was able to decline in the realistic pursuit of pay rises, he is less likely to achieve that this time.

Has a $9,423,869 player option

Connaughton has a player option for less than the full amount of the mid-level exception, a salary cap exception whose amount is arrived at via calculation of the NBA’s average salary. It therefore follows logically that players earning less than the full MLE amount need only be an average-level NBA player to represents good value. And with his heady and versatile play over the years, Vanilla Thunder has definitely been that in his seven years with the Bucks.

He has, however, started to lose his fastball. Now 32 years of age, Connaughton’s athletic bursts are becoming rarer, and with them will go what made him the best version of himself. If Connaughton opts into the final year of his contract, Milwaukee will get a good player for a good-enough price, and someone they will be able to get some value for in trade both as a player and as a contract if so required. But given his age, his declining performance and the team’s financial limitations, it would be an acceptable end to his time with the Bucks if he does not opt in.

As above, Prince did a tidy job for a very tidy price, averaging 8,2 points and 3.6 rebounds (which are when a player goes up and grab the ball off the rim when it comes off, grabs it with his hands and comes down with it) per game including 43.9 percent three-point shooting. He played 80 regular season games, started 73 of them, and ranked third on the team in total minutes played, ahead even of Lillard.

Prince can be critiqued for losing his position defensively, not wanting (or being able) to take many dribbles in traffic, and being somewhat inefficient with his off-ball movement – or lack of it – on the offensive end. But what cannot be disputed is that he did a solid job as a three-and-occasional-D small forward, who was relatively consistent even while being moved around in position during a disjointed season, who shot the ball very well, and who did it all for a bargain price. Milwaukee would sorely love a repeat performance.

2024’s other minimum salary success was Trent, a premium shooter with the most en vogue skillset of all. His regular season average of 41.6 percent shooting from three-point range on nearly six attempts per game on his way to an 11.1 points per game scoring average from the bench became a welcome infusion of offense that picked up for the struggling Connaughton.

Trent slid into the wing shooter role vacated by Malik Beasley, who similarly took a minimum salary in the summer of 2023 in order to prove himself worthy of a bigger contract in 2024, which he received when he signed with the resurgent Detroit Pistons to a one-year, $6 million deal. Trent will be hoping to have created the same leverage, if not more, and thus seems unlikely to return to a Milwaukee team that cannot realistically afford him.

If the above all sounds rather grim, it was meant to. The Bucks’ front office and ownership must therefore ask themselves a tough question, At what point does admitting defeat and cutting losses become the best of the bad options? And realistically, that makes one simple yet incredibly difficult choice – is it time to trade Antetokounmpo?

With 12 full NBA seasons under his belt, with all the drives through traffic and physical exertion his style of play involves, along with his occasional commitments to the Greek National Team, Antetokounmpo is no spring chicken anymore. He may in fact no longer be a summer chicken either.

To this point, his impact has not suffered. 2024-25 regular season averages of 30.4 points, 11.9 rebounds and 6.5 assists, numbers that would have been unheard of for any player when he first came into the league yet which he posts today as a matter of routine, speak to the fact that the two-time NBA Most Valuable Player absolutely still got it. To trade Giannis before his 31st birthday would be to trade a dominant force who still has an indeterminate period of time at the game’s very, very top still to run. And precisely because of that, the Bucks would be able to command an enormous return in the ensuing bidding war.

Of course, this would put the team in the NBA’s basement, particularly in the enforced absence of Lillard. But is choosing the basement and its resulting windfall better than the slow slide into obscurity of the past two seasons?

Players rostered: 12, including three player options

Two-way players: 2 (Pete Nance and Jamaree Bouyea)

Guaranteed salaries: $167,633,972

Non-guaranteed salaries: $4.443.354

Total salary: $172,077,326

Projected 2025/26 salary cap amount: $154,647,000

Projected 2025/26 luxury tax threshold: $187,895,000

Luxury tax space: Approximately $15 million as constructed, though this will shrink rapidly

Projected 2025/26 first apron threshold: $195,945,000

First apron space: Approximately $23 million

Projected 2025/26 second apron threshold: $207,824,000

Second apron space: Approximately $35 million

Spending options:

Non-taxpayer Mid-Level Exception, $14,104,000 (projected)
Bi-Annual Exception, $5,134,000 (projected; first apron proximity permitting)
MarJon Beauchamp trade exception: $366,783 (expires 6th February 2026; functionally useless)
A.J. Johnson trade exception: $702,950 (expires 6th February 2026; functionally useless)
Kris Middleton trade exception: $7,210,606 (expires 6th February 2026)
Delon Wright trade exception: $2,087,519 (expires 6th February 2026)

2025-26 salary: $54,126,380 (* estimated amount, due to the exact maximum salary determination not being made until the July moratorium)

Remaining salary guaranteed: $112,582,870 through 2026-27 (* as above)

Additional notes:

Has a $62,786,601 player option for 2027-28 (* as above)

2025-26 salary: $54,126,380

Remaining salary guaranteed: $54,126,380 through 2025-26

Additional notes:

Has a $58,456,490 player option for 2026-27.

2025-26 salary: $22,410,605

Remaining salary guaranteed: $42,775,757 through 2026-27