The Giannis Trade Situation Is Crazier Than We Thought…

The Giannis Trade Situation Is Crazier Than We Thought…

giannis is the story of this NBA offseason with a ton of rumors around him suggesting that he will request a trade from the only NBA franchise he has ever known in the Milwaukee Bucks but there are some new reports that would completely change the direction of this situation in two ways one there’s currently momentum towards Giannis actually staying put in Milwaukee and two if he does ask out a new wildcard team has emerged as a possible favorite to trade for him first let’s talk about these reports of Giannis actually staying in Milwaukee because from the moment that their season ended I believed that Giannis would actually request a trade this off seasonason prior to Damen Lillard getting injured it seemed unlikely that Giannis would actually ask out because it was pretty easy for him to convince himself that Milwaukee was still a place that they could semicontend continue to make adjustments to the roster and he’s always remained loyal to Milwaukee at every point that he could have left that he could have requested a trade he signed a new contract he extended they made trades and moves to continue to add to the roster they won a title he’s always wanted to stay in Milwaukee it’s his home in America it’s where he wants to be and he probably could have convinced himself that this Milwaukee roster was good enough to at least convince him to stay but everything changed when Damen Lillard got hurt when he went down with a torn Achilles and it was clear that next year was going to be a lost season for the Bucks and the future beyond that was even more uncertain given Damen Lillard’s age his contract situation and the injury that he sustained all of a sudden it became clear that if Giannis wanted to contend if he wanted to try and win a title over the next couple of seasons as he is now 30 years old Milwaukee was not the place to be and the one thing that was going to overcome his loyalty to the Bucks and his desire to stay there was his desire to win a title that’s what I’ve believed that’s what most people have believed however in some of these meetings that Giannis has had with Milwaukee in some of these reports that we are getting it seems like there’s actually a real possibility that Giannis is going to stay with the Milwaukee Bucks which would change a bunch of things about the offseason it would change a lot of plans for a lot of teams and frankly would be extremely surprising to me i don’t really understand how he can look at the situation and think that he has any chance of winning a title they’re not going to be able to trade Damen Lillard he’s going to be on the roster for the next couple of years they don’t have a bunch of other really great pieces they’ve got some pending free agency questions i don’t understand that mindset at all from a competitive standpoint but Giannis’s loyalty to Milwaukee might be so strong or he might be looking around the league and realize that any team that trades for him is going to give up a bunch of stuff and doesn’t necessarily represent that much better of an opportunity for him to win a title than what Milwaukee presents over the next couple of seasons and in a situation where Giannis does decide to stay in Milwaukee that changes a few things obviously there are teams around the league that are preparing offers for him some of which we’re going to talk about here in a second and if he’s not available they’re going to have to change their focus we’re already getting a lot of reports around the Kevin Durant situation that there are teams like San Antonio that are viewed as potentially the favorites to add Kevin Rant and they were a possible Giannis team given the fact that they have the second overall pick in the draft they have a bunch of salaries a bunch of future assets and Giannis alongside WBY would obviously be super exciting but the fact that they already seem to be pivoting towards Durant would give some credence to this idea that Giannis is actually going to stay and then you’ve got a bunch of other teams around the league like Houston that potentially could have been in on Giannis that if they wanted to add a star this off seasonason would also have to shift their focus towards Kevin Durant and the biggest winners of this potentially other than the Bucks themselves is the Phoenix Suns because that means that Kevin Durant becomes one of if not the number one trade guys out there in the market and puts all of the attention on him which gets them potentially more assets in exchange for Durant rather than if Giannis was around and taking up one of those spots at this point there’s no guarantee of what Giannis is going to do but it’s definitely a fluid situation and one that seems to be trending more towards him staying which you could actually argue is a bad thing for the Bucks like Giannis is incredible but this team is going nowhere and this feels like as opportune of a time as ever to trade him the biggest issue for them is they don’t have their own picks their own picks are scattered throughout the league and so in any situation what you’re trading you’d like to get some of those picks back so that you can actually tank and then try and rebuild your team but at this point if he does decide to stay you could certainly argue that that’s actually potentially a bad thing long-term for Milwaukee but if he was going to request a trade which is still a possibility there’s one team that’s kind of came out of nowhere over the last week or so to potentially be the favorites to land should he request a trade and that is the Toronto Raptors there’s all kinds of odds and things like that that track these kinds of things and they have really jumped up in the odds and are potentially the favorites to trade for Giannis if he doesn’t stick around in Milwaukee it’s a very interesting situation because Toronto’s not all that good like they’ve got some interesting pieces they’ve got a pretty expensive roster for the next couple of seasons but when they actually try they’re not all that good of a basketball team and so adding Giannis to their group obviously helps a lot but you’re going to have to give up some significant pieces and I’m not really sure how that helps Giannis win a title any more than the situation that he already has in Milwaukee but let’s just say for example Giannis says “Hey I’d like to leave and Toronto is a place I want to go to.” This is what the trade package would potentially look like no matter what in any trade package Scotty Barnes has to be in the deal there’s no way that the Raptors can be in conversations to trade for Giannis and say “Okay we want to trade for Giannis but you’re not getting Scotty Barnes scotty Barnes is the starting point in the deal.” And in theory the Raptors would like to keep a bunch of their other starters Emanuel Quickley RJ Barrett Yaka Purle in the deal because you’re adding Giannis to your team and at least you’d like to have a really strong starting five alongside Giannis again this is also a team that added Brandon Ingram in the middle of the year it’s a very weird roster and if you’re taking out Scotty Barnes and replacing him with Giannis there is a little bit to this idea that maybe they could be a really really good team next year mostly because that’s just how great Giannis is and it provides him a better long-term outlook because those guys that I mentioned quickly RJ Barrett Brandon Ingram these guys are obviously much younger than anybody on the Bucks roster that’s any kind of important and would help him kind of have a longerterm championship outlook as he goes into the later part of his prime the trade would look like or a possible trade would look like Scotty Barnes some salaries the ninth pick in this draft and two future Toronto picks the reason that the the pick compensation looks the way that it does is that the Bucks immediately get a top 10 pick in this draft which is going to be helpful for them and the Raptors are okay giving up future first round picks in this deal however you don’t really know how well Giannis is going to age given how much time he spends at the rim how much contacts he takes how much he relies on his athleticism and his strength and he might not age super gracefully by the time he gets to be 34 35 years old and so you don’t want to be giving up picks in 2031 or 2032 you would potentially depending on how desperate you are to add Giannis but you’d rather give up picks on the front end of this rather than on the back end this might not be enough for the Bucks to consider actually trading Giannis maybe it’s a situation where he decides Toronto is the only place that he wants to go and this is a pretty strong offer like Toronto can do more than this they’ve got other pieces on their roster that are certainly interesting young guys that I definitely think Milwaukee would be interested in but the biggest downside for this for Milwaukee and really in any Giannis trade is something that we talked about earlier and that’s that they don’t have a bunch of control over their draft picks moving forward into the future and so you’d have to put together a really large three or four team construction with pieces going a bunch of different places for the Bucks to reclaim a bunch of their future picks and it’s kind of like the Kevin Durant situation in Phoenix where like they’d mostly like to trade Durant to Houston because they’d like to get their own picks the Bucks would like to get their own picks back in any Giannis trade but it’s more difficult for them because their picks are kind of scattered throughout the league and it isn’t necessarily a situation where it’s easy to send assets to those teams to get their own picks back and of course Toronto doesn’t own any of those Milwaukee picks so you could do a structure similar to this and then potentially reroute some of those Milwaukee picks back to the Bucks and I do think that Scotty Barnes a top 10 pick in this draft and future draft equity including some of their own picks back is a decent starting point to begin if you’re trying to trade Giannis to Toronto or elsewhere it’s not a guarantee that the Bucks would say yes to this kind of structure but it is at least interesting and this concept of Toronto as this big star trade team might not make a ton of sense uh at the surface but they are a team that traditionally has had a little bit more juice with stars than we’ve really realized of course they made the Kawaii trade although that was just a calculated gamble on the part of their front office and even though I’m not a huge fan of their roster and it’s expensive and there’s a bunch of guys on long-term deals that I’m not sure like super highlevel ceiling raising kind of guys if you add Giannis to the group in place of the Scotty Barnes spot you could convince yourself that this is a 50- win team and a not very good Eastern Conference next year and the Pacers are proving right now that if you kind of get yourself in the mix maybe you can go on a run in the Eastern Conference and having Giannis at the center of that obviously is a huge boost for Toronto and all of this to me you could probably tell by the tone of my voice is very surprising i had anticipated a situation where as we approached the draft it became more and more likely that Giannis was not going to be on the Bucks next year potentially a formal announcement either by the team or some kind of Shams tweet or something insiders tweeting saying “Hey this guy has actually requested a trade we’re looking at Houston we’re looking at Miami we’re looking at Brooklyn we’re looking at all these different teams Dallas potentially.” And all of a sudden none of that’s really happening it’s momentum going in the other direction and those teams that I’m mentioning Houston maybe even a team like San Antonio that we talked about earlier don’t seem to be as involved as Toronto does so it’s a fluid situation and it’s a very interesting one and one that has changed pretty dramatically within the last week or

Giannis is THE story of the NBA offseason – with a ton of rumors around him suggesting that he will request a trade from the only NBA franchise he has even known in the Milwaukee Bucks… but.
There are some new reports that would completely change the direction of this situation in 2 ways. There is currently momentum towards Giannis actually staying put in Milwaukee
and if he does ask out, the Toronto Raptors have emerged as a possible favorite to trade for him.

#giannis #giannistrade #giannisantetokounmpo