FIRST TAKE | Warriors ‘want’ Giannis in potential blockbuster trade – Windhorst tells Stephen A.

FIRST TAKE | Warriors ‘want’ Giannis in potential blockbuster trade – Windhorst tells Stephen A.

Welcome back to the association we go. The Bucks made some waves in the East as they signed Miles Turner to a 4-year $107 million deal. To get the deal done, they also waved and stretched Damen Lillard’s remaining contract as he is expected to admit at least the bulk of this season rehabbing from his Achilles tear. According to ESPN Bet, the Bucks now have the eighth shortest odds to win the Eastern Conference at 20 to1. So, we know what the oddsmakers think about the Bucks, but Brian Winhorst was on NBA today yesterday and broke down what the Turner signing may mean for Giannis’ long-term future in Milwaukee. Take a listen. My concern for their forthcoming pitch to Giannis to want to be there long term is that it didn’t move the needle enough. And that’s nothing against Miles uh Miles Turner, who is an excellent player in his prime, the rest of the roster. It’s just I to do what they did which was their last card to play and an extremely penal card to you know maybe move the ball along the football analogy just a few yards down the field. I’m a little bit you know squeamish about that.
Didn’t move the needle enough. David Tim Bontam’s Alan Han back for this. Allan you think Giannis should want to stay in Milwaukee? He has been this has been a story for a number of years and for him to want to stay the only reason now he owes them nothing at all. He won them a championship. What he wants now is the ability to continue to win them and when you look at the East the ability should be there but it’s not because of the Damen Lillard injury more than anything else. But let’s go before the injury. How was it working? Not great. They made that trade. It did not work out as well as everybody thought it would pairing those two stars together. So, at this point, Giannis needs to come to that point, just like almost Dame Lillard had to come to that point when he was in Portland to say, “I’ve had enough time here. I want to go somewhere else.” Because it sounds like that’s what he wants. But like a lot of these players, they whisper it, but they’ll never actually come out and say it. Someone has got to have the courage to come out and say, “You know what? I’ve done enough here. I want to go somewhere else.” That’s where LeBron James doesn’t get enough credit. When he was in Cleveland all those years, he left over for Miami. Everybody’s burning jerseys. What do you blame him for? He gave you all the time he could. He moved on. He had control. Giannis has to do that next. If he really wants out, say it because this would be the time to do it. I I I am baffled that we’re at this point still having this conversation because I cannot believe that Milwaukee would do what they just did. Take on that cap, that money for Dame Lillard, bring in Miles Turner as their last ditch effort without having Giannis saying, “I am all in if this is what we do.” the fact that they are still if they get this. This is sort of an organizational beyond malpractice. This is like a nuke to your own organization. If you have not had already sign in on this and say if we buy out Dane, stretch Dane, bring in Miles Turner, you’re in, right? There should have been a ticker tape parade as soon as they made that move where Yiannis is saying I’m here. I’m in Milwaukee and I’m bing. If you’re doing this and you’re still waiting on him to commit, this is a disaster that’s not waiting to happen. It has already happened because you are now looking at a situation if Giannis does move. You’re paying for Dame Lillard to go win a championship somewhere else and you have Miles Turner on your team. You have no draft capital or whatever you may try to get back from Giannis. This is something that could doom your franchise for the next half decade if you have not already said Giannis, you’re in if we do this right. And he says yes.
Tim, desperate teams do desperate desperate things. And I would say this is a Milwaukee Bucks team that is a desperate team because they’re trying to keep the greatest player that’s ever played for their franchise. Kareem Abdul Jabbar was a better overall player who only played there a few years though before he went to the Lakers. Janet Koopo’s been more than a decade. He brought this team a championship after 50 years. He’s been an incredible player there for them. Won multiple MVPs. Has been awesome. But at this point, you look at where the Bucks are. They’re not good enough to contend. They haven’t been good enough to contend the last couple years. That’s why they lost in the first round of the playoffs each of the last three years. David, to your point about the Bucks being doomed if he doesn’t want if he doesn’t on board with this move, the Bucks are already doomed going forward. They’ve traded all their draft picks in future years. Yes, they have this dead cap hit on their books, but they’re not any going to be any worse situation if Giannis comes to them in a month and says, “I want to be traded than he would have if they had if he had done it two months ago and they didn’t have this dead cap hit on their books.” It would look bad. It would be a problem, but they could still turn around and trade Miles Turner. They can trade Jonsteado for a bunch of stuff and then they could just reset their roster going forward and they’re in Milwaukee. The cap space is going to be less of an issue. The real question is what does Yiannisko want? And to this point in his career, what he has wanted is to be in Milwaukee. If Giannis wanted to leave Milwaukee, he’s had chances the last three years to go other places. They got embarrassed in the first round two years ago. He got hurt and they lost last year. Then this past season, Dane gets hurt. They lose in five games to Indiana. But that series didn’t look like it was going to be competitive anyway. They’re not a team that’s that good. They don’t have young pieces.
How How about this, Tim? If you’re the Bucks at this point, looking at your roster and your situation that you guys are talking about where they are when it comes to personnel, draft picks, and all those things, and he’s getting to now the age where he’s now what, 32, right? He’ll be 32 during the season. It’s like, when do you get to a point where you look at him as a bigger asset than anything else? Because this story hasn’t gone away. And he hasn’t said publicly committing to wanting to be there for the rest of his career. and I don’t want to go putting that narrative away. It stays there every year. So when do you get to a point to say
I could we could trade this guy
never
and reset the franchise and get ourselves back on track. You can get a boatload for him if you decided if you’re not going to commit, we aren’t either. Loyalty one way is stupidity.
So I’ll say this. I was at the NBA finals and before game two of the NBA finals, Don Nelson won the NBA Coach Association’s lifetime achievement award, the Chuck Daily Award. and he talked about the loyalty that you owe to a star player when he’s on your team. He talked about Dirk Nitzky and Dirk Nitzky spending his entire career with the Dallas Mavericks and that he believes if you have a player like Dirk Nitzky or like Luca Donic, this was his way of taking shots at the Mavericks that if you have a player like that, you owe it to them to do whatever you can for them to win as long as they’re on your team. Giannis Tenikoupo, if he wants to play on the Milwaukee Bucks for his whole career, should play on the Milwaukee Bucks for his whole career. He would have an unbelievable career then. He’d be looked at like Dirk Nitzky, like Kobe Bryant, like Tim Duncan, like Steph Curry. The guy’s won a title. He doesn’t have, as you said before, he has nothing to apologize for. He has nothing he needs to do. If he wants to be a buck, God bless him. Have him play his career there. Have them do everything they can to win because it took 50 years for the Milwaukee Bucks to get another player like Giannis Koopo. They had Kim Abdul Jabbar in the 70s. They won a title. They went decades while having good teams, never coming that close to winning a title. Then they get a top 20, 25 player again, and they win a title again. They probably if you just look at the odds are never going to have a player like Jonathan Koopo in Milwaukee ever again. So if he wants to spend his whole career with the Bucks, God bless him. Let him do it. Obviously if you want to look at it from a cold-hearted reality standpoint, if you’re the Bucks, hey, we should blow it up. We should get draft picks for him. We should start over. Fine. You could say that. But that’s not what sports are. And if you tell Bucks fans, hey, Jianniso is going to spend 20 years playing for the Bucks and we get to watch him play for an entire generation. I guarantee you every Bucks fan would take that and be happy with it and have no problem. Why do we keep hearing about him not being happy? Yeah. Like if if there’s if there’s all this kumbaya and this loyalty and you’ve been here, then why aren’t having y’all sat then? Why didn’t y’all sit down 3 weeks ago and say, “What is our plan?” Why didn’t y’all sit down and say, “Why do we assume they haven’t?”
Well, that because we’re still having this conversation. Who said otherwise? But who said otherwise? Because we have a lot of conversations.
Well, because we had a whole We had a whole conversation about LeBron James leaving Los Angeles. We just picked up his player option 3 days ago. We’d love to have conversations,
but but I’m saying but but the the reason we’re still having this conversation is because after this move or before this move, Giannis has not committed to this team. We are still having this conversation because Giannis put up a team. We’re having this conversation because we like to talk about whether Giannis Tennakoupo is going to get traded. Giannis is under contract. He doesn’t have to come out and wave a flag and say, “Hey, Miles Turner is here. This is great.” Like he doesn’t have to do that, but you usually get that. Wait a minute. Usually the star player reacts to when you spend $100 million or more on a free agent. Usually if you’re in the situation that you’re talking about that Don D is explaining with Dirk Ninsky and all that stuff, we didn’t have this with Dirk. If you’re talking about this Kumbaya, this beautiful relationship that you have. You have you have sat down and said this is what we need to do. We I want Miles Turner. I want you to buy this out. It happens the very next day. Yiannis says this is what I want. He puts emojis on Twitter. He does everything on social media. Everybody believes that Yiannis is coming back and the fact that we have not gotten that yet is is a telling of what this organization where Yiannis are with each other. I need something firm from one of those two to say that this noise. Yeah, I I think the Bucks deserve a ton of credit. We sit here and we rip the Denver Nuggets for years for not doing enough around Joic.
Well, you may not like what the Bucks did, but they have not stopped trying to help Giannis. They got Drew Holiday every pick. They got Dame Dame Lillard for Drew Holiday. They went out when Chris Middleton was breaking down last year and they got I don’t like the trade. Yeah, but they they have done and now they’ve come up doing well until that one.
They’ve come up with the single most creative way of adding a player that we’ve seen all off season. You may not like it, but they deserve way more credit than they’ve they’ve been getting for this move. Coming up on an a fresh hour of first take. Despite the underre

FIRST TAKE | Warriors ‘want’ Giannis in potential blockbuster trade – Windhorst tells Stephen A.