Giannis Antetokounmpo has ascended the pantheon to become the Greek God of unlikeability

When Giannis Antetokounmpo was traded to the Miami Heat late on Monday night, it signaled the end of an annoying, disingenuous, drawn-out process that has lasted almost a year. In that span, Giannis went from being one of the NBA’s most-beloved superstars, to simply a superstar, and now to one of the league’s biggest supervillains. It has far less to do with Giannis wanting a trade, or even specifically wanting to go to Miami — and far more to do with how he approached the process, the lies told along the way, and the acrimonious end to his Milwaukee tenure, which saw a mammoth fish in a small pond escape to larger waters.

Teams and players often outgrow each other, but the ending to the Giannis era with the Bucks wasn’t for lack of effort. Milwaukee had tried everything to bolster the team and turn it back into a contender with Antetokounmpo as the centerpiece after winning the NBA Championship in 2020-21, but each swing quickly turned into a strikeout. At first, they attempted to bring in ancillary role players like Grayson Allen and Jae Crowder while keeping their core intact, but that failed. Then they tried swinging for the fences with the seemingly brilliant trade for Damian Lillard, but that went belly-up when he tore his Achilles. It then became an effort of throwing good money after bad in an attempt to keep the ship afloat. They tried Kyle Kuzma, which failed. They went big to get Myles Turner, and that didn’t work either. Time and time again, the Bucks used every tool at their disposal to try and build a contender, but it just kept on failing.

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Hell, the Bucks catered to hilarious nepotism by signing Thanasis and Alex Antetokounmpo to appease Giannis, knowing full well that neither of them had any NBA talent.

That context is important because it highlights that nobody is really in the wrong when it comes to the Giannis/Milwaukee break-up. The Bucks did everything they could to try to make things work, while Giannis kept playing sensational basketball. The whole era had just reached a point where Milwaukee had run out of assets to really improve the team, and Antetokounmpo had…

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Publish date : 2026-06-23 15:35:00

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