IRVINE, Calif. — This should be an uncomfortable topic, but Giannis Antetokounmpo has decided to take a different, more comical, tack.
The Milwaukee Bucks star is standing on the court at UC Irvine, where we’re discussing the increased stakes that come with this season and the hypothetical question of what might happen if it doesn’t go well. This is Year 2 with Damian Lillard in tow, and the first full season with Doc Rivers at the helm. That means it’s time to do a whole lot better than the drama-ridden 2023-24 campaign in which first-year coach Adrian Griffin was fired 43 games in and the Bucks flamed out in the first round of the playoffs for the second consecutive season.
Antetokounmpo, clearly, has decided there’s no use running from the reality of these months ahead. In fact, he leans right into it.
As a Bucks staffer walks by, Antetokounmpo grabs the man by the shoulder and asks a remarkably pointed question.
“If we don’t win this year, would you get fired?” Antetokounmpo asks with a wry smile to his co-worker. “Do you have it in the back of your mind, like, ‘(What) if this year doesn’t go well?’ Yeah, if we don’t win a championship, I might get traded. Yeah, this is the job we live. This is the world we’re living in. It’s everybody.”
It was heavy and humorous all at once, even more so when Antetokounmpo pulled a similar prank on Bucks general manager Jon Horst on his way out of the gym after the interview. From top to bottom, in other words, heads could roll here if it doesn’t go well. Or, heads could at least relocate.
As I shared with Antetokounmpo, rival front office executives are hoping the Bucks fail miserably so that he might consider an NBA life outside of Milwaukee. (He is signed through the 2026-27 season and has a player option worth $62.7 million in 2027-28.) If Lillard struggles to be at his best again in a Bucks jersey, trade calls will inevitably come Milwaukee’s way about him. (He’s owed a combined $161.4 million for the next three seasons, with a player option in 2026-27.)
The list goes on.
“On a serious note, this is the job,” Antetokounmpo continued. “It’s the profession that we’re in. At any given moment, if you don’t succeed, that might be it for us. It was the same way with the previous coaching staff, and the year before, the players before. … If you don’t do a good enough job, you’re out.”
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The solution, then, is quite obvious. The Bucks, who face so much uncertainty if this group can’t deliver, simply must live up to the hype. Anything less than a deep playoff run will surely make this new Bucks ownership group question a payroll of $193 million that puts them into the collective bargaining agreement’s feared “second apron” territory.
Yet in this Eastern Conference landscape where the reigning champion Boston Celtics are the heavy favorites, and fellow contenders such as the New York Knicks and Philadelphia 76ers went all in with big-time moves during the offseason, the task looks even tougher now.
So, can Milwaukee do it?
I spoke with the three most important members of the Bucks — Antetokounmpo, Lillard and Rivers — about that very question during their training camp. While there’s no way for them to know the answer yet, there is a strong sense from all involved that they’re much better positioned for success now than they were a year ago. And as is always the case with these Bucks, it starts with Giannis.
A motivated Giannis
It’s not as if Antetokounmpo was lacking in motivational material heading into this season.
He’s entering Year 12, with his 30th birthday coming on Dec. 6, which means this time in his prime is more precious than ever. He’s three years removed from his lone championship and four years removed from his last NBA MVP award (which was back-to-back), having ceded the unofficial title of game’s best player to Nikola Jokić along the way (by virtue of the Denver Nuggets star’s three MVP awards in the last four seasons).
While Antetokounmpo’s individual brilliance has remained, the Bucks as a whole have regressed. Yet beyond all of that NBA fuel for his fire, it was Antetokounmpo’s Olympic summer spent with the coach of the Greek national team, Vassilis Spanoulis, in France that has him ready to recapture some of that past glory.
The 42-year-old Spanoulis — aka “Kill Bill” — is a Greek legend who gained global fame in 2006 by leading his national team to a stunning win over Team USA in a FIBA World Cup semifinal game. He won three EuroLeague titles and one EuroLeague MVP award during his decorated career, racked up eight All-EuroLeague selections (three first team, five second) and pivoted to coach after retiring in 2021. He even has a play named after him — “The Spanoulis Action” — that is widely used within the NBA.
As someone who took part in a few of Spanoulis’ postgame news conferences during the Olympics, I can confidently report his intensity — and the passion that drives it — is off the charts. This video, with some NSFW language, shows that much.
Το video από την τελευταία προπόνηση πριν από τον αγώνα με τη Σλοβενία, που αποδεικνύει ότι η Εθνική του 2024 δεν είναι ομάδα του “πάμε κι όπου βγει”:https://t.co/LoiYBOW5T3 pic.twitter.com/OxWFET1jmr
— Harris Stavrou (@harris_stavrou) July 8, 2024
To hear Antetokounmpo tell it, Spanoulis’ combination of off-the-charts energy and high IQ is the kind of thing he’ll be taking with him into these crucial months ahead.
“Spanoulis has changed the way I think about things,” said Antetokounmpo, whose team went 1-3 in pool play and had the program’s first win at the Olympics in 16 years (over Australia). “My approach to the game. My love for the game. Sometimes, I think, you’re in your comfort zone. A lot of people are in a comfort zone, without even wanting to be there. You have to push. You have to demand from yourself, from the people around you. And he did that.”
Never more so than after Greece’s 86-79 loss to Canada on July 27. Antetokounmpo had 34 points in 31 minutes in that game, carrying his team with what appeared to be maximum effort. But Spanoulis didn’t see it that way.
“I literally (left) my heart on the floor, and my kidney and my knee and everything on the floor, but he came to me and said, ‘Your defense wasn’t good enough,’” Antetokounmpo said. “The next day, he’s saying, ‘I didn’t see the fire in your eyes. Your defense wasn’t good enough’
“Every day, it was something else. He would just push me and push me and push me and push me, (saying) ‘You’ve got more to give. Come on. When I was 29, I was the best in Europe. I had back-to-back (championships). What are you doing?’
“All this conversation made me realize that I crave the challenge again,” added Antetokounmpo. “Of course it pisses you off, but it puts you in the mood where you’re like, ‘Wait, I’m going to show you.’ You don’t want to let (Spanoulis) down. Like (with the Bucks), I don’t want to let Doc Rivers down. I don’t want to let Dame down. I don’t want to let my team down.”
Health, as always, will be a massive factor. While the Bucks have been eliminated in the first round the past two seasons, Antetokounmpo missed eight of those 11 games against Miami and Indiana, respectively, because of injuries (back and calf).
“This year, a challenge for me is to be healthy,” he said. “A challenge for me is to play in the playoffs, to get out of the f—— first round. Assert myself even more.
“Every year for me is important, because one day, I’m going to be 35 or 36 or 38 and I’m going to be like, ‘Oh, my prime just went, and I wasn’t able to do something.’ So dominate. Break through.”
A peaceful Dame
Speaking of superstar players with a long list of incentives…
The 34-year-old Lillard, even more so than Antetokounmpo, is an all-time great in a race against Father Time. But as Lillard has shared openly for quite some time, his situation is far more sensitive.
Right about the time he was getting traded from Portland to Milwaukee last September, Lillard was going through a divorce that made the transition much tougher than he ever imagined. The combination of the breakup and his relocation meant he never knew when he would see his three young children, and Lillard says he found himself struggling to balance the personal struggles with his new professional challenge. Add in that he had put on weight last summer while waiting for the Trail Blazers to decide where they would deal him, and, in retrospect, it’s not hard to understand why he wasn’t at his best.
“A big part of my life is my family — obviously my kids,” Lillard said. “That’s what means the most to me. So I was affected more by that than anything. But I was brought here to do a job and to show up. I did that to the best of my ability at that time. It just was tough. Everything was happening so fast for me last year.
“With parenting time, I couldn’t get anything set up. I didn’t even have a place to live for the first couple of months of the season. I was in a little apartment that they just had for me. I didn’t get to get things organized in my life. … But I think having a full summer and knowing what it is, I was able to kind of get everything set up to where this year could work for me much better than last year. I was able to get my s— together.”
Damian Lillard, Giannis Antetokounmpo and Doc Rivers talk during a break in play against the Knicks last season. (Patrick McDermott / Getty Images)
For all the time we spend analyzing the X’s and O’s, these sorts of real life factors often play a much bigger part in performance than most realize. And considering Lillard insists he’s in a much better place now, with a reliable schedule for visitation time with his kids and an offseason regimen that was far more productive than his last, it’s not hard to imagine this being a comeback kind of year for the eight-time All-Star who was named to the NBA’s Top 75 team in 2021.
“I’m doing great now,” he said. “I’m way more (at peace). It’s that way with everything, though. When hard times come, it feels like, ‘Damn, this is the hardest thing ever.’ And then when you get some time removed from it, you realize it’s not so bad.
“Like even gaining perspective being away from my family, away from my kids, it’s like, ‘It’s not ideal, but there’s people with way worse situations.’ There’s people in prison who can’t see their kids — wrongly convicted people. There’s people defending our country who don’t have the opportunity to do anything. I see my kids. I’m able to FaceTime my kids. I gained a lot of perspective. I was able to get myself set up much better this time around.”
There is recent evidence that star players might need a season to blend before truly coalescing in Year 2. That was the case for Kyrie Irving when he joined Luka Dončić and the Dallas Mavericks two seasons ago, just as it was for Rudy Gobert when he was partnered with Anthony Edwards’ Minnesota Timberwolves.
Yet for all the focus on the Antetokounmpo-Lillard duo, the truth is that the Bucks’ defense — which was ranked 16th — was the primary problem (they had the league’s sixth-best offense). Still, the prospect of these two truly clicking is the kind of thing that could certainly elevate them in the East.
“You’re trying to figure it out with another star and with somebody else who has the ball,” Lillard said. “(Antetokounmpo) had to figure it out with somebody else that has the ball. And that was the same thing for me. So I think that second year, obviously, you get more comfortable with what it looks like. You know the coach. I know my teammates. I know Giannis a lot better. I know what it’s like playing with Giannis a lot more.
“So all those things considered, I think that next year, you usually settle in and it’s better.”
The power of Doc — and talk
When Rivers took over for the fired Griffin in late January, there was no time for the kind of relationship building he knew would be necessary to make this all work.
The then-62-year-old had plenty of insight to the team’s problems, as the then-ESPN analyst served as an unofficial consultant to Griffin — at the behest of the Bucks — before Milwaukee made its coaching change. The Lillard transition had been tough enough on its own, but it was made worse when his most-trusted resource on the coaching staff, longtime Trail Blazers head coach Terry Stotts, resigned abruptly in mid-October 2023 because of a falling out with Griffin.
By the time Rivers took over, the relentlessness of the regular-season schedule made it nearly impossible to dig deeper into the kinds of interpersonal dynamics that matter greatly on title-contending teams. The choice to hold training camp away from a team’s home city as a way to grow closer, Rivers has long believed, can sometimes provide the solutions.
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There is no better blueprint in his 25-year coaching career than the 2007-08 Boston Celtics, who held camp in Rome not long after their star trio of Kevin Garnett, Ray Allen and Paul Pierce first came together, and would win a title eight months later. That Italy trip included their famed “Ubuntu” experience, where Rivers introduced them all to the South African word that means “humanity to others.” The general idea, which has long since become a favorite for leaders in all industries, is that there must be connectivity and commitment from all for a group to reach its full potential.
To that end, Rivers saw improvement early on during the Bucks’ Southern California camp: more personal conversations between teammates, different kind of laughter, that sort of thing. But on the court, where the Bucks so desperately need to be in sync, Rivers is hell-bent on encouraging the kinds of tough conversations that typically lead to growth.
“I showed a (video) clip where one player took a shot where he clearly should have thrown it to the other player, and the other player just ran down the floor (without saying anything),” Rivers said. “So I stopped it, and I said to the guy who didn’t get the ball, ‘OK, what were you thinking?’ He said, ‘Well (shrugs), he’s got to throw the ball.’ So I said, ‘OK, but you didn’t tell him.’ I was like, ‘Guys, we’ve got to get to the point where we (talk). It’s not a difficult conversation. There’s nothing wrong with saying, ‘Hey!’ And you know what? The guy’s going to say, ‘I missed you.’ Or he may not receive (the message) well, and then you’ve got to get through that too.
“But when you get through all that, you become a made team. There’s no f—— issues anymore.”
As Rivers sees it, this tendency to let tension fester goes well beyond the Bucks.
“This is the passive-aggressive generation,” he continued. “It’s amazing. From my standpoint in coaching, it’s the biggest difference (from past years). When Dominique (Wilkins) didn’t pass me the ball (in Atlanta). I’d say, ‘Nique, what the f—?’ And he would literally say, ‘Yeah, I saw you open. But I think I’m the better option.’ We would laugh about it. Or you get on the bus in my generation, and someone got their ass kicked. Boom! You’ve got to pick your s— up. It wasn’t me being mean.
“But now, we don’t get a lot of that. So we’re trying to encourage just more communication.”
All of it, of course, is done with the hopes of helping this Bucks group make good on all this promise. The alternative, as Antetokounmpo will tell you, will likely be a lot less pleasant.
(Illustration: Meech Robinson / The Athletic; top photos: Stacy Revere / Getty Images)
