In the span of a few weeks this past fall, the Milwaukee Bucks traded for perennial All-Star point guard Damian Lillard and signed two-time MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo to a three-year contract extension, establishing themselves as the betting favorite for the 2024 NBA. championship and possibly beyond.
Nothing has gone right for the Bucks since then, and Antetokounmpo’s left calf injury on Tuesday night is the latest harbinger of a hellish season in Milwaukee, even if he avoided a more serious injury.
Days after being dealt to Lillard, Jrue Holiday was redirected to the Boston Celtics, where he forged a juggernaut. Lead assistant Terry Stotts quit during training camp after a reported dispute with first-year head coach Adrian Griffin. After a blowout loss to the Atlanta Hawks in the second game of the season, Antetokounmpo reportedly questioned Griffin’s defensive plans for the team, and three games later the Bucks returned to the drop coverage that made them successful under the ousted head coach Mike Budenholzer.
And that was just the beginning.
After a season semifinal loss to the Indiana Pacers in mid-December, Bobby Portis openly challenged Griffin and reportedly joined an internal chorus of criticism. A month later, the frustrations became public when Antetokounmpo challenged everyone’s “pride,” including the equipment manager.
“Some nights there will be a violation, and some nights it won’t be there,” he said. “Your defensive effort has to be there, though. And defensively our effort was not there. There was no pride. The guys were just driving the ball, driving in a straight line, getting to the paint, over-helping, shooting 3s, offensive rebounds. There was nothing. These weren’t the Milwaukee Bucks. This is not who we are. …
“We have to be better. We have to play better. We have to defend better. We need to trust each other better. We need to be coached better. Everything, everyone has to be better. Everyone. It starts with the equipment manager. He needs to wash our clothes better. The bank must improve. The team’s leaders need to be louder. We have to make more shots. We have to defend better. We need to have a better strategy. We have to be better. … We have four months to get better, so let’s see.”
Weeks later, the Bucks fired Griffin and replaced him with Doc Rivers, who soon told everyone about his case.hesitation“to accept a job that was “harder than I thought” as he could not muster the full effort from them before the All-Star break, when “we had some guys here, we had some guys in Cabo.”
Meanwhile, Lillard revealed to Yahoo Sports’ Vincent Goodwill that the trade, which coincided with a divorce from the mother of his three children, was “all things considered the most difficult transition of my life.”
In March, Antetokounmpo joined Lillard and called this “the hardest season I’ve played,” citing a surgical cleanup of his left knee last June, the Lillard adjustment and the coaching carousel.
Despite everything, Milwaukee managed to stay in second place behind Boston, but back-to-back losses last week to the lowly Washington Wizards, Memphis Grizzlies and Toronto Raptors threatened that position.
“I do not know what it is”, said Rivers, whose team has fallen to 18-20 on the road. “You know, it’s funny, I actually sat and watched everything. Not just our players, but our travel team, everything, and I took a lot of notes. I will say that, I won’t share that. But we don’t bring the necessary professionalism and seriousness on the road. And that is something that we will have to solve.’
Those “four months to get better” were down to four games on Tuesday, as Milwaukee faced another benchmark against a Celtics team that had a 15-game lead in the Eastern Conference. The Bucks also delivered, taking a lead as large as 24 in the first half, but Antetokounmpo suffered a non-contact injury in the third quarter. He clutched his left calf, fell on the track and needed help to the training room.
An MRI revealed no structural damage to Antetokounmpo’s Achilles tendon. according to Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN. We don’t know how serious the strain in his left calf is. According to Jeff Stotts of In Street Clothes, a low-grade strain requires an average recovery time of 17 days, but a grade 2 strain extends the average timeline to 45 days. That’s the difference between a first-round return or the conference finals.
Former Golden State Warriors forward Kevin Durant tore an Achilles tendon while returning from a calf injury midway through the 2019 NBA Finals, and that precedent could mean a more cautious approach. In addition to the arthroscopic surgery Antetokounmpo required in June, he has missed games over the past month due to what the Bucks have described as “Achilles tendonitis” and “hamstring soreness” in his left leg.
Antetokounmpo’s injury couldn’t have come at a worse time. Milwaukee has two games remaining against the third-place Orlando Magic and could easily fall to the No. 4 or 5 seed. The play-in tournament offers the Bucks a week of rest, but a first-round series against any number of challengers will be a mountain to climb without him. They have allowed 118.4 points — the equivalent of a bottom-three defense — and have been outscored by 5.2 points per 100 meaningful possessions when Antetokounmpo rests this season.
Even if Antetokounmpo returns to save a series, the clock is on his chemistry experiment with a new co-star and new head coach, at least in a season where the Bucks scapegoated non-essential team personnel multiple times. Upsetting the Celtics, who are having a historic season, now requires Antetokounmpo to fully rehabilitate his calf And finding balance with a roster that has been lopsided all season.
The question now is what another early playoff exit could mean for Antetokounmpo’s psyche. The fear of an Achilles tendon will do little to quell his fears about maximizing his flourishing. The Bucks have won one playoff series since capturing the 2021 title, and as Antetokounmpo told Tania Ganguli of The New York Times in August, “I don’t want to be on the same team for 20 years and not win another championship.” “
The Bucks have little wiggle room for upgrades. They don’t have control of a first-round draft pick until 2031, and no recent selection has played a significant role. Brook Lopez, Lillard and Khris Middleton, respectively, will be 36, 34 and 33 years old next season, when they will owe more than $100 million. The end of the rotation is full of impending free agents. An aging team in decline could become older and shakier.
The end of their season from hell can’t come soon enough unless a darker fate awaits.