Implications of the Miami Heat's Reported Acquisition of Giannis Antetokounmpo
NBA trades for the upcoming season do not become official until July 6, but assuming that the reports are correct and that nothing happens to scuttle the deal, the Milwaukee Bucks will send franchise cornerstone Giannis Antetokounmpo to the Miami Heat along with Bobby Portis in exchange for Tyler Herro, Kel'el Ware, Jaime Jaquez Jr., Kasparas Jakucionis, three first round draft picks, a second round draft pick, and a pick swap. No other teams are reported to be involved at this time, but last year the Kevin Durant trade that initially included just the Houston Rockets and the Phoenix Suns morphed into a massive seven team deal.
In general, the winner of an NBA trade is the team that acquires the best player involved in that deal; in basketball, several good players rarely are as valuable as one great player, and hoarding draft picks is akin to trading in risky futures and commodities: for draft picks to pay off, the person making the selections must be a skilled talent evaluator, the players who are drafted must be blessed with good health, and the coaching staff must do well at talent development. I would rather have a great player now than the potential of drafting a great player later, but that viewpoint is not universally held.
Pat Riley has been the Miami Heat's president since 1995, and his consistent team building modus operandi relies not on hoarding draft picks but on trading for players who have earned multiple All-Star selections: the list of All-Stars who Riley acquired by trade includes Tim Hardaway, Alonzo Mourning, Shaquille O'Neal, LeBron James (via sign and trade after the infamous "Decision"), Chris Bosh, and Jimmy Butler.
Antetokounmpo performed better last season (27.6 ppg, 9.8 rpg, 5.4 apg, .624 FG%) than any of the above players did in their season prior to joining the Heat with the exception of James, who won the 2010 regular season MVP before fleeing Cleveland to form the first "super team" of the modern era. The only downside regarding Antetokounmpo is that injuries limited him to a career-low 36 games last season--Antetokounmpo played in at least 61 games in each of his other 12 NBA seasons, and he finished fourth or better in regular season MVP voting for seven straight seasons (2019-25) while winning back to back MVPs in 2019-20. It will be interesting to see how fit and healthy Antetokounmpo is with the Heat, a team that is notorious for demanding that its players maintain high conditioning levels with low body fat percentages. Antetokounmpo is just 31 years old, and we have seen in recent years that well-conditioned NBA stars can play at an elite level past age 35--and, in LeBron James' case, past 40.
In 2021, Antetokounmpo led the Bucks to their second NBA title 50 years after the 1971 Bucks featuring Hall of Famers Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Oscar Robertson, and Bob Dandridge swept the Baltimore Bullets in the NBA Finals. Antetokounmpo scored 50 points in Milwaukee's series-clinching game six win versus the Phoenix Suns, tying Bob Pettit's record for the most points scored in a Finals-clinching victory while also becoming just the sixth player to have at least three 40 point games in one NBA Finals. Antetokpoumpo joined Michael Jordan and Hakeem Olajuwon as the only three players who have won a regular season MVP, a Finals MVP and a Defensive Player of the Year award (the Finals MVP was first awarded in 1969, and the Defensive Player of the Year award was first bestowed in 1983). Antetokounmpo averaged 35.2 ppg, 13.2 rpg, and 5.0 apg in the Finals while shooting .618 from the field, the first player in Finals history to post all of those numbers in the same series.
However, since that championship run the Bucks have not been a potent playoff team: they lost in the second round in 2022, and then suffered three straight first round exits before not even qualifying for the Play-In Tournament in 2026. After the Heat eliminated the Bucks in five games in the first round of the 2023 playoffs, Antetokounmpo responded to a question about the Bucks' season being a failure:
You asked me the same question last year, Eric. Do you get a promotion every year? No, right? So, every year you work is a failure? Yes or no? No. Every year you work, you work toward something--toward a goal--which is to get a promotion, to be able to take care of your family, to be able to provide a house for them or take care of your parents. You work toward a goal. It's not a failure. It's steps to success. If you've never--I don't want to make it personal.
Michael Jordan played 15 years. Won six championships. The other nine years was a failure? That's what you're telling me? I'm asking you a question...Exactly, so why you ask me that question? It's the wrong question. There's no failure in sports. There's good days, bad days, some days you are able to be successful, some days you are not, some days it is your turn, some days it's not. That's what sports is about. You don't always win. Some other group is gonna win, and this year somebody else is gonna win. Simple as that. We’re gonna come back next year and try to be better, try to build good habits, try to play better--not have a 10 day stretch of playing bad basketball. Hopefully we can win a championship.
So, 50 years from 1971 to 2021 that we didn't win a championship, it was 50 years of failure? No, it was not. There were steps to it. And we were able to win one and hopefully we can win another one.
Sorry, I didn't want to make it personal, because you asked me the same question last year, and last year I wasn't in the right mind space to answer the question back--but I remember it.
Antetokounmpo understands that it is not possible to win a championship every year and that a season without winning a championship is not automatically a failure--but he also wants to have more chances to win another title before he retires. After it became apparent that the Bucks' championship window had closed, Antetokounmpo wanted out while the Bucks wanted to rebuild.
The Heat now have an excellent and versatile frontcourt anchored by Antetokounmpo, three-time All-Star/six-time All-Defensive Team member Bam Adebayo, 2022 All-Star/2022 NBA champion Andrew Wiggins, and 2021 NBA champion Bobby Portis. The Heat are very thin in the backcourt, and they are likely to lose 2026 All-Star shooting guard Norman Powell in free agency. Davion Mitchell is serviceable at best as a starting point guard, and even if the Heat run their halfcourt offense through Antetokounmpo they still need point guards who can run the fastbreak and defend opposing point guards. The Heat also need to replace the three point shooting provided by Herro and Powell (assuming that Powell does not return).
Until the Heat upgrade their backcourt, their realistic best case scenario is a 50 win regular season followed by a second round exit--but if they improve their backcourt then they can be a championship contender. In the 12 seasons since James left the Heat to return to Cleveland in 2014, the Heat missed the playoffs four times (including last season), lost in the first round four times, lost in the second round once, reached the Eastern Conference Finals three times, and lost in the NBA Finals twice; even if the Heat lose in the second round next season, that will be a better finish than they had in eight of the previous 12 seasons. Clearly, Riley did not acquire Antetokounmpo with the goal of losing in the second round; the point is that there is a limit to how far a team can go without an MVP-caliber player, and now the Heat have such a player for the first time in a dozen years.
The Heat's future may be uncertain, but includes the potential upside of winning an NBA championship. The Bucks' future is much grimmer. Consider what happened the last time the Bucks traded their cornerstone player; in six seasons, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar led the Bucks to two NBA Finals and one NBA title while winning three regular season MVPs, and the Bucks won at least 60 games in three of those seasons--but the Bucks won 38 games or less in three of the first four seasons after trading Abdul-Jabbar to the L.A. Lakers with Walt Wesley for Junior Bridgeman, Brian Winters, Dave Meyers, and Elmore Smith. The Bucks eventually became a contender again, making the playoffs for 12 straight seasons from 1980-91, but they never advanced beyond the Eastern Conference Finals, losing three times in that round. After losing in the 1986 Eastern Conference Finals, the Bucks reached the Eastern Conference Finals once (2001) between 1987 and 2019 (Antetokounmpo's sixth season).
Rebuilding may sound good on paper or in soundbites, but NBA championships are won by teams led by players like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Giannis Antetokounmpo, not by the very good players who their teams received after trading them. Abdul-Jabbar won three regular season MVPs, five NBA championships, and one NBA Finals MVP with the Lakers. He had the good fortune of being paired with Magic Johnson and James Worthy, but they also had the good fortune of being paired with him.
The Heat may not win a title with Antetokounmpo, but they have a better chance of winning a title in the next five years than they have had since James left; the Bucks traded a generational player for some good players and several draft picks, and if the aftermath of the Abdul-Jabbar trade is an indicator it may be 50 years before they have another generational player who leads them to the NBA Finals.
Labels: Bobby Portis, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Jaime Jaquez Jr., Kasparas Jakucionis, Kel'el Ware, Miami Heat, Milwaukee Bucks, Tyler Herro
posted by David Friedman @ 12:40 AM
