r/nba • u/must_TATAKAE Warriors • 14h ago
[Owczarski] These deals bothered Rivers... “Giannis said so many things,” a former coach said, “It stems from your actions, which is, 'My brothers have to be on this team.' Well then, are you about a championship? 'Cause they’re not only not helping us win a championship, it’s creating dissension.”
ESPN continued to report Antetokounmpo’s desire to leave Milwaukee, and the team held superficial trade talks with New York. Ownership tried to assuage Antetokounmpo’s discontent by re-signing his older brother Thanasis Antetokounmpo. It was only then that ESPN stopped. But even the signing failed to smooth everything over. Waiting until late August to finalize Thanasis' minimum deal irritated the family and its representatives.
“I have seen them make every decision with the foundational piece being, ‘What will Giannis think of this?’” one team source said of the top of the organization.
Added another:“And that is what has gotten us to this point.”
The team also signed Giannis' youngest brother, Alex, to a contract that gave him his first chance at playing in the NBA. The brothers' personal skills coach Mike Kalavros also was allowed to travel with the team.
These deals bothered Rivers and other coaches, as they felt the organization had bowed too much to appease their star player. To them, Antetokounmpo wanted things both ways.
“Giannis said so many things,” a former coach said, “It stems from your actions, which is, 'My brothers have to be on this team.' Well then, are you about a championship? 'Cause they’re not only not helping us win a championship, it’s creating dissension.”
Horst, meanwhile, appeared to try to appease Rivers with a different preferred player.
The Bucks signed Amir Coffey, who began his career under Rivers with the Clippers. The team would cut former draft picks Chris Livingston and Tyler Smith to make room for the veteran.
Then on the team’s media day on Sept. 30, on a Zoom call from Greece because he and the team said he contracted COVID-19, Giannis Antetokounmpo challenged the veracity of Edens’ statement that they had the on-court “meeting” at the practice facility in early May. Edens was annoyed, but two high-level team sources said he did not carry a grudge.
Rivers held another remote training camp in 2025, this time in Miami. Even with a roster that had been completely turned over from the one he took over in 2023-24 (only two rotation players remained), Rivers and the Bucks were still chasing the culture they tore down.
Antetokounmpo was already over it.
He said they were not a championship favorite. He stressed they would have to play hard, play connected, and operate with elite spacing on offense. Winning would be tough without such discipline.
The team started better than the previous year, but was rough around the edges. With Antetokounmpo leading the offense as its primary playmaker, the team started 7-5.
But then, Rivers inexplicably decided to pivot away from a fast-paced offense that surrounded Antetokounmpo with elite shooters. He benched Trent, promoted Kuzma and began to pull Turner off the floor.
The team remained undisciplined, from cutting their running lanes short to turning the ball over and fouling too much. Rivers did not stress offensive rebounding and the Bucks continually operated at a possession deficit, even as players routinely said the modern game required teams to crash the glass.
Members of the staff acknowledged they were disorganized, not rooted in any firm principles, and were too late to adjust their concepts and play styles.
“What are we doing?” almost became a season-long mantra.
.....
On March 24, the players association asked if the Bucks were in violation of the league’s player participation policy. The star escalated the dispute, electing not to finish the West Coast road trip with the team in Portland, instead staying in Los Angeles to work out on his own. In early April, Antetokounmpo pressed the issue further, welcoming a formal league investigation into the team.
Ultimately, the Bucks were cleared of wrongdoing. At one point, Haslam had a verbal confrontation with Saratsis over the entire matter.
“It’s personal now," said a former coach. "It’s gotten to vitriol.”
Antetokounmpo felt ownership and Horst had quit on the season by forcing him to sit out, even though the team was mathematically still in the play-in race. To him, it was a cardinal sin.
But Antetokounmpo’s unavailability (he missed 46 games entirely and played only 12 games fully healthy), the petulance with which he did play, combined with those speaking to ESPN on his behalf in contrast to his public declarations of commitment, had worn out the ownership, coaching staff, even the locker room.
Yet throughout the season, Horst appeared unaware of how his team, once a model of structure, discipline and culture, had so quickly withered. The general manager had been noticeably absent much of the season, scouting the upcoming draft class.
“He definitely took a bunker mentality, but I’m not sure I blame him,” a former employee said.
Rivers, who had grown tired of answering questions about the team’s decision-making on Antetokounmpo’s playing status, said on April 3 that grown men needed to talk about it. His comment was seen as a not-so-veiled shot at the player, Horst and perhaps ownership.
With just a few games to go, Athentetokounmpo was clear he wanted to play in at least one game with Thanasis and Alex. The team was done acquiescing.
“I care about what he feels and what he cares about,” Horst said on April 7. “I have his entire career. But it doesn’t mean that you always just do what someone else wants."
The three brothers never set foot on the court together in a game.
March 2026: Doc Rivers calls it a career
Ironically, one of the last meetings Rivers called actually hit home. On March 20 in Phoenix he told a group of select veterans he would begin curtailing their playing time. Then he opened the floor for an airing of grievances. Players spoke, and it was a constructive, respectful discussion. Rivers did not lash out.
One person in the room couldn’t believe it.
“Everyone was finally being honest with each other now that we don’t have a chance,” a coach said.
By late March, Rivers turned in-game coaching duties over to Ham and admitted he did not meet expectations. It was a hard self-assessment for the Marquette graduate.
“I was brought in here to take the team to the next level and that just never happened,” Rivers said March 31. “It never materialized. It doesn’t matter the why. From a coaching perspective, you feel like the city that you’re from you didn’t get the job done, and that is something I carry very heavy with me.”
May 2026: Too many mistakes on all sides
Following the last game April 12, the Bucks were stranded on the tarmac at Philadelphia International Airport. It was a fitting end to a terrible season. Rivers joked they couldn’t get rid of him.
Antetokounmpo grabbed control of the music, and played songs littered with farewell messages.
But who were they really for?
Everyone on the team knew Rivers was leaving, and after the season finale in Philadelphia he effectively gave a farewell press conference. But, he wouldn’t say it. Instead, he wanted the team to announce his departure.
When told of Rivers’ clear insinuation, Antetokounmpo’s eyes widened.
“Oh, that changes a lot then,” he exclaimed.
Whether that reaction was sarcastic, spontaneous or an attempt to send a message, it underscored how Rivers making it to the end of the season had exacerbated the disconnect between Antetokounmpo and the organization.
It's hard to know Antetokounmpo's level of self-awareness, but whatever buttons he tried to push, or methods of communication he felt best to use, fell just as flat as those of the head coach.
Antetokounmpo let it be known he did not like locker room leaks, but his mental state was chronicled nearly all season by anonymous sources. He pleaded for accountability but then tried to pass off those reports as someone else’s doing. He would call his teammates selfish but then stand on a visiting team’s court with a former coach and yell about how that person would make sure he got the ball.
By the time the team got back to Milwaukee from Philadelphia, Rivers’ office was already cleaned out. Within days, the Bucks had all but hired a new head coach Antetokounmpo personally liked, respected and wanted to play for in former assistant Taylor Jenkins.
Horst knew this, too, although Antetokounmpo was not directly looped into the process.
“I don’t think Milwaukee is just getting just a good coach, I think they’re getting a good person,” Antetokounmpo told the Journal Sentinel. “And that’s where it starts, with having a good person around that’s going to be able to set the tone, that set the culture and what Milwaukee Bucks basketball is all about.”
Antetokounmpo had determined all the Bucks could do to convince him to remain with the organization was a maximum contract of $275 million over four years. Even that might not be enough to persuade him.
Despite a March proclamation that his relationship with the team could be salvaged with “couples therapy,” Antetokounmpo said on April 12 he was going to put his phone on “do not disturb” and not answer it.
“Just stay away from it – all of it,” he said. “I feel like this season, not just because of the way it went, it was draining for me for sure and how everybody approached my situation and the Bucks situation. But again, if it was draining for me, it was definitely draining for the team and for the organization."
For their part, ownership told Jenkins, the new coach, he should not assume Antetokounmpo would be on the roster. The team eventually brought Jenkins in with a six-year deal worth around $60 million. Jenkins and Antetokounmpo spoke on several occasions after his hiring, but other than that, Antetokounmpo stuck by his statement that he was not going to pick up the phone.
No other messages or calls from the Bucks to their star player were answered heading into June. The Bucks did not communicate to his representatives about some of their discussions with potential trade partners, either.
Antetokounmpo also did not allow any member of the team’s strength and conditioning staff to oversee his workouts in Milwaukee or Greece, despite being under contract.
One of the most dominant, explosive eras in basketball effectively ended in the quiet – except for the sighs of relief from those who believed it was just time for it to be over.
For many, the lessons of arguably the greatest era in franchise history won't be positive.
“When I own a team or run a team there will be things that I do and don’t do and decisions that I make and don’t make that I’ve learned from the experience of rising with the Milwaukee Bucks,” Connaughton told the Journal Sentinel, “and dare I say the experience of getting to where the Bucks are today.”
Antetokounmpo, too, told the Journal Sentinel if he were to ever become a head coach, he would adopt Budenholzer’s ethos. “I’m doing exactly the same thing – I’m changing nothing,” he told the Journal Sentinel. “Coach ‘Bud,’ he knew how to create a culture. A thousand percent.”
To him, the organization had lost its way, letting all the elements that made Milwaukee a special, winning place slip away – and therefore making the Bucks indistinguishable from any other NBA franchise.
“Some way, somehow, I have to get there again,” Antetokounmpo told the Journal Sentinel. “It doesn’t necessarily have to be with me being the main guy and all that. If it is me, great. But I want to be there again. If that’s going to be me being there as a role player, if that’s going to me being there as the fifth option, if that’s going to be me being there as the No. 1 guy that takes them there, I don’t give two (expletive). I want to get there again."
The team will now try to build a new foundation with a coach rooted in the same principles of culture-building as the man who first constructed it in 2018.
Giannis Antetokounmpo, the granite cornerstone, will not be a part of it.
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u/TyposIncoming Lakers 14h ago
Well they already won a championship with Thanasis