Giannis Antetokoumpo ends any concerns about Bucks future

2023-10-24 07:59

Giannis Antetokounmpo signs a three-year extension with the Bucks, ensuring his future with the team.

According to ESPN insider Adrian Wojnarowski, the Milwaukee Bucks have signed Giannis Antetokounmpo to a long-term extension. The extension is a three-year deal worth $186 million, an average annual value of $62 million.

With the extension, Antetokounmpo's player option that was initially set to hit in 2025-26 has now been pushed back to 2027-28, per Wojnarowski.

Of course, all due respect to Woj, it was Giannis himself who actually broke the news of the extension first.

This ends any speculation that the former MVP will end up leaving his squad in the near future. Before the Bucks traded for Damian Lillard, it was rumored that Giannis would end up leaving as he had one more committed year (player option the following year) left on his deal.

To be quite honest, this feels extremely similar to the last time that the Greek Freak signed an extension to the team. Before signing his last contract with the team, Milwaukee ended up trading a haul of draft picks for Jrue Holiday.

Will Giannis Antetokounmpo be with the Bucks for life?

Unless something ends up going horribly wrong, Antetokounmpo will be in a Bucks uniform for the rest of this current contract. At that point, the All-NBA player will be in his early 30s with only one or two major contract in front of him. Addtionally, the Bucks will most likely be able to have enough draft picks to make one more major move to keep Giannis in town.

It's very difficult to project something that will happen in 2027 but one could assume that the current game plan of keeping Antetokounmpo could work at that time. At the very least, this extension says that the Bucks will run a core of Antetokoumpo and Lillard without any distractions for the next two to three years. This is really key for a team that is looking to win another title.

Of course, this is dependent on Lillard's basketball skills aging well, but this is a talented team problem. Before trading for Lillard, the Bucks were in danger of losing their best player in the modern era. That is a problem you can't have.

While the Bucks have not locked the star for the rest of his career, the franchise can celebrate that they have locked up the best player in the history of the franchise for the foreseeable future.