Giannis Antetokounmpo is "ready for a new home," as ESPN's Shams Charania recently reported. While bigger market teams such as the New York Knicks and Miami Heat should be considered the most likely landing spots, don't count out the Portland Trail Blazers entirely.
Portland has a unique connection to Milwaukee thanks to the Damian Lillard trade, which landed them a 2029 first-round pick as well as first-round pick swaps in 2028 and 2030. The Blazers have been proactively planning to see how they can come away with a key asset of their own should Giannis land somewhere other than the Pacific Northwest. Those picks gave them valuable leverage as a facilitator.
But what if the Blazers just shocked the NBA world and cut out the middleman?
Blazers should be considered a dark horse in the Giannis sweepstakes
Giannis wants a big market and sunny weather. One would also assume he'd prefer to be within a relatively short flight of Greece. Portland can offer none of those things, making it a risky proposition.
As Charania notes, Giannis is eligible to sign a four-year, $275 million supermax extension in October. If Giannis doesn't sign that, he could hit unrestricted free agency as soon as 2027, depending on whether he picks up a $62.8 million player option that summer.
But despite this "informal trade request" or whatever you want to call it, Giannis is as loyal as they come. The Blazers can make a compelling pitch to keep him around, especially given the connections he has to former Bucks teammates Damian Lillard and Jrue Holiday.
The Blazers also have the ideal combination of youth and veterans to pull off a trade, giving the Bucks exactly what they want to jumpstart a rebuild while still having enough to contend themselves.
ESPN's Bobby Marks recently gave Portland a 4/10 for deal difficulty, adding that the Bucks would ask for Deni Avdija, Toumani Camara, or Shaedon Sharpe in return. Avdija's star ascension and team-friendly contract should make him untouchable, even if it results in landing a top-five player in the world. The limited window of contending with Giannis and two aging star guards (Holiday and Lillard) isn't worth sacrificing that much of their future. Not to mention, we don't fully know what Lillard will be when he comes back from his Achilles tear.
But Camara and Sharpe should absolutely be viewed as expendable if it means landing a player of Giannis'-caliber. Eventually, the Blazers are going to have to make another aggressive move to land a legitimate superstar, making Avdija the secondary star. There are no better available options than Giannis.