Hall of Fame coach Doc Rivers had the most candid conversation about the 2025-26 Milwaukee Bucks season, most unusually, on Friday. He appeared on FanDuel’s Run It Back, where he was asked directly how close the Bucks were to pulling the trigger on an Antetokounmpo deal at the trade deadline. And gave an answer that cut through months of noise.
“That’s the point,” Rivers said, pushing back on the framing. “That’s where, like, if you read all this stuff, and I hate to keep throwing Shams under the bus, but that’s what he was upset at. It was nowhere near that we were about to do anything.” He went on to add that the volume of trade speculation genuinely bothered him as a coach, precisely because he knew the internal reality, which was that the discussions were real, but the Bucks were never close to acting on them. “Were we close to pulling the trigger? No. We were not.”
— Ubong Richard (@ubyrich) April 10, 2026
The trade deadline came and went on Feb. 5, and Giannis stayed put in Milwaukee. As ESPN’s Shams Charania reported in the lead-up to the deadline, the Bucks began listening to offers, and he was prepared to move to a new team either at the deadline or in the offseason. And among the packages considered was an offer from the Miami Heat, which was centered around Tyler Herro and Kel’el Ware, which Milwaukee ultimately rejected.
The gap between the noise and the reality is precisely the damage Rivers described. According to ESPN’s Shams Charania, the relentless trade speculation exhausted the Bucks management, coaches, and players alike. One team source said, “the crux of the issue is feeling Giannis doesn’t want to be here on any given day.” That atmosphere, regardless of whether a trade was ever truly imminent, had consequences on the floor and in the locker room that Rivers could not contain.
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When the Run It Back host asked Rivers to characterize this as one of the most frustrating seasons he’d experienced, his answer was quietly devastating in its honesty. “Yeah, it’s right up there,” he said. “For me personally, it’s my first losing season in 20 seasons. I’ve had 20 seasons in a row, over 500, which is an amazing streak. I just didn’t know it. And it doesn’t mean a lot. It just means you’re winning a lot.” The Bucks’ 31-49 record this season will mark only the sixth time in his 25-plus head coaching seasons that his team has missed the playoffs.
But the record was only the surface of it. Rivers admitted that Giannis’s uncertainty crept into the fabric of the locker room in ways that went beyond wins and losses. “Trying to keep this locker room together has been very difficult,” he said. “When you can’t get everyone to buy in, it’s hard. And they’re making an excuse for them — I get it too. All the rumors about, is your best player here or not — it affected our locker room. It definitely did. And that’s tough to hold together.”
ESPN’s Shams Charania, on Wednesday, on First Take, framed the entire 11-month saga as a crisis that could have been avoided, saying: “John Horst, the general manager, Doc Rivers, the head coach, team ownership, they were aligned,” Charania said, “because the leadership of that organization had convinced ownership that we have a contending roster. We have a team that can compete and win.” Last summer, general manager Jon Horst and head coach Doc Rivers tried to sell Antetokounmpo and team ownership on the idea of contending in the Eastern Conference after they waived Damian Lillard, and stretched the remaining $113 million on Lillard’s contract over five seasons to bring in Myles Turner on a four-year, $108 million deal.
After back-and-forth discussions, which included a meeting in Antetokounmpo’s native Greece in late July, the New York Knicks became the only team he’d play for outside of Milwaukee. However, the Bucks refused to move him, and he then agreed to give the new roster a chance. That commitment broke quickly, as within two weeks, the Bucks lost humiliating games in Washington and Brooklyn, and the franchise was once again on the clock with their franchise icon. One team source laid out the core dynamic that Charania cited on First Take: “When you have a star player, that’s one foot in, one foot out, you’re just not going to win.”
The Bucks’ ownership has since agreed that a trade is likely to take place this offseason. Antetokounmpo will be eligible for a four-year extension worth up to $275 million in October, and if he does not sign it, both sides are likely to part ways.
