Brad Penner-Imagn Images
The Milwaukee Bucks have arguably been the most notable underperforming team since the start of the 2024-25 NBA regular season. At 2-7 prior to the final result of Sunday’s matchup against the Boston Celtics, the Toronto Raptors and Philadelphia 76ers are the only teams below the Bucks in the Eastern Conference standings.
Despite the fact that the Bucks are off to a slow start, Marc Stein reported that rival NBA teams don’t foresee the Bucks discussing trades for perhaps their best player Giannis Antetokounmpo at the moment, seeing as it’s still early on in the season.
“No rival team expects the Bucks, even amid a 2-7 start, to show any willingness to discuss Giannis Antetokounmpo trades at this early juncture of the season,” Stein wrote.
Stein’s report comes less than two weeks after CBS Sports’ Bill Reiter said “there’s a rising sense of confidence” that if things continue to go bad for the Bucks, Antetokounmpo would force his way out of Milwaukee in the not-too-distant future.
If Antetokounmpo’s gaudy numbers so far this season are of any indication, he doesn’t deserve much of the blame for the Bucks’ underwhelming campaign to this point. He’s leading the Bucks in points (30.1) and rebounds (12.8) while also averaging 5.3 assists per contest, though these stats don’t account for his performance against Boston.
Rather, Milwaukee’s supporting cast around Antetokounmpo and Damian Lillard seems to deserve a large share of the blame. Outside of Milwaukee’s star duo, only one player on the team, Bobby Portis, is averaging double digits in points this season.
Gary Trent Jr. — whom the Bucks signed to a one-year deal in the offseason — was brought in with a reputation as a talented and established scorer, yet he has hardly been able to find the bottom of the net in seven starts in Milwaukee thus far.
The Celtics game notwithstanding, he is averaging just 7.3 points per game while shooting an abysmal 29.5 percent from the floor and 23.1 percent from deep. It’s worth noting that he averaged 13.7 points per game with the Raptors a season ago.
The Bucks need to be careful and make sure that their rocky start doesn’t snowball into a season to forget.
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