Giannis Gave Milwaukee Everything. Milwaukee Couldn’t Give Enough.

Aaron Gash/ AP, Associated Press, Andrew D. Bernstein/getty, Barry Gossage/NBAE, Stacy Revere via Getty Images

13 years.

For the first time in 13 years, Giannis is no longer a Milwaukee Buck.

After years of rumors, failed signings and a satirical-like Kalshi partnership, Giannis is gone. Following their 2021 title that took 50 years to get, Milwaukee proved to have the best player in the world.

Time and time again it became clear that while the title will always be there it delayed the inevitable. Giannis was never meant to stay a Buck for life.

Prior to the Title

Before 2021, the same noise that has surrounded Giannis and Milwaukee recently was loud before that title was hoisted. After losing to Toronto in the conference finals in 2019, and their second round loss to a 5 seeded Miami team in the bubble, it felt like this team wasn’t going to ever be good enough to win a title.

Now the difference between the most recent tension and what happened in 2021 is the Bucks attempts to make Giannis happy, actually worked. Acquiring Jrue Holiday and later PJ Tucker at the trade deadline finally gave Milwaukee a concrete identity to rely on: defense.

Leaving The Title

After winning in 2021, it felt like Milwaukee had an actual window to contend consistently in the East. The next two seasons post-title were emblematic of that. After the championship, Milwaukee lost key contributors like PJ Tucker and eventually Khris Middleton. Even through that, they still were able to maintain a level of title contention just because of Giannis being Giannis and a defensive core that keeps them in any game.

The year after the title, Milwaukee went into the playoffs as the prohibitive favorite for the east, but Khris Middleton, the second most important player to their title was hurt.

That injury and the loss in game seven to Boston signaled what eventually became a consistent problem for Milwaukee. No matter how great Giannis can be, when it mattered most there wasn’t enough around him to take him over the top.

While remaining competitive, the old Bucks that were there before Giannis and prior to the title showed up relatively soon. Moving Donte DiVincenzo for Serge Ibaka and the more egregious five second round picks for Jae Crowder.

Most of the time, teams to remain in the title race need to always make moves on the margins, it felt like they would either overpay or overthink the moves.

The Miami Loss

After the second round loss to Boston, Milwaukee kept it relatively quiet, and their lack of moves didn’t seem to be a problem. Throughout the season despite Khris Middleton’s injuries leading to him not being as much of an impact, the teams defense was still humming.

But like their loss to Boston last year, the playoffs showed they just might not have enough. The hard part is that it was in the most embarrassing way possible that was proven.

Funnily enough, the team Milwaukee lost to that started this run of contention was the same team they lost to that ended this era of Milwaukee basketball. As the one seed in the east, they played the eighth-seeded Miami Heat who quickly dominated Milwaukee.

The whole series, was clouded by Giannis getting hurt in the first game, the games without him showed how lacking the supporting cast really became around Giannis.

The best example was Miami taking a late lead in game five and Grayson Allen went for a eurostep layup that was quickly taken down. Plays like that and the series itself showed what Boston only barely unlocked.

No matter how good Giannis was, the supporting cast isn’t matching.

Back to the Drawing Board

Immediately after the loss to Miami, it was scapegoat hour. And after years of constant rumouring, coach Mike Budenholzer was fired. Following his firing, Adrian Griffin was hired in response.

Prior to coaching Milwaukee, Griffin was an assistant coach for Nick Nurse in Toronto, Nurse was also a potential coaching candidate but pulled his name out for his hiring for the 76ers coaching opening.

Throughout the offseason, Giannis felt like he would go onto any podcast that would listen to say that he will only sign an upcoming extension with Milwaukee if there were proven changes to the team.

For most of that summer, it looked like we would be heading to the end of the Giannis era, until another era ended to revive Milwaukee and Giannis’s hopes.

After a summer of Miami hopes and groans from everyone wanting it to end, Damian Lillard was finally traded. After being drafted by Portland 10 years before, his time with Portland reached its inevitable conclusion.

Looking back on that trade and the Dame saga throughout the whole summer was that the same things that led to Dame’s eventual exit were what would end Giannis’s tenure with Milwaukee. During Dame’s time in Portland, it felt like they failed to never give him the pieces that would work around him to lead to a title.

After trading for Dame, sports anchors for weeks waxed poetic about a Giannis-Dame pick and roll and how their fit feels seamless. But over the next two seasons and a coaching change halfway through the year, it was clear while both are great players, they refused to lessen their role to let the other shine.

Both felt as if they are too established as players to be the one to sacrifice their role.

This and the Doc Rivers hiring that only felt to make the situation worse made every game feel like Giannis and Dame are staring intensely at each other from separate heads of the table to see who’s gonna cave.

The Tipping Point

After two seasons and constant questions surrounding the fit between Giannis and Dame, something finally changed the fit problems. The fit was fixed in the worst way possible however, with Dame rupturing his achilles in their first round series against Indiana. His injury felt like the punch that finally took down Milwaukee’s chances of competing with Giannis still on the roster.

Going into the offseason, Milwaukee now has a still lacking supporting cast and a max star that at this point was dead money until he returned. Then, he became actual dead money. Waiving Lillard to sign Myles Turner, who came off a finals appearance and who Indiana due to Haliburton’s injury did not want to resign to a big contract.

Milwaukee now adds a big contract that while playing consistently well for years, feels like overpaid given his role. Myles Turner at his best is a player that is just as good as his teammates are. Outside of Giannis and Turner, former two-way contract Ryan Rollins was the best player on the roster.

While being questionable and looking back on outright dumb move. Milwaukee was at a spot where for the first time, they had no way to give Giannis a chance at contention. Even with the Dame trade not really ending up in success, they did it with the hope Giannis gets another chance at a ring. It felt as if they had nothing left in the chamber to do.

The Inevitable

For what’s felt like six years in the making finally happened. Giannis, the player who resurrected a Bucks franchise that after a conference finals appearance with Ray Allen, fell quickly back into NBA obscurity. Giannis brought them out of that, but now their desperation to give Giannis the only thing that he wanted-a chance at a title- cost them the player they were desperate to help.

While Milwaukee’s attempts at competing post-title led to relative failure, this feels like another chapter in the same story. A small market team strikes gold at a generational kind of player and through ownership and front office mismanagement and sometimes the small market aspect of it, never returns what the player gave them.

Even with how it ended for Milwaukee, it still ended up positive.

Unlike how most of the stories like those play out, where the said player goes to a better and bigger market to win a title, Giannis actually won the title in Milwaukee.

No matter how bad those years following eventually became, Milwaukee and Giannis at least brought something a lot of teams like them fail time and time to get: a title.