Milwaukee Bucks: Year of Giannis Antetokounmpo speculation is underway

The new season hasn’t even begun and speculation about Giannis Antetokounmpo‘s future is already underway. Milwaukee Bucks fans will have to get used to it.

As the Milwaukee Bucks prepared to take to the podium for media day earlier this week, there was already one standout question in everyone’s minds. At least that seemed to be the opinion of a variety of national journalists who weren’t even going to be in attendance to pose said question.

Of course, I’m referring to the question of Giannis Antetokounmpo’s future, a topic of discussion that has already been a source of frequent writing, podcast segments, and TV talking head stings from certain outlets, in spite of the fact the league MVP has yet to even take the court for preseason action with the team he won 60 games with last season.

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Antetokounmpo has two seasons remaining on his current deal with the Bucks, yet is set to be eligible for a supermax contract offer from Milwaukee next season that will equate to the richest contract in the history of the NBA.

Given the major strides forward the Bucks made last year, how close they were to winning it all, and how Antetokounmpo is thriving as both a player and a brand in Milwaukee, the current picture suggests those negotiations should be little more than a formality.

That’s not to say that scenario couldn’t change drastically over the course of the season, particularly with how quickly things can shift in the NBA, but as it stands, there seems little reason to discuss Antetokounmpo’s future as opposed to looking forward to a season of actual NBA basketball.

When Antetokounmpo was pressed on his future at Media Day, his own sentiment only further indicated that there’s little point in this being pressed as a story for the next 12 months or so:

"“I talked a little bit about it last year and I said that, you know, I’m not going to talk about it lot. And I thought about it this summer when I was sitting down with Thanasis [Antetokounmpo] and my family on the couch watching shows and all that. I feel like if you have a great team, and our goal is to win a championship, and be the last team standing and get better each day, I think it’s disrespectful toward my teammates to be talking about my free agency and what I’m going to do. So when the time is right, we’re all going to talk about it, but I don’t think the time is right right now. Our focus is to get better each day, go out there and compete as hard as we can, and I’m not going to talk about it a lot this season and I’m not going to try to address it.”"

Surely, if the player doesn’t intend on discussing his contract, and the Bucks may yet prove to be good enough to make the prospect of him going elsewhere a moot point, that should be the end of this particular conversation, right?

You probably already know that the answer to that is an unequivocal no.

For fans, this will lead to months of firing off somewhat tiresome tweets about media outlet X or Y wanting Giannis out of Milwaukee, and in to a team located in one of the major media hubs in the US. It’s not difficult to understand how that conclusion is reached, but personally I think it only offers a more complicated read on a content strategy that is actually considerably more reductive.

Fully aware of the irony in sharing this particular opinion in an online environment where, if you’re reading this now, you’ve already given me your click (and thanks for that!), let’s proceed in going inside baseball for a moment. Understanding the relentless wave of largely unprompted Giannis speculation that could dominate this season requires consideration of the wider landscape for both the NBA and its most high profile media partners.

The NBA’s profile has exploded in recent seasons, yet part of that is attributable to a strange dynamic at work in how the league is consumed. The drama and excitement of free agency and trade season has allowed the NBA to dominate the news cycle, and increase the visibility of its stars. As someone who is entering a sixth season of creating NBA content on a daily basis, I can confirm the well-known truth that boom times for interest come in mid-February at the trade deadline, and from mid-June to mid-July, when the draft and free agency dominate the conversation.

That hints at the unusual nature of social media interest in the league booming, and yet TV ratings becoming increasingly underwhelming. Robert Litan explored this subject for The Athletic ($) back in July, highlighting how international growth and social media popularity are essentially safeguarding the NBA from the potential drawback of more traditional decline on U.S. television.

In an American context, that creates greater impetus for the NBA’s high profile, national media partners to make player movement a year-round discussion. With that considered, even as the new season prepares to get underway, focusing purely on basketball would seem unlikely.

Based on the metrics, the wider audience may not even tune in or click if the focus was purely on the game itself. That may say something about wider shifts in attention span, interest, and how content is digested, but it means that the start of a new season will for many high profile outlets be the first opportunity to plant the stories they hope can carry them to record traffic, engagement and interaction over the months ahead.

Looking to a 2020 free agency pool that may end up being incredibly dull by recent standards, and headlined by players such as Kyle Lowry, Gordon Hayward, and DeMar DeRozan, it quickly becomes apparent why Antetokounmpo’s future is already being pushed to the forefront of the conversation.

Antetokounmpo is a once-in-a-generation talent, the reigning MVP, an international marketing sensation, and the undoubted needle-mover as the NBA prepares to transition into a post-LeBron James world. There’s every reason for the 29 other NBA teams to want to prise him away from Milwaukee, and there’s no shortage of motivation for media superpowers to play up the interest in that prospect.

With that considered, as much as it won’t be pleasant for Bucks fans to be greeted almost daily by debate and opinion focused on the prospect of their favorite son being lured away to another city, content of that nature is an inevitability.

It’s not worth getting angry about, particularly as so much of the motivation is painfully transparent. Every time the Bucks stop off in a city where the main voices in the NBA media have full-time beat writers stationed, the conversation will come up, Antetokounmpo will be pressed to talk about something he’s made it clear he doesn’t want to, and the hunger to create popular content will win out.

If anything, if Bucks fans want to make a point, the best thing they can do is to avoid clicking on and watching endless content on that subject, or sharing it angrily on social media.

For all of the noise that’s going to continue to roll in over the coming months, the reality of Antetokounmpo’s future is simple. Perhaps fans are more interested in the non-basketball chatter that accompanies the NBA now, but for Antetokounmpo his destiny will be decided by how the Bucks perform on the court.

Next. Milwaukee Bucks: Key quotes, highlights from 2019-20 Media Day. dark

If Milwaukee deliver this season, Antetokounmpo’s signature will be signed and sealed next summer. The 29 other teams may be focused on the social media clips and rumor mill scuttlebutt that gives them hope of stealing him away, but for Bucks fans, that should all be secondary to settling in to watch the games themselves.

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