Giannis Antetokounmpo: What does season suspension mean for supermax offer?

The ongoing coronavirus outbreak has already altered the 2019-20 NBA season  and will soon affect what kind of supermax extension the Milwaukee Bucks will be able to offer Giannis Antetokounmpo this summer.

Giannis Antetokounmpo, much like us all, suddenly has a lot more time on his hands than he envisioned this time of year.

As Antetokounmpo spends this unforeseen break attempting to learn how to play the guitar and trying to maintain his sanity being away from a basketball court, his and the Bucks’ sensational season is currently on hold and no return will be imminent.

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Like a snap of a finger, Antetokounmpo’s MVP defense and pursuit of an NBA title have been taken out of his and the Bucks’ control as all basketball fans get used to a life without basketball, among many other things at the moment.

The ripple effects of this new normal will not only be felt until the NBA is able to resume the 2019-20 season, should that come to pass, but also in Antetokounmpo’s ability to field what would have been the richest contract in NBA history this summer.

Everything related to the Bucks and Antetokounmpo has been fixated on the summer of 2020, more specifically July 1, the date when the Bucks would be able to officially offer Antetokounmpo his supermax extension. Before this sudden stoppage, that was projected to come in at $253.8 million under the salary cap for the 2020-21 season as Bleacher Report’s Eric Pincus recently detailed:

"“Before the current national emergency, the league’s projection for 2021-22 was $125 million, which would enable the Bucks to give Antetokounmpo a massive $253.8 million extension starting at $43.8 million. The most another franchise could give him in free agency would be four years and $161.3 million ($37.5 million in the first season).”"

Between the Bucks’ smashing success all season long and their ability to offer so much more than what opposing teams could theoretically give Antetokounmpo in the scenario that he would hit free agency in the summer of 2021, it was the ultimate test case for how viable the supermax extension would be for teams like the Bucks.

That won’t change if and when things return to normal and we have basketball back in our lives. What will, though, is what the offer will look like, based on the events of the last week.

With plenty of uncertainty over how long this break goes on for the NBA, there’s no question the league’s revenue will take a severe hit based on the games lost and subsequently affect the salary cap for the following season and beyond. There are plenty of hoops that both the league and the players union have to jump through to find a feasible situation in the face of this crisis and that could include smoothing the cap as some cap experts have posited such as The Athletic’s John Hollinger and Danny Leroux.

Again, we’re in the early stages of all of this and as Marc Stein of the New York Times reported Monday afternoon, the league will explore any and all avenues to finish out this season, even if it’s well into the summer.

Certainly the Bucks and Antetokounmpo would very much like the same, given what still remains possible for them if and when basketball returns. One way or another, Antetokounmpo’s future will be heavily impacted by what he could command from the Bucks on a supermax extension and what he could chase elsewhere if he were to go down that route a summer from now.

For more information about COVID-19, visit the website for the CDC, WHO, or the website for your state’s Department of Health.