Giannis Antetokounmpo Is Trapped By His Unwillingness To Be The Bad Guy

While the rest of the NBA's elite have distinguished themselves in a series of showcase games this month, Giannis Antetokounmpo has spent his December in a prison of his own making. The fourth-best player in the NBA has reached a dead end with the Milwaukee Bucks, yet neither he nor the team have yet shown themselves willing to accept reality, leading to a series of strange and frustrating developments.

The Bucks got filleted by the Indiana Pacers in the first round of last spring's playoffs and said goodbye to the newly torn-up Damian Lillard, losing along with him any possibility of team-building flexibility. They somehow managed to wriggle around enough to sign Myles Turner away from those Pacers, though the team was clearly drawing dead once again in the East, even with the Pacers and Boston Celtics maimed by, respectively, Jayson Tatum's and Tyrese Haliburton's Achilles tears. This past May, Shams Charania reported on Antetokounmpo having developed a bit of a wandering eye, writing in his characteristically cryptic style that "for the first time in his career, Antetokounmpo is open-minded about exploring whether his best long-term fit is remaining in Milwaukee or playing elsewhere."