It would normally feel hyperbolic to suggest a win in November over the lowly Toronto Raptors could represent a potentially season-salvaging turning point. But these are strange and crucial times for the Milwaukee Bucks, whatever the month and whoever the opponent, and that was just how it felt Tuesday night.
As straight, stark relief.
The Bucks’ 99-85 victory over the Raptors pulled them to what is still a ghastly 3-8 on the season, but the win might end up mattering very much. Small victories can lead to bigger ones, especially early in an NBA season.
It came on the heels of a 1-6 skid during which CBS Sports’ reported that other NBA teams are eagerly watching Milwaukee’s lackluster start with the belief it could lead to Giannis Antetokounmpo eventually forcing his way to greener pastures.
There was a fervor that followed, and some lukewarm attempts to downplay the serious risk facing the Bucks if their then-bad start spiraled.
But the report is indeed true, even if Bucks fans don’t want to see or acknowledge that. Several other outlets confirmed CBS Sports reporting after the initial news came out, including The Ringer’s Howard Beck.
On his podcast with Raja Bell, Beck noted he reached out to his own sources to verify the report. “I poked around myself and went two-for-two with executives that I texted… ‘10,000 percent true’ is what (one of them) said back to me.”
Or, as an NBA executive who’d recently talked to the Bucks about their situation told me after the piece ran, “You nailed it. Everyone knows he could leave.”
The Milwaukee Bucks organization certainly knows all of this, and the risk they’re staring down at losing a generational talent. The players on that team, in that locker room, do too. And last week, after the Knicks blew out the Bucks, making that hole Milwaukee was in feel even deeper and darker.
“We gotta compete,” Antetokounmpo said after that blowout. “We gotta do a better job competing. At the end of the day, coming to New York, playing the way we’re playing, teams will not just give us games. Teams will not feel bad about us and just don’t compete.”
The Bucks followed it up with a loss a few days later to Boston.
And so on Tuesday they entered what bizarrely felt even in November like a very, very important basketball game — without Damian Lillard, who is out while under concussion protocol — against the league’s worst team.
Because, yes, Giannis has not yet asked for a trade. And, yes, of course, the Bucks do not want to trade him. But want sometimes has nothing to do with it, not in the NBA, not with stars approaching 30 years old and facing what feels like a place that will only hold them back.
There are plenty of reasons for Milwaukee to worry, and pretending everything is fine with the franchise’s star player isn’t a solution. The Bucks are now just 21-28 with Doc Rivers as the head coach. They traded much to get Lillard and have little flexibility as a result. They’ve seen the key player who left in order to facilitate the Dame-Giannis tandem — Jrue Holiday — help the Celtics win a title and establish themselves as the game’s best team.
So given all this, Milwaukee badly needed that ‘W.’
Who cares if the victory came only against Toronto, and if the three teams the Bucks have managed to defeat so far this season have combined for six total victories?
Sometimes just winning, and how it feels and the relief it can generate, is enough.
Sometimes.
Because winning can be contagious. And if it gets contagious enough, it can also change things as gloomy as the mood in Milwaukee and the league-wide feelings about Giannis’ possible future elsewhere. It’s hard to believe both the Sixers and the Bucks will miss the playoffs, or even both will give up their place somewhere near the top of the Eastern Conference pecking order.
So maybe the Bucks are now on the cusp of a real turnaround.
Certainly losing Tuesday night would have felt apocalyptic. And while getting to 3-8 isn’t exactly salvation, the road forward looks smooth enough for this team to make a U-turn — if, in fact, they’re good enough to do so.
Their next 10 games go: Detroit, Charlotte, Houston, Chicago, Indiana, Charlotte, Miami, Washington, Detroit again, and Atlanta. Only the Rockets are currently over .500.
Being 3-8 doesn’t tamp down the dysfunction, turn the vibes from dire to hopeful, or obscure Rivers’ serious struggles and the looming possibility Giannis will decide he just can’t win in Milwaukee.
But being, say, 11-10 might. The 2010-11 Miami Heat started 9-8, the gloomers emerged (guilty), and that team still made the NBA Finals that year — and eventually won two titles.
Do I think that path is possible for Milwuakee? Do I think this team, this coach, this Lillard-Giannis tandem can even approach such heights?
I do not.
But what I think is meaningless. Same for Bucks fans furious at the idea other NBA teams are greedily eying their superstar and thinking, just maybe, he could be theirs.
All that matters is what Giannis Antetokounmpo thinks. And that, more than anything, will be shaped by losing — or by winning, a whole lot, preferably starting right now.