The Milwaukee Bucks finally sealed the deal with the report that Giannis Antetokounmpo will sign a supermax extension with the team.
That great rush of wind you hear is the collective gasps of relief coming from Wisconsin. After months of debate, discussion and worries from the Milwaukee Bucks, Giannis Antetokounmpo will finally sign his supermax extension. The report comes from Shams Charania of The Athletic.
Antetokounmpo’s extension is worth $228 million over five years, and the deal comes with an opt-out clause in the final year. The extension kicks in next season, which means that he’s locked in for the next six years on a deal worth a total of $256 million (including the $28 million he’s making this season), and that makes it the most lucrative contract in NBA history.
It turns out all the worry and angst was for naught in the end. He had until the eve of this regular season to sign the deal, and he did so with a week to go. Of course, this supermax has been available to him since the moment he was eligible for it, so maybe he could have spared the city of Milwaukee some sleepless nights by doing it sooner, but he used his leverage as an irreplaceable generational talent in order to ensure that his team would stock up the talent pool around him as they look to break through their playoff failures this season.
In spite of some pretty major foibles this season, like the failed sign-and-trade for Bogdan Bogdanovic (among a handful of other sloppy errors), the Milwaukee Bucks swayed him to their side with a blockbuster deal for Jrue Holiday of the New Orleans Pelicans. Although Holiday is a free agent next season, the Bucks mortgaged their future draft prospects in order to get him into the fold.
It wasn’t perfect and you can’t even give the Bucks an A for effort, but they got Giannis Antetokounmpo to sign. And that’s all that really matters in the end.