NBPA accuses Bucks of tanking for trying to hold out Giannis Antetokounmpo, but there's a simpler explanation

Antetokounmpo hasn't played since March 15, but he wants to return despite Milwaukee's place in the standings

Sam Quinn

Mar 24, 2026

5:52 pm ET

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6 min read

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Giannis Antetokounmpo has struggled to remain consistently healthy this season. He missed two lengthy stretches earlier in the season due to calf strains, has played just 36 games, and if the Milwaukee Bucks have their way, he won't play again this season. Milwaukee reportedly hopes to shut Antetokounmpo down due to the hyperextended knee and bone bruise he suffered in his last appearance on March 15, a relatively standard practice for teams who are no longer realistically in the hunt for a playoff spot.

But there's one problem: Antetokounmpo wants to play regardless of where Milwaukee sits in the standings.

The standoff has seemingly grown contentious enough that the NBA Players Association had to get involved. On Tuesday, it released a statement blaming the league's current boogeyman, the tanking crisis, on Milwaukee's efforts to end Antetokounmpo's season.

"The Player Participation Policy was designed by the league to hold teams accountable and ensure that when an All-Star like Giannis Antetokounmpo is healthy and ready to play, he is on the court," the NBPA said in its statement. "Unfortunately, anti-tanking policies are only as effective as their enforcement; fans, broadcast partners, and the integrity of the game itself will continue to suffer as long as ownership goes unchecked. We look forward to collaborating with the NBA on meaningful new proposals that will directly address and discourage tanking."

It doesn't make sense for Giannis Antetokounmpo to play again this season; good luck convincing him of that

Jack Maloney

Now, broadly, when teams shut players down late in a lost season, tanking is the most common motivation. However, in Milwaukee's case, two important things should be noted:

- The Bucks do not control their own first-round pick. They will wind up with the lesser of their own pick and the New Orleans Pelicans' pick as one of the last remnants of their 2020 trade for Jrue Holiday. For the Bucks to move into the top four, they would need both their own pick and New Orleans' pick to jump. That is becoming less likely by the day because the Pelicans have no motivation to lose (their pick goes to the Atlanta Hawks) and have started to win. They are now in eighth place in the lottery standings.

- The Bucks, at this moment, have very little room to benefit from tanking. They are currently tied with the NBA's ninth-worst record. The team with the 11th-worst record, the Golden State Warriors, has a five-win lead with only weeks remaining, so the Bucks don't have to worry about getting caught by anyone in the Play-In picture. Meanwhile, the team in eighth is New Orleans. Milwaukee's placement in comparison to New Orleans is irrelevant. The Bucks get the lesser of the two picks that those two teams produce. If they finish next to one another in the standings, the order is irrelevant. Either way, the Bucks have won four more games than the Pelicans. The only team the Bucks are really tanking against is the Chicago Bulls. Both the Bucks and Bulls have 29 wins. There is some benefit to finishing with a worse record than the Bulls, but at that point in the standings, it's minimal.

So, can we say definitively that the Bucks are not tanking? No. They still have some motivation to tank, even if it's minimal. As long as the incentive exists, tanking is a rational behavior. But the time for the sort of egregious tanking the NBPA's statement hints at was two months ago, when the Bucks had a record comparable to teams like the Utah Jazz, Memphis Grizzlies and Dallas Mavericks, who have all tanked their way out of Milwaukee's area in the standings.

The Bucks resisted the urge to try an all-out tank at a point when several of their competitors embraced the idea. There are frankly at least half a dozen more egregious examples of tanking out there this season than Milwaukee, so the Bucks really don't deserve to be called out like this.

Why do the Bucks want to shut down Giannis?

If tanking isn't the primary motivation for Milwaukee's attempts to shut down Antetokounmpo, what is? The answer is deceptively simple: the Bucks don't want him to get hurt. That's especially true in his case because durability has become a bit of an issue in recent years. He has played 70 games just once since the COVID-19 pandemic came in 2020. He missed time in both the 2023 and 2024 seasons. This year, he's had those two calf strains, an injury teams are especially cautious with nowadays after Tyrese Haliburton's Achilles tear, as well as that hyperextended knee and bone bruise.

Any plans the Bucks have for the 2026-27 season rest on Antetokounmpo's health. If he ultimately elects to sign a contract extension this offsea