Marques and Kris Johnson get to the bottom of a viral quote two weeks ago
You might remember a couple weeks ago, there was somewhat of a kerfuffle online about an article written by The Athletic’s Sam Amick. What essentially happened was: he relayed a joke Giannis made, the usual aggregators/bad actors on Twitter cherry-picked it, then it went viral as yet another entry in the wishcasting saga other NBA fans and franchises keep clinging to regarding Giannis’ future in Milwaukee. Stuff we’ve been dealing with as Bucks fans for a while.
Never mind that Giannis’ supermax extension was signed just barely 365 days ago and doesn’t even take effect until the start of next season. The earliest he can become a free agent is 2026. To be fair, the extension Damian Lillard signed with Portland in 2022 also takes effect next year, having been traded to the Bucks. That was a player who showed nearly as much loyalty as Giannis has, but with several key differences: Giannis’ teams haven’t missed the playoffs since 2016, let alone finished below .500, and Giannis has won a title here. That means a lot more than most people think, despite it happening three years ago.
Moreover, no one seems to care about long-term commitments players make to franchises these days, previous statements be damned. So that’s why the usual suspects latched onto this innocuous joke Giannis made, clearly being sarcastic. Amick describes how he mentioned to Giannis during training camp that contacts with other NBA franchises are monitoring the situation in Milwaukee with regards to him. Giannis then grabbed a Bucks staffer walking by and with a wry smile, said: “if we don’t win this year, would you get fired? Do you have it in the back of your mind, like, ‘(What) if this year doesn’t go well?’ Yeah, if we don’t win a championship, I might get traded. Yeah, this is the job we live. This is the world we’re living in. It’s everybody.”
Clearly, the man is joking about being traded. We all know his sense of humor from all the press conference quotes, the dad jokes at media day, his silliness on his Instagram. He even pulled a similar prank on Jon Horst. Those uninitiated can’t seriously be taking him at his word. He is a franchise player and his presence is by far the biggest reason the Bucks contend for titles each year, and his lack of presence—like in last year’s postseason—the biggest reason why they don’t advance. No team would trade him willingly, full stop. No matter how much one might think a front office is incompetent, this isn’t happening.
Amick recently appeared on Hear District with Marques and Kris Johnson, a Bucks+ podcast, and clarified what exactly happened. You can watch the whole interview and podcast below, but here’s what Amick had to say:
“My opinion is that hypothetically, if we got to next summer and the landscape didn’t look all that promising—let’s say Dame had another tough year and maybe he wasn’t loving the experience out there and didn’t have the support around him— I’ve seen stranger things, but we all know he loves that community. We all know how invested the organization has been in him. I have a hard time seeing him wanna get outside of that.”
You can also listen to the episode on bucks.com/plus and the podcast platforms below, where you can also subscribe to Hear District.