Ramona ShelburneMar 20, 2026, 07:15 AM ETCloseSenior writer for ESPN.comSpent seven years at the Los Angeles Daily NewsFollow on XMultiple Authors
play1:28Shams: Bucks want to shut Giannis down for rest of seasonShams Charania reports that Giannis Antetokounmpo has refused the Bucks’ requests for him to sit out the rest of the season.
Shams reveals latest on Giannis’ back-and-forth with Bucks (1:32)The ‘Get Up’ crew discusses the tension between Giannis Antetokounmpo and the Bucks over shutting him down for the rest of the season. (1:32)
Shams: Bucks want to shut Giannis down for rest of seasonShams Charania reports that Giannis Antetokounmpo has refused the Bucks’ requests for him to sit out the rest of the season.
Shams Charania reports that Giannis Antetokounmpo has refused the Bucks’ requests for him to sit out the rest of the season.
THE HIGH-SPEED TRAINS passing through the Brightline station in West Palm Beach travel north and south between Orlando and Miami, creating a rumble that shakes the conference room on the second floor.
It’s here, at this crossroads in South Florida, that the two men with final say over one of the biggest stories in the NBA have come to discuss the future of the face of their franchise, superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo.
Milwaukee Bucks co-owners Wes Edens and Jimmy Haslam told ESPN in a joint 90-minute interview that they will decide the path to take with their two-time MVP together, and the most important factor will be whether Antetokounmpo signs the four-year, $275 million extension he is eligible to receive on Oct. 1.
“Giannis is going into the last year [of his contract],” said Edens, the team’s controlling owner until April 2028. “So one of two things will happen: Either he will be extended or he’ll be traded.”
“The likelihood you’ll let him just kind of play out the last year, we can’t afford that. It’s not consistent with what’s good for the organization. That’s not a Giannis issue. That’s any player that’s in their last year.”
Yet team sources, rival executives and league insiders question whether the situation is that simple. Interviews with more than a dozen people with knowledge of the situation say what’s happening in Milwaukee goes beyond a typical NBA franchise’s struggle to maintain a winning roster: A unique ownership structure has made it difficult for opposing franchises to identify who is actually running the team.
ANTETOKOUNMPO HAS FOR years said publicly he wants to stay in Milwaukee, but only on a championship-caliber team. Nearly every NBA team is waiting for Antetokounmpo to decide when those variables are mutually exclusive.
They are practically out of the playoff picture entirely this season, after three straight first-round playoff exits.
It’s a hedge sharp enough, and appealing enough, that his future is consistently one of the most tantalizing hypotheticals in basketball.
“It’s not an accident that teams like the Lakers, Clippers, Heat and Warriors all have lined up to have cap space in 2027 when Giannis can be a free agent,” one NBA executive told ESPN. “A player like Giannis can tilt the balance of power in the league for years to come.
“What nobody knows yet is whether they’ll really trade him before he gets to free agency — and how they’re making that decision.”
It was the single biggest topic of this winter’s trade deadline as the Bucks entertained meaningful trade offers for their 31-year-old superstar for the first time. And it will remain so this offseason, as the Bucks have remained the 11-seed in the East despite Antetokounmpo’s return on March 2 from a calf injury that cost him 15 games. And now there’s friction over whether to shut down Antetokounmpo for the remainder of the season after his latest injury.
“As of today, I’m a Milwaukee Buck and I’m committed to that,” Antetokounmpo said in mid-February. “Now what happens if things move and change in the future? That change, I can’t control that.”
Edens’ either-he-signs-or-he-goes statement, however, suggests the contrary — that the decision is Antetokounmpo’s, and his alone.
THE CONFUSION OVER who makes the decisions in Milwaukee exists because the Bucks have one of the most unusual ownership structures in professional sports. Every five years, controlling governorship rotates between partners.
It is a structure that, in the past, generated organizational chaos and competing agendas between the partners and could do so again.
For the next two years, Edens is the controlling owner. After that, Haslam, who owns the NFL’s Cleveland Browns and MLS’ Columbus Crew, will assume the controlling position. All major decisions require consensus between the two rotating controlling owners and the third-largest shareholder, businessman Jamie Dinan.
Edens and Haslam told ESPN this setup has worked well since Haslam purchased a 25% stake in the team from Marc Lasry in 2023.
“The Jimmy partnership is unbelievably good,” Edens said. “And that’s really, really important because … the likelihood is, just given the season we just had, the things we’ve got in front of us, we’ve got to make some hard decisions, and it’d be great to make hard decisions with somebody who you really like and trust.”
As Edens’ term as controlling owner wanes, however, there are strong indications that Haslam’s power within the organization is growing.
In late January, the Bucks announced that president Peter Feigin would be leaving his post after 12 years and turning the reins over to Josh Glessing, who works for the Haslam Sports Group and has previously run the Crew.
By all accounts, it was a peaceful transfer of power. But for people in Milwaukee, the move to replace Feigin, 56, a popular figure who was given a key to the city of Milwaukee by Mayor Cavalier Johnson on Jan. 29, marked a key power shift from Edens to Haslam.
“The more time goes on, the more power Jimmy’s going to have,” the source close to the team said. “And long term, it’s going to be his anyway, so he’s not going to let the guy that’s [passing controlling ownership on] eventually dictate what it looks like.”
“We mostly dealt with [GM Jon] Horst,” an executive with one of the teams that heavily engaged with the Bucks told ESPN. “But our impression was that Jimmy was really the one who would decide this.”
Said an executive with another team that engaged in talks for Antetokounmpo, “There were clearly multiple owners there, but you just got that feeling that internally, Jimmy is driving more of that train.”
To the execs from that second team, it was clear that the Bucks did not want to trade Antetokounmpo during the season.
“There’s no question they didn’t want to move him,” the executive said. “Because it never reached a point in time, in any of our discussions with them, where they said, ‘We will do it if you do X.'”
Multiple sources across the league said the Bucks’ asking price was enormous, with an executive from a third team describing the Bucks’ process as “gauging the market” and their price as “all our draft picks and good young players.”
The Golden State Warriors offer included four unprotected first-round picks in pursuit of Antetokounmpo, sources said, but never seemed to gain much momentum on a deal.
The players the Bucks did seem interested in were younger building blocks such as VJ Edgecombe of the Philadelphia 76ers or Evan Mobley of the Cleveland Cavaliers, sources said.
“It was very, very, very easy because we just were completely united on this whole thing,” Edens said. “If we’re going to do anything, it’s a very serious decision, so we’re going to take it seriously. And we try to get the best counsel we can on the player side from Jon Horst.”
Still, questions remain among other NBA owners and Bucks minority shareholders who spoke to ESPN because of how the previous partnership between Edens and Lasry deteriorated.
Shams: Bucks want to shut Giannis down for rest of season
THE ORIGINAL OWNERSHIP construction was created when Edens, Dinan and Lasry purchased the team for $550 million in 2014. It worked well for the first few years in which Edens held the controlling stake but started to fray in 2017 when Edens and Lasry disagreed over who should replace John Hammond as general manager.
Eventually Edens promoted Horst to the position after an outside search had focused on two other finalists, then-assistant GM Justin Zanik and Arturas Karnisovas, who was eventually promoted by the Denver Nuggets (and is now GM of the Chicago Bulls.)
The partnership between Edens and Lasry splintered after that, sources within the organization said, but remained intact through the NBA championship season in 2021 and until Lasry sold his shares in the team to Haslam in 2023.
There was a chance of ending the strange setup of rotating ownership when Lasry sold, sources said. Lasry offered Edens the chance to buy his shares, but Edens did not pursue it. Eventually one of Edens’ top lieutenants, Sarah Watterson, connected with Glessing, one of Haslam’s top lieutenants, and the deal was completed in April of 2023. Lasry departed with one year remaining on his five-year term as governor.
“I knew their relationship was bad,” one team source said. “But I didn’t realize how bad it was until I saw them at Giannis’ wedding [in 2024] and they wouldn’t go near each other.”
While the partnership between Haslam and Edens appears to be healthier, the complicated ownership structure — and potential for similar discord — remains.
SO FAR, THE biggest moves the new partnership have made together both involved bold moves around Damian Lillard. In September 2023, the Bucks traded Jrue Holiday, a key player on their title-winning team, for Lillard in an attempt to extend their title window with Antetokounmpo.
While hailed for its boldness and potential at the time, not only did it not work out as planned, it diminished the team’s assets as the pressure built to win with Antetokounmpo in his prime. To add insult to injury, Holiday ended up winning a title with the Bucks’ Eastern Conference rival, the Boston Celtics, the next season.