'Mystery Team' Looking into Giannis Antetokounmpo Trade This Summer

With the revelations this week that Giannis Antetokounmpo and the Milwaukee Bucks are locking horns on his playing status for the rest of this season, and almost certainly 'headed for a divorce,' some teams are starting to emerge as potential pursuers.

A new report from Kirk Goldsberry names an unexpected team that could pursue Giannis this summer, among others.

I actually heard there’s a mystery team. I called around as part of this exercise to see who were potentially desperate places for Giannis to land. And somebody who knows stuff told me that Orlando has actually been very active in seeking out Giannis Antetokounmpo’s services.

"Desperation" sets in after the first round of the playoffs, says Goldsberry. And those eight teams that just got knocked out sooner than they'd hoped start to get anxious to plan a big move to make things right for the next season.

That's when "desperate" teams like the Orlando Magic, as Goldsberry suggests, along with others who could lose in the first round, like perhaps the Houston Rockets, New York Knicks or Cleveland Cavaliers, "talk themselves into" taking a wild swing for someone like a Giannis, "whether they should or not."

"Desperate GMs and desperate ownership groups tend to do irrational things," adds Goldsberry, refering to the risk they'd have to absorb bringing in a 31-year-old Giannis who'll be due a massive extension as of Oct. 1st of four-years at between $275 - $300 million.

However, he adds, the Magic, if they do want to land Giannis, have a problem, in that they traded four unprotected first-round picks to the Memphis Grizzlies for Desmond Bane last June. They simply don't have the draft capital to satisfy the Bucks, unless they involve some other teams and/or make other moves first.

The Magic have underperformed this season, sitting at 39-34, in the 9-seed in the East, and facing a Play-In. They've gone 4-6 in their last 10 games, losing four games in the standings to the Atlanta Hawks, three games to the Charlotte Hornets, and two games to the Philadelphia 76ers, dropping behind all three of them in the standings.