Милуоки Бакс Яннис Адетокунбог солилцоогоор явууллаа

Milwaukee Bucks general manager Jon Horst spoke to reporters for the first time on Wednesday about the decision to trade Giannis Antetokounmpo to the Miami Heat, and his final answer of the 30-minute session provided the most incisive look into the franchise-altering decision.

“This is hard,” Horst said. “Call it what it is. Giannis is one of the greatest players in NBA history. Top 75 of all time. Greatest player in franchise history. He’s an NBA champion in Milwaukee. All the things that we’ve talked about and that you all know, he is not with us anymore.

“So, we’ve got a lot of work to do, and we championed balance and getting back foundational players that we believed in, draft capital that we thought we could utilize and capitalize on, either by drafting at some point or by using in future transactions and flexibility to make decisions. The Miami opportunity presented us with the best path in totality, and that’s why we did the deal.”

When the GM spoke at the introductory news conference for new Bucks head coach Taylor Jenkins on May 6, he emphasized that the team planned to work through its options along two parallel paths — one in which the team traded Antetokounmpo, one in which they kept Antetokounmpo — and attempt to figure out the best course of action.

That was the same sentiment he expressed in the final week of the regular season in April, and a message that Bucks co-governor Jimmy Haslam echoed following Jenkins’ introduction, with one significant addition: The team would choose a path before the NBA Draft.

That led to the Bucks sending Antetokounmpo and Bobby Portis to the Miami Heat for Tyler Herro, Kel’el Ware, Jaime Jaquez Jr., Kasparas Jakučionis, the No. 13 pick in the 2026 NBA Draft (which Milwaukee used to select Nate Ament), two additional first-round picks, a first-round pick swap and a second-round pick.

While the Bucks ultimately decided to trade Antetokounmpo, Horst said Wednesday that the team truly considered both paths and looked at how they might rebuild a contender around Antetokounmpo before moving the franchise’s all-time leading scorer.

“In most cases, for most of the last decade, there wasn’t a parallel path of ‘Hey, if we trade Giannis, it’s this,’ and ‘If we keep Giannis, it’s this.’” Horst said. “It was just, ‘We’re going to maximize this with Giannis.’ And so, you’d end up trying to find the best opportunity and make the most of it, and hopefully it works.

“This time around, we had something sincerely to compare those options to, and clearly, we made the decision what we thought was best for us. But again, there’s a human side of this and a respect factor of Giannis. And what’s best for Giannis was to execute the Miami trade. It was different than years past, in that there were truly paralleling paths to really consider against just the all in (with Antetokounmpo), and what does it look like.”

As Horst said, the Bucks had spent the last decade doing everything they could to put the team, led by Antetokounmpo, in the best position to contend for a championship at the start of each season. That included making bold decisions like trading packages of first-round picks for a new starting point guard (Jrue Holiday and Damian Lillard) on two separate occasions, and then waiving and stretching Lillard’s contract after he tore his Achilles tendon to sign Myles Turner.

On Wednesday, Horst stood by those decisions, including the waive-and-stretch of Lillard, because it allowed Milwaukee to acquire Turner and served the organization’s goals at the time. He also explained that the time had come for the team to choose a new path separate from Antetokounmpo.

“If we’re looking for a defining moment, I don’t know that that exists in any of these things,” Horst said when asked what made the Bucks choose this new direction. “I think you’re talking about a decade-long, or decade-plus, pursuit of first building competitiveness and then trying to sustain competitiveness, have as much success as you can, weather as many failures as you can. There’s a lot that goes into that, and I think over the course of time, you do everything that you can.

“I think ultimately there comes a point in time where you have to make the assessment, and you have to assess the opportunities, and if the result of that in our estimation or (Antetokounmpo’s) estimation is you can do more and better differently — and we can do more and better differently — you take advantage of that. We went through an offseason last year and we believed that we had an opportunity to maximize something together. We went through a trade deadline where we assessed whether or not that was still the case. And we went into an offseason this year where we took the same approach. This time around, our assessment was (that) the ultimate opportunity we had with Miami was what was best for the Bucks organization now and going forward — and best for Giannis.”

While Horst walked reporters through why the time had come to trade Antetokounmpo and move in a different direction, he did not shy away from the truth of how the deal affects Milwaukee’s outlook for the upcoming season.

“No one’s sitting here today and saying that we’re a better team today after trading Giannis,” Horst said. “He’s one of the greatest players to ever play, (the) greatest player in the franchise history. We’ve had an incredible amount of success. And as I’ve said to Miami a couple of times, he’s going to have an unbelievable season for them. [They’ve] got an incredibly motivated, healthy, focused Giannis Antetokounmpo that I think is going to have an unbelievable season and seasons, for that matter.

“So, for us, it was just about the opportunity to build and to again set a foundation. Can we set something in place with a new coach and take advantage of an opportunity to truly build from a place of strength on a roster and a style of player that hopefully makes our city proud and our franchise proud and gets us to the place where we are competitive and we can sustain that competition and that competitive level, year in and year out? And if we’re lucky enough, at some point, to be in a position to knock on the door and have a chance to win a championship.”

Throughout his session, Horst reiterated that building a team without Antetokounmpo will be new for him as a general manager.

“We’re not going to get all the way there in the first six weeks of this thing,” Horst said. “This is a build. And we’re going to continue to build each and every day, but it was important for us to acquire a group of players that gave us a foundational start, a foundation to start from, to do the things that we wanted to do.”

Horst complimented all four players the Bucks acquired in the trade with the Heat and stated that Milwaukee insisted that Herro, Ware, Jaquez and Jakučionis be part of any deal with Miami for Antetokounmpo this offseason. While Horst praised those players, he also noted that the Bucks will need to be open to many paths forward with all their players as they establish a new direction in Milwaukee.

“I think being super aggressive and diligent at the same time in exploring opportunities and learning about the team,” Horst said. “This is a big transition. Obviously, a big transition not only on the floor, but off the floor, it’s a big transition for the franchise.

“And so, that’s not a call to just sit and do nothing, but it’s definitely a call to be patient and be diligent and make sure that the things that we do are the right things at the right time. And hopefully, we believe — that’s why we did the deal — having a foundation that we’re starting from that accomplishes a number of the things that we want to accomplish going forward.”

While Horst tried to use the session to discuss the Bucks’ future, most of the reporters’ questions focused on the team’s decision to part ways with its most accomplished player, and the emotions that came with the move for Horst, who was with the organization when the team drafted Antetokounmpo in 2013 and took over as general manager while Antetokounmpo was beginning to blossom into a superstar.

So, although Horst shied away from discussing his emotions on Wednesday, he admitted that the decision was difficult. He told reporters he took solace in a sentiment shared with him by long-time NBA executive John Hammond, who is both Horst’s mentor and the man who drafted Antetokounmpo for the Bucks.

“In the NBA, it’s never goodbye; it’s see you later,” Horst said. “And Giannis will be back in Fiserv (Forum) soon, and he’ll be back in Fiserv multiple times. And I really hope — not hope — I know that each and every time the standing ovation, the love, the respect, the admiration that he gets from this city and this fan base and this franchise will be felt and will be appropriate for everything he’s meant to all of us.”