The Milwaukee Bucks have underwhelmed early in the 2024-25 season amid a 1-4 start that has left the team searching for answers and other organizations keeping a close eye the superstar face of the franchise.

CBS Sports’ Bill Reiter reported that teams are, per executives, “circling — and hopeful” that Giannis Antetokounmpo will be available via trade. “I wouldn’t be surprised if it happened by the trade deadline,” a top executive told the insider.

Reiter’s report named the Miami Heat and Brooklyn Nets as Antetokounmpo’s preferred destinations.

Teams can take glee in the Bucks’ early struggles and circle around the two-time NBA MVP all they want but it would be asinine for Milwaukee to even consider a deal at this point in the season.

The 29-year-old is the face of the franchise, the best player on the roster and the piece around whom the organization has been built. He led the Bucks to the 2021 NBA title and was the Finals MVP.

While the team has not made it past the opening round in the last two seasons, they have been in the playoffs every season since 2016 and a large part of that can be attributed to his development into the best player on the team and one of the legitimate superstars in the NBA.

Through the first five games of this season, the big man from Athens, Greece has averaged 30.4 points, 11.6 rebounds, 5.8 assists, 0.4 steals, and 0.6 blocks. He ranks fourth in the league in scoring and ninth in rebounds. He is ranked first in defensive rebounds.

This is not a player whose skill set is diminishing or whose level of play has taken a sudden downturn. He is still an elite player in the league whose stats rank right up there alongside LeBron James, Anthony Davis, Nikola Jokić, Jayson Tatum, and Anthony Edwards.

Dealing Antetokounmpo, either now or later this season, would admit defeat to the rest of the league and essentially set the Bucks organization back several years. If not longer.

A player of that magnitude, both on the court as a leader of the team and off as the face of the entire franchise, does not walk through the door every day. He is not someone who the Bucks can trade away to the Heat in return for draft picks or Jimmy Butler (or both) and hope to pick up where they left off.

Giannis is a generational player, a franchise savior, and a champion.

You build an organization around him and then make trades to improve the roster elsewhere.

Not the other way around.

That is the step the Bucks need to take next, especially if the early season struggles continue. Find other role players and depth additions to surround him with. Make it appealing for him to stay so that any desire he may have of leaving the only team he has ever known dissipates.

Or, better yet, give the roster more than five games to get into a rhythm and gel before blowing things up to the extent that they trade away one of the best players of the last decade for a haul that will never adequately equate to what Antetokounmpo has brought and meant to the organization, the city, and its fans.