The confetti from the Knicks’ championship win barely had time to settle before league insiders began tying the rival Celtics to dissatisfied Bucks superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo in a way that rumors previously had not.
It started with Ringer CEO and founder Bill Simmons, who hopped on a live podcast immediately following the Knicks’ win.
“From what I heard, they [the Celtics] made an offer in the past week,” Simmons said. “I don’t know what the offer was, and I don’t know who’s in it. Hat was in the ring, which I was really surprised by, as I said on Thursday, because I really thought they were sitting it out.”
Fellow insider Zach Lowe responded, “I don’t think they were ever out. The safest bet is just always inertia.”
“I think it’s probably just frustration with how the season ended,” he continued. “Some public comments that had been made after the season that ruffled some feathers, I’m sure.”
Reading between the lines, Lowe may have been referencing Jaylen Brown’s repeated assertion that the 2025-26 season was his favorite, even after Boston suffered a first-round exit – something that has never happened when both he and Jayson Tatum have been fully available for a series.
Longtime insider Marc Stein confirmed he heard the same information as Simmons, just a day later.
“The Boston talk, it has gotten louder and louder,” Stein said, on the AllCity All NBA show. “Since the end of May, this has been out there, and my old friend Bill Simmons beat me to it.”
“The two teams that keep coming up with Giannis are Miami and Boston, and Bill said it on his podcast on Thursday, a couple days before my weekend column,” he said. “Bill was the first one to talk about Boston as a place that interests Giannis and based on everything I’ve heard the last two, three weeks, I think that was dead on.”
But just Monday morning, ESPN’s Brian Windhorst got into the mix with information pointing Giannis in the direction of South Beach.
“Talks have intensified over the last 7-10 days. Look, he has focused on wanting to be a member of the Miami Heat. Because he only has one year on his contract, he has some control over that, but the Heat and the Bucks have been talking for months and not agreed to a deal because the Bucks don’t love the Heat’s offer,” Windhorst said, on an ESPN broadcast. “There are third teams involved, there are fourth teams involved.”
“In recent days, we have seen that the Boston Celtics have shown some interest there,” he added. “But a Celtics offer has a stumbling block. Number one, you’d be breaking up Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown. Number two, it would mean changing the entire structure of the way the Celtics play basketball.”
To some fans, that last point may be the driving one for a Celtics team who suffered such an early knockout after securing the No. 2 seed during the regular season.
Antetokounmpo, 31, will be eligible for a massive 4-year extension six months after he’s traded to a new team. He is a two-time league MVP, nine-time All-NBA player who led the Bucks to a championship in 2021. He played just 36 games last season due to a hyperextended left knee and bone bruise.
