Pat Riley knows how to go big game hunting.
Riley has landed big names before — LeBron James and Jimmy Butler among them — and in this case, he and Miami put their best offer for two-time MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo on the table early and dared anyone else to beat it. In the end, nobody could.
Milwaukee is trading Giannis Antetokounmpo to the Miami Heat in a package that includes three key rotation players and three first-round picks, a story broken by Shams Charania of ESPN. Miami was one of the teams on Antetokounmpo’s list. He said he would sign an extension and stay with with the Heat if traded to them (he has only one more guaranteed season on his contract and is seeking a max extension). Expect that extension to get done in the fall.
There is no third team in this deal (as of now, the deal can’t be finalized until July 6, and it could be modified between now and then). The trade shakes out like this:
Miami gets: Giannis Antetokounmpo, Bobby Portis
Milwaukee gets: Tyler Herro, Kel’el Ware, Jaime Jaquez Jr., Kasparas Jakucionis, the 2026 No. 13 pick, Miami’s unprotected first-rounders in 2031 and 2033, a 2030 pick swap, and Miami’s 2033 second-round pick.
It ends Antetokounmpo’s 13-season run in Milwaukee, where he lifted the team to a championship in 2021, won two MVPs, and is the greatest player in franchise history. He has never shied away from expressing how much he loved Milwaukee and its fans, but he also wanted to win another title, and it had become clear in recent seasons that was not happening with the Bucks.
Last season, Antetokounmpo, 31, looked like an MVP candidate when he was on the court, averaging 27.6 points, 9.8 rebounds and 5.4 assists per game. However, he only played in 36 games (and had limited minutes in a number of those) due to a variety of injuries. For the past three seasons, he has been injured come the playoffs.
This is a clear win for Miami, which now has its latest superstar and jumps up the ladder in the East. Last season, the Heat did not get out of the play-in, and following that loss to Charlotte — which left Riley, “Really pissed. I’m disappointed. Disgruntled” — it was clear Antetokounmpo was the Heat’s top priority.
Now the Heat will pair Antetokounmpo with Bam Adebayo, a likely re-signed Norman Powell, Andrew Wiggins and Davion Mitchell and with Portis coming off the bench. All of them, plus Nikola Jovic, give Miami a solid foundation — it is much closer to contending than the Heat were before the trade. However, after sending good players out the door to make this trade, Riley and the Heat front office have a lot of work to do to bring in the depth of talent needed to make this team a threat in the East to teams like New York, or even Boston.
Miami’s offer beat out the Boston Celtics, who came hard for Antetokounmpo, offering All-NBA player Jaylen Brown coming off his best season, plus two first-round picks, Charania reports. In the end, Milwaukee used that as leverage to get a little more (likely Jakucionis and maybe another pick). It may have been Bucks co-owner Jimmy Haslam — also the owner of the Cleveland Browns — who pushed for the Miami offer over Boston’s, reports Kevin O’Connor at Yahoo Sports.
Sources say Bucks owner Jimmy Haslam was a driving force in taking the Heat deal for Giannis over Boston’s offer. Haslam didn’t want to risk Jaylen Brown wanting out of Milwaukee in a year after dealing with Giannis and Myles Garrett trade demands. Haslam wanted certainty, and…
— Kevin O'Connor (@KevinOConnor) June 23, 2026
Boston’s president, Brad Stevens, now has to sit down with Brown and make sure they are all good, and he wants to return after hearing his name in trade offers. Sources out of Boston had said that Brown was only available in a trade for Antetokounmpo — a move the Celtics considered an upgrade — but he is not being shopped. However, a year ago, the Celtics also dangled Brown in an effort to get Kevin Durant in a trade, and at some point, Brown is not wrong to say, “If you want me here, why do you keep putting me in trade offers?”
There have been a lot of rumors that Milwaukee plans to flip Herro to another team, possibly Detroit, to get more players for their rebuild. There is a lot of interest in Herro, league sources told NBC Sports. However, with the new NBA lottery system punishing the three teams with the worst records (they have worse lottery odds than the other teams that miss the postseason), the Bucks don’t want to totally bottom out and may keep Herro. He has one year remaining on his contract at $33 million.
