Not even 24 hours after the New York Knicks won their first NBA title in 53 years, they had to share a little bit of the league’s spotlight with the Boston Celtics.
What did the Celtics do to garner attention, even if it was just the slightest, away from Knicks and their glorious moment atop the NBA’s mountain?
Well, it was reported by The Ringer’s Bill Simmons, who is also a die-hard Celtics fans, that Boston went big-game hunting recently and made a trade offer for two-time NBA MVP and Milwaukee Bucks superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo.
“From what I heard, they made an offer in the past week. A couple days before I mentioned it on Thursday,” Simmons said on “The Bill Simmons Podcast” on Sunday morning. “I don’t know what the offer was and I don’t know who was in it, but they are in (it), hat was in the ring, which I was really surprised by as I said on Thursday because I thought they were sitting it out.”
The Celtics have been linked to Antetokounmpo since early May when ESPN’s Shams Charania reported they were one of five teams to pursue Antetokounmpo at the trade deadline this past season.
The rumors about the Celtics possibly landing the 31-year-old Greek Freak haven’t been squashed since then, either. Prominent NBA reporter Zach Lowe said on Simmons’ podcast that Boston is “not just dipping their toe in, but diving in” on a potential trade for Antetokounmpo.
The Miami Heat have also been heavily rumored to be interested in trading for Antetokounmpo, who hit a major rough patch with the Bucks this past season after they went 32-50 and beefed over the 10-time All-Star being held out for the final 15 games of the season following a calf injury.
Perhaps, the Celtics just want to drive up the trade price for the Heat, or the Knicks, who defeated the Celtics in the second round of the Eastern Conference playoffs in 2025 and are major threats to Boston getting its hands back on the Larry O’Brien Trophy, summiting the NBA landscape is pushing president of basketball operations Brad Stevens to make a seismic move.
“The safest bet is always inertia,” Lowe said about why the Celtics would want to pursue Antetokounmpo. “The safest bet is, ‘We know the nucleus that we have works really well, and there’s some degree of risk in shaking that up for a 31-year-old who’s been injury prone, and we’re going to have to sign him to a ginormous extension.’ That’s a big pivot for a team that has a pretty large window now of being one of the best teams in the NBA when everyone’s healthy.”
Jayson Tatum of the Boston Celtics and Giannis Antetokounmpo of the Milwaukee Bucks talk after the game at Fiserv Forum on April 3, 2026 in Milwaukee. (Photo by Patrick McDermott/Getty Images)
Trading for Antetokounmpo will come with a hefty price tag and the Celtics, who spent all of last season shedding salary by offloading Jrue Holiday and Kristaps Porzingis in trades, would need to make the financials work, too. Antetokounmpo will make $58.5 million next season and has a $62.8 million player option for 2027-28. He’s also eligible this offseason for a $275 million extension.
The easiest path to the Celtics acquiring Antetokounmpo is putting Jaylen Brown in a trade. Brown is coming off his best season in his 10-year career, in which he finished sixth in MVP voting after averaging 28.7 points, 6.9 rebounds and 5.1 assists. Brown did have plenty of offseason drama already, but Brown said on one of his Twitch streams that “if it were up to me, I would play in Boston for the next 10 years.”
The Celtics could find a way around not trading Brown by dealing away a multitude of other assets. They could package Derrick White, Sam Hauser and Payton Pritchard along with several draft picks — Boston holds its own first-round selection in each of the next two drafts plus four out of the next six — to land Antetokounmpo.
Bucks co-owner Jimmy Haslam told reporters in May that trading Antetokounmpo before the NBA draft, which is just over a week away, would be ideal.
Stevens has made bold trades each of the last two offseasons and it appears he’s ready to make another. He said at his end-of-season press conference that the Celtics needed to add to their roster to improve, and specially looked at an interior presence of where the team needed an upgrade. Antetokounmpo, who has been named to an All-Defense team five times in his career and made the most field goals inside five feet each of the last five seasons, definitely checks that box.
“My general feeling watching us play in really each of the last two playoffs — the second round against New York, even against Orlando in the first round (last year) — was we had a hard time generating really good looks on that first shot,” Stevens said in May. “So we’ve got to figure out a way to do better in that, and I think that one of the things that we’ve got to figure out is how to have more of an impact at the rim. And I think we do need to add to our team to do that.”
Antetokounmpo played in just 36 games this past season and totaled 27.6 points per game on 62.4% shooting from the field to go along with averaging 9.8 rebounds and 5.4 assists. Prior to the 2025-26 campaign, he finished in the top five in MVP voting in seven consecutive seasons.
One drawback on Antetokounmpo is he’s a poor 3-point shooter, making 28.5% of his career attempts, which doesn’t jell with Joe Mazzulla’s system that relies heavily on perimeter shot making.
There’s certainly plenty of risk in trading for Antetokounmpo, and reward, too. It will be up to Stevens to determine which one outweighs the other.
