If Giannis Antetokounmpo’s tenure with the Milwaukee Bucks ends this summer, it will show that his commitment to winning championships outweighs his loyalty to the team. This scenario serves as a warning to small-market contenders like Oklahoma City, Minnesota, and Indiana. While their relationships with stars Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Anthony Edwards, and Tyrese Haliburton are strong, these good vibes will only last as long as the Thunder, Timberwolves, and Pacers can continue to contend.
It has been 15 years since LeBron James left the Cleveland Cavaliers for the Miami Heat, marking the start of the NBA’s player-empowerment era. Since then, superstars like Kevin Durant, Kawhi Leonard, Kyrie Irving, Paul George, and Jimmy Butler have left smaller markets for bigger cities. Oklahoma City, Minnesota, and Indiana felt these departures deeply.
The Thunder, Timberwolves, and Pacers have developed superstars and built contenders around them, similar to how the Bucks built around Antetokounmpo. However, if a team doesn’t win, the pressure on the front office to satisfy its superstar increases significantly. The Dallas Mavericks traded Luka Dončić to the Los Angeles Lakers rather than face the possibility of him leaving amid their struggles to build a winner around him.
Small markets must always wonder if their superstars will leave them too. Since Kareem Abdul-Jabbar left Milwaukee for Los Angeles, superstars have been drawn to NBA destination cities, where there is more money and more to spend it on.
Dončić’s trade was extreme, but the financial realities of the NBA eventually catch up. Players age, contracts increase, and luxury taxes skyrocket. The latest collective bargaining agreement is designed to close championship windows almost as soon as they open. We are now seeing its effects on the next generation of superstars, as rosters have deteriorated around players like Antetokounmpo and Nikola Jokić.
While we once thought superstars might stay in small markets for life, we must now consider the possibility that they, too, are products of the empowerment era. Their franchises have kept them satisfied for a decade, longer than the Cavaliers ever could with LeBron James, but all things come to an end. NBA assets depreciate, and once there is nothing left to wield power over, eyes begin to wander, as is the case with Antetokounmpo.
Where are Gilgeous-Alexander, Edwards, and Haliburton in this process? Let’s examine.
Oklahoma City is getting expensive. Chet Holmgren and Jalen Williams are due maximum contracts in the summer of 2026, when Gilgeous-Alexander will be eligible to sign a five-year, $380 million extension. The cost of these three—OKC’s Big Three—will likely force the Thunder to lose most of their current depth. If the Thunder win this year’s championship, they will have only one season to run it back before the CBA reaps what it has sown. The Boston Celtics faced a similar situation this season.
However, no team is better equipped to replenish its depth around a Big Three than OKC, which holds a stash of draft picks as deep as any other team in the league. There is no guarantee that these picks will become championship-caliber pieces. Consider the Denver Nuggets, who lost key contributors to free agency, and only Christian Braun developed to replace them. Other picks have been, for the most part, whiffs, setting a second-round ceiling for the Nuggets this season. This cost general manager Calvin Booth his job and, in a way, cost head coach Michael Malone his gig too. The NBA cost of depreciation is steep.
There is also no guarantee that the Thunder will remain healthy. Think of the Celtics, who watched as injuries and illness prevented them from submitting their best title defense. Series over. Season over. Era over? NBA fortunes can change in an instant, which is why it is so important to maximize the present.
Should the Thunder fail to win this year’s title, what better way to seize the moment than by pursuing Antetokounmpo? All of those assets also make them better positioned than anyone for one big swing this summer. This assumes Antetokounmpo, who has fixed his eyes on bigger markets before, would want to re-sign in Oklahoma City, where he and Gilgeous-Alexander could form a dynamic duo or discover misfit chemistry. But Antetokounmpo’s arrival would not change the calculus of what is to come for the Thunder. It would only increase the pressure to win next year, ahead of rising costs and a diminished supporting cast.
Is this as good as it gets in Minnesota? The Timberwolves recognized early what they had in Anthony Edwards and acted accordingly, trading the rights to six first-round draft picks for Rudy Gobert in July 2022. This led to last year’s Western Conference finals appearance, but financial costs came quickly for them too, so they swapped Karl-Anthony Towns for Julius Randle and Donte DiVincenzo—a risky move that led them back to the Western