MILWAUKEE — Midway through the third quarter of the Milwaukee Bucks’ 134-123 win over the Indiana Pacers, Giannis Antetokounmpo made a move he’s made hundreds of times during his 13-year NBA career.
With the ball in transition, Antetokounmpo dribbled to his left, planted hard on his left foot and spun to his right. After the spin, he exploded to the rim and threw down a hellacious dunk through contact from Pacers center Jay Huff.
Unable to hold on to the rim with the contact from Huff, Antetokounmpo landed awkwardly after the dunk and hyperextended his left knee.
GIANNIS WITH THE SPIN AND THE POSTER. 🤯 pic.twitter.com/KtGawn8yUo
— Milwaukee Bucks (@Bucks) March 15, 2026
The fall looked gruesome enough to cause a significant injury, but Antetokounmpo slapped the top of his left leg and then got back up shortly after he went down.
“Yeah, I think I hyperextended my knee,” Antetokounmpo said when asked what happened on the play. “I haven’t seen the clip. I want to see the clip. Doesn’t matter. That’s pretty much it.”
He even finished another two-hand dunk after the Bucks managed to force a turnover without him on the other end of the floor.
Antetokounmpo kept playing after that second dunk and went up and down the floor before the Pacers committed another foul on Antetokounmpo as he tried to establish post position in the middle of the lane. Antetokounmpo went 1-for-2 from the free-throw line and kept playing until Jericho Sims knocked a ball out of bounds with 2:19 remaining in the third quarter. Then Milwaukee’s superstar left the game.
Rather than immediately going to the locker room to get the injury checked, Antetokounmpo sat on the bench with his teammates. Then, he tried to stretch out his left leg and test his knee on the sideline before riding a stationary bike as the third quarter came to a close.
As the fourth quarter got underway, the Bucks built a 13-point lead while Bucks vice president of sports medicine Luke O’Brien and physical therapist Tommy Brice started a conversation with Antetokounmpo in the tunnel that leads to the locker room near the Bucks bench. After some convincing, Antetokounmpo ultimately went to the locker room.
“I had the conversation with Luke and Tommy, and again, I don’t think anything changed,” Antetokounmpo said. “I wanted to get back in the game. They looked at me and said, ‘No, it’s not worth it.’ We were up 13, 15. They was like, ‘No, no way, it’s not worth it.’”
After a brief visit to the locker room, Antetokounmpo returned to the bench for the rest of the fourth quarter and talked with his teammates like normal, even breaking down a possession with longtime teammate Bobby Portis on the floor during a timeout.
When The Athletic asked if he would be getting any imaging done on the knee to see if there was any more serious damage done on the play, the two-time NBA MVP said no.
“I’m just going to go back home, sleep, see how I feel tomorrow, try to lift some weights,” Antetokounmpo said. “And if I have a little bit of discomfort, then I’ll go from there. But as of now, I’m not really bothered by it at all.”
While Antetokounmpo acknowledged the Bucks’ medical staff was eventually able to convince him to sit out the rest of the fourth quarter, he still wanted to compete and get back out on the floor to help his team in the fourth quarter.
“For me, every game is worth it,” Antetokounmpo said. “Every time I step on the floor, I try not to take it for granted. I appreciate just being out there, especially when I’m getting my rhythm back and I’m feeling good.
“But again, that was the time that you gotta look back and you just gotta listen. Just gotta listen. And I listened. But I try not to make it bigger than what it is. I felt like I could finish the game. But the training staff thought it wasn’t smart for me to do so, so I just gotta trust them and go from there.”
It’s tough to disagree with the assessment of the Bucks’ medical team. Even with the win Sunday, the Bucks are 5 1/2 games behind the Charlotte Hornets for the Eastern Conference’s final Play-In spot and have won only two of their last 10 games. The 31-year-old Antetokounmpo has already missed 31 of the Bucks’ 67 games this season with a groin strain, two separate right calf strains and a left ankle sprain.
While Antetokounmpo has prided himself on playing through injuries and returning from injuries sooner than expected throughout his career, it is tough to see there being much reason for such a decision at this point as the Bucks — while not mathematically eliminated from grabbing a Play-In spot — don’t appear to be primed to make it into the postseason.
Despite this latest injury, Antetokounmpo bristled at the idea of losing trust in his body to make moves he normally makes as injuries have piled up this season, and he has missed more time than in any other season in his career.
“Yeah. … Last game, I made (that move) like three or four times,” Antetokounmpo said. “It doesn’t change anything. He bumped me. Like, it should be and-1, right? If you go look at the play, I didn’t just land. (He) bumped me while I’m up in the air, so that’s why I lost my balance. Should be and-1, but yeah, I do trust my body. I’ve done that (move) a million times, a million times, man. So, nothing changes now.”
Antetokounmpo may want to get back on the floor as soon as possible to keep up with the standard that he has built throughout his career, but he needs to be smart.
This has turned into a lost season for the Bucks. They’re 24th in offensive rating and 25th in defensive rating, and they’ve been in the bottom 10 in both categories for much of this season.
Entering Sunday’s game, the Bucks have outscored opponents by 3.4 points per 100 possessions in the 1,015 minutes Antetokounmpo has been on the floor this season, per Cleaning the Glass. But they’d been outscored by 9.5 points per 100 possessions in their time without Antetokounmpo.
If he wants to play in more games this season, the Bucks have to ensure he is fully healthy and able to compete at the highest level, because he means too much to the franchise to take any chances.
No one quite knows what this offseason holds for the Bucks. They have spent the last eight seasons doing everything in their power to surround Antetokounmpo with the best possible roster to contend for championships. At this year’s trade deadline, general manager Jon Horst listened to trade offers for his organization’s franchise player. Whether the Bucks want to try to build a contender around Antetokounmpo again or start a rebuild by trading him to the highest bidder, they desperately need one thing: a healthy Antetokounmpo.