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crkone wrote:

Jez2983 wrote:It was probably covered in this thread, but what is Kane up to now?

I think it hasn't been announced yet but Frank hinted that we may see him more often on TV or something like that.

Ron Swanson wrote:Huh, I thought Frank had made a comment about him "being able to see more Bucks games in person now" so my first thought was that he either got a job with the team, or as a beat-reporter for some national outlet much like Nehm when he joined the Athletic.

ANTETOKOUNMPO WANTED TO know two things when the Bucks told him they were acquiring Lillard:

1. How in the hell they'd managed to keep their discussions so quiet.

2. When Lillard was arriving.

"I went and drove down to the practice facility so we could talk," Antetokounmpo says. "He didn't know that I knew he was coming in."

From a basketball perspective, the fit was obvious. But Antetokounmpo wanted to make sure Lillard felt welcomed on a human level too.

"Basketball, we're going to figure it out. Every day that we play together, we'll figure it out," Antetokounmpo says. "But off the court, it's very important also for him to feel as comfortable as possible, because I know if you feel comfortable as a family man, you're going to be able to do his job with no distractions, the same way as me."

The answer to Antetokounmpo's first question was more complicated.

"Giannis was like, 'How did you tell not one person? How did this not get leaked?'" Bucks vice president of global scouting Ryan Hoover tells ESPN. "And I looked at him and said, 'Giannis, it was the same way when we drafted you.' We keep our mouth shut."

Hoover can smile now that Lillard is in Milwaukee. But for months -- no, years -- he has had to suppress any expression of how badly he and the organization have wanted to pair Lillard with Antetokounmpo.

"It was just something on my heart and on my mind for many, many years," Hoover says. "To take it to that next level, to sustain success at a high level, Dame Lillard was the guy."

Hoover had loved Lillard's game since Jan. 11, 2013, when the rookie guard dumped 37 on the Golden State Warriors. Hoover had even called Billups, then a guard with the LA Clippers, after that game and said, "I think I just found your little brother."

A few times a year since, Hoover would raise the issue with Horst, who would dutifully make a call to the Blazers, express interest and get turned down.

"Yeah," Hoover says with a smile, "sometimes you have to speak things into existence."

In the fall of 2021, just a few months after Milwaukee had won the championship, Hoover even tried to sing it into existence. The Bucks were having a staff retreat in Kohler, Wisconsin, at a golf course about an hour's drive north of Milwaukee, and the first session of the morning was devoted to "big ideas."

Hoover was the first to present. Inside the room, he pushed play on his laptop, filling the room with one of the songs from Lillard's latest album. He walked up to the front of the hall, wrote "DAME!!!" on the whiteboard and walked back to his seat.

"I just wanted us to understand that to continue to win and put banners up, we had to think big," Hoover says. "Jon challenges us to think big, be creative and think outside the box. If there's a will, there's a way."

Even if it takes two years for that way to present itself.

"You stay in the barbershop long enough," Hoover says, "you get a haircut."

Horst says the call he got from Antetokounmpo expressing plans to re-sign was even better than the one he received in 2020.

Because this time, Antetokounmpo was not expected to sign the extension. From a financial perspective, waiting a year would have allowed him to sign for an extra year and $65 million.

"Money is not important, but a lot of f---ing money is important," Antetokounmpo said on media day on Oct. 2. "So I'm going to sign it next year. It doesn't make sense right now."

That didn't stop the Bucks from trying. Horst flew to Houston, where Antetokounmpo was training with Hakeem Olajuwon, to present him with an official offer the very first day Horst was allowed to.

"I think those things matter," Horst says.

Then late last Thursday, Horst called Antetokounmpo and his agent, Alex Saratsis, and asked them to take a look at a 20-page proposal that presented a different way of looking at the situation. Horst had asked two basketball operations staffers -- Arjun Mahendroo and Lindsay Hay -- to team up with the marketing department to lay out the presentation.

It was long and personal, but the business side of it was succinct: Signing a three-year extension now would give Antetokounmpo two more chances to sign maximum extensions before the age-38 rule of the NBA's collective bargaining agreement kicked in.

That idea resonated.

"When we took the long-term view of how this decision gave him the best ability to maximize earnings over the next 10 years, it began to make more sense," Saratsis tells ESPN.

"Other than the ego of signing the largest contract in NBA history in the short term, why not take three big bites at the apple instead of two?"

Signing a three-year extension now, the thinking went, also would give the Bucks stability.

Horst had two of his most trusted interns drive the Bucks' pitch to Saratsis in Chicago on Thursday night. The GM also sent a bottle of small-batch Barrell Craft Spirits Bourbon -- the same he had sent three years earlier when Antetokounmpo decided to re-sign.

crkone wrote:

Ron Swanson wrote:Huh, I thought Frank had made a comment about him "being able to see more Bucks games in person now" so my first thought was that he either got a job with the team, or as a beat-reporter for some national outlet much like Nehm when he joined the Athletic.

Close enough.

JBucks wrote:The Athletic continues to bleed money — not surprising. There's going to be a time in the not-too-distant future when there is no beat writer (in the traditional sense) covering this team.

Siefer wrote:LOB is still an okay listen when Frank is on, but Justin and Camille aren't adding much basketball-wise, and Camille is wooden in the host seat. I don't know if she's miscast in the role (she seemed way more comfortable as a guest), but she has no chemistry with Frank, and I'm starting to lose it at how she reads scripted elements like "Fan.......Duel."