The Milwaukee Bucks have signed all-star Giannis Antetokounmpo to a three-year contract extension worth $186 million, ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski reports.
Wojnarowski adds the deal includes a player option for 2027-28.
Antetokounmpo was the first to hint of the news with a post on X, formerly Twitter.
Antetokounmpo led the Bucks to the NBA championship in 2021.
The six-foot-11 Antetokounmpo, 28, was the league's MVP in 2019 and 2020 and is a seven-time all-star.
The top-seeded Bucks were surprisingly eliminated in the first round of the playoffs last year by the Miami Heat.
After the series, the Bucks fired coach Mike Budenholzer. Former Toronto Raptors assistant coach Adrian Griffin was later hired as the club's new coach.
Antetokounmpo had said this summer that he didn’t plan to sign an extension this year because it would make more financial sense for him to wait until the summer. The two-time MVP also had indicated that he wanted to wait to see how committed the Bucks were toward winning another title before he decided on whether to sign an extension on his contract, which at the time ran through 2024-25 with a player option for 2025-26.
Since then, the Bucks made a blockbuster trade to acquire seven-time all-NBA guard Damian Lillard from the Portland Trail Blazers. Even after that trade, Antetokounmpo had indicated he didn’t expect to sign an extension this year.
“I said that it did not make sense to sign the contract right now because money’s not important — a lot of money is important. So I’m going to sign it next year,” Antetokounmpo said with a laugh during the Bucks’ Media Day event on Oct. 2. “But, no, at the end of the day, again, it doesn’t make sense. It does not make sense for me to sign it right now. I’ve got to always look at what’s best for me and my family, for my situation.
“But at the end of the day, I want to be a Milwaukee Buck for the rest of my career, as long as we are winning. It’s as simple as that.”
The extension starts with the 2025-26 season, meaning Antetokounmpo is under contract for at least four more years — and a fifth if he’s so inclined. He will earn about $94.4 million over the next two seasons, then about $120 million more for the 2025-26 and 2026-27 seasons.
The last year is his option, meaning he could make roughly $66 million more in 2027-28.
And if Antetokounmpo had waited until next summer to agree to an extension, he possibly may have secured earned even more money. A max-extension scenario, had he waited until 2024, could have been a four-year agreement at a figure exceeding $250 million.
- With files from the Associated Press
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