Giannis Antetokounmpo and the Strategy of Going All-In

After months of rumors, the Milwaukee Bucks traded Giannis Antetokounmpo to the Miami Heat on Monday for a package of draft picks and young players.

The trade ends Antetokounmpo’s run in Milwaukee that included two MVP awards, seven First Team All-NBA selections, and the 2021 NBA Championship. For Miami, the acquisition is an attempt to move out of the play-in purgatory the team has been stuck in for the last few years.

More than any other league, NBA team performance is driven by star players. So we knew someone was going to give up a trove of assets for Giannis. But does that make it a good team-building strategy?

That’s something I’ve been thinking about since a friend shared an Athletic article titled 'The Superstar Trap’ with me a few weeks ago. In it, INSEAD professor of organizational behavior Spencer Harrison argues that sports executives and business leaders ignore the data and continue to take these swings even though they rarely work.

Every NBA executive knows the numbers.

They know how rarely “all-in” trades actually deliver championships. They know how many franchises spend a decade digging out from under the rubble of lost draft picks and frozen cap sheets. They’ve read the postmortems. They’ve lived them.

And yet, when a superstar becomes available — or even when there’s the hint of availability, as is the case right now with the Milwaukee Bucks’ superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo — the same pattern repeats: teams empty the cupboard, mortgage the future and tell themselves this time will be different.

It’s an entirely believable claim given how easy it is for teams to ignore information that’s right in front of them as pressure from fans and owners builds.

There are two problems with the argument, though.

The first is that the claim isn’t necessarily supported by evidence. Harrison doesn’t define what constitutes an all-in trade, but looking at the recent history of these deals shows a more mixed bag of results.1

Twenty-five percent of the trades resulted in NBA titles, and a number more helped their new teams reach the conference finals or finals. That doesn’t even include the smaller, non-all-in trades that propelled teams to new heights like Denver’s acquisition of Aaron Gordon or Boston’s trade for Derrick White.

And looking further back, teams like the 2008 Celtics and the 2006 Heat used trades for Kevin Garnett, Ray Allen, and Shaquille O’Neal to build champions.

There’s an interesting example right in front of us. The 2026 NBA Champion New York Knicks were built on trades (and one incredibly savvy free agent signing). Four of their starters — Karl-Anthony Towns, OG Anunoby, Josh Hart, and Mikal Bridges — came to the team via trade with seven first-round picks, one swap, and a number of talented young players like RJ Barrett and Immanuel Quickley going out the door.

But there’s a bigger issue than how these trades have fared. The article’s conclusion also fails to consider the alternatives. Even if the success rate of these trades is minimal, we shouldn’t evaluate success in a vacuum but in the context of the other available options.

It feels like somewhere along the line we decided the word strategic is reserved for teams that accumulate future assets and maintain flexibility. Teams like the 2025 Thunder are celebrated for having and executing a vision. The same is rarely said of the 2019 Raptors or the 2020 Lakers. Any team that gives up future value for something that helps now is seen as aggressive, desperate, or all-in.

That definition of strategy eliminates options. A better one suggests evaluating possibilities and selecting one given the circumstances.2 Winning is incredibly rare and difficult. If the bar is a championship, every strategy is more likely than not to fail. That doesn’t mean teams should abstain; it means they should take the path that gives them the best odds.

In the case of the Heat, it’s unfair to weigh in on the trade without thinking about their other options. An analysis that says they gave up too much for an aging star without saying why and what they could have done instead is incomplete. They decided to use some of their picks and young talent to acquire one of the best players in the world while he was available. It’s a bold strategy. But it’s a strategy.