MILWAUKEE (AP) — Giannis Antetokounmpo brought the Milwaukee Bucks back to relevance and delivered the franchise its first title in half a century as the most impactful player in team history.
Now the Bucks face the onerous challenge of retooling without the player who carried the team on his broad shoulders for over a decade.
The Bucks agreed on the eve of Tuesday’s draft to send Antetokounmpo along with forward Bobby Portis to the Miami Heat in exchange for Tyler Herro, Jaime Jaquez Jr., Kel’el Ware and Kasparas Jakucionis, according to a person who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the move had yet to receive the required league approval.
Milwaukee also gets the No. 13 selection in Tuesday’s draft along with a first-round pick swap in 2030, first-round picks in 2031 and 2033 and a second-rounder in 2033, the person said.
The move leaves the Bucks without one of the most beloved figures in Wisconsin sports. Milwaukee fans watched in awe as Antetokounmpo spent the last 13 seasons maturing from a skinny teenager into one of the top players on the planet.
Bucks coach Taylor Jenkins understood this was a possibility when he accepted the job in April following the departure of Doc Rivers.
“Naturally, we did talk about Giannis, the entire roster, developmental pathways for everyone you know, moving forward,” Jenkins said during his introductory news conference last month. “Because from the coaching lens, I've got to start formulating that, what we’re going to do, not just this offseason, but when we hit the ground running, you know, at the start of training camp. So naturally, (we) talked about that. Had great dialogue, full transparency.”
Antetokounmpo had spent his entire career with the Bucks, who selected the 18-year-old from Greece with the 15th pick in the 2013 draft. The nine-time all-NBA forward leads the Bucks in virtually every career statistical category, including points, rebounds, assists, blocks, games and minutes.
He won MVP awards in 2019 and 2020. Antetokounmpo came back from a knee hyperextension in the 2021 playoffs to earn NBA Finals MVP honors while scoring 50 points in the title-clinching Game 6 victory over the Phoenix Suns.
Antetokounmpo, 31, had signed multiple contract extensions to stay in Milwaukee and play in one of the NBA’s smallest markets. He was so appreciated for his loyalty that a mural of him — 53½ feet high and 56½ feet wide — appears on the side of a three-story building in downtown Milwaukee.
The Bucks made plenty of high-risk, high-reward moves in an attempt to keep Antetokounmpo happy and remain among the league’s top contenders. But the Bucks never got beyond the second round of the playoffs after winning that 2021 title due in part to injuries to Antetokounmpo and other key players. They're coming off a 32-50 season that snapped a string of nine straight playoff appearances.
Those big swings they took to remain competitive with Antetokounmpo will make it that much tougher for them to rebuild without him.
Even after making this blockbuster deal to recoup some draft capital, Milwaukee doesn’t have any first-round picks in 2027 or 2029.
The Bucks gave up multiple first-round picks in the 2020 trade that brought Jrue Holiday to Milwaukee and the 2023 deal in which they acquired Damian Lillard. Holiday played a key role in the Bucks’ 2021 title before leaving Milwaukee in the Lillard trade. Lillard was waived after tearing his Achilles in a 2025 first-round playoff loss to Indiana, a move that enabled the Bucks to sign former Pacers center Myles Turner.
That makes it imperative that the Bucks find major assets with their two lottery picks Tuesday, as they now pick 10th and 13th. That No. 10 pick represents their earliest selection since 2016, when they also went 10th and took Thon Maker.
The Bucks have one potential building block in guard Ryan Rollins, who turns 24 next month. Perhaps a new staff gets more from Turner, whose production dipped his first year in Milwaukee.
This trade gives Milwaukee an infusion of youth as it begins a new chapter.
Herro is a Milwaukee-area native and 2025 All-Star who has scored at least 20 points per game each of the last four seasons, though injuries limited the 26-year-old to 33 games in 2025-26.
Jaquez, 25, scored 15.4 points per game in a bench role this season. Ware is a 22-year-old, 7-footer. Jakucionis, 20, was the 20th pick in last year’s draft.
But this still represents a major transition for a team that had considered itself a legitimate contender as long as it had a healthy Antetokounmpo, who finished fourth or higher in the MVP balloting every year from 2019-25 before injuries limited him to a career-low 36 games this season.
This franchise has been through lean years before. The Bucks reached the Eastern Conference finals in 2001 but didn’t win another playoff series until returning to the East finals in 2019.
Longtime Bucks fans know the challenges that come after a superstar’s departure.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar led the Bucks to a 1971 title when he was known as Lew Alcindor and got them another conference championship in 1974 before requesting a trade. The Bucks sent Abdul-Jabbar to the Los Angeles Lakers in the summer of 1975, and they wouldn’t get back to the NBA Finals until that 2021 championship season.
Now the guy most responsible for that 2021 celebration also is leaving town.
AP Basketball Writer Tim Reynolds in Miami contributed to this report.
AP NBA: https://apnews.com/nba
FILE - Milwaukee Bucks forward Giannis Antetokounmpo (34) dribbles the ball during the first half of an NBA basketball game against the Miami Heat, March 12, 2026, in Miami. (AP Photo/Marta Lavandier, File)
FILE - Milwaukee Bucks forward Giannis Antetokounmpo walks off the court after an NBA basketball game against the Brooklyn Nets, Friday, April 10, 2026, in Milwaukee. (AP Photo/Jeffrey Phelps, File)
PARIS (AP) — Millions of people across Europe were exposed to extreme and exceptionally high temperatures on Tuesday, with 40 fatalities from drowning recorded in France in the past week as residents seek relief from the searing heat.
Temperatures will remain high around the clock in France, the European nation most affected so far by the early summer heat wave. The national weather service, Meteo France, placed 54 departments, about half the country, under a red heat wave alert.
Italy, Spain, and Britain were also hit.
Human-caused climate change is tied to increasingly extreme weather, and U.N. climate agency projections say the next five years should shatter more heat records.
French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu said that the 40 people who died by drowning since last Thursday were mainly young people.
In a country without widespread air conditioning, schools, public transportation and sporting events have been impacted. In Paris, the Eiffel Tower adjusted its operations to the scorching weather, closing in the afternoon instead of late at night as it usually does. The Louvre museum said it would close two hours earlier than normal from Wednesday through Saturday.
“Although parts of its historic building are naturally resilient, the museum remains vulnerable and is not sufficiently adapted to climate change,” it said. “Heat buildup is greatest toward the end of the day and is further intensified by high visitor numbers.”
Extreme conditions are expected to last at least until the end of the week, with daytime highs above 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) in many towns.
“Further record-breaking temperatures are expected, including some that could surpass all previous records, regardless of the time of year,” Meteo France said.
The heat wave is exceptionally intense, coming very early in the summer, “but with a still uncertain duration,” the weather service said. It has already been compared to the August 2003 heat wave, when the highest temperatures in over half a century caused an estimated 15,000 deaths, many of them among older people in apartments and retirement homes without air conditioning.
Europe is the world’s fastest-warming continent, with temperatures increasing twice as fast as the global average since the 1980s, according to the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service. Over the last four years, more than 200,000 people across Europe died from heat-related causes, and most of those deaths were preventable, the World Health Organization’s Europe office said this month.
The above-average temperatures can cause heat exhaustion and life-threatening heat stroke.
Across the English Channel from France, hundreds of British schools say they are shuttering or closing early this week because of expected record heat, while many train services have been reduced to avoid heat-related problems on the rail lines.
The Met Office, the U.K. weather agency, issued a red extreme heat warning for Wednesday and Thursday, with forecasts suggesting June’s all-time daily temperature record could be broken.
Temperatures of around 37 degrees C (98.6 F) are expected in southern England, with up to 35 C (95 F) in southeast Wales. The peak of the heat wave is now forecast for Wednesday and Thursday, when highs could reach 39 C (102.2 F) in London or southern England. Conditions are expected to ease by Friday, the Met Office said.
On Tuesday, multiple train operators across the United Kingdom, including the express train serving London Gatwick Airport, said they were canceling or reducing services this week. Railway operators urged people to “only travel if absolutely necessary” on Wednesday and Thursday.
Further south on the continent, Spain is facing a heat wave across various parts of the Iberian Peninsula.
Spain’s national weather service, Aemet, issued red alerts Tuesday for temperatures of 44 C (111 F) in southern Andalusia as well as warnings of thermometers hitting 40 C (104 F) in the normally temperate Cantabria and the Basque Country regions along its northern Atlantic coast.
Aemet meteorologist Rubén del Campo said Spain, which has experienced increasingly torrid summers of late, is only going to get hotter because of climate change as heatwaves become more frequent, longer and appear outside the traditional window of July and August.
Of the dozen heatwaves Aemet has recorded in June since it started tracking them in 1975, half have occurred since 2015, del Campo said.
Human-driven climate change is heating up the atmosphere, both above Spain and in the surrounding sea waters, he said.
Copernicus, the EU monitoring agency, found that in Europe and globally, 2024 was the hottest year on record and the continent experienced its second-highest number of “heat stress” days.
Scientists warn that climate change is exacerbating the frequency and intensity of heat and dryness, especially in southeastern Europe, making the region more vulnerable to health impacts and wildfires.
The name of the body of water between France and the U.K. has been corrected to the “English Channel.”
Associated Press journalists Sylvia Hui in London and Joseph Wilson in Barcelona, Spain, contributed to this report.
People swim in an outdoor swimming pool in London, Tuesday, June 23, 2026 as a heat wave is predicted across Britain.(AP Photo/Alberto Pezzali)
Tourists use umbrellas to shelter from the sun as they visit the historical Spanish steps in Rome, Tuesday, June 23, 2026. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)
A man drinks on Westminster Bridge in London, as a heat wave is predicted Tuesday, June 23, 2026. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)
A man keeps his legs dry as he cycles through standing water in London, as a heat wave is predicted Tuesday, June 23, 2026. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)
An African penguin cools off in a basin in Kronber zoo, near Frankfurt, Germany, Tuesday, June 23, 2026. (AP Photo/Michael Probst)
A man keeps his legs dry as he cycles through standing water in London, as a heat wave is predicted Tuesday, June 23, 2026. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)
People cool off in a water spray at the Eiffel Tower in Paris, Sunday, June 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Michel Euler)
A family walks through a cooling water spray at the Eiffel Tower in Paris, Sunday, June 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Michel Euler)
A man shields himself from the sun with a scarf as he walks in the garden of the Palace of Versailles, outside Paris, during a heat wave with temperatures soaring above 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit), Monday, June 22, 2026. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)
Tourists with an umbrella take a photo in Paris, as France is enduring a grueling heat wave with temperatures soaring above 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit), Monday, June 22, 2026. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena )
A drugstore sign shows the temperature 43 degrees Celsius (109,4 degrees Fahrenheit) in Rennes, western France, Monday, June 22, 2026. (AP Photo/Jeremias Gonzalez)
