The Milwaukee Bucks are in crisis mode after star center Myles Turner went on a remarkable rant throwing his teammates under the bus at the end of a disastrous losing season.
Milwaukee missed the playoffs for the first time in a decade after going 32-50, and the postmortem has now begun in ugly fashion.
Turner, who signed a four-year, $108.9m deal before the start of this season, appeared on the ‘Game Recognizes Game’ podcast and told co-host Breanna Stewart exactly what went wrong – and which teammate is most to blame.
‘Bro, we literally… if the plane [was meant to] take off at 2 o’clock, we weren’t leaving until 4:30,’ he began. ‘I’m being so serious, bro. It was crazy.
‘Guys were hours late to the plane. It got to the point where I just knew not to show up until like an hour after they said the plane was taking off. It was crazy.’
Not content with a generic takedown of his teammates, Turner went on to name the No 1 culprit – and it’s fair to say it wasn’t a troublesome bench-warmer.
Myles Turner lifted the lid on the Bucks’ nightmare season on the Game Recognizes Game pod
He revealed that superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo regularly turned up late for team flights
‘That’s easy… Giannis,’ he stated, referencing the Bucks’ highest earner Antetokounmpo, who earns an eyewatering $58m a year.
‘Giannis is gonna show up whenever he wants really, you know? I think that it kinda just came with the territory. And once I saw what was going down, I was like “Hey, man, more power to you. They ain’t gonna fine you. Do what you do.”‘
But surely there were fines being dished out for lateness, right? Wrong, according to Turner.
He went on to claim that ‘zero’ fines were handed out to the players by head coach Doc Rivers, who has since retired. ‘He didn’t fine anyone ever.’
Revealing more, he said: ‘Guys were showing up to film whenever they wanted to show up, guys were missing meetings. It was one of the craziest things I’ve personally ever experienced.’
The Bucks missed out on the playoffs for the first time in 10 seasons – and the coach retired
WNBA icon Breanna Stewart listened in as Turner let rip at his teammates in Milwaukee
Turner celebrates after a dunk against the struggling Brooklyn Nets in mid-April
The bombshell comments appear to point even more towards a Giannis trade in the offseason, as the rebuild begins in Milwaukee.
There have been reports of trade talks, and Bucks co-owner Jimmy Haslam openly discussed the potential of his exit when welcoming Jenkins to the team.
‘We will do what’s best for Giannis and what’s best for the organization,’ he told reporters.
‘We don’t know whether Giannis will stay with us or not, but we’ll work through that with Giannis in the coming weeks.’
