Howard Beck

Kareem got there almost as a fully formed star.

Giannis got there as like this skinny teenager with no promise of anything.

And he's delivered way beyond what anybody could have expected.

He embraced Milwaukee and he, for all of what's happening now in what is eventually going to be a divorce sometime this off season, almost certainly, uh,

He gave them a lot of really great years of really great basketball and put a small market, cold weather city back on the NBA map.

There's no small thing.

I didn't even have to consider Oscar within this because Oscar's going to be the notch below Kareem, isn't he?

This is basically a what did you mean to that team during your time with that franchise.

Yeah, but I just said the greatest buck.

And that doesn't mean he was better than him overall.

It doesn't mean he's got more hardware because he doesn't.

It doesn't mean he's got more of the other accolades.

He doesn't.

And when all is said and done, Giannis is not going to touch Kareem in the Pantheon, in the all-time, in Bill's pyramid.

Like,

Giannis will be really high, but he's not going to be in Kareem's tier.

That's fine.

For the period of time that each of these guys anchored this franchise, what did they each mean to it?

And what did they leave behind?

At the moment that Giannis leaves, there will be a lot of those same bad feelings that we see every time we see a version of this.