MILWAUKEE — Bucks star Giannis Antetokounmpo did not finish Friday night’s 102-100 loss to the Denver Nuggets because of a right calf injury, which Antetokounmpo said after the game he expects will sideline him for at least four to six weeks.
Antetokounmpo will undergo an MRI on Saturday for further evaluation of the injury, which limited him throughout Friday’s contest. He said the issue felt similar to the calf injury that sidelined him earlier this season.
“After the MRI, they will tell me, probably, I popped something in my calf on my soleus or something,” Antetokounmpo said Friday. “This is from my experience being around the NBA.”
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Antetokounmpo appeared to suffer the injury in the first quarter and went to the locker room. He returned to the game wearing a wrap around his right calf and played through the injury.
“I was feeling it majority of the game but did not want to stop playing,” Antetokounmpo said. “But at the end, I could not move no more, so I had to stop.”
Bucks coach Doc Rivers acknowledged he thought Antetokounmpo was favoring his leg for most of the second half before he finally pulled him from the game.
“I asked our [medical] team five different times,” Rivers said. “I didn’t like what my eyes were seeing, personally. Giannis was defiant about staying in.”
Antetokounmpo has been no stranger to calf injuries in recent years. In December, he missed three weeks with what he later described as a right soleus strain, the same injury that kept him out of the 2024 playoffs.
“This calf keeps coming up, and it’s concerning,” Rivers said. “I’m not a doctor, but I’m smart enough to know that his calf keeps bothering him and there’s something that is there. It keeps happening, and that’s troublesome for all of us.”
Antetokounmpo stayed on the floor for 32 minutes despite the injury, finishing with 22 points on 4-of-8 shooting, 13 rebounds and seven assists.
Milwaukee nearly pulled off a late rally from down 23 points with 10:33 in the fourth quarter by cutting the lead to two, but Antetokounmpo was clearly favoring his leg near the end of the game and the comeback attempt fell short.
“For me to stop playing and not be able to move? It was extremely painful,” Antetokounmpo said. “I was just trying to be out there, do whatever I could, try to affect the game in any way that I could. Passing, rebounding, just whatever I could. I feel like even sometimes when I’m at a disadvantage, I might still be effective. I’ve done it in the past. It’s not the first time, so I would just try to be out there and try to help my team whatever way possible.”
The potential loss of Antetokounmpo is a significant setback for Milwaukee, which lost for the fifth time in the past six games on Friday night. The Bucks (18-26) are in 11th place in the Eastern Conference and trail the Atlanta Hawks by 2½ games for the No. 10 seed.
The Bucks are 3-11 this season without Antetokounmpo.
“I’m going to work my butt off to come back,” Antetokounmpo said. “That will probably be the end of February, beginning of March. Hopefully the team will be in a place that we can at least make the play-in or make the playoffs and just take it day by day, try to get better.”
