The Bucks have had a hell of a season. Is there hope for better days?

Within weeks last fall, the Milwaukee Bucks traded longtime All-Star point guard Damian Lillard and signed two-time MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo to a three-year contract extension, establishing themselves as the betting favorites for the NBA 2024 championship and potentially beyond.

Nothing has gone well for the Bucks since then, and Antetokounmpo's left calf strain Tuesday night is the latest harbinger of Milwaukee's season from hell, even if he avoided a more serious injury.

A few days after being dealt for Lillard, Jrue Holiday was rerouted to the Boston Celtics, making a huge splash. Senior assistant Terry Stotts left during training camp after a reported dispute with first-year head coach Adrian Griffin. After a stunning loss to the Atlanta Hawks in the second game of the season, Antetokounmpo reportedly questioned Griffin's defensive plans in front of the team, and three games later the Bucks returned to the drop coverage that made them successful under ousted head coach Mike Budenholzer.

And that was just the beginning.

After a regular-season semifinal loss to the Indiana Pacers in mid-December, Bobby Portis openly challenged Griffin, reportedly joining an internal chorus of criticism. A month later, the frustration came out into the open when Antetokounmpo challenged everyone's “pride,” including the equipment manager.

“Some nights there will be attacks, some nights there won’t be attacks,” he said. “However, your defensive effort has to be there. And defensively our performance wasn’t there. There was no pride. The guys just passed the ball, drove straight, got to the box, helped too much, shot threes and grabbed offensive rebounds. There was nothing there. They weren't the Milwaukee Bucks. That's not us. …

“We have to get better. We have to play better. We have to defend better. We need to trust each other better. We need to be trained better. Everything, everyone has to get better. All. It starts with Device Manager. He needs to wash our clothes better. The bank must be better. The leaders of the team need to be louder. We have to take more shots. We have to defend better. We have to have a better strategy. We have to get better. … We have four months to get better, so we’ll see.”

Weeks later, the Bucks released Griffin and replaced him with Doc Rivers, who soon told anyone and everyone about his “.”Hesitate“Taking on a job that was “more difficult than I thought” since he couldn't muster the full performance of them to get to the All-Star break than “We had some people here, we had some people in Cabo.”

Meanwhile, Lillard revealed to Yahoo Sports' Vincent Goodwill that the trade, which coincided with his divorce from the mother of his three children, was “all in all the most difficult transition of my life.”

In March, Antetokounmpo traded for Lillard and called it “the hardest season I've ever played,” citing a surgical repair on his left knee last June, the transition to Lillard and the coaching carousel.

Despite all this, Milwaukee managed to stay in second place behind Boston, but consecutive losses last week to the weak Washington Wizards, Memphis Grizzlies and Toronto Raptors threatened that lead.

“I do not know what it is” said Rivers, whose team slipped to 18-20 on the road. “You know, it's funny, I actually sat back and watched everything. Not just our players, but our travel team, everything, and I took a lot of notes. That's what I say, I won't share it.” But we don't bring the necessary professionalism and seriousness with us on the road. And we have to fix that.”

That “four months to get better” was limited to four games on Tuesday as Milwaukee faced another benchmark against a Celtics team that led the Eastern Conference by 15 games. The Bucks also performed well, leading by 24 points in the first half, only for Antetokounmpo to suffer a non-physical injury in the third quarter. Clutching his left calf, he fell onto the court and needed help getting to the training room.

An MRI revealed no structural damage to Antetokounmpo's Achilles tendon. according to ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski. We don't know how severe the strain was on his left calf. According to Jeff Stotts of In Street Clothes, a low-grade strain requires an average recovery time of 17 days, but a grade 2 strain extends the average time to 45 days. This is the difference between a return to the first round or the conference finals.

Former Golden State Warriors forward Kevin Durant suffered a torn Achilles tendon while returning from a calf strain midway through the 2019 NBA Finals, and that precedent could mean a more cautious approach. In addition to the arthroscopic surgery Antetokounmpo underwent in June, he missed games last month due to what the Bucks have described as “Achilles tendonitis” and “hamstring pain” in his left leg.

Antetokounmpo's injury couldn't have come at a worse time. Milwaukee still has two games remaining against the third-place Orlando Magic and could easily fall to No. 4 or 5. The play-in tournament will give the Bucks a week of rest, but a first-round series against any number of challengers will be a mountain to climb without him. They have allowed 118.4 points — the equivalent of a bottom-three defense — and have been outscored by 5.2 points per 100 significant possessions when Antetokounmpo is sidelined this season.

Even if Antetokounmpo returns to save a series, time has run out on his chemistry experiment with a new co-star and a new head coach, at least in a season in which the Bucks repeatedly scapegoated non-essential team personnel. To upset the Celtics, who are having a historic season, Antetokounmpo must now fully rehab his calf And Find balance with a squad that has been lopsided all season.

The question now is what another early playoff exit could mean for Antetokounmpo's psyche. The fear of an Achilles tendon tear will do little to ease his anxiety about maximizing his prime. The Bucks have won a single playoff series since capturing the 2021 title, and as Antetokounmpo told Tania Ganguli of The New York Times in August, “I don't want to be on the same team for 20 years and not win another championship.”

The Bucks have little room for upgrades. They don't have control of a first-round draft pick until 2031, and no current selection has taken on a significant role. Brook Lopez, Lillard and Khris Middleton will be 36, 34 and 33, respectively, next season when they are owed more than $100 million. The bottom of the rotation is full of impending free agents. An aging team in decline could become older and more insecure.

The end of their season from hell can't come soon enough unless a darker fate awaits them.