When a Bucks promotional video surfaced earlier this month showing the players dodging the question, “Who’s always last on the bus?”, Myles Turner should have ideally done what his other teammates did — ignore the question completely. Instead, with a cheeky look at the camera, he set the stage for Giannis Antetokounmpo having to justify himself.

“Giannis is going to show up whenever he wants,” Turner said on Game Recognize Game podcast, insisting that the Greek Freak was consistently late for practice and film sessions, even delaying team flights by up to two hours. He also revealed that Doc Rivers (now former head coach of the Bucks) never fined him. 

Patrick Beverley, who played for the Bucks in 2024, later spoke to Giannis about this, and it turns out, Turner was wrong. Giannis, however, wasn’t angry when he heard what his teammate had said about him.

“I talked to Greek about it, and Greek was confused,” Beverley said. “Greek was like, ‘Man, Pat, thanks for setting it out straight.’”

The reason, Beverley explained, was simple: “I’ve never seen Giannis late one time.”

What Turner may have clocked as tardiness, Beverley argued, was something else entirely: a superstar putting in work while others had already called it a night.

“If the game was at 10 and Greek went to the free-throw line and shot 20 free throws, you’ve got to get your lift in so you can recover faster,” Beverley said.

Current Bucks teammate Bobby Portis also pushed back, denying any incident of Giannis being two and a half hours late and suggesting the account had been exaggerated.

“I thought it was AI. … I think it was over-exaggerated… There ain’t that much traffic in Milwaukee!” Portis said on Run It Back. 

The “Game Recognize Game” podcast account has since deleted the tweet and video involving Turner’s comments shortly after they went viral, though by then the clip had already completed multiple laps around the internet.

Beverley’s Defence Comes as the Bucks’ Culture Takes Repeated Hits

Turner’s allegations landed on top of the controversy already surrounding the Bucks culture. The former Pacers big man had already gone public with Shams Charania to reveal that Doc Rivers once asked the team to “Google him” during a meeting when his decisions as a coach were being questioned.

The accounts painted a Bucks locker room that had lost its structure long before the season ended in disappointment, with the team finishing 11th in the East with a 32-50 record, and a franchise star who has now had to watch teammates air the organization’s dirty laundry in public.

Meanwhile, with the trade rumours surrounding the Greek icon gathering wind, ESPN’s Sam Amick reported that Giannis Antetokounmpo is expected to “put his foot on the scale” in terms of pushing toward a team he wants to play for.

Beverley’s broader point was aimed directly at that moment, that whoever gets Giannis is getting a player whose post-game table time is longer than most because his standards are simply different, not because he’s indifferent to his teammates. 

“Are you talking about an organization that’s won a championship before?” Beverley said. “There’s a certain way to do things.”

The Bucks look like a shell of the team that won the title five years ago. Since then, they’ve been trying to get back to the Finals, but even the playoffs have started to look like a distant dream lately. Giannis is loyal to the city of Milwaukee, but there will always be bigger and better teams with teammates who understand what those extra 30 minutes of work actually mean when you’re trying to win it all.