Trading away a franchise star is a heavy decision for any team to make and the Milwaukee Bucks are in the cusp of of doing so with Giannis Antetokounmpo. 

Giving away the player that brought your team a championship, multiple MVPs and overall restored the franchise to relevance is a move that will change the direction of the franchise for the foreseeable future.

When a team makes that kind of decision, they want to make sure that they're getting their money's worth and that ironically enough might be the Bucks' problem when it comes to actually making a deal happen.

Milwaukee hasn't been shy about the kind of return that the team expects from any form of trade involving Antetokounmpo and general manager John Horst has naturally been the one in charge of facilitating any kind of deal. 

The problem is that even when trading a player of Antetokounmpo's caliber, there is such a thing as asking for too much and according to a report from Marc Stein, that's exactly what Horst and the Bucks are asking for.

“I heard the same word several times this week when talking to NBA personnel from teams that have engaged with the Bucks on a potential Antetokounmpo deal... The word that keeps coming back: ‘Unrealistic.’ … Sources say Milwaukee has been asking teams for returns that would leave any club acquiring Antetokounmpo too barren to contend for a championship," (via The Stein Line). 

It's been assumed that the kind of return that the Bucks are expecting will have to involve multiple existing players as well as a massive amount of first-round draft picks for Milwaukee to even consider a deal and while Antetokounmpo is the kind of player that can push a franchise into championship contention, gutting the rest of the roster to make a deal happen can have the opposite effect. 

The Atlanta Hawks are already one team that's had to deal with Milwaukee's high standards. 

While the Hawks have emerged as finalists for the Antetokounmpo sweepstakes, they've been turned away by the Bucks once before for not presenting a good enough offer, even though their offer at that time was likely a package with Tyler Herro and Kel'el Ware headlining. 

There are a few ways that the Bucks can make a deal more palatable while not making it such a one-sided exchange. 

One way is to make a three-way trade with two other teams, minimizing the kind of cost that a single team would have to pay out while still giving the Bucks the return they would want. 

The problem is that such a deal obviously requires another layer of negotiation that will take time to put together and the Bucks would simply have to make peace with a trade happening after the NBA Draft rather than before.

Another option is for the Bucks to offer up additional players of their own to package alongside Antetokounmpo. This is already something they've seemingly considered as there have been reports of the Bucks considering packaging players like Myles Turner, Bobby Portis and Kyle Kuzma with Antetokounmpo at different times. 

With how slow progress have been on what is undoubtedly the hottest trade candidate in years, the Bucks may have to make concessions in their desires or put in some extra work to either sweeten the deal on their end or bring in another team to make their desires more palatable.