Yet Edens’s fallback vantage point did provide at least one benefit. Not long after Villa’s defeat, which led several of its players to collapse to the ground in disappointment at the final whistle, he switched the channel to the Bucks’ game in Charlotte, N.C. Giannis Antetokounmpo duly delivered 41 points, 20 rebounds and 6 assists in just 35 minutes in a 93-85 victory that gave him his first career 40/20 game and nudged Milwaukee to a tidy 52-8 record.

The Bucks dropped the second half of their back-to-back on the road Monday night in Miami, but it is not lost on Edens that his two franchises on separate continents are in two completely different places competitively.

Despite the Miami setback, Milwaukee remains on pace to become just the third 70-win team in league history, while Antetokounmpo closes in on a second straight Most Valuable Player Award. The Bucks awoke on Tuesday ranked third in the league in offensive rating and No. 1 in defensive rating, looking like the closest thing to a juggernaut in the first season following the Golden State Warriors’ five successive trips to the N.B.A. finals.

Villa’s outlook isn’t nearly as rosy. In its first season after winning promotion from England’s second tier, Edens’s club sits 19th in the 20-team Premier League with 11 games to go. Villa must finish 17th to stay in England’s top division and avoid a return to the Championship, which, for starters, would inflict the estimated loss of nearly $150 million in television revenue.

So there is no resting easy for Edens, even though it is true that Milwaukee’s success and Antetokounmpo’s nightly ferocity have hushed much of the usual free-agent speculation that a player of his stature would generate heading into a summer in which he is eligible for a contract extension. The reality persists that, for all of its regular-season quiet, Milwaukee may well need to win the championship to persuade Antetokounmpo to sign that extension.

If the Bucks don’t go all the way this time, after squandering a 2-0 lead over Toronto in the Eastern Conference finals last season, it would undoubtedly give hope to teams such as Toronto, Miami and, yes, even the Knicks — all of whom have been plotting to make a free-agent run at Antetokounmpo in the summer of 2021 should he bypass the $247 million extension Edens and his partners Marc Lasry and Jamie Dinan will surely offer him in July at the first allowable minute.