Are the Bucks Actually Facing a Free Agency Nightmare or Can Jon Horst Work Some Magic Again?

Are the Bucks Actually Facing a Free Agency Nightmare or Can Jon Horst Work Some Magic Again?

we share some interesting free agent names the Bucks could possibly target here this off season and our thoughts on the NBA finals as it begins tonight coming up after this on Locked on Bucks you are Locked on Bucks your daily Milwaukee Bucks podcast part of the Locked On podcast network your team every day welcome into Locked on Bucks i’m Justin Garcia joined as always by Camille Davis and Frank Madden episode as well we thank you for making this your first listen of the day each and every day today’s episode of Lockdown Bucks is brought to you by FanDuel right now new customers can get $200 in bonus bets when your first $5 bet wins well the off season uh continues chugging along here and we figured let’s take a look at some interesting names that are out there take a look outside of the Bucks scope of things we’ve talked about the importance and and how that rates with the players they have internally but it’s going to be an interesting off seasonason and I guess that’s the place to start here is for agents outside of Milwaukee because um Frankie you were mentioning this before we started recording and and Camille and I have kind of talked about this as well i think there’s still a lot of uncertainty about what this market is going to be and and probably in a good way for teams like the Bucks where it’s one of the things we’ve talked about these last two off seasons now is basically the death of the middle class and when you talk about players the Bucks would love to retain and we you know we mentioned well there’s really what two teams that have any sizable cap base here that uh where’s the money going to come from when you’re talking about well the Bucks in half the league basically has the non-T tax pyramid level that’s about it for the spending spree and all those players the Bucks have that they’re hoping to retain at best are kind of ranking somewhere in the middle positionally for the free agents that are out there yeah I think there’s going to it’s it’s going to be an interesting dynamic this summer because now with the TV deal you know start is kicking in and we’re basically going to be in this world of 10% uh cap increases every summer which is the kind of negotiated maximum the cap can go up the in in future years um it would go up a lot more if it could um but essentially they wanted to minimize you know what was it 2016 I guess was the kind of crazy year of you know Timmy Fume Mazggov $70 million contracts or whatever it was so bought cash in too with guys like Mirovich and was it was Delhi that year was that the Delhi I believe yeah wasn’t it Delhi and Ma that were their big splashes yeah I think we’ll we’ll always have the uh first quarter buzzer beating layup by Delhi in that uh Celtics game three or four whatever that was that was magical uh yeah it’s still one of the loudest moments I’ve heard yeah that’s a litmus test moment if if people don’t know about that they’re not a Bucks legit Bucks fan if you don’t know about that moment um I uh I have a great Miraa Tlettovich story that I’ll share at some point uh to that day that he was introduced in the the signing of Mir i feel like the time is now i mean you already brought it up so all right so the uh the Bucks were introducing Mesa Tedovich and uh a magical moment for all of us magical day i think this is my first or second year in seat of that that role that I had with the Bucks and um I was asked hey do you want to interview Mesa Toletic for the radio and and do that so I said all right sure and uh that was back in the day before Fiserve where the Bucks would do those press conferences at various places like Jabari’s intro wasn’t it at the public market and this Miraa interview and intro and press conference was at the Fister in the lobby so the uh setup for me interviewing Mir Tovich was I had to meet with I think it was Dan I can’t remember but Bucks PR and they took me up to a hotel room where it was just me Mir Toledovich and two of his guys and um like all right where do you want to do this and he just sits on the bed for me to interview him and like motions of like all right sit down right here so it’s me for like seven minutes did he pat his head just sitting on a bed in the fister like how excited are you to be in Milwaukee oh there are a lot of jokes I want to to use with that but I’m gonna I know this is I know I don’t know if you make those jokes anymore this is not the time they never they never did an intro at the the Rockies at Beayshore um unfortunately but you know maybe maybe something for the future um anyway so uh for agency 2025 um so I think an interesting dynamic here we’ve got kind of the cap now is going to be going up 10% every year which is also affects the aprons the you know the tax level like everything’s kind of going up which given you know we’re now at what $154 million cap last year was 140 do the math 140 plus 10% 154 a year from now it’s going to be you know at at 170 or so for the cap and everything else kind of going up there which is why as you guys have been talking about and we talked about you know the second apron isn’t really in play for the Bucks anymore even though they still have Dame and Giannis making these massive contracts and you still have obviously other guys um eating up a fair bit of the cap so you have sort of on the one hand you have you know the cap increases now providing more breathing room but on the other side you do have also the same fundamental rules about the first apron the second apron um and the kind of harsh penalties that come with that the limitations that you have when you get close to or over those things you know things like freezing draft picks and all that other stuff so the penalties are still really high for kind of getting into that kind of rarified air um so it’s going to be interesting just to see you know as you were alluding to Justin do we continue to see that sort of call it flight to quality right like basically teams sort of hoarding money on their top three four five rotation guys and really being wary of giving you know like the backup point guard or the six-man you know $18 million a year $20 million a year whatever it might be um or you know do we see teams start to throw money around a little bit but I mean aside from the Brooklyn Nets it’s not like there are a ton of teams with you know multiple max slots i think I think Brooklyn might be the only team that has I think there is yeah max slot available um and so when that happens you know obviously then you start to have to kind of make this consideration take into consideration right like what extensions are you going to have to do with your current guys um and you know again just kind of how you manage things moving forward and so um so I think it’s going to be an interesting litmus test a bit of like where the league is like are teams going to start opening up their pocketbooks a bit more and spending a bit more given the kind of trajectory of the cap um because again like the most of a the most raises you can give your current own players is 8% of first year salary of outside free agents is 5% the cap’s going to be outpacing that right so basically any deal you sign multi-year is going to be declining in terms of the percentage of the total cap that it’s going to be so it’s going to be interesting but yeah I I think the sense that you know I don’t get the sense that suddenly teams are going to be throwing out full metal full mid-level deals to guys that you know are not going to be starters or are like so so players or really unproven guys and um you know I I think we’ll just have to see kind of what that means for the Bucks but obviously to the extent that teams look at you know the shooting guard position and say Gary Trent nice job off the bench last year but you’re not going to start for I don’t I don’t know how many teams he would start for probably starts for the Bucks um absolutely tim or AJ Green I think both guys you know would be totally adequate in that spot and the other one would play big minutes up the bench um but you know is there more than a taxpayer mid-level size deal available for a Gary Trent i kind of put that as as maybe sort of the overunder um and been talking about you know splitting that midle up against across multiple guys including you know Gary and Kevin Porter Jr being the principal guys but um but who knows right i mean I don’t know kevin Porter Jr given his history uh he’s he is making more than the minimum if he opts into his player option i has assumed he would opt out and at least try to get a little bit more money on a one-year deal um to try to cash in on the good you know good times he had with the Bucks like can you get a oneplus one or something like that given that he’s probably going to if he stays would have an opportunity to play a ton and put up numbers and perhaps most importantly just stay out of trouble for a second straight year which I mean again like for him that’s like honestly job one if you’re his agent like that’s your biggest thing is like dude just like be a good teammate stay out of trouble keep your head on straight and play the way you’re capable of playing so so yeah I I think you know when I think when I was talking about sort of initial scenarios my first question was just like all right if you wanted to retain kind of all your key guys which again anybody looking at is going to be like you really you want to run back a team that’s lost in the first round like multiple years in a row that also doesn’t have Dame Lillard i get that but uh but I would also say you know the wings and guards are all like in a good age range right when you look at KPJ and his age you look at Gary Trent still being only 26 um I think it makes sense to keep to try to keep those guys you’ve got AJ Green you can extend him this summer um and then with the big guys honestly you know as we’ve discussed it’s more just a question of like who else are you who else are you going to get um as much as people may not be enamored with Brook Lopez anymore um stretch bigs are just in very short supply and stretch bigs that can actually defend um you know at least in certain situations right and Brooke may be more of a situational guy at this point but go find a rim protector who can play nextdian that can hit threes like it’s hard to do you’re not doing it for less than the mid level pretty much so yeah it’s it’s just a really interesting position but it also I think raises the question if any of these guys do leave then how do you use some of that flexibility whether it’s the $7 million trade exception or the bannual exception or part of that mid-level what what would what do you do at that point and obviously you know you can benefit from either resigning your own guys for less money or potentially finding maybe some value on the free agent market which give credit to John Horse you know we can question certain things that John Horse has done but he has been able to find guys consistently on the margins with very little money to spend in free agency whether it was in League Bey a couple years ago obviously GTJ u la this past year and obviously get more than than a minimum level of value from those guys um Camille I want to take a look at the shooting guards I suppose in the bigs in the free agent market for those two areas and how it impacts the Bucks when you look at some of those guys in the group with players like Gary Trent Jr and obviously Brooke and Bobby if he opts out as well so what that could look like and why we keep saying I don’t know what the money is going to be for these guys in terms of it it’s probably not going to be as high as the figures we’ve seen kicked around from some Bucks fans we’ll get into that discussion coming up after this on Lockdown Bucks the NBA playoffs in full swing now and every night is delivering highlight worthy performances major momentum shifts and can’tmiss moments 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interesting one to see how close to the mid-level number does that move i don’t think he’s getting the full mid level but you got Nil Alexander Walker of the Timberwolves as a free agent uh Quinton Grimes is a free agent cam Thomas an interesting name but 23 years old he can score uh I would assume there’s a larger market for Cam Thomas than there’s going to be for Gary Trent Jr so that’s where you start to get to some of these names and say okay at the two guard spot alone we’ve just rattled off four names that are up there kevin Porter Jr is certainly in the mix with Gary Trent Jr as well um you’ve got value propositions potentially like a Sam Merrill and Caris Levert bruce Brown one of the interesting names DA Anthony Melton coming off of that torn ACL so there’s uh varying levels of impacts but there’s a lot of names that are out there but I think without question Gary Trent Jr at best is probably going to be fourth or fifth in the pecking order for two guards this summer so that’s where it comes into play that we mentioned quite a bit i I don’t think he’s getting close to the full uh non-tax mid-level and then when you’re looking at the other names that are in front of him that money’s got to come somewhere and if somebody’s using half of the mid level to sign let’s say Malik Beasley is a bad example because he was already at that figure but if you’re using portions of that to sign guys in front of him it just trickles on down the line and that’s why I don’t really know what to make of this off season with where is the money going to come from because of the fact that not a whole lot of teams have money to spend and there’s guys that I think ordinarily you would look at it and say “Well this guy’s got to get close to $10 million.” But to Frank’s point I do wonder as well if we’ve seen a shift in team building of no we think we can get this guy for close to the minimum part of you know maybe the tax pyramid level uh or we can get somebody that gives us 80% of that for that figure and that’s what we’re going to do i mean shoot last off season at the beginning of it I don’t think any of us would have thought that Gary Trent Jr would sign for a vet like as it went on and you saw that he wasn’t being picked up it was kind of like well maybe maybe it does happen and how the middle class is being shaped right now is interesting like that’s part of the debate of people saying the middle class in the NBA is dead um at the moment but I we talked about it earlier with Van this week as well of just like I do wonder as we watch this finals unfold as we see how the Thunder have built their team how the Pacers have built their team and type of players that they have uh do more team start putting more emphasis on those role players instead of moving away from that one two maybe big three superstar model um but for this off seasonason I did see Peter Fagan was on the nasist podcast and he made mention of the fact of just like you know we don’t have a lot of assets so to speak but like we’re excited and as team president you got to be excited you got to portray that optimism going forward um but just talking about like John Horse and you mentioned it earlier too Justin of like he tends to be able to try to find a way to try to make something out of what seems like nothing and for years we’ve been wondering like the Drew Holiday trade felt like it came out of nowhere the Dame trade like it came out of nowhere but now with the asset pool just dried almost completely up um I think some of the guys they’re going to have to look for in free agency this year could be some of those guys who might be considered quote unquote damaged goods or you’re trying to see if they can take that next step um and that’s why somebody like the Anthony Melton who is a name that’s been thrown around for a few years from Bucks fans of like would love to have him on the team but he’s coming off an ACL he is a smaller shooting guard he’s only like 6’3 at at the shooting guard position so he’s a smaller guy but you get him for the minimum can you take a chance on a guy like that and see what that unfolds for you especially if you can keep Gary Trent Jr Kevin Porter Jr you get Ryan Rollins back in the fold here you have AJ Green so you have a pretty good level of guard depth to start with so like maybe you do take a chance on somebody like the Anthony Melton of like you’re coming off of this ACL we don’t know what that looks like but we know we can get a bargain contract out of this because of situation so I do wonder if someone like that does pick up like for the Bucks and it could be interesting especially if the Bucks are able to bring back the guys that we saw start building continuity last year with Giannis being like the the focal point of the offense you know and I’m I’m honestly not that worried about the shooting guard spot in part because I don’t think like I feel like and again not to overindex on the Bucks sort of situation the last few years but in general right like yes there are some superstar shooting guards right the Devin Booker types exist in the world um but the shooting guard’s always been that spot where you just look for a guy who can make threes and defend adequately enough and there’s not a like shortage of of guys that can sort of two years ago that’s really pushing it Frank and you know so it’s and and that’s like the one thing right the Bucks have just been able to like just continuously reload right like Dante Genenzo uh became Grayson Allen became Malik Beasley became Gary Trent Jr and honestly like you know like we can look back and say like oh man they should have signed Dante whatever it might be it’s like they shouldn’t have traded him for Sergio Baka but you know like are they like did they get into this predicament as a franchise because they didn’t pay Dante Duvenzo coming off his worst year no you know it took him a couple years honestly to get to back to a good place and even this year it took him a while to kind of get going again after that great year in in New York so um so I’m probably least worried about that just because I mean worst case scenario you have AJ Green and honestly I’d be totally content to start AJ Green and so then you know you’ve got I think options as like backup type guys i would most probably at this point prefer just to bring back Gary Trent you know and as we’ve been talking I don’t think you’re gonna have to break the bank to do that um I think point guard is interesting because I mean you have a $54 million hole at the point guard position and you know yes like Kevin Porter Jr and Ryan Rollins obviously had you know nice moments last year i think they played above and beyond what I think anybody expected them to bucks had their eightgame win streak with those guys deputizing for a game at the point guard position but you know if we’re being realistic here like I don’t think anybody would look at those two guys and say like “Oh just resign those guys and then you’re you know you’re set for your gap year or whatever um next year at at the point guard position.” I think you you need more ball handling depth again KPJ is a little bit of unique case and Rollins as well like because honestly like neither of them is really a true point guard they just can handle it well enough to you know get you into your offense they can defend point guards but they can also play offball a fair bit as well and honestly maybe better better off being in more of an offball type type role although with Giannis if Giannis is going to be the offense again this coming season you know you obviously aren’t looking for your point guard to be like super ball dominant anyway but but yeah I mean I think like I think it’s I when I think about like okay well if you’re going to look at somebody from outside the current roster at the guard spot I tend to gravitate towards ball handlers you know whe and again caveat everybody these are not names that are going to like make you feel like we’re going to contend with for the east with these dudes right um but honestly it’s just about like can you build can you get enough depth around Giannis that you know you can basically be competitive and um you know I think like you know Dennis Shruder obviously has been a guy that has seemingly always killed the Bucks so I feel like the Bucks have a long history going back to the Herb Cole days like it’s always seems like the Bucks sign guys that are especially good against them feels like Schroer’s been sort of like on the periphery as a potential like Bucks target forever um I remember looking at him as a Bucks uh draft target the year they drafted Giannis worked out okay for them um so certainly he’s a guy that you know I think has come off the bench he started at times had a very weird last year where he was like you know house on fire for the Nets and then he ends up going to Golden State completely flops in Golden State and then kind of like kind of reathered himself a bit in Detroit after the trade deadline and and was you know solid as a backup there so you know do you add a guy like Schroeder who could start you know if needed but also you know if one of those other guys ends up fitting better or outplaying him like yeah Sher can come off the bench like he’s he’s done that mostly right for the last few years so um so guys like that or you know Taius Jones who you know another guy when you talk about like the Gary Trent Jr fact guy that had obviously I think he was around like $10 million a year previously that deal he signed when he was with the Grizzlies bounces around ultimately signs a minimum deal with the Suns and puts up good numbers but obviously nobody came out of that Phoenix situation you know smelling like roses and what’s his market now right I don’t think anybody’s going to look at him and say like that’s our starting point guard of the future folks and I mean point guard’s probably the ultimate position where If you’re a starter you know if you’re like an average starter like a 15 to 20 starter in league if you’re a manual quickly you’re making 30 plus million dollars a year and if you’re a like pretty good backup you are you know an order of magnitude below that and I think guys like Jones and Schroeder again they are probably great examples of that middle class death that the extinction event that um you know the new CBA the new CBA was the meteor you know 65 million years ago that uh that hit the Yucatan if we’re going to talk about I have I have small kids so I’m you know everything becomes a dinosaur metaphor for me um but you know that has kind of wiped out seemingly the like10 to20 million contracts for um you know backup point guards or sort of fringe starter type point guards so um so I mean again like certainly the Bucks could have some options there um to pursue guys like that um at you know again probably more like the taxpayer mid level i I often will refer to the taxpayer mid-level not because the Bucks can’t pay more than that right um but when you look at just where deals tend to gravitate towards they tend to gravitate towards the the mid-level cut offs right so you have tons of guys get minimums you have tons of guys get right bel or below the tax pyramid level because if you pay a dollar over that now you’re hardcapped at the first apron instead of the second apron you know etc et etc and then obviously the mid-level like you know if you’re a team that’s over the cap you can’t pay more than that on a deal either so again stuff gets kind of lumpy around those those those sort of thresholds so I think um again like a guy like Schroeder could sign a minimum contract somewhere he could sign for 5 million maybe somebody gives him a little more than that but you know if you’re a team like the Bucks how do you how do you lure guys for for for good contracts you offer them a chance to win compete for a championship go get the ring chaser guys or you offer them playing time and an opportunity to build their value right and uh I think for the guards they could offer both of those things right malik Beasley uh Gary Trent Jr both guys probably looked to Milwaukee is like “Hey I get to play on a really good team with Giannis i’m going to get to take a ton of open shots and I can compete for that starting position and actually play a lot.” Obviously the winning part didn’t work out so much for those guys but um but they both were able to put up numbers and again Malik didn’t end up cashing in in a huge way um we’ll see given he was even double his money yeah and even he was more even more prolific last year in Detroit so maybe he parlays that to even more this summer we’ll see i don’t think he’s going to make a ton um and obviously Gary you know that’s obviously the bigger question for the Bucks so um so yeah we’ll we’ll kind of see what happens but I I just don’t see like a bonanza of spending and I I don’t see you know I don’t see like some run on like you know decent fringe starter shooting guards where they’re all making $10 million a year like I I just don’t think that’s where the league is headed i think again teams are going to kind of be probably still be conservative and you know keep their powder dry for players that that are just you know more of difference makers which no offense to those guys like they’re just not in that kind of class um yeah I mean I think the free agency class has a lot to do with it as well especially when you look at the next couple of years compared to uh this year and then as we mentioned what teams have to spend so we’ll take a look at those things and the one asset the Bucks do have Camille and I have talked about a few times get Frank’s thoughts on that is there any move where you would put that on the table we’ll dig into that next on Lockdown Bucks so to your point about um teams probably keeping their powder dry it’s not a great free agent class that we have here um next summer you have the potential of Luca Donuch out there Paulo Bancerero Jiren Jackson Jr um Chad Homegrren’s going to have to get paid next summer chris Daps Porzingis maybe he rehabs his value so in just name value it’s there’s more names out there better names dear Fox as well next season uh next off seasonason versus this off seasonason so that’s another one of those interesting pieces where I do wonder if we just see teams say “Yeah we’re we’re sticking to this like right around that mini mid-level cut off that’s what we’re doing out we think we can lure guys.” Like when you look through the the list of teams as well that have the um the taxpayer midlevel to use there’s some interesting teams out there teams like the Warriors the Nuggets the Lakers um the Knicks very interesting now especially once we find out who their coach is and the Raptors I think that’s the group of the tax mid level and then it’s close to half the league that has the uh the non- tax and you got the bianual that factors in there as well but the long and short of it is just I think that’s what teams are looking to spend for this group in that five to7ish million dollar range and as we just go through this list here as we’ve already mentioned the guards and the number of guys that are likely to to be closer to the top of the list than players like Gary Trent Jr um forward in bigs not much different either when you talk about well hopefully I know Bobby and Jericho Sims the two big ones for Bucks fans but as you mentioned before Frank too Brook Lopez um that’s an interesting one i mean of all the guys that the Bucks have that either have a player option or outright free agents do you think Brook Lopez is going to have the most external interest i would guess yes um I don’t know if he’s going to get like I look at Bobby Portoris and I just feel like it makes too much sense for him to stay for both sides um I just mentally I don’t I don’t think he’s necessarily going to opt into his player option but I just think whatever he ends up with is probably going to be in the ballpark of of what he’s at um you know could the Bucks maybe say opt out and we’ll give you I don’t know 3 years 30 million so we save some money but you lock up more kind of longer term more more more years um that’s certainly possible um but you know like is someone giving Bobby 15 to$16 million a year using cap space or even like a a full mid-level at $14 million a year like is that their big signing like just like kind of skeptical because he’s not going to start for probably anybody um even though we know he’s capable of being a like role playinging starter type guy uh and the fact too that you know there’s there’s two names out of Minnesota that I would assume if that’s the route you’re going and you know there’s a flaw with this guy you’re going to pay either of those two guys before you’re going to pay Bobby Portoris yeah and so I I think it just makes sense in Milwaukee again like floor stretching guys that are like legit bigs and again we can debate obviously Bobb’s defensive you know strengths and weaknesses um weaknesses um but I think I think they I honestly I think he had a solid defensive year you know like especially with the kind of those best lineups with Giannis I didn’t really feel like teams were consistently exploiting Bobby you know in a meaningful way um so yeah I think it just kind of makes sense to kind of again this is all premise obviously Giannis staying but if Giannis does stay you know and again if you’re Bobby Poris like how much money would you need how much more money would you need to be get elsewhere to give up kind of like what you have here right because I mean there’s a good chance he starts next year obviously right um even if Brooke comes back like Bobby could be the starting center and he’s going to play a lot no matter what like you know Doc likes playing him he’s you know a little bit more malleable than than Brooke is obviously so even if you have the same group back you’re going to play 25 minutes potentially even more maybe if you start and you know what you can do with Giannis and you know you’re going to be able to get shots you know playing without him as in second units and stuff like that and he’s the mayor of Milwaukee you know it’s like it’s comfortable right he was just on Bar Rescue Frank right helping out local Milwaukee businesses being the like what I mean has mentioned that he does want to get paid like he’s like you know I’ve taken some deals I would like to get paid but I mean but nobody’s going to like you for because you I would like to get paid too Camille I would too I know the money that’s out there yeah it’s like some you know some other team should pay you extra because you took a sweetheart deal in your first two years with the Bucks it’s like well either the Bucks give you that or probably nobody is So you know I get it play your play a little game of chicken now like don’t begrudge him that at all but just feels like the end end point just makes sense for him to come back uh but yeah Brooke I I think Brooke you know you’ve already sort of heard some of the discussions right like I don’t know what team would target Bobby i think there’s teams you know I think the Warriors have been mentioned the Rockets have had interest obviously the last couple years um I think there are teams that are out there that would want a floor stretching rim protector type like Brooke um not to necessarily play him 32 minutes a game right but to even if he’s like the backup kind of big guy um I could definitely definitely see that as as you know something that one what if these teams would prioritize with you know maybe again maybe not a full mid-level deal but is it something around $10 million a year or you know at at worst around the taxpayer mid-level the Lakers definitely need big help right i mean talk about a team that could use like a floor stretcher and some size you know that’s obviously a team that could really use a guy like Brooke and of course you know he’s from California so you know I’m sure there’s some appeal going back to potentially one of the California teams being close to Disneyland um so the Knicks will be interesting when they hire Bud like that’s a name too oh man um so yeah so I think Brooke probably has like the I could see Brooke having probably like the broadest market um and I don’t know and people have been throwing around you know like is there like a sign and trade right like I think the most popular one was like oh like could you you know get Jonathan Kaminga in like a sign and trade and I mean I’ll say this I don’t think well Jonathan Kunga I haven’t thought a lot about where Jonathan Kuminga could end up um he’s a guy who certainly is probably not gonna get paid what he thinks he’s worth um but you know like again sign and trade okay uh if Brooke wanted to go to the Warriors would you sign and trade for Jonathan Kaminga uh sure i don’t really have better ideas you know for the for the Bucks what would you want to pay him well I mean Brook’s not going to get paid again if he’s getting paid $10 million a year then you can’t sign and trade for Kaminga like any more than that right it’s not like you can give Kaminga like $25 million a year and I wouldn’t want to um so would I entertain like is there some scenario where something like that could happen i guess you know I think it would be an interesting thing to explore if Brooke wanted to go elsewhere he’s unrestricted free agent so you can’t stop him unless you you know basically make the case for him to stay and if Giannis is around obviously then then certainly Giannis may you know really want him to do that or if Giannis were to leave who knows maybe Brooke would want to go where Giannis ended up um but I think Brooke is a guy that I I think yeah could could be out there i don’t think you’re you know but I don’t think you’re like signing and trading Bobby Portoris for some real value you know elsewhere i think if if usually with guys like that if it’s a signin trade it’s just basically a sign and trade in order to create a trade exception and exception or you get like a the two exactly like something very minor like nobody’s giving up a bunch of stuff for the privilege of paying Bobby Poris you know $15 million a year like this is not like the way value works in the NBA these days so um so I would say the odds of a sign and trade are are quite low but could something happen with Brooke yeah maybe maybe could happen and again maybe it would just be um if it was a team that had a um that maybe a team only had the mid-level exception or something like that but um or maybe they had like you know maybe a team had like 10 million in cap space or something like that um you know is there some situation or like they had an exception and they didn’t want to use that and you end up doing some kind of sign and trade so they don’t have to use the exception and the Bucks yeah like there’s different kind of versions of this that you know or they have a player that you know maybe they don’t really want but the Bucks could you you know again but like you’re not getting rich off of Brook Lopez or Bobby Porter in trades right that’s not saving the trajectory of the franchise but obviously everything certainly worth exploring at this point we mentioned the one big asset the Books do have uh we’re we’re up against the clock on this one so we’re going to have to wrap it over chris Livingston is this is this a Chris Livingston conversation that we’re walking into how dare you number one we’ll wrap that around into tomorrow’s show and take a look at the finals as well which game one will be played later on tonight but just thoughts about that matchup as we uh we move into that so that’ll come your way on tomorrow’s show for Camille and Frank i’m Justin we’ll talk with you guys tomorrow on Locked on Bucks

Bucks’ Free Agency Frenzy: Who Will Join Giannis in Milwaukee?

NBA free agency is heating up, and the Milwaukee Bucks are at the center of the action. Justin Garcia, Camille Davis, and Frank Madden break down potential targets for the Bucks, including Dennis Schröder and Tyus Jones. The trio analyzes the evolving market for shooting guards, with a spotlight on Gary Trent Jr.’s surprising value. Brook Lopez’s future with the team takes center stage as the hosts speculate on his potential suitors. Will the Warriors or Lakers make a play for the veteran center? The discussion wraps up with a teaser for their upcoming NBA Finals preview. Tune in for expert insights on how the Bucks can bolster their roster and maximize Giannis Antetokounmpo’s championship window.

0:00 Intro: Free agent targets and NBA Finals
5:04 NBA free agency landscape and cap implications
10:07 Analyzing potential Bucks free agent targets
15:30 Exploring bargain free agent options
20:34 Point guard options for the Bucks
26:28 Free agent market and team spending strategies
31:45 Brook Lopez’s free agency outlook
36:35 Teaser for next episode on Finals preview

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