The Bucks Lose Lopez but Keep Three Key Pieces…is Deandre Ayton the Next Move?

The Bucks Lose Lopez but Keep Three Key Pieces…is Deandre Ayton the Next Move?

a great start to free agency for the bucks keeping some key names but watching one bigname leave we dive into the details coming up next 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 again by camille davis and frank madden we thank you for making this your first listen of the day each and every day especially uh these days as we are now in the full swing of free agency today’s episode is brought to you by fanduel right now new customers can get $150 in bonus bets when your first $5 bet wins we had the bobby portoris updates on yesterday’s show and we got a lot more news this afternoon slashevening so um i suppose we should start with the only exit so far and that was brook lopez all of these are tied together as we’ll get to but brook lopez moves on and i think the big surprise there not seeing brook lopez leave i think uh all three of us are pretty staunch supporters of brook lopez but we you kind of got the sense he was moving on the big surprise was when you heard brook lopez leaves and goes to los angeles and it wasn’t lakers that followed that it’s the clippers
yeah i definitely thought it was going to be the lakers but when i saw the clippers i was like that actually makes a little bit more sense to me um than the lakers would have like brook lopez at this point in his career and as he’s going to the clippers projected to be a backup center uh for this team which i think is a good role for him playing 15 maybe 20 minutes a night plus the clippers just have better point of attack defenders as well and we know if you’re playing brook lopez in the drop coverage the point of attack defenders are very very important so to be able to have stronger point of attack defenders being a backup big at this point in his career i think it’s a good landing spot for brook lopez and he gives the clippers a different element with his ability to stretch the floor in addition to the the rim protection when he doesn’t get drugged out to the perimeter to defend in space so all in all i like that move for the clippers i like that for brook lopez and it’s it’s bittersweet to see him go because of all that he was to the bucks in that championship team an iron man for this team outside of the one year he had the back injury where he missed most of the year after winning the championship but uh brook lopez is stamped in my book and uh it was fun watching him here and i wish him the best in in la with the clippers yeah i mean one of the most likable you know players i think the bucks have had in my lifetime just the combination of you know kind of knowing the quality of the person that he was off the floor what you also saw of his personality on the floor like he you know i think think you could tell the type of person he was on the floor most of the time and then the one the rare times where he didn’t act like the brook lopez we know and love it kind of almost made him more likable because he had like those few times where he got really mad and angry and whether it was you know trey lyles bumping giannis and brooke like going crazy or ironically gary trent jr who we’ll talk about in a moment when gary trent was on the raptors i think that was the only the first time that brooke was ever ejected from a game robin many more ejections than than brooke um was when gary had he had his dust up with gary and he took his headband or whatever he did um but yeah i mean i don’t think you can you know understate the importance of brook’s arrival um in 2018 and you know i think in so many ways we think of that as like the the start of the bud era but it was the bud and the brook era and i think what brooke did enabling the defense that you kind of bud became synonymous with in terms of that you know zone drop coverage defense they were you know just dominant for two years and then ironically in the the 58 win season whatever it was now three four years ago whenever that was so long ago um you know when they rediscovered that and brooke after the back injury rediscovered his form and was almost defensive player of the year which is just crazy so um so yeah just i mean just one of those people i think was emblematic of you know some of the like when you talk about like the topline players of this of this team giannis chris drew brooke i mean just solid goal five-star human beings players locker room guys um and you know i think you i think on the one hand i’ll say this like we were obviously huge brook lopez fans i defended him a lot of times when people complained especially about his regular season performance um i think we knew going into that playoff series last year that it probably was not a good matchup for him and it wasn’t um and so we’ll see i i mean i’m a little torn because i think there’s you know there’s a good case to be made that if the bucks wanted to play differently he’s the most obvious guy that you would have to move away from in order to play differently especially obviously defensively whether that’s means playing better to tbd we’ll talk about the bucks need for a replacement which as of you know 11:01 central time here on monday night the bucks still have a very glaring hole um on their roster and in terms of brook’s shoes that will need to be filled um so they have some options but um it’ll be very difficult to replace his productivity really on both ends and i think probably the offensive floor stretching and kind of his like multi-dimensional like you know the high low chemistry he had with giannis that little 15 foot push shot that he was so comfortable with the touch he had which was remarkable for a man of his size um yeah i mean you don’t just go to the the minimum bin and find another guy that can do what brook lopez does but i think this does allow them and really forces them i think to turn the page and you know we’ll see what happens with jericho sims i think we all would like to see jericho sims brought back hopefully there’s who comes back who’s you know younger more mobile than than brooke was maybe that does allow you to play a more aggressive defensive style that can hopefully be a bit more malleable bit more modern but you know again i this isn’t a day about sort of celebrating like the good that comes from breaking with with brooke i think this is a a day about celebrating kind of the historic greatness that we saw with him on the team and i think there’s i think we mentioned it the other night i think there’s a really good chance lopez is number 11 at some point hangs in the rafters um and i mean he he deserve it he’s a guy i’m gonna root for no matter what where he goes bit surprised by the clippers i don’t know if that’s the best use of their precious cap dollars to sign another kind of big drop center um but perhaps they were thinking like we just want as many dudes as possible we can put one-on-one with jokic um and uh maybe maybe that’s kind of what the the thinking was so so we’ll see um but you know i think it it’s interesting to ponder and what might have been if brooke goes into a role the role that he’s gonna have next year in la you know if he had come back to milwaukee for a similar dollar value and been a backup to bobby portoris what would that have meant for the bucks could that have been a better solution fewer minutes etc we talked a lot about him probably needing to play fewer minutes and it just seemed to be he played more and more um over the years so so we’ll see i mean um i don’t think this is you know gonna magically turn anything over for the bucks but uh but yeah just a big big shout out day of appreciation for brooke and what he meant to this franchise champion forever and um you know i i hope uh i hope we see the little dinosaur i hope it’s still on the on the scores table next year um but uh but we’ll have to see yeah um quite a run those seven years the championship and as as you mentioned too frank i mean i don’t know if anybody outside of giannis was as instrumental on the floor than brook lopez in the culture and everything else that that this group ushered in um because it only works with that type of stretch big so he made a tremendous impact he will certainly be missed and i think the interesting thing to to leave us with as we pivot towards who is retained here is is what you brought up in that the million-dollar question and the piece that comes out eventually at some point this summer is which party decided it’s time to move on or was it beneficial because especially with these deals that we’ll get to here coming up next the bucks had a path to retain brook lopez for the exact same contract that he got from the clippers so was it the bucks recognizing it’s time to play differently and we got to move on was it brook lopez saying i’d rather be out in california and and have this opportunity with the clippers or a mixture of the two that’s going to be one of the more interesting things to wait and get an answer on this summer but uh we mentioned that’s the one name at least so far that is left but there’s a whole lot coming back and quite frankly at surprising levels so we’ll dig through those updates coming up next time to talk to you about our friends at fanduel it’s summertime meaning sports are in full swing whether you’re all about baseball under the lights golf on the green or high stakes soccer action fanduel is the best way to make every game more exciting you’re already following this action so why not make it a little more thrilling with fanduel you can get in on the game while your friends are getting sunburned at the beach it’s easy to use the app you get paid out fast and even makes regular season games feel like mustwatch events whether you’re watching a same game parlay or watching a bet ride into the ninth inning fanduel makes it feel like you’re a part of the action if you’re new to fanduel new customers can bet just $5 and get $150 in bonus bets if your first bet wins open the fanduel app today and visit fanuel.com to get started so uh bobby poris resigned yesterday or the announcement he intends to on the eve of free agency and um the other names that we discussed the most here in this leadup were gary tren jr and kevin porter jr um the first domino to fall was kevin porter jr and i think as soon as we saw the contract everybody kind of looked at it and said “okay is that part of the midlevel or that figure could actually be the bianual?” it’s two years $11 million and as we learned it is the bianual exception so that um that non- tax mid-level is still open while we were waiting on the answer for gary trent jr we see tory prince resigns and it was a name that we talked about at one point what a week or so ago and and saying look he’s kind of been forgotten but i think there’s a lot of value to bring him back as a regular season piece and give you some more depth and you get that on a oneplus 1 and then the most shocking piece coming at least to date um what about an hour two hours ago as as we record this on monday night gary trent jr does in fact resign with the bucks on a oneplus 1 but it is none of the mid-level that the bucks had to dip into it is just the 120% raise meaning you got the two three i suppose when you say bobby and needing to keep it big the three most important pieces to retain are there and two of them very very cheap that you still have one major asset left to play gary trent jr the gift that keeps on giving last year you know he signs late in free agency for the vet men we were very excited about that signing and then here he is again signing for an amount that comes in far lower uh than what we were projecting and for the bucks to be able to do that without touching the mle which i’m throw this to frank as our like resident cap expert like that is just impressive gming right there where i did not see it unfolding this way for the bucks to be able to bring back gary trent jr and kevin porter jr without them touching ml at all now the toryan prince part of it we can continue to talk about his return but i just finished doing locks with nba and i made a joke of like you know the bucks getting ready to play different and nick was like same guys you’re bringing back how is this different and it’s like one you’re trusting in doc to pull the right levers which i know that there are some people who don’t have as much confidence in that uh but brook lopez not being there is a big indicator that something’s going to be different for this team but having kevin porter jr and gary trent jr in particular those two guards two guys who when we saw last season it worked around the idea of playing through giannis as the main initiator like that’s why they were so important to bring back because hey little proof of concept here we see that this can work if we’re going in this direction so super thrilled to have them back and to not touch the mle what a deal what a deal yeah i mean and you kind of i think you need to sort of view like the torian prince and and gary trent deals as sort of a package um like everyone is there one more name
everyone well and chris livingston they’re all represented by by rich paul of clutch um and it was a little funny is like when when prince resigned like the collective freakout on bucks twitter because it happened before the gt uh signing was was wild i think it’s bec i think some people were thinking it was um for part of the mid-level or something which you know because the number is a little higher than what people associated with the minimum i can understand like why people didn’t immediately think like oh they’re using you know non-bird rights or another minimum to to do this um and so like with both gary and torian same was true for bobby a few years ago if you play one year with a team you don’t have bird rights or which is three years basically consecutive with the team or you had bird rights before and you bring it with you or whatever it is like basically on a on a single contract um but if you play one season on a new contract like one-year deal or a one plus one and you opt out um you have what’s called non-bird rights which allows you to sign for 120% of your previous salary or the minimum for your years of service and so for like we’re used to seeing the minimum contracts that you see like on cap spreadsheets for one-year deals are what’s called like a subsidized minimum like literally the league allows for cap purposes a million dollars yeah
yeah so it’s basically like everybody counts um as like a two-year service veteran so last year was about 2.2 million so these guys were all showing up at like 2.2 million their actual salaries were higher like if like torian was i think a little over three last year i think this year he’d be at 3.3 i want to say something like that um for his minimum as a nine-year
i think is he nine or 10 anyway
3.3 this year goes up to 3.8 8 next year
yeah so bottom line you know but the bottom line is like that’s their minimums and then they can sign for 120% of that so that’s why gary and torian’s numbers are look higher than minimums it’s because they’re kind of like quoteunquote true minimums now the other or they’re kind of scaled up to some extent most likely um the other thing that it is worth noting though if you sign a two-year minimum you don’t count as the quoteunquote sub minimum cap sheets so in like an ideal world from a cap perspective if you were bringing back prince you would have wanted a one-year minimum contract so he would have counted like a million dollars less that said you know this isn’t really a conspiracy like if you have multiple guys
that’s the cost of yeah
yeah if you have multiple guys with one agent they don’t think of these as totally siloed up let’s just say the negotiations are happening as a paired group so i would and i tweeted this right before the gtj signing but i said if they if they gave tory prince especially the player option the player option that they gave tory prince that part would definitely like them bringing back torian on a one year even a two-year minimum not shocking i mean the guy shot what i don’t know 40 whatever percent you know he’s fine as a role player his problem like in la was he just played too much he was starting with koozma it just didn’t make sense if he was playing he’s not a two
yeah yeah if he was playing 15 to 20 minutes per game like fine you know like you’re not it’s not like there’s like amazing small forwards three four guys that you know you’re going to get for for the same price um but when they gave him when i when they reported they had the player option then it was like okay and shams even said shams even said that like rich paul negotiated it last night with bucks and i was like uh what else do you think they were talking in that that agreement and so the obvious other thing that they would have been talking about is gary trent and my assumption had been i’ve been thinking like oh he’s going to get like six to eight million maybe they do like a two plus one so he gets like some longer term carry on the deal and so i think the surprising thing was and by the way when i tweeted out 68 million like a couple nights ago like a bunch of people were like he’s not getting that little money like he’s definitely getting more money than that and i was wrong because i was too generous with that that estimate and he ends up basically taking the bobby portoris oneplus 1 120% of his pri of the minimum so it was the most the bucks could pay without using a different exception um and it is at least somewhat interesting i mean like why they gave gary the oneplus one for seven and they gave kpj the oneplus one for you know 10 and a half
is a bit interesting you know because i would have expected from like a market perspective that kpj would have less of a market given his history um so i’m a little bit curious what that was and the only thing i can think of is the bucks are not going to like given everything about kpj the bucks are not going to say like “hey do do the do the oneplus one on the non-bird rights a year from now
we’ll take.”
you feel you feel better about ex giving more money and more years to gary trent jr a year from now than kpj exactly so i think it the in my head the logic was probably you had to give kpj more of a like true contract figure because they probably did not want to like make a wink wink to him just given like let’s see where we are in a year right i think i think they would have been i i think it would have been a better contract for the bucks if they had just gotten the straight two years and they didn’t have the opt out because he’s obviously going to play a t this coming year he’s probably going to put up numbers hopefully it’s in the context of like really helping them win basketball games and not you know having any issues and blah blah blah um so if you see the version of we that we saw at the end of last year it just scaled up to more minutes then that’ll be a no-brainer opt out and he’ll be able to get more money from someone whether it’s the bucks or or whomever um so we’ll kind of see what what ultimately happens with that but it it definitely is just like a really interesting dynamic and it hits on exactly what we were talking about last night just in terms of like it’s not just about like who’s objectively better or worse etc all these subtle things come into play we didn’t even talk about you know like having an agent with multiple players and you know being able to like horse trade like options and things like that um and as you were alluding to justin like i mean again if you were like just thinking of it like objectively player by player on this roster a very obvious thing would be probably to wave chris livingston that may be the only way to get bogleub um marovic on this year’s version of the team but what was discussed with rich paul regarding the future of chris livingston his guaranteed date is midway through summer league mhm
i would certainly guess the likelihood of chris sticking around for at least one more year is higher you know based on what we just saw with with gary and the deal that he signed and you know again like maintaining goodwill with a power agent not a bad thing um so we’ll see if if that’s the kind of price they pay um i’ve also been wondering about the finesses of it all um we’ve heard suggestions i know some of the greek fans were saying that there’s talk that he might go back to greece to play for i forget which team it was but one of giannis and thanacus’s like friends is some rich you know guy that bought um a uh a greek team and so you know could yan thanasses go back and play for that team um i think there was also the talk that the nasis wanted to get a contract with the team other than the bucks you know to sort of prove something but let’s be honest if that happened it would everyone would just be like “oh okay now giannis is gonna that’s just because
team trade for giannis right?” so i don’t know i mean i feel almost bad for vanessa and stuff no matter what happens it’ll be perceived as like you know him just like riding giannis’ cotails forever but um i don’t know hopefully we see him at bucks games one way or the other he was a a a welcome um courtside uh presence throughout last year and generally a good luck charm so it the math is let’s say becoming much harder on seeing the nasa actually make this roster
um so so we’ll see what happens but yeah i mean just a lot of uh a number of things falling into place tonight but still a few kind of major missing pieces starting with the center position and you know that chunk of money on the mid level but i think we can probably talk as well just about like how much of that they could actually functionally use in standard the tax because that’s um that’s another key piece i i don’t think also just like from the apen perspective they can’t really probably use the full 14 and bring back rollins and jericho sims you probably need to spend a little bit less than the full 14 even if you were willing to go over the tax and again you could do things like stretch packet etc that would relieve a lot of that stress but
i doubt they want to do that i think they’d probably rather keep that expiring contract around and obviously pat’s a good soldier and you know you can always dust him off and he’ll he’ll play if you need him to
he’ll score 43 points
yeah you know
yeah you know
if you need
need a 40 burger he’ll give it to you um camille it brings us to that figure that frank tossed out there in the mid-level exception which is open and um i mean who knows this may be dated by the time you actually hear this but there is one name that a lot of bucks fans have started to run wild with so we’ll explore that possibility and just how much of it they can spend that frank alluded to coming up next so i think we all kind of had the same thought when you saw the the figures for the gary tren jr contract and i i saw quite a few people camille you may have been one of them as well even um tweet out or put out on social media like wait is that per year or that’s total for the contract and then you started to do the math and and figure out this is the minimum so they still haven’t touched that mid level and then you start to look through free agents and think about okay they’re obviously working on something if you haven’t touched the mid level so who are they looking at um i think the most logical position would be a big with the absence of brook lopez and you know we heard a couple of names of the bucks maybe kicking the tires on or potentially being interested in gerson yabelli was one of those at one point a lot of teams interested in him doesn’t sound like that’s a possibility i saw one report that the bucks are maybe cooling off on him and i think he’s still linked to the spurs um even though they added luke cornette and uh cornette
a lot of luke cornet
al horford came up earlier
um i i forget who had that but it just never made any sense because this doesn’t seem like the team al horford
would go to and uh then you come back
wait would you would you would you take would you take al horford though i i would totally take alford
for the right price yes yeah if it was cheap yeah i mean i mean for half yeah whatever to yeah like seven million eight million you could do that and then keith rollins and jericho sims like sure yeah
like no brainer
tito’s tito’s son prodigal son returns
tito returns to milwaukee yeah i would definitely take him he fits realistically with yiannis then he can’t defend jiannis
he can’t defend him yeah yeah he killed two birds with one stone um but the the majority of the attention has drifted towards one name and that is one that we talked about on on yesterday’s show deandre aiden and um we were all talking before we started the the recording here this is not by any means sourced i get the feeling that’s who it is and when you think about leaving the mid-level open and the fact that earlier in the day jake fiser in one of his blurs with mark stein had said the bucks are keeping an eye on deandre aiden and linked him to them which i think we all saw and thought okay he’s going to the lakers though but now the further this has gone on you just have to wonder did they preserve all the midlevel for deandre aiden they might have they might have and um you seem stoked
i i i one of my athlete red flags is just guys who don’t have a consistent motor like that’s for me on my personal list of like what i look for in in athletes and players like the the effort has to be there and there have been reports and you can see it too just with aiden’s play uh there are some nights where he’s he’s all he’s after and there’s other nights where he’s lolly gagging and then you hear reports coming out as well about when he was in portland he’s tardy to practices he’s late for team flights he’s skipping rehab appointments he’s slamming chairs when he’s taken out of the game he’s just doing these things and having reported tantrums in the locker room where it’s like man the the attitude around the player it just it feels like an headache and of course guys can get in different situations and they can change so on and so forth but when you’ve been in two different stops and a lot of the complaints are the same um maybe the difference in contract would be a a changer for him going from him calling himself what domination dominating
dominating
dominating and you know being like i’m the max guy maybe now that he’s been bought out maybe that does humble him in a certain way to reignite a fire with him but um yeah for me i just it’s always tough for me with guys who have those type of concerns when it comes to what they give you on the court night in and night out it was sort of funny i saw uh anthony irwin from i don’t know what actually lakers twitter anony’s all over lakers twitter um i can’t remember exactly what all he’s from right now um but uh i think he tweeted something like he would like it was like something kind of like expressing like concern that the bucks can offer twice what the lakers can and i don’t know if that means the lakers can offer seven or if they were using if he was using a smaller number but when i read that i was just like you can have him like i was like you can have him like go ahead lakers you can take deandre um yeah it’s it’s sort of funny and we were joking before the pod about how like and we need we need to talk at some point about like espn’s like performative giannis discussion tonight during their their free agent special it was like just like priceless espn stuff but um i feel like signing would like help the you know narrative with the like espn crowd of like cuz it’s a game like yeah average is like oh that’s a big big you know a big splash whatever and but if we kind of just and look is there some upside scenario where you know aan motivated and you know like is playing with giannis and generally like you know being in maybe like a better atmosphere doc rivers being a veteran coach who’s managed a lot of different types of personalities like is there a version of this where you could maximize him and get like you know a really good season out of him like yeah i’m sure i’m sure there is um you know he’s had at least a couple years i think actually the year i want to say the year after his the finals run was actually like his best year he put up really good advanced metrics and you know the suns were great when he was on the floor with them and all that um and that’s why he i think that was that i was think after that year that he got the huge contract ironically from the indiana pacers um in one of those weird sliding doors things so yeah is there some version you know like is there is is part of this like is there an argument that you do it because you’re the bucks you should be desperate because you’re at such a talent deficit i to i totally understand that perspective but i i just don’t i just don’t feel like he’s about the stuff that is going to let the bucks make some surprising playoff run like that’s just not really how i kind of perceive what he would do for you um and i say that knowing that there are not a bunch of great options otherwise for the bucks from a big man perspective right it’s you know like you’ve got non-enters like yabusle or larry nance who are like you know 68 maybe larry nance is 67 depending on where you look um guys who i think have played center but you know again like are not everyday typical nba center type players um and then there’s you know kind of like could you get nick richards uh with using a trade exception from the suns because the suns just picked up you know two guys that they presumably want to play ahead of nick richards maybe i don’t know um or you know like stuff like that um so it’s it’s a it becomes a bit speculative like horford i haven’t really thought of just i’ve always just assumed he goes back to boston but it does seem like there’s more increasingly a potential that maybe he doesn’t although maybe cornet going to um going to san antonio maybe does leave a little more of a window open for him to go back to
well i don’t know they just p luca garza so
that’s to to the warriors too makes a lot of sense yeah so so we’ll see but i mean obviously the the bucks you know jericho sims i think sure give jericho try to get jericho sims on a minimum regardless no objection um i think having three bigs is a plus and something that you know would make sense to do um i think if your bigs are jericho sims and bobby portoris and nothing then i think you’re kind of playing with fire even even though you do have pete nance as on your two-way uh i enjoyed the one game of the pete or two game was pete nance around for two games or i guess one game he played in one game right
he played in one he was around for like 10
okay um so i enjoyed pete nance’s performance in the season finale alongside you know superstar pat conutton but um yeah man kyle kosma don’t sell him short on that first quarter yeah i would i would be i would just be fascinated what um if john horse asked giannis what his opinion of deandre aton was i’d be fascinated to know what giannis’s view was um i mean giannis must love the fact that you know he gave him 35 points a game in the finals and um you know like he put 50 on top of him in a closeout game but so there’s some weird history there regardless one of the greatest blocks in nba history came between those two guys um so yeah but i guess we’ll see i mean i think at a minimum the bucks have controlled the bucks were able to get on top of you know a a few key moves that um were probably the most difficult but they still have this center question that obviously is is the big one that they haven’t gotten in front of i think rollins because he’s restricted you know i think is a bit more controlled although there are scenarios where depending on how much of the middle mid level they spend they could be in a position where you know they could be in a spot where a team could test them because you know if rollins gets four or five million they’d be well over the tax or maybe even bumping up against the the first apron depending on how much of the mid-level they use so they’re not there’s not like it’s not like hey it’s easy to just use the full boat 14 million mid-level i think it’s more likely that they would probably want to spend you know eight or nine of that um but we’ll see i mean they can always go into the they can always go into the into the season over the the tax
well and i mean so camille with with this player in question specifically it also depends on how much of a buyout he received if you know it’s $10 million shaved off his deal great we’re gonna start you with $10 million a year on your contract um i
i think that’s what it was reported right i think i think he gave up 10 yeah so you’re right on that so yeah um the rollins one is interesting too because i mean you know we’ve talked about it you don’t view like everybody had this assumption coming in the offseason well you just signed and trade brook lopez and you can get jonathan kaminga or you can get this player um like the timberwolves got a second rounder for michaela alexander walker that’s typically what you’re looking at but maybe if you know things go that way and you have to use more than you intended and somebody makes it difficult it could be a sign and trade with ryan rollins and you get a second round pick back and then you got something you can attach to albeit not great but a contract and say “would you take this as an expiring deal?”
i mean you could go that route i think rollins is one of those guys um for me especially
i would prefer to retain him
yeah yeah like that that’s the the goal here but again if it leads you to getting other assets that you can also flip then like you have to be interested in him now i did see stuff earlier too saying that you know the bucks were in talks of trying to move pat conington but we’ve seen those reports now for like
the last two years it feels like
so you take that with a grain of salt but i mean again just to to go back to the aton like he is only what like 26 i think he turns 27 this year he’s still a young guy there’s i can see why there are going to be people like he’s a former number one draft pick the pedigree so on and so forth um and i’m sure that if he did sign with the bucks i could talk myself into being like hey this makes sense but like also looking at the big rotation like you can’t look at this bucks roster now as it’s constructed and be like “hey they’re they’re good.” like the the big rotation they need some more there so for me it’s like well what else could you do with that money that you have available who else is on the market that’s like worth the shot of taking that or would you rather like try to do something small like get like like a thomas bryant uh not taking that full amount but like just a smaller amount like we’re going to roll with thomas bryant and bobby portoris and giannis as our big rotation and jericho sims like you could go that route or you can go the aton route but ultimately we have to wait and see but i am curious to see how the ryan rollins situation does shake out for the bucks with him being a restricted free agent that normally takes a little bit more time to come to fruition but he is definitely definitely somebody i want to see the bucks retain i mean you have one am i missing anybody you have one guy on the roster right now who’s
like sort of a point guard that’s upright you know um other than well and mark sears okay if we’re talking about two-way guys yeah um but as far as like nba contracts you know it’s kj and a lot of people would not like a kpj and even potentially even call him a point guard i think for the bucks he’s a point guard um
well i mean technically
giannis but you still need players to play the position
yeah you need somebody who can dribble the ball up and down the floor can run some pick and roll and and most importantly probably defend the other team’s point guard and so that’s obviously where um you know keeping kpj and rollins i think is really important because if you don’t retain rollins then you have to find another guy in in that kind of vein that uh that you would want to bring back and you know we talked about some of the guys that you know you could potentially look at as um as the players that could kind of fit that mold and you know dennis schroeder went for way more did he did he get full mid-level is that did i understand that correctly um or he was going to get something on that order from sacramento
i thought he was getting the full mid level but i can’t recall which i mean it kind of figures that toronto’s paying that or uh sacramento’s paying that because it’s the kings right like everybody else is getting value and the kings are
kings kings yeah
full mid-level to dennis schroeder um and you know like i think tyus jones signed for seven million trey jones i think got eight million a year which
it’s a little weird like is it like it’s kind of a little weird to me that trey jones is getting more money than tyus jones like i thought it was clearly taius was better
i think the situation for the two of them were going to orlando where it’s like contender i’ll take a little bit of a hit and not having a good year in phoenix the year before
right and trey going to the bulls who are dumb so um so anyway it been interesting but but yeah so if you’re not being rollins it’s like who’s who’s your ball handler i mean
i think you normally want to have three point guards on your roster um and the bucks like previously the bucks kind of cut it short and the thought was like well you’ve got giannis and chris middleton
um now you do not have chris middleton uh kuzma is not going to be you know facilitating your offense um now that chris is gone so they definitely feel like they’re a bit short on shot creation um but again like there’s still i think a lot of different things they could do and i do think um i i will say i think the conetan noise that was coming around i think is a little bit fundamentally different this time around because this is the first time that he’s truly an expiring contract
yeah and on the one hand like it’s not like okay this isn’t you know like 2014 or something when expiring contracts were considered like valuable unto themselves but obviously money is much tighter now than it was a few years ago in terms of how people are perceiving you know spending and the implications of being you know having a high payroll um so i think you know is there some version of the world where you could trade him for a guy on multiple years and the other team is just basically like you know some some guy maybe is a little bit better than pat coneton but he’s got two three years left and pat honathan has won so we’re just trying to like clear money and and blah blah blah like that could be the case um you know like eric and i were brainstorming he he mentioned jaylen smith with the bulls who makes pretty much exactly what what pat does
and i looked at i was like like
i’m not saying jaylen smith is great or anything like that but um he can shoot a little bit at least and he’s got you know per minute productivity stats that i want to say are actually like pretty close to deandre i’m not saying he’s actually good i mean like thomas bryant is is another guy like that who just sort of like puts up stats but like not really sure if he’s helping you win basketball games um so so we’ll have to see but yeah i mean um hopefully the bucks can make a splash to impress giannis as he monitors the situation very closely um just you know sitting in greece staying up all night watching the tv keeping twitter refreshed trying to make sure that the bucks are doing everything they can to to possibly impress him um i guess as as we wrap here uh it does and and we heard they’re going to be pretty active and it’s like we’ve talked about the leadup to this the things that they have available available to them not that they’re in a great spot capwise because it is still miraculous that you were able to get those deals done and keep those guys without using your mid-level but they had those things afforded to them because of the koosma trade to get under that second apron we mentioned other things like trades and grant you just have that one asset of the the 2031 first rounder although you could do a pick swap in 2032 as well we saw one of the names that we had kicked around quite a bit cam johnson traded um what do you think there’s a greater chance of happening here in these next couple of days the bucks making some type of trade or using more than let’s say 10 million in that mid-level exception i think i’d go making a trade off in my gut here of just between those two because it’s like who on the market is going to command that more than 10 for them that fits what they’re looking for um i mean honestly too if the debate is lakers only have 18 $8.2 million$ 8.1 million to offer deandre aiden then cool we’ll give you 8.2 million yeah i think i think i go with detroit yeah i feel like i feel like there’s i feel like there’s pro they’re probably looking for for a trade um and they don’t have a ton of obviously don’t have a ton of flexibility yeah they just don’t have a lot to attach whether it’s kind of the core salary in the first place it’s pretty much coup at whatever he’s at 22 23 or pat who’s at nine and obviously both guys like you’re not trading for them because you think they’re going to make a difference on your roster so much as like you may just see again like some sort of savings action with with cuz right like he’s got two years is there some higher number right do the i think like we heard again like the bucks may be connected with like wiggins who makes more money than koozma um i think you could i think you could pretty much you could salary match those guys with by attaching like a livingston or somebody like that um so is there some version of the world
think again well i don’t know maybe he wants um we we thought this was a great opportunity for chris um and then he gets waved immediately um um and then the bucks couldn’t couldn’t resign him because they traded him they got waved um so yeah like maybe there’s some version i i feel like john horse is probably trying to see what he can do in that regard i think i would be very surprised if they as we’ve been saying i’d be very surprised at this point if they put the 2031 into play um you know they they could do i think i was doing the math i want to say um cuz plus pat plus like andre jackson plus the 2031 first that gets you to like 40 up to 43 million i think you could take back or something on that order um so if you really wanted to go like big game hunting i don’t know what zack lavine’s number is you know if you want to pick pick some random like kind of you know fringe allstar types that could be ha had um but that might be something like that um i was gonna ask i think we said the other day i can’t remember camille if you were in that discussion too but knowing what we know now if everything else happens the way it happens would you have been interested in essentially like trying to match the um the nuggets offer and give the nets the 2031 first plus koosma in this case um for cam johnson how interested would you have been in that in that type of move
i think so when i first heard this like like a month or so ago i was like i’m kind of interested in this but as i thought a bit more about it you’d really be slotting cam to kind of come in and be like your your second option maybe your third um and to that role i’m not as excited about giving up that draft asset for it but in a situation like with denver where you’re trading him into a slot where he’s going to be slotted behind joic and murray and probably gordon as well like the the pecking order makes a lot more sense to me for denver than it does in milwaukee with giannis being your main guy and still looking for that second guy so unless you count like gary trent jr and like well he’s over him but regardless like the role will be a little bit different i think in milwaukee so i don’t think that that would be the missing piece for the bucks to do it whereas for the nuggets that’s a team that took the thunder seven games and they were banged up by the end of it i can see them being like for us like we’re close so like let’s make this swing for the bucks i don’t think they’re as close as the nuggets
well i mean let’s be honest dude kevin porter jr is probably entering the season as your number two option
probably honestly i was i was gonna say i don’t know if that’s a reason not to right like kuz is either your second or third option um which you know
i think i think i think camille you’re getting at the fact that like you put the 2031 in play when you feel like you’re close to having
yeah like this will this will push us over the top
yeah and i think as long as dame’s in street clothes like there’s no version of this team that is going to be close to anything and i think that’s like what fundamentally like the whole like the whole conversation on espn about giannis today it’s just like why are why are we even acting like there’s some trade that while dame is out
that is going to like make this team like contend for something i i just i mean maybe maybe i’m just not thinking creatively enough um but like i think they had about as like productive the contend yeah i mean the trade that could make you contend includes dame and who at this point is going to trade
for a guy that’s not going to play at least what 80% of this season maybe all of it and then when he does come back you don’t know what he’s going to look like so
um yeah i mean that’s the thing too to like we’ve seen so much discourse surrounding things like the bobby portoris extension and like well how if we’re still just running the same group back how does that make you better like well i thought we already aligned on this is a gap year of sorts for a team that has lost in the first round three years in a row so we do need to level set the expectations here of there is likely no move the bucks are going to make that all of a sudden whoa this is a top three or two team in the eastern conference so let’s operate with that assumption to answer your question about the trade i was i mean i said i don’t trade that thing for just a what like a number three on your team or something and and just a role player type guy it has to be an impact player uh seeing everything else they did i would be more inclined to do that knowing oh you kept these pieces and like you potentially still have something major cooking with the mid-level that’s open and then you bring in cam johnson then i’m willing to listen and just say you know what screw it who knows where we’ll even be in 2031 if there’s an nba or united states of america for that matter um then i’m willing
in a in a year you can trade the 2033 so you know like
just get right back after
yeah keep pushing it down
we’re we’re we’re a debt we’re a bad credit country justin like just take out another credit card you know like it’s going to be fine
we just print more cap money
exactly print more money
can’t we just do that for these second apron teams so yeah i guess i would think more about it um with the makeup of this group but i i still just i don’t know like that i think that’s the ceiling of the type of trade that they could pull off with a guy where we’re debating like is he really good enough as your number two scorer
it would it would be easier i think if he was 25 and not 29 you know like i think it’d be easier to sort of talk yourself into it um but yeah i it’s one of those things like that’s like one of those questions where i’m kind of happy i’m not an nba gm i don’t have to make that decision if they make the deal glass half full like all right it’ll be this will be a more fun team for it glass half empty like you know i won’t think about five years from now um but i don’t know the the only other thing i want to say is just on the like the discourse around giannis um and for people didn’t see like they had they did this whole round table thing on giannis and you know all of them are like the the like people i can’t remember who said it was like this is the most important off season in bucks history or something like that and i just want to be like it’s really not guys like like like here’s the deal okay if we’re going to be sober and cleareyed about this like we’re saying bucks are not going to contend for anything this year can they be frisky interesting is there some like lightning in a bottle version of the world where they can get to the eastern conference finals like i don’t maybe there’s some crazy version of that but like i’m not assuming any of that right i’m not going into the season predicting something like that um you’re relying on giannis wanting to stay here because he wants to stay here and because he’s okay with not actually like demanding to be on a team that maximizes his chance of winning the championship this year that’s what this is that’s what this is premised on like yeah and honestly the only person i think who had anything like
vaguely useful to say and i don’t think the framing was necessarily exactly way i do it was i thought udonis hasslam because he was basically like udon hasslam was basically like giannis you can do whatever you want if you want to stay in milwaukee because you’ve been there forever and that’s your place and you just want to stay there you stay there if you don’t want to stay there you don’t have to stay there but it was kind of like make up your mind like and i feel like some i had certain bucks some bucks fans would say like “well giannis has made up his mind he said he wants to win a championship in milwaukee.” you know like i would say this giannis has not forcefully come out and said like
“i’m happy forever.” and
well not even just forever but just like
you know like he has not like done the interview in the us press like the media day style thing where it’s like
we’re focused on this year i’m not thinking about trades and any of that stuff he hasn’t done that okay and he’s not like jokic where like he never even like entertains the idea of this stuff he he puts the stuff is put out there by him or his camp and that’s why that’s part of why this stuff flows around now does espn eat it up and fan the flames yeah they do at every opportunity um but you know i i think that the realistic view is like giannis will say that he wants more than anything to win championship but i think there’s an aster i think he wants to win it on his terms i don’t think he wants a cheap championship he doesn’t want to go and do it like he he made fun of it when he won the championship in the presser right after he said like i could have gone to a super team like but but i want to do it here and it’s because it’s hard and you know he did that thing and i think he was 100% correct that’s that’s why his championship here was meaningful so i think like if we’re gonna you know keep it a buck or whatever the children say these days whatever the kids say how do you do fellow kids um he’s it looks like he wants to stay here because this is his home and he’s got enough loyalty whether it’s to the franchise to dame to his teammates because he’s i think sees this as a chance to potentially have fun having the ball in his hands and putting up huge numbers and showing the league what he can do when he’s the fulcrum of the bucks offense um you know for the sake of his ego because he’s out of unfinished business because he doesn’t like the way things have gone the last few playoffs i think all those things are kind of wrapped into and and i think he probably has some cold feet about the idea of like leaving and going to some place where he has to win a championship or he is a failure he will be an underachiever if he goes to another team he does not win a championship they will consider him an underachiever he is not an underachiever in life he will never be an underachiever in milwaukee but yeah there’s a lot that that’s a heavy decision to make and i think you know right now it seems like he’s happy to kind of keep going with where he is doesn’t mean that it’ll always be that the case but like we don’t need to i don’t know i just i don’t think we don’t need to turn everything into the freaking cuban missile crisis you know it’s yeah camille i’ll let you jump in here but it’s nauseating and we’ve talked about it a lot on this show that one of the last points you made frank he is not going to like oh victor webinyama go to the spurs and play with him that’s victor webbyama is the next star and that right now is his team like that’s not the scenario that a guy like giannis is going to sign up for i mean think about how much kevin durant was clowned for doing that exact thing he’s not going to do that and the other thing that’s driven me drove me the most crazy these past couple days is you know just as we had the conversation when the thunder won let’s be careful and not just jump into bed with dynasty they’re going to win the next five championships and yada yada yada knowing what the cap is to hear everybody on these shows for the last few days saying warriors rockets they’re keeping everything on ice right now because they can still go out and get giannis like have we not observed the last two summers with this where the model of dame and giannis on the same team in that cap situation that ain’t it anymore and it’s not as simple as we’re paying kevin durant $62 million let’s trade for giannis and add that you don’t win doing that so it would be a team that doesn’t have a star and doesn’t have one of those contracts i don’t know who that team is
i mean shoot y’all summed it up beautifully i don’t know if there’s too much more for me to add on the giannis tip outside of the fact that i’ll say this um things can change right i’m under the operate like assumption that going into this season he’s on board with what the bucks are planning to do he’s willing to be here so on and so forth but who knows what that looks like if at the trade deadline the bucks record is terrible or what happens next summer based on how you saying the unthinkable and they start the season 2 and 8 possibly nick or possibly justin possibly but like things can change but for right now like it seems like he wants to stay so all the other stuff around it i just kind of roll my eyes like it’s not happening now but i don’t look at it as like it could never happen but for the now we’re talking about a bugs team that was able to bring back some some key guys uh with indications that this is going to be a change in stylistic play for him going forward he’s here for it he’s on board with it and we’ll see how they continue to build around him to try to get milwaukee back into contention talk so
and i just and i think we all said it before too like look this is the scenario this is the year where we all complain like how is giannis not getting the proper respect and why isn’t he ranking where he is in mvp discussion this is the season to do it when it’s no expectations we’re going to play through you just as we did the last half or the last month of the season last year like that’s how you get in there like wow you see what giannis is doing and holy cow the bucks aren’t as terrible as we thought yeah um that’s how your name starts to pop up on those charts so now that uh we’re we’re bringing it to an end here i fully expect uh shams or somebody to announce within the next 10 minutes uh bucks intend to deandre aton intends to sign with the bucks or some other trade happens as soon as we uh we pull the plug on this one but certainly a very eventful day one for the bucks and one that like we said overall wow this was actually a good day for the bucks that uh able to keep these guys at very very friendly deals and still have one big piece left to use here in free agency we’ll see what that brings in the next couple of days who knows maybe the bucks have a big man uh in the overnight hours or at some point tomorrow we’ll get into that on the show tomorrow for frank and camille i’m justin we’ll talk with you once again tomorrow

Milwaukee Bucks shake up roster as free agency frenzy hits fever pitch. Is a championship-caliber team still within reach?

Justin Garcia, Camille Davis, and Frank Madden dissect the Bucks’ recent moves, including Brook Lopez’s departure and key re-signings. The trio analyzes potential targets like Deandre Ayton, cap space implications, and roster construction around Giannis Antetokounmpo. With the NBA landscape shifting, Milwaukee’s strategy for contention takes center stage.

Will the Bucks’ offseason maneuvers propel them back to title contention? Tune in for expert insights on Milwaukee’s path forward in a hyper-competitive Eastern Conference.

0:00 Brook Lopez leaves Bucks for Clippers
5:52 Bucks retain key players on friendly deals
11:48 Gary Trent Jr. re-signs on surprising contract
19:06 Speculation on Bucks’ plans for mid-level exception
25:34 Deandre Ayton linked to Bucks in free agency
31:49 Bucks’ roster needs and potential trade scenarios
38:42 Importance of retaining ball handlers and creators
45:55 Debating potential trades and roster construction
52:36 Analyzing Giannis’ future and media speculation
58:07 Outlook for Bucks’ upcoming season and moves

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