The Damian Lillard Decision Is INSANE…

The Damian Lillard Decision Is INSANE…

NBA free agency day two has started with an absolute shocker. Damen Lillard is no longer a Milwaukee Buck. They have cut him from the team. They have waved and stretched his contract in order to sign Miles Turner. Two moves that honestly I didn’t even realize were possible before the day started. So, here’s what happened. It’s announced that the Bucks are signing Miles Turner to a contract that frankly they just can’t sign him to. It doesn’t seem possible. It’s four years and $107 million. And it’s interesting, too, because the Pacers were expected to bring back Miles Turner, be willing to pay the tax. There was a report during the finals, like a sideline reporter was mentioning, hey, we’ve talked to the owners, they’re confident they’re bringing back Miles Turner, could be 25 plus million a year. Then the finals go the way that they do. Tyres Hallebert and Teres Achilles. And all of a sudden, they are not as excited about paying the tax. And they’re offering Miles Turner things like 3 years, $60 million, which is still a bunch of money, but a little bit less than Miles Turner is worth. So then the Bucks sign him to 4 years and $107 million. And everybody’s looking around wondering how is that possible? The Bucks don’t have cap space. This is more than the middle level exception. This is more than the middle level exception the Bucks have access to. So I’m assuming this is some kind of a signing trade scenario or a salary dump. And then a few minutes later we get this. Damen Lillard is just not a Milwaukee Buck anymore. He had two years and $111 million left on his contract. and the Bucks waved and stretched his contract to create the salary cap space to add Miles Turner. So now you have Giannis, you have Miles Turner, and not a whole lot else there in Milwaukee. And obviously this has a lot to do with Dame’s injury and a bunch of other storylines here. Where is Dame going to go next? But first, I feel obligated to explain how exactly this works. Like how is Dame just not on the Bucks anymore if it’s not a buyout or anything else? Well, essentially, we don’t see the waved and stretched thing used a lot, but the Bucks are able to take Damen Lillard’s $113 million that is owed on his contract and stretch it out over five seasons. They can cut him from the team and they’re going to pay him as $13 million and it’s going to count on the salary cap, but it’s going to count over five years rather than over two. So $22.5 million for Damen Lillard is going to be on the Bucks salary cap on their payroll this coming season and for four more years following. So essentially the Bucks are working with 22 23 million less for salary cap for payroll purposes than every other team in the league for the next five seasons just so that they don’t have dame on their books this off seasonason so that they can add Miles Turner. It’s a provision that is not used a ton. This is by far the biggest salary it has ever been used for. And again, it’s all happening for two main reasons. One, because Dame tore Achilles and isn’t going to be on the Bucks next year. They need to find a way to improve around Giannis so he doesn’t leave. And two, because Tyres Hallebertton tore his Achilles and the Pacers suddenly, after making this run to the finals, weren’t willing to pay Miles Turner what he was worth and go into the tax to pay him. There’s not that big of a difference in average annual value between what the Pacers were offering Miles Turner and what the Bucks ultimately gave him. that there’s one extra year and it’s just more money overall. And it’s money that the Pacers and their owners were just not willing to pay, which is a pretty shocking development for a team that was just in the NBA finals. And again, all of this gets dictated by two massively devastating Achilles injuries for the Bucks and the Pacers. If Dame doesn’t tear his Achilles, the angst around Giannis, the concern around Giannis isn’t nearly as bad because you still have Damen Lillard and you still have Giannis. But without Dame on the team next year, whether it be because of injury or now because he’s just not on the roster, they felt even more pressure to improve the team and obviously understand that Dame is going to play at most one more season with them once he comes back the following year from the Achilles and then his contract would run out. So at this point, they felt like it was more beneficial to just cut him from the team in general. So what that means is that Damen Lillard is now a free agent. It’s not expected that he is going to be able to play at all this upcoming season, but he can go ahead and sign with a team. There’s obviously going to be a bunch of teams interested because this is still Damen Lillard and even though he wasn’t as good uh even before he tore his Achilles, he’s still really really good. Still going to have a couple years presumably left in his career even post Achilles injury. And he’s going to be a very interesting piece now all of a sudden in the free agency market because there were a bunch of teams that had, you know, the full mid-level exception or the small mid-level exception that we’re offering to all these different players that now might pivot in a different direction as a result of Damen Lillard being available. And of course, the number one team that comes to mind here is the Miami Heat. A team that Dame wanted to go to in the first place when he requested a trade from Portland. a team that he still wanted to go to even after arriving in Milwaukee and a team that is always on the lookout for ways to improve their roster in terms of adding stars. And I can’t really think of a better buy low scenario for the Miami Heat than just signing Damen Lillard to a very small contract, waiting out the year, and then adding him to the roster the following season. It remains to be seen if the interest is still there between those two sides. Remains to be seen where Dame actually wants to go, what his recovery timeline is going to look like. But Damen Lillard is now just a free agent. And in the shock of all of this, people aren’t really evaluating what exactly this means for Milwaukee now over the next couple of seasons because you have Miles Turner and you have Giannis. And defensively, that’s going to be fantastic for them. Brook Lopez is gone. He’s gone to the Clippers. They brought back Bobby Cordis. They brought back a couple of other guys. And obviously in the back court, they’re going to be struggling without DNE. But that was always going to be the case because Dame’s not going to play because of the injury this year. But now with Miles Turner in the front court, it gives them an an interesting combination because the power of Brook Lopez there was that he was this floor spacing big and that allowed Giannis to play so much at the rim. And Miles Turner, although he’s not as good of a three-point shooter as Brook Lopez, can do some similar things and isn’t someone that is part of this aging core that the Bucks have really had over the last couple of seasons. Chris Middleton’s gone, of course, now Dame is gone. They bring in Koozma, they bring in Miles Turner, and that’s their front court moving forward. It’s definitely an interesting combination. My thing is I wonder if they’re just doing a little bit too much here in trying to retain Giannis. I’ve been kind of speculating in some of these Giannis videos that if you really gave the Bucks Truth serum, if you really asked them, hey, what would you like to do this off seasonason? I think there are probably some people within the organization that would say, yeah, it probably makes sense to go ahead and move Giannis. Now, this is pretty much peak value for him. There’s going to be a bunch of teams around the league that are going to be interested. They don’t really have any core pieces moving forward and they didn’t really have a way to put together a top tier competitive team around Giannis. And even in a weak Eastern Conference now moving forward with all these different guys injured, maybe you could convince yourselves that the Bucks are going to be a top four team in the East now with making this move. But even with all those things considered, this feels like a extremely desperate move on the part of the Milwaukee Bucks because this is something that affects your franchise for the next five seasons. It’s like Damen Lillard’s contract is going to be on your books until Giannis is like 36 or 37. And that’s assuming that he’s even still on the team at that point. And they also haven’t gotten a new long-term commitment from Giannis in the first place. He’s signed to a contract for the next couple of seasons, but he hasn’t really fully told anyone, at least we haven’t been told publicly, that he is going to stay and not request a trade. I’m assuming that’s the case now because they wouldn’t have made this move, I would assume, without that kind of commitment from Giannis on staying longterm. But it’s a very desperate move. That’s what it feels like to me. And obviously the other side of this wasn’t great for Milwaukee either. That’s why we’re having all these conversations about Giannis possibly asking out this offseason because the other option was waiting out the year with Dame not really doing anything and just kind of sitting on the bench chilling. And then you’ve got Koosman and you’ve got Giannis and whoever else they were going to be able to retain in free agency. I’m just not convinced that this is all that much better of a position when you account for where the contract is going to be on their books over the next 5 years. And Miles Turner, although a good player, is not someone that necessarily puts them over the top. And they don’t really have a ton of other assets to continue to add to this group. So, I’m not really sure how exactly this is supposed to save the Giannis era. And it more so feels like they’re putting a band-aid on a very bad situation. And really the bottom line to me is it is crazy the ripple effect of all of these different injuries that we’ve had in the postseason. You got Jason Tatum with his Achilles and then all of a sudden the Celtics are basically getting rid of half their rotation from a team that won the title just a year ago basically. Then you have the Pacers getting rid of a key piece of their finals team and Miles Turner and now missing Tyresese Hallebertton due to injury next year. And then you have the Bucks just getting rid of Damen Lillard and where he could be a year from now is now completely determined by the fact that the Bucks just decided to cut him so that they could add Miles Turner. And all of these things happen because of injuries and because of the same injury. And it’s something that we are going to be look back on as probably the legacy of the 2025 postseason and offseason. the how much injuries truly impacted all of these moves and some of these crazy moves like Damen Lillard just being a free agent.

In a SHOCKING move, Damian Lillard is now a free agent. The Milwaukee Bucks just waived and stretched his contract – which has MASSIVE implications over the next 5 years for the Bucks and Giannis Antetokounmpo – in order to sign Indiana Pacers center Myles Turner to a massive contract in NBA free agency.

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