Is Myles Turner the KEY to another Bucks championship? 🔑 + MAXIMIZING Giannis’ prime 📈 🏆 | Get Up

Is Myles Turner the KEY to another Bucks championship? 🔑 + MAXIMIZING Giannis’ prime 📈 🏆 | Get Up

run the floor. Bobby Marks. Oklahoma City locking up Shay Gildris Alexander. Are they in position to keep their big three together this time? They are. They’ve got all 15 players under contract. They’re likely going to lock up Jaylen Williams and Chad Homegrren. Four potential first round picks next year. Flexibility of how they’ve staggered their contracts. Yes. I would say if there’s a team that can defeat the apron, it’s the Oklahoma City Thunder. Oklahoma City versus the Apron. It’ll be a It’ll be a fun show. Tim McMahon, should Nicole Joic be happy with what Denver’s done so far? Absolutely. Look, after they lost game seven at Oklahoma City, Joker stated the obvious. Denver needed more depth. They’ve done that. Jonas Valentunis, the best backup of the Joker era. Uh Bruce Brown, you know, that’s a championship piece off the bench. We’ve seen that. Tim Hardaway Jr., a veteran shooter. This is the best bench in the Joker era. He should absolutely be happy with that. Brian Windhorse, the Milwaukee Bucks really shook things up yesterday. They agreed to a deal with Miles Turner. They waved Damen Lillard. What do you think of all this that Milwaukeee’s up to? It’s very hard to stun the whole NBA. This stunned the whole NBA. Not so much because they, you know, were able to go out and get this piece, this new franchise center, but because of what they did to afford it, which was wave Dame Lillard and eat the final $113 million on his contract, which they will pay out in $22.5 million payments over the next five years on their cap. It is totally a robbing Peter to pay Paul extreme situation.
What? So, it’s a it’s a move they’re making presumably, Wendy, to to maximize a window they have with Giannis Antinako. But why is it, you know, you say robbing Peter to pay Paul, that that’s a bad thing. What What is it about this move that’s kind of irresponsible? I I don’t even think that’s accurate. I think it’s robbing Peter’s 401k to pay Paul’s lone shark bill, if you want my honest assessment of it. So because they they have you know they have look at the end of the day they have already exhausted all of their draft picks. They have exhausted all of their salary cap space. So now they are borrowing from five years from now salary cap space. And the acquisition of Miles Turner it’s very strong. Like we did not see this coming. The league didn’t see it coming. The Indiana Pacers really didn’t see it coming. But Miles Turner is not a transformational piece to the Bucks. He is an upgrade on a on Brook Lopez who had slowed down over the last couple of years. He will defend the rim. He will spread the floor for Giannis. It’s a really nice pickup, but the Bucks are still with this move in the middle of the pack in the win the Eastern Conference. Eastern Conference is the junior conference to the West. If you were ranking the teams with a chance to win the championship, they’re not in the top 10. and they now have a problem at long-term point guard that they cannot fix and they have $23 million less on their books to be able to do it over the next few years. It is a stunning move, a jaw-dropping move, but not unnecessarily a move that if I were Giannis, I would say I’m home free. I ain’t ever thinking about leaving Milwaukee.
Bon, what are you hearing around the league after these uh stunning jaw-dropping moves by Milwaukee?
Yeah, I mean I think Brian summed it up very well. You know, in the current odds, the Bucks had the eighth best odds to win the East, let alone the eighth best odds to win the title. So, they are very far away from being another championship level team, which Yat Koopo has said he wants to win multiple championships in his career, and so far he’s won one. And if you look at this situation overall, I was talking to an executive yesterday about how this went and they said, “This is exactly the kind of thing you’d come up with if you’re sitting in a boardroom in July trying to figure out a way to dig yourself out of the hole you’re in. But a couple years from now, you’re going to look back on it and say, “What were we doing?” And when you look at the amount of money that’s on the Bucks books long term, this is the kind of move you make when you don’t have another place to turn to try to have this team be as good as you can with Yiannis Tenkoup on. And as Brian said, yes, Miles Cerner is a nice piece. He is a rim protecting three-point shooting big. There are very few of them in the league. However, there is a $54 million hole on this team in the form of Damen Lillard, who was there last year, is no longer there. The Bucks do not have a replacement for him and do not have a way to replace him and they were only the fifth best team in the East last year. So, there is a lot of work to be done if the Bucks want to get anywhere near the place they hope to be, which is the top of the East and potentially a championship level team. Yeah, Tim McMahon Lillard was their big go for it move just two years ago. Now he’s gone. Uh it seems like the plan is changing all the time in Milwaukee. What did yesterday tell you about the state of the Bucks right now? Yeah, I mean it’s an admission that the Damen Lo trade was a complete disaster and there’s obviously massive misfortune here with this torn Achilles, but this was an allin massive swing that didn’t produce a single playoff series win. And you know, you talked about the credit card bill. They’re still paying off for the Drew Holiday trade. And then they flip Drew Holiday into Damen Lillard. They still owe picks on Lillard plus all this salary moving forward for the next 5 years. Damen Lillard was supposed to be the transformational piece for the Milwaukee Bucks and now he is a financial albatross for them moving forward.
Take us through a little bit of what the Bucks are confronting here in terms of the financials over the next few years.
Yeah, so they took the $13 million of that Damen Lillard contract and waved it over five years. It’s a $22.5 million cap hit. Dan, when you look at how you’re building rosters, we usually do it in a three-year window as far as projecting long term. I think when you have a generational player like Giannis on your roster, you’re almost in a one-year window. You’re almost year-to-year how you’re going to about going to build the roster. This was their only get out of jail free card. If Damen Lillard doesn’t get hurt in that Indiana series, we’re not talking about this right now because he’s still on the roster and they’re still trying to figure out how they can add to their roster with limited means here. This was the way to go out and get a center, but it then leaves you a void at point guard here. That’s going to be the biggest question moving forward. Did this roster get better? Did it stay stagnant? Or did it get worse? So presumably a lot of what they’re doing is to try and convince Giannis to stay long term. and Tim McMahon. It feels like that’s been the story of Milwaukee since I can remember paying attention uh to Giannis’s career. I do do you think they have done enough to convince him to stick around long term? The the Drew Holiday trade got Yiannis to commit long term. Then the Damen Lillard trade got him to commit long term. At this point, I don’t know if the question is what do they have to do to keep Giannis happy? I think it’s how bleak do things have to get for Giannis to look to leave. if if he was looking for reasons to leave, they’re there. I mean, they haven’t had recent playoff success. They’ve been getting bounced in the first round. If he was eager to get out of Milwaukee, he’d be at the door pounding on it right now. So, I don’t know the answer. But, uh, again, I I don’t think it’s about making Giannis happy. I think it’s just they’re in a state where they’re trying to maximize their chances to win each season with Giannis at the expense of the long term. Are they doing that? Are they a real contender right now? No, they’re not a real contender. But if the question is, have you convinced Giannis to stay? It’s like McMahon said, I think that Giannis is looking for reasons to stay in Milwaukee. If he wanted to leave, he would have made noise about wanting to leave by now. There would have been plenty of reasons to. They lost three years in a row in the first round. They are not a team that looks like they’re a championship level team. It’s also totally understandable and reasonable if he says, “Hey, I’ve won a championship in Milwaukee. I want to spend my career with one team.” I mean, we’ve seen Dirk Ninsky do that. Steph Curry’s on his way to doing that. Tim Duncan did that. Kobe Bryant did that. That’s the, you know, a lot of the all-time great players have done that, but it’s a matter of whether he wants to win multiple championships. It’s hard to see how that happens with the Bucks.
Wendy, final word on on the Pacers end of this, please. That 10 days ago, they’re in game seven of the finals. Now, they lose Miles Turner. What What’s going on in Indiana?
Let me just say one more thing about Giannis. Sure.
I was in Cleveland in 2010. Okay. I understand the desperation of a franchise that is worried about losing a star player. If this method was available to the Cavs in 2010, they might have waved two players and still been paying off those if they thought they could have kept LeBron James for another year. The Bucks when between Kareem Abdul Jabbar leaving and Giannis leading them to the finals in 2021, 40 years passed. 40 years between their finals appearances. So, I understand the desperation that they are feeling and I I can get why this is happening. I’m just not sure this moved the ball forward. And that’s what I think is there is a visceral reaction in Indiana. 10 days ago it was game seven. They were up seven or 10 to two to start that game. Tyresese Hallebertton looked like he might be on his way to a 40point generational performance. And it’s been extremely disappointing since then because now even when Tyrese Hallebertton comes back, I’m not sure who’s going to be playing center for them. And Indiana hasn’t paid the luxury tax in 20 years. And there was a real belief, not just in the league, but in Indiana, that the ownership was going to invest in this team.
We’re going to talk about it here. You go back to June 22nd, right before game seven of the finals, Kevin Durant reshaped the Western Conference when he was traded from Phoenix to Houston in a deal that sent two players and six draft picks the other way. Later that night, in game seven, Pacers star Tyrese Hallebertton was off to a great start. They tore his Achilles uh and he could miss most if not all of next season. And then the Celtics stripped down some of their roster when in separate trades they moved Drew Holiday and Chris’s Porzingis M moves purely money related to save over $250 million in salary and tax. So with the Celtics and Bucks both dealing with roster issues, it’s really opened up the Eastern Conference to some new teams. At this same point last year, you had teams like Orlando, Atlanta, Cleveland, and Detroit with massive odds against them to win the NBA title. But now the odds have those teams squarely in the mix. Detroit went from a,000 to1 down to 40 to1. Atlanta’s down to 25 to1. The Magic and the Cavs are sitting there at around 10 to one. So Tim Bontemps, we look at all that’s happened in the East here in just a couple of weeks. Like who’s the big winner so far? I mean, to me, it’s the two teams that were sitting at the top of the conference last year that haven’t had significant losses, and that’s the Cleveland Cavaliers and the New York Knicks. You look last year at this time, the Boston Celtics were seen as the big bad team in the East. The Indiana Pacers were coming off making a conference finals appearance, and even 10 days ago, going into game seven of the conference finals, you would have looked at the Pacers as a team going into next season as the clear favorites to make it back to the NBA finals. Instead, Jason Tatum tears his Achilles, Tyrese Hallebertton tears his Achilles. Those two teams lose significant players. Boston loses. Chris Asporzingis and Drew Holiday. The Pacers obviously lost Miles Turner yesterday. Those teams are out of the mix and now the Knicks and Cavs are sitting there to me as the clear-cut top two teams in the Eastern Conference.
Tim McMahon, do you agree? I think you can put the Cavs and the Knicks as the favorites, but I think the teams that have made the biggest leaps over these last couple weeks have been the Orlando Magic and the Atlanta Hawks. and the Magic, you know, I mean, it was a couple weeks ago, but their trade for Desmond Bane, you could look at the picks package they gave up and accused him of overpaying, but this is a guy who’s going to be a great fit for a team that had a glaring need for some offensive punch, for some juice in that starting lineup as a shooter, as a guy who create. And this is a team that’s pouncing on the opportunity. They haven’t won a playoff series since Dwight Howard was in Orlando. And then the Hawks have just strung together good move after good move after good move. Their best move won’t pay off until next year. That’s a trade they made on draft night to get an unprotected pick from the New Orleans Pelicans. But bringing in Porzingis, Nquille Alexander Walker, they’ve really surrounded Trey Young with length, with athleticism, with shooting, and they look to be a team that can be a factor in the Eastern Conference. Now,
Bobby, who do you think has benefited the most from all this shifting around in the East?
Yeah, I mean, I think certainly New York, and they went out and got Gershon Yabaselli and and Jordan Clarkson. Now, they have a nine, you go nine deep with that roster. Now, we’re certainly an Achilles for them last year. I think Cleveland also, I mean, we we forget this Cleveland team won 64 games last year and were the best team in the Eastern Conference for the whole year. And they go out and get Lonzo Ball and they resigned Sarah Merrill. Of course, the health of Daryus Garland’s going to be a a big factor here. So, I I look at what those two teams did just based off last year. And then, of course, what what Tim had said of I think you can’t overlook um certainly Orlando and Atlanta, two teams that have made a lot of progress this offseason. [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause]

Brian Windhorst, Tim MacMahon, Tim Bontemps and Bobby Marks join Dan Graziano on Get Up to discuss the Milwaukee Bucks’ offseason storylines after releasing Damian Lillard and acquiring Myles Turner from the Indiana Pacers.

0:00 Run the Floor
1:55 Have the Bucks convinced Giannis to stay?
3:00 The Bucks acquiring Myles Turner
8:09 How does losing Myles Turner affect the Indiana Pacers?
10:56 Which team in the East is having the best offseason?
12:45 Which team would benefit most from a shift in the East?

☑️ Subscribe to ESPN+: https://plus.espn.com/
📱 Get the ESPN App: http://www.espn.com/espn/apps/espn
🏀 Subscribe to NBA on ESPN on YouTube: http://bit.ly/2yxs3Og
☑️ Subscribe to ESPN on YouTube: http://es.pn/SUBSCRIBEtoYOUTUBE
☑️ Watch ESPN on YouTube TV: http://es.pn/YouTubeTV

#ESPN #NBA