Bucks News, Transactions, Trade Ideas: KPJ confirmed ankle sprain after MRI

[Ron Swanson]

A better shooting Sprewell is a super-max contract All-NBA dude in today's league. I just wanna see KPJ put together more than 30-odd games of very solid starter/rotation guy ball before I start calling him a budding superstar.

[raferfenix]

They will have early bird rights on GTJ and KPJ, meaning they can pay them both close to full MLE money without using the MLE to do so. Cole would need cap space or MLE to sign for anything more than the min plus a small percentage raise. No one else needs to be re-signed.

GTJ in theory could receive a full MLE offer from someone else but idk if I see it.

Rather if he's slotted as a backup 2/3 here he might go for equalish money elsewhere with a bigger role.

Or the Bucks decide they don't want to give him a bigger / longer term deal either way.

Cole Anthony seems ahead of GTJ in the pecking order to me considering how much we can use true PG play -- with big caveat of extremely small sample size so far.

If KPJ were to resemble anything remotely like a Sprewell who can shoot ( ) we'd have trouble keeping him at MLE dollars. But the Bucks could put him on the Bobby track where we structure the deal to get to full bird rights with a wink and a nod if not an Aspiration contract.

[soxperry]

If Trent wanted to go somewhere else he would have already. Its clear as day that he is biding his time to get full bird rights here. Hes not leaving. Cole could take the same path. Hes not going to get offered a starter position somewhere else and hes important here, so why not?

[soxperry]

The thing about KPJ is that we should be treating him like hes 23 not 25. His progress was interrupted (not that it wasnt his fault) and now hes finally able to go back to development. A player with his ceiling needs to be given every opportunity to see what they are capable of.

So while he currently struggles at processing reads at times, so what? Its part of the process. A quicker Harden who plays much better defense but isnt quite as pure of a scorer is not out of the realm of possibility. Not that i want to see him actually do the Harden offense...im just saying i see a path towards a similar skill set.

If he wants to work on it, im pretty sure he could become a very solid foul merchant, too. Hes got the body control and reflexes. No idea what his actual work ethic is like though.

Hes in a very unique position where there are championship aspirations without championship expectations. We can have our cake and eat it too, so to speak: Develop and Win at the same time.

I didn't think i would enjoy Bucks basketball much without Kpj on the court this season but that intuition was flat wrong. But man i cant wait to see him out there again doing his thing.

[jakecronus8]

Wouldn't get too caught up with position designations. Modern basketball has two positions. Big and Wing.

Roles come down to matchups. For all intents and purposes, our actual point guard is Giannis.

[soxperry]

Wouldn't get too caught up with position designations. Modern basketball has two positions. Big and Wing.

Roles come down to matchups. For all intents and purposes, our actual point guard is Giannis.

If KPJ can guard wings though...thats huge

[emunney]

A better shooting Sprewell is a super-max contract All-NBA dude in today's league. I just wanna see KPJ put together more than 30-odd games of very solid starter/rotation guy ball before I start calling him a budding superstar.

I think we were talking ceiling. At least I was. I've always felt his was perennial all-star, but he's got a lot of gap to close this year if he's going to sniff that level.

[engelmartin]

A better shooting Sprewell is a super-max contract All-NBA dude in today's league. I just wanna see KPJ put together more than 30-odd games of very solid starter/rotation guy ball before I start calling him a budding superstar.

I think we were talking ceiling. At least I was. I've always felt his was perennial all-star, but he's got a lot of gap to close this year if he's going to sniff that level.

Until KPJ plays five games in a row, can we withhold observation?

Bonus: We're awesome without him, so anything he does is just a bonus