Shams: Kuz and Baldwin to Bucks for Middleton, Johnson, '28 Pick Swap

[Kanyewest]

Kuzma's game really fell off a cliff this year. Not that he was that good in the first place but we should consider ourselves lucky that we were able to get rid of him. Should have traded him last year.

Dallas trade seemed contingent on him waiving his trade kicker. Anthony Davis even didn't take his trade kicker IIRC.

Wizards might have ended up with a better offer especially considering Middleton (went 6-4 in a stretch before shutting him down) AJ Johnson, and the Bucks swap which is looking juicy now if Giannis asks out. Plus the Wizards ended up getting Dallas's first anyways for Gafford.

It worked out luckily because the Bucks were desperate, but yeah you are right that you can't always count on the incompetence of other team's front offices I suppose.

[Endless Loop]

The Wiz REALLY need to be bad next year, else they lose their pick and the potential lottery roll on the pick swap.

Keeping Middleton and Smart around for half a season or more won't help the tank at all. If they showcase the two for trades, then youth won't be served and they might win too much. We'll all moan about not giving minutes to 1st and 2nd year players just like this year (and last year). They might be better off waiving one of the two so they can keep a spot open for somebody who could potentially fit their long term plans. If it came down to waiving Smart or waiving Tristan, I think I'd keep Tristan. Would be good for Smart (who could sign elsewhere for the vet minimum), the young player, and draft position. Salary expense hit would not be big, either.

[pcbothwel]

The Wiz REALLY need to be bad next year, else they lose their pick and the potential lottery roll on the pick swap.

Keeping Middleton and Smart around for half a season or more won't help the tank at all. If they showcase the two for trades, then youth won't be served and they might win too much. We'll all moan about not giving minutes to 1st and 2nd year players just like this year (and last year). They might be better off waiving one of the two so they can keep a spot open for somebody who could potentially fit their long term plans. If it came down to waiving Smart or waiving Tristan, I think I'd keep Tristan. Would be good for Smart (who could sign elsewhere for the vet minimum), the young player, and draft position. Salary expense hit would not be big, either.

Unless they pull a Brogdon and completely fall off/are hurt, that would be a hard sell.
Smart & Midds are productive vets, that play defense, have PO experience, and are expiring. There is a substantive value gap between that and a non-productive vet with a bad contract.... Im greedy and want that value difference.
Beal, Dame, Jrue, Wiggins, KCP, etc. all expire in summer of 2027, and I could see Midds/Smart being options for all their teams

[nate33]

The Wiz REALLY need to be bad next year, else they lose their pick and the potential lottery roll on the pick swap.

Keeping Middleton and Smart around for half a season or more won't help the tank at all. If they showcase the two for trades, then youth won't be served and they might win too much. We'll all moan about not giving minutes to 1st and 2nd year players just like this year (and last year). They might be better off waiving one of the two so they can keep a spot open for somebody who could potentially fit their long term plans. If it came down to waiving Smart or waiving Tristan, I think I'd keep Tristan. Would be good for Smart (who could sign elsewhere for the vet minimum), the young player, and draft position. Salary expense hit would not be big, either.

Please list the teams you think will be worse than the Wizards next year, assuming the Wizards are playing Bilal, Sarr, Bub, Kyshawn and their two FRP's 25+ minutes per game. Can you name 6 teams?

[doclinkin]

The Wiz REALLY need to be bad next year, else they lose their pick and the potential lottery roll on the pick swap.

Keeping Middleton and Smart around for half a season or more won't help the tank at all. If they showcase the two for trades, then youth won't be served and they might win too much. We'll all moan about not giving minutes to 1st and 2nd year players just like this year (and last year). They might be better off waiving one of the two so they can keep a spot open for somebody who could potentially fit their long term plans. If it came down to waiving Smart or waiving Tristan, I think I'd keep Tristan. Would be good for Smart (who could sign elsewhere for the vet minimum), the young player, and draft position. Salary expense hit would not be big, either.

We may pull some sort of trade on draft day. Smart still has value, both here and elsewhere. I think Kispert will be in talks, as well as Holmes. KMidd has a player option, so that part is up to him, there's a solid chance we arrange a sign & trade to give him slightly longer term security somewhere rather one year of big money then hunting another deal. But if he picks up his option we will play him and trade him.

What they won't do is simply waive either guy and eat the money. They collect assets in order to recoup value. Both have value to other teams for what they can do on the floor when healthy, as well as as large expiring contracts. Teams all saw how the Bucks cratered without Middleton's experience and savvy. He is Mr Plus Minus, always registers a positive effect in this stat. Smart is a defensive maven, I think we keep him a while to mentor out young pups as he seems to have embraced the role. He's auditioning for a coaching job these past couple stops.

Unless the young pups come back having made a significant leap forward, I don't think there is any way we endanger the tank. We will play young players heavy minutes, bring vets off the bench or play them short minutes and cry load management, let them pad their stats against back-ups, looks for offers in the market whenever they have a good game or streak. Then sell them off. Both players have skill sets that our young pups can learn from. But neither is good enough to turn an entire team around.

[The Consiglieri]

Kuzma's game really fell off a cliff this year. Not that he was that good in the first place but we should consider ourselves lucky that we were able to get rid of him. Should have traded him last year.

Only thing I'd say is that it's technically possible AJ Johnson+that pick swap+Middleton's expiring in '26 deal prove to be more valuable than two first rounders from Dallas. Not really sure, but considering what we were able to do this winter, it was infinitely better than I expected with Kuzma circling the drain last winter. We've done a remarkable job shipping out horrific contracts to idiotic teams for limited payouts that, except for Wall, actually had some attractive pieces attached.

If we ever get good (in this attempted to tear down and rebuild, or the next if we need to try again), we'll need to remember these two approaches that have habitually proven to be horrific (don't pay off another teams horrible contract, w/the idea that he's the last piece we need, and don't send out futures/pick swaps under the pretension you're a contender going forward for the next half decade).

[The Consiglieri]

The Wiz REALLY need to be bad next year, else they lose their pick and the potential lottery roll on the pick swap.

Keeping Middleton and Smart around for half a season or more won't help the tank at all. If they showcase the two for trades, then youth won't be served and they might win too much. We'll all moan about not giving minutes to 1st and 2nd year players just like this year (and last year). They might be better off waiving one of the two so they can keep a spot open for somebody who could potentially fit their long term plans. If it came down to waiving Smart or waiving Tristan, I think I'd keep Tristan. Would be good for Smart (who could sign elsewhere for the vet minimum), the young player, and draft position. Salary expense hit would not be big, either.

Please list the teams you think will be worse than the Wizards next year, assuming the Wizards are playing Bilal, Sarr, Bub, Kyshawn and their two FRP's 25+ minutes per game. Can you name 6 teams?

The teams I'm afraid of are the usual suspects:
Utah
Charlotte
New Orleans

Teams that end up imploding:
Milwaukee
Phoenix
Philly
Dallas
Miami

And then the second tier craptacular sides:
Toronto
Brooklyn
Portland

What makes '25-'26 scary is that there's really plenty of reason to think Toronto, Brooklyn, and Portland could fall back off. All 3 were expected to be much worse than they were this past season, what if '24-'25 was an outlier, and they all fall back to 20ish win teams?

The other scary piece is that Milwaukee and Phoenix, and Dallas are all fundamentally broken and hopeless. They have traded away futures in I think all three cases, and so can't really tank, otoh, maybe they can't avoid sucking because of how thoroughly they screwed up their windows. On top of them are Miami and Philly, both teams fell off a cliff after losing their franchise guys, 1 to a trade, the other to injury. How bad could they be in '25-'26?


I tend to agree w/you. Unless we win the lottery or land the 2nd pick, it's really hard for me to envision this team winning more than 15-23 games next year, how much improvement would we see with a Flagg or a Harper landing with this group? I'd imagine it would just move us to 19-26. So a touch of risk there.

Now you also have the reality that there are fundamentally 4 truly horrible teams pre-lottery in us, Utah, Charlotte, and New Orleans, and another 2 or 3 that could be truly horrible if '24-'25 was an outlier, and there are 5 teams that have had their builds fail and are slowly collapsing in that Milwaukee through Miami group.

So is there a risk? I think there is. But how much of one? I'd put the odds at probably 15-25% we lose the pick if finish top 2 in the lottery and probably at 3-5% if we get hosed, and land a 3-6 pick.

We'll have a better idea when Vegas comes out with their post draft and FA Over/Under Total's. Vegas won't be setting a stupid #, they aren't in favor of giving away money, they'll try and set it as specifically as possible. Last year our total was 22, I won my under bet on that, but it ended up way closer than it looked on February 1st.

[AFM]

It's not impossible we win 30 games next year depending on who we draft.

What pace were we at again after the Kuzma trade? Now factor in expected improvements from our young core + Flagg (?) + Dairy Queen = 30 wins

[AFM]

Stolen from the bucks board:

Watch on YouTube

[nate33]

The teams I'm afraid of are the usual suspects:
Utah
Charlotte
New Orleans

Teams that end up imploding:
Milwaukee
Phoenix
Philly
Dallas
Miami

And then the second tier craptacular sides:
Toronto
Brooklyn
Portland

What makes '25-'26 scary is that there's really plenty of reason to think Toronto, Brooklyn, and Portland could fall back off. All 3 were expected to be much worse than they were this past season, what if '24-'25 was an outlier, and they all fall back to 20ish win teams?

The other scary piece is that Milwaukee and Phoenix, and Dallas are all fundamentally broken and hopeless. They have traded away futures in I think all three cases, and so can't really tank, otoh, maybe they can't avoid sucking because of how thoroughly they screwed up their windows. On top of them are Miami and Philly, both teams fell off a cliff after losing their franchise guys, 1 to a trade, the other to injury. How bad could they be in '25-'26?

I think it breaks out like this:

• Utah: Will probably behave much like us. They will play exclusively young guys, but they will try and win with them without too much concern for intentional tanking early on. As the season winds on, they could shift to a full tanking stance.
• Brooklyn: Their owner wants to win and they have a lot of free agency money they have to spend. I don't think they will start the season with a plan to tank, but, like Utah, they might be pretty quick to shift to a tanking stance if they have a slow start.
• Charlotte: They have too many good young players to be starting the season with the intent to tank. They have LaMelo, Miller, Bridges, Williams and a top 6 pick from this draft. They're going to try. And that means they'll probably win at least 30 in the East unless they have lots of injuries.
• New Orleans: They were absolutely devastated by injuries this year. Zion missed 52. Herb Jones missed 62. Ingram missed 64. Murray missed 51. Murphy missed 29. They were a playoff team the year prior. Yeah, they lost the Daniels for Murray trade, but that doesn't turn them into one of the worst 3 teams in the league. They opted to tank last season because the rash of injuries made playoff contention hopeless. That won't be the plan this year.
• Milwaukee: They don't control their picks. They have no incentive to tank. They will try, which means 30+ wins in the East. They'll either keep Giannis, or trade him for good young players. They won't trade for future picks because they definitely don't want to tank while another team reaps the benefits.
• Phoenix: They don't control their picks. They will try. If they do tank, that's good for us anyhow because we have swap rights.
• Philly: They tanked because Embiid and George were hurt. They're not going to maintain a $180M payroll and tank in back-to-back seasons - particularly when they have Maxey and McCain as good young guards and a top 6 pick from the 2025 draft.
• Dallas: They are totally in win-now mode with the veteran Davis on their roster. Ownership is going to be desperate to try and prove that the Luka trade wasn't a total disaster so I seriously doubt they will tank. My guess is that they trade a center (Gafford or Lively) for a good wing to rebalance their roster and be a competent team.
• Portland: They didn't tank this year. Why would they tank next year?
• Miami: They have never tanked in the past - always opting to retool in free agency.

So basically, it's just Utah and probably Brooklyn who are a pretty sure bet to be bad, which means they could commit to tanking pretty early in the season. A couple of teams like Philly, Dallas, New Orleans and Charlotte rely upon injury-prone stars so an early injury might get them to consider a mid-season change of course into tanking mode, but they won't start out that way. Let's assume 1 of them ends up tanking. That's 3 teams that might be worse than us. Let's assume two other teams out of left field also end up tanking. That's 5 teams. We should be good. If we finish with the 6th worst record, we will have a 96% chance at landing a top 8 pick and not having to convey it. A 5th worst record gives us a 99.4% shot at a top 8 pick.

I think it's important to understand that we are the only team in the league that is both terrible in talent and has a pick-protection motivation to tank. No team has less talent than us except maybe Utah and Brooklyn. And no other tanking team has their own pick at stake in a protected pick scenario. Most of our tanking competition has the inverse, they have a motivation NOT to tank because they don't own their pick at all.