Khris Middleton Thread

[coolhandluke121]

you mean were not allowed to look back months later and search 100 different contracts and pick the 1-2 we like better than the guy we got?

When one of those guys was your own RFA and the others all signed for a little less than the cap space you had, why not? The Bucks were clearly a desirable destination.

[ReasonablySober]

you mean were not allowed to look back months later and search 100 different contracts and pick the 1-2 we like better than the guy we got?

When one of those guys was your own RFA and the others all signed for a little less than the cap space you had, why not? The Bucks were clearly a desirable destination.

Yea, so much so that our RFA wanted the hell out. If you want to play a what if game I can just as easily say Brogdon would have played for the QO and left as a UFA next summer.

[paulpressey25]

I'll be disappointed if they dont trade Middleton sometime between Jan. 15 and Jul 31. They made a mistake, it's time to fix it before it festers.

In concept, I’d agree. Cash out at the deadline, while he’s still got probably positive value.

The problem is the chemistry issue. The team is on track to make it to the Finals. It would take balls of steel to chance disrupting that. Could backfire massively.

[mattg]

Like I’ve been saying forever, we aren’t really a worse team without Khris, just different. If you try and just straight plug someone in to do exactly what Khris does the results won’t be as good, but if you adjust play style a bit as we did, we’re fine. No coincidence that we won every game.

[EastSideBucksFan]

I'll be disappointed if they dont trade Middleton sometime between Jan. 15 and Jul 31. They made a mistake, it's time to fix it before it festers.

In concept, I’d agree. Cash out at the deadline, while he’s still got probably positive value.

The problem is the chemistry issue. The team is on track to make it to the Finals. It would take balls of steel to chance disrupting that. Could backfire massively.

After Giannis had his 50 point game on Monday, he unprompted, said how excited he was for Middleton to come back.

ie, he doesn't want to have to feel he needs to score 50 points.

You don't trade a boat anchor of a contract like Mids during Year 1 unless some insane offer comes our way.

Too risky right before Giannis supermax.

If Bucks fall short of an NBA championship this year and you can point out how little help Mids offers and you have an offer in hand to help win now, you can sell Giannis on it then. Maybe.

[SirChurros]

They're not going to trade Middleton.

If they trade any one of the "big" names, it's going to be Bledsoe for a point guard who is more of a shooter. Still think that's very unlikely, as well.

Or they move picks and a vet or two for someone along the lines of Bogdan.

[jimmybones]

Are we really making the argument that Middleton wasn't missed quite a bit? We've needed some super human performances from Giannis to win some of these games. The supporting cast hasn't exactly lit it up over the last few weeks. We desperately need a #2 scoring option out there that can consistently put in 20ish points and take some pressure off the other guys on the court.

Yeah man, we needed a literal historic god tier performance to beat the one good team we played in that stretch, at home.

I have friends off this board that said all the Bucks losses were with Midds and they're undefeated without him. Ignoring the context of who they played - now THAT is lacking nuance.

[Ruben Quevedo]

I'll be disappointed if they dont trade Middleton sometime between Jan. 15 and Jul 31. They made a mistake, it's time to fix it before it festers.

In concept, I’d agree. Cash out at the deadline, while he’s still got probably positive value.

The problem is the chemistry issue. The team is on track to make it to the Finals. It would take balls of steel to chance disrupting that. Could backfire massively.

After Giannis had his 50 point game on Monday, he unprompted, said how excited he was for Middleton to come back.

ie, he doesn't want to have to feel he needs to score 50 points.

You don't trade a boat anchor of a contract like Mids during Year 1 unless some insane offer comes our way.

Too risky right before Giannis supermax.

If Bucks fall short of an NBA championship this year and you can point out how little help Mids offers and you have an offer in hand to help win now, you can sell Giannis on it then. Maybe.

If it's a boat anchor, wouldn't you want to get rid of it as soon as possible for anything of positive value? The longer we hold on to it, the more difficult to move it becomes (at least until it becomes an expiring).

Giannis is a great teammate and will always say the right things. A GM he is not though, and we shouldn't be doling out max contracts to mediocre players or refuse to trade said player because we are afraid to hurt his feelings. A strong and skilled GM will do what's best for the team and justify his decisions accordingly.

[raferfenix]

Trading Middleton for anything other than a clear upgrade on the court would be suicidal with Giannis’ extension decision looming.

We don’t need picks or cap space to help us in future seasons.

We need Giannis to extend and then we can figure it out from there.

[jimmybones]

There's a big leap between "saying the right thing" and expressing literal excitement over a guys return. He's a great teammate and great dude but he's also real and not going out of his way for anybody like that. Our superstar literally said he's excited about the guy coming back and we're at the point of saying he's being disingenuous.

[jute2003]

Are we really making the argument that Middleton wasn't missed quite a bit? We've needed some super human performances from Giannis to win some of these games. The supporting cast hasn't exactly lit it up over the last few weeks. We desperately need a #2 scoring option out there that can consistently put in 20ish points and take some pressure off the other guys on the court.

Yeah man, we needed a literal historic god tier performance to beat the one good team we played in that stretch, at home.

I have friends off this board that said all the Bucks losses were with Midds and they're undefeated without him. Ignoring the context of who they played - now THAT is lacking nuance.

Kinda like ignoring how every decent team we played early was missing their batman and/or robin and continuing to tout our SOS......


The team is still better with Khris. He is still a good player that helps the team. He is just not twice as good or twice as important as Bledsoe, Blopez, or Brogdon was.

This team is good because of Giannis and Bud and having good players in the supporting cast. I continue to worry that Greatness will need more higher end talent and our 40 million man is going to be what prevents the team from finding that talent though. Hopefully I am wrong.

[paulpressey25]

The team is still better with Khris. He is still a good player that helps the team. He is just not twice as good or twice as important as Bledsoe, Blopez, or Brogdon was.

This team is good because of Giannis and Bud and having good players in the supporting cast. I continue to worry that Greatness will need more higher end talent and our 40 million man is going to be what prevents the team from finding that talent though. Hopefully I am wrong.

Well said.

Have some optimism that maybe Bud can recast Middleton's role a bit, to have him play more when Giannis is off the court.

[jimmybones]

Are we really making the argument that Middleton wasn't missed quite a bit? We've needed some super human performances from Giannis to win some of these games. The supporting cast hasn't exactly lit it up over the last few weeks. We desperately need a #2 scoring option out there that can consistently put in 20ish points and take some pressure off the other guys on the court.

Yeah man, we needed a literal historic god tier performance to beat the one good team we played in that stretch, at home.

I have friends off this board that said all the Bucks losses were with Midds and they're undefeated without him. Ignoring the context of who they played - now THAT is lacking nuance.

Kinda like ignoring how every decent team we played early was missing their batman and/or robin and continuing to tout our SOS......


The team is still better with Khris. He is still a good player that helps the team. He is just not twice as good or twice as important as Bledsoe, Blopez, or Brogdon was.

This team is good because of Giannis and Bud and having good players in the supporting cast. I continue to worry that Greatness will need more higher end talent and our 40 million man is going to be what prevents the team from finding that talent though. Hopefully I am wrong.

Not ignoring that at all. The point is bummy teams like the Bulls don't even have a Batman or Robin.

[msiris]

Middleton is not the only Robin on this team. We need as many Robins as we can get in order to beat teams with two Batmans for the NBA Championship,

[Ruben Quevedo]

There's a big leap between "saying the right thing" and expressing literal excitement over a guys return. He's a great teammate and great dude but he's also real and not going out of his way for anybody like that. Our superstar literally said he's excited about the guy coming back and we're at the point of saying he's being disingenuous.

I don't mean to suggest he's being disingenuous. I'm sure he was excited when Brogdon came back last year too. But that didn't stop us from letting him go, and nor should it in Middleton's case.

[msiris]

The team is still better with Khris. He is still a good player that helps the team. He is just not twice as good or twice as important as Bledsoe, Blopez, or Brogdon was.

This team is good because of Giannis and Bud and having good players in the supporting cast. I continue to worry that Greatness will need more higher end talent and our 40 million man is going to be what prevents the team from finding that talent though. Hopefully I am wrong.

Well said.

Have some optimism that maybe Bud can recast Middleton's role a bit, to have him play more when Giannis is off the court.

If we do not make it to the finals that would be a sign to change things up. But will it be to late? All I know is that I did not miss Middleton trying to create or trying to shoot over people.

[Antinomy]

As much as some guys bitch about Khris, I’d easily take him as the best 2nd option over all the other East “contenders”.

[machu46]

As much as some guys bitch about Khris, I’d easily take him as the best 2nd option over all the other East “contenders”.

Aside from Paul George and Anthony Davis, Khris might be the best second banana on any of the contenders/pseudo-contenders.

[TD75]

Giannis had to be this version of Giannis (MVP, ridiculously good) from the start of the season for the team to win the games. Let's not pretend that he did not carry the team even when Middleton was around.

In fact that is a major complaint many have with Khris. He is not as much of factor as he should be. (There are other more technical complaints of course, about the pace of the game that Khris slows down, his passing/dribbling, his defense etc. but that is not the point of this post).

This team depends on Giannis too much to win games. That is simply not a reliable recipe for a championship.

The Bucks need to do something to introduce more options to win the games around Giannis. Let's be honest; they have done a decent to very good job in the last couple of years on finding good roleplayers to surround Giannis but they have failed in getting him a second all star that can play a major role in winning a championship (unless you think that Khris will be that guy that will carry the team in some ECF/Finals games when Giannis is not the 35/15/8 version people have been accustomed to during the regular season or when the other roleplayers start missing their shots).

Also if people think that Giannis is going to be satisfied with deep playoff runs without championships, I speculate they will be negatively surprised very soon.

PS: Giannis sais a lot of good things about all his teammates. If I remember correctly, he said similar things about Jabari (how they miss him) in the final year of Jabari in the Bucks. Even after the '18 playoffs in Boston Giannis said something along the lines of Jabari is going nowhere when asked about Jabari's upcoming free agency. You all know how that ended up, what a massive issue Bucks dodged by not resigning Jabari at the money he wanted and how Giannis plays against Jabari whenever those two meet each other. You all know very well it does not make sense to try to use what positives Giannis says publicly about current teammates in an effort to prove a point.

[GHOSTofSIKMA]

The team is still better with Khris. He is still a good player that helps the team. He is just not twice as good or twice as important as Bledsoe, Blopez, or Brogdon was.

This team is good because of Giannis and Bud and having good players in the supporting cast. I continue to worry that Greatness will need more higher end talent and our 40 million man is going to be what prevents the team from finding that talent though. Hopefully I am wrong.

Well said.

wait a minute.... what reasoning is this that a guy has to be twice as good to justify making twice as much money?

even if it was true how the hell do you even quantify "twice as a good a player"?

if theres 100 50cent players and 20 dollar players in the league then the dollar players are going to make more than double. if you don't think so then we should be the team trying to send out all our core in 2-1's which is crazy. the last thing this team needs is more depth