Moderators: MickeyDavis, paulpressey25
pifhluk23 wrote:+1 for Giannis GM urging Bucks to trade for Beal and Bogdan. I'm guessing WSH said no but we should have put it all on the table for him.
Ron Swanson wrote:Don't think Giannis was ever against recruiting guys to Milwaukee. He'd be the #1 guy in any situation and everyone would know that this is his franchise. It's just that he's not an insecure Beta superstar who would constantly flee to other teams in order to do it.
Offseason summary
The Bucks offseason was more notable for what didn’t happen than what did. We’ll get to that in a minute.
Traded PG George Hill, PG Eric Bledsoe, 24th pick, two unprotected future firsts and two pick swaps to New Orleans for SG Jrue Holiday and 60th pick
Drafted SF Jordan Nwora (45th) and SG Sam Merrill (60th)
Signed PG D.J. Augustin for three years, $21 million, with $333,333 guarantee on third year
Signed SG Pat Connaughton for three years, $16 million, with third-year player option
Signed SG Bryn Forbes for two years, minimum, with second-year player option
Signed SF Torrey Craig for one year, minimum
Signed C Bobby Portis for two years, $7.5 million, with second-year player option
Signed PF Giannis Antetokounmpo to five-year, $228 million extension
Did not re-sign C Robin Lopez, SG Wesley Matthews, SF Sterlin Brown, SF Kyle Korver or PF Marvin Williams
Waived PF Ersan Ilyasova
Of course, not listed in the above was the fouled-up sign-and-trade for Bogdan Bogdanovic, one that was seemingly agreed to well before the official start of free agency and is now the subject of a league investigation.
While this was one of multiple recent own goals by the Bucks, it may be better that they didn’t go through with it. First, with Bogdanovic at or around a $16-17 million first-year salary, every other offseason addition would have had to be a one-year minimum deal due to the hard cap, leaving the Bucks with near-zero roster flexibility. Second, one of the players in the deal — shooting guard Donte DiVincenzo — actually rated as a more effective player last season by BORG and is just 23 years old. His ability to start at shooting guard while soaking up just a $3 million salary slot is a big key for Milwaukee this year.
The rest of the offseason was a bit of a mess as well. Start with one clear positive: Milwaukee also pushed its chips in by sending multiple unprotected picks to New Orleans for Holiday. That was the single best player the Bucks could have acquired, and it should beef up their already stout defense, although it won’t matter in the playoffs if they aren’t more committed to playing different styles effectively. Holiday also provides a decent secondary shot-creator to take some pressure off Middleton.
Oddly, the Bucks did not set this up as an extend-and-trade transaction, leaving Holiday’s future in doubt. He can leave as a free agent after the season, so this was a potential overpay, but perhaps a justifiable one if it resulted in Giannis’ supermax extension. Certainly, it came with risk: Milwaukee’s 2022, 2025 and 2027 first-round picks are completely unprotected, and the Bucks owe unprotected pick swaps in 2024 and 2026.
As the final piece of a sloppy offseason, the Bucks also messed up Connaughton’s deal, agreeing to an illegal deal (two years with a player option, which is a no-no for an early Bird rights player) before having to amend it by adding another year and more money. Milwaukee also could have preserved its midlevel exception and stuck to the original Connaughton deal if it had included Augustin’s deal as a sign-and-trade in the Holiday trade but apparently did not pursue that angle.
The other important piece was acquiring the 45th and 60th picks to select Nwora and Merrill, assuring that the last two roster spots will be filled by league minimum contracts. Those two moves were necessary to keep the Bucks under the hard cap (by less than $1 million), but in a final oddity, they didn’t use their remaining midlevel exception money to ink those two to three- or four-year deals.
Outlook and prediction
We can’t really say anything about the Bucks until the second round of the playoffs starts. A team with Antetokounmpo, Middleton and Holiday is virtually guaranteed to have the best record in the East in the regular season and to stomp some poor middling club in the first round of the playoffs. The real season for these guys starts in June, when we learn if the failures of the past two postseasons can sprout a different, more successful strategic approach.
That outcome could have profound impacts on the future for all three of Antetokounmpo, Holiday and Budenholzer. Thankfully, we won’t spend all season in an agonizing Giannis free-agency watch with announcers all but ignoring the game every time he’s on TV. Come summer, that could be a lot: I expect this Bucks team to finally get to the Finals.
Prediction: 50-22, 1st in Eastern Conference
emunney wrote:Daver wrote:th87 wrote:Can't believe we let Christian Wood get away (even as an asset) because Sky Smith and the con-artists convinced a naive FO that Thon was 19.
Some of the people on this board are very hypocritical please correct ne if im wrong but didnt the majority of the people here when woods was on the bucks pretty much not care either way if he was kept or released.All i read was he cant play D he cant do that
He was dominating on the herd but played zero D
Just want to point out that we had already traded Thon by the time we cut Wood.
There was a time not so long ago when Giannis Antetokounmpo wasn’t comfortable recruiting other talents to come to town. But then, as we chronicled this week in our piece looking at his decision to sign the five-year supermax extension on Tuesday, that all changed.
In this mini-offseason that just passed, he played a part in the Bucks’ pursuit of everyone from Jrue Holiday to Victor Oladipo to Bogdan Bogdanovic. So, is Harden now on that proverbial list? Bucks sources say no.
Harden, it seems, is not seen as a good fit for this Bucks culture that has been so carefully curated by Antetokounmpo, Khris Middleton, general manager Jon Horst, coach Mike Budenholzer and so many others. They are not expected to pursue him. And while no one can speak for Giannis in terms of his private view of Harden, there was plenty to ponder in the public domain already that suggested this would be a friction-filled superstar pairing…
It was only 10 months ago when Antetokounmpo was forced to answer questions about his own MVP worthiness because of Harden, who had declared himself “the best player” and implied that Antetokounmpo’s achievements were less impressive because of his size.
During the All-Star draft on TNT that same month, Antetokounmpo joked that he didn’t want to take Harden for his team because “I want somebody that’s gonna pass the ball.” (The lighthearted jab came with Antetokounmpo smiling and after Charles Barkley had said of Harden, “You don’t want the dribbler?”)
As if that wasn’t evidence enough of how improbable this would be, our plugged-in Bucks beat writer, Eric Nehm, detailed the on-court and off-court complexities here.
trwi7 wrote:**** me deep, Giannis. ****. Me. Deep.
packer396 wrote:re: Hollinger preview, couldn't we not do an trade/extend with Holiday due to the player option? I agree with his general idea that the Bucks F.O. staff appears to be pretty dumb but I don't think this point is accurate
th87 wrote:emunney wrote:Daver wrote:
Some of the people on this board are very hypocritical please correct ne if im wrong but didnt the majority of the people here when woods was on the bucks pretty much not care either way if he was kept or released.All i read was he cant play D he cant do that
He was dominating on the herd but played zero D
Just want to point out that we had already traded Thon by the time we cut Wood.
Correct, but Thon's development beforehand was prioritized ahead of Wood's. With increased playing time, it's possible Wood would (ha) show more, enabling him to become a better asset.
emunney wrote:Very few things funnier than an analytics-heavy writer throwing some recently created Big Metric into his articles like it's been around forever.
Anyway, I'm glad we didn't trade for Bogdanovic due to his subpar BORG, and also his middling SCHLONK rating. Please don't get me started on his hard/soft CORN splits.
emunney wrote:lol wtf is BORG
emunney wrote:lol wtf is BORG
trwi7 wrote:**** me deep, Giannis. ****. Me. Deep.
Prez wrote:That’s really frustrating to read lol. He’s a perennial top MVP candidate...make a damn offer
ABucksFan wrote:Prez wrote:That’s really frustrating to read lol. He’s a perennial top MVP candidate...make a damn offer
Haha, I'm with you. Don't get me wrong I think we can win without Harden, but our chances with him would be better IMO. Also, the whole culture thing is kind of BS, talk to me about culture when you have titles and W's to back it up or else it's just BS. Pats can talk about culture because it's proven they've won, MIA same thing, GSW, Alabama, Bayern. When you haven't won anything culture means very little. Obviously there needs to be a balance, but it's gotten kind out of hand how much emphasis is put on it.
DukeH wrote:Plenty, RealGM Bucks Board is the Golden Dawn of forums.
emunney wrote:lol wtf is BORG