Milwaukee Bucks: 5 biggest offseason mistakes

1. Handling of the Jabari Situation

Don’t be fooled by the title above, I am not of the opinion the Bucks should have kept Jabari Parker. When you are taking plays/quarters off in the playoffs – I’m out. And if you weren’t sure if he was committed to defense, make sure you look at this interview here. I am of the opinion though that Milwaukee should have gotten something for Parker, whether that was this offseason or at the trade deadline last year.

Making a move at the trade deadline would have been very difficult as Parker was just coming back from his second ACL tear.  But as an organization, you had to already know about his poor attitude and his lackadaisical play on defense enough to know you had to get rid of him.

This offseason was a little different, the Bucks held all the cards and could have tried to squeeze out an asset from another team if they played the situation correctly. But they did not. Within the first minutes of free agency, they signed Ersan Ilyasova and essentially told the rest of the league they didn’t want Parker.

For one, Ilyasova plays Parker’s position. But secondly, this move “hard capped” the Bucks meaning that a team that wanted Parker knew immediately what number they needed to offer to get him. Without boring you with the salary cap minutiae too much, in using the mid-level exception the Bucks created a hard maximum salary figure for themselves.  Much has changed since then, but at the time the Bucks were about $15 million under the hard cap again giving other teams a number they had to pay for Jabari.

The Bucks were too obvious in the fact that they didn’t want Parker. A more experienced front office would have got some sort of asset back. Danny Ainge or Daryl Morey would have played the situation much differently and tried to take advantage of a inept, desperate team like the Kings or maybe even the Chicago Bulls where Jabari just happened to end up.