Milwaukee Bucks: Recap of NBA Free Agency/Trade Season

The Milwaukee Bucks had a very eventful week during a one of a kind offseason in the NBA.

The NBA has a very truncated offseason in comparison to normal as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. This shortened offseason made for a very interesting week for the Milwaukee Bucks and many other teams across the league.. Important dates that occurred last week are as follows:

• Wednesday, November 18th – NBA Draft
• Friday, November 20th – Free agent negotiations begin at 6 pm ET
• Sunday, November 22nd – Players can begin to sign with teams at 12:01 pm ET

The Bucks get Giannis a present for the upcoming (Jrue) Holiday

On Monday, November 16th it was reported by Adrian Wojnarowski that the Bucks have traded Eric Bledsoe, George Hill, and ‘significant’ draft compensation for Jrue Holiday. The ‘significant’ compensation was originally reported to be 3 first-round draft picks, plus 2 picks swaps. Since that report, the deal has changed and become a 4 team trade, per Kevin Pelton of ESPN.

• Bucks receive Jrue Holiday, and 60th overall pick in 2020 (Sam Merrill)
• Pelicans receive Steven Adams, Eric Bledsoe, 2024 first-round swap rights from Bucks, unprotected 2025 first-round pick from Bucks, 2026 first-round swap rights from Bucks, unprotected 2027 first-round pick from Bucks
• Thunder receive George Hill, Darius Miller, unprotected 2023 first-round pick from Nuggets, two future second-round picks from Nuggets
• Nuggets receive 24th overall pick in 2020 (RJ Hampton)

Bledsoe is a very talented player who is very effective at getting to the rim offensively and is a top tier defensive point guard. I feel like the fit with Antetokounmpo has not been great with Bledsoe as they both need space to penetrate into the paint to be effective offensively. That is not the case with Holiday, Holiday is more of a true point guard with the ability to effectively shoot the ball from three-point range. Holiday has averaged 6.4 assists per game over his career, in comparison Bledsoe has averaged 4.8 assists per game over his career.

Another aspect that Holiday brings that we have not seen from Bledsoe is catch and shoot three-point shooting. Holiday averaged 36.4 percent in 2019/2020, while Bledsoe averaged 26.4 percent on the same shots during the 2019/2020 season.

One thing that Bledsoe has been very good at throughout his career and his time in Milwaukee is his defense. Basketball-Reference has a metric called defensive win shares (DWS) which an estimate of the wins contributed by a player due to his defense. DWS is a metric that adds up over the course of a player’s career, so a player with multiple years in the league will likely have more than a player that has only one year in the NBA. Bledsoe has one fewer NBA season than Holiday, so Holiday does have an extra year of accumulation with this stat. Bledsoe has a DWS of 20.8 while Holiday has a DWS of 22.9, using Bledsoe’s average DWS added over the course of a season he would be .02 behind Holiday if they played the same number of seasons in the NBA. This tells me that we are getting as good of a defender at the point guard spot, who also fits better offensively with Giannis and the rest of the Milwaukee Bucks lineup.

The Bogdan Bogdanovic blunder

As I am sure you have heard the Bucks tried to acquire Bogdan Bogdanovic from the Sacramento Kings. Bogdanovic is a young, high volume three-point sharpshooter. Bogdanovic would have been a great addition to this Bucks team but due to the rules about when teams could start having conversations with free agents this trade was not legal. There was talk about potentially the deal still being worked out, but the Bucks released Ersan Ilyasova which made the deal no longer work. Check out this article by NBA.com and this article by the New York Post for more information about this mistake by Bucks GM Jon Horst.

2020 NBA Draft

The Milwaukee Bucks owned the 24th overall pick in the 2020 NBA prior to Monday, November 16th. The Bucks made the 24th overall pick due to the NBA trade rules regarding draft picks. The Bucks selected RJ Hampton with that pick and then shipped him to the Denver Nuggets as part of the four-team trade for Holiday. The Bucks did acquire the 60th overall pick as a part of that deal. A few hours prior to the 2020 NBA Draft the Bucks acquired the 45th overall pick from the Orlando Magic for two future second-round draft picks.

With the 45th overall pick, the Milwaukee Bucks selected Jordan Nwora, a forward from Louisville.

With the 60th overall pick, the Milwaukee Bucks selected Sam Merrill, a shooting guard from Utah State.

For more information regarding these two players click here.

Free Agency Frenzy?

Well, I don’t know if I would call it a frenzy, but with the players lost in free agency and the ones that Horst was able to bring to Milwaukee, this Bucks team has a completely different look now than it did just a few weeks ago.

Players not currently on the Bucks:

• Wesley Matthews – signed with the Lakers for 1 year, deal worth $3.6 million
• Kyle Korver – unrestricted free agent
• Robin Lopez – signed with Wizards for 1 year, deal worth $7.3 million
• Ersan Ilyasova – unrestricted free agent
• Sterling Brown – signed with the Rockets for 1 year

Players added to the Bucks during free agency:

• Bobby Portis – signed a 2 year deal with the Bucks, $7.5 million with a player option for the second year
• DJ Augustin – signed a 3 year, $21 million deal with the Bucks
• Bryn Forbes – signed a 2 year deal with the Bucks, details of the contract are not available. Forbes will have a player option for the second year
• Torrey Craig – reportedly, no contract details available on Spotrac.

All information regarding free-agent contracts provided by Spotrac and ESPN.

Portis seems to be the Ilyasova and/or Lopez replacement for the Bucks moving forward. This makes a lot of sense for the Bucks, getting younger and really more athletic from their big coming off the bench. Plus at this point in their respective careers Portis is more of scorer, in 2019/2020 he averaged 10.1 points per game, as opposed to 6.6 and 5.4 points per game for Ilyasova and Lopez respectively.

Augustin intuitively is the player that was brought in to be the replacement to George Hill who was dealt in the Holiday trade. I think that Hill is a better player but they had to make him a part of the Holiday trade. After losing Hill, bringing in Augustin will mean the Bucks will not lose as much as I originally thought after hearing the news that Hill will not be a Milwaukee Buck next season. Augustin actually outscored Hill in the 2019/2020 season on a per game basis, even with Hill shooting an absurd 46 percent from three-point range.

Forbes is a player that is going to be used mainly as an offensive weapon for Mike Budenholzer and the Bucks. Forbes will be able to help stretch the floor for the Bucks as he is a career 40 percent three-point shooter. Whether he is the starting two guard or coming off the bench for the Bucks his scoring and spacing can help this team a lot. The spacing is something I thought Korver would have provided more of, but hopefully, a young sharpshooter can provide more space than Korver did last season.

Lastly, Craig is a guy that is going to come to Milwaukee mainly as a defensive minded player, he averaged just 5.4 points per game last season which is just slightly over his career average of 5.3. The exciting part of this signing is his defense, Craig was asked to cover the elite wings on a regular basis in Denver. He will not be the same spot-up, catch and shoot type of three point shooter that Matthews was for the Bucks but he does bring the same level of defensive prowess. Craig does have an advantage in size and versatility in regards to the positions he can effectively defend over Matthews.

Other news from last week

The Bucks signed Jaylen Adams and Mamadi Diakite to two-way contracts. Adams had a great season for the Wisconsin Herd in the NBA G-league. Adams averaged 21.5 points per game, 5.1 rebounds per game, 5.7 assists per game, and averaged 1.8 steals per game. One other important stat for Adams is that he shot 40.7 percent from three-point range. Diakite is a 6’9″ forward from Virginia. Diakite averaged 13.7 points per game, 6.8 rebounds per game and 1.3 blocks per game during the 2019/2020 college basketball season. Diakite was very good defensively for Virginia, he lead the ACC in DWS in 2019/2020 at 2.8 which was fourth best in the entire country.

What do you think of the offseason for the Milwaukee Bucks? Did they improve the roster? Did the roster get worse? Let us know your thought below or on Twitter @DairylandXpress