Bucks 2022-2023 Season Thread

[True Blue Brew Crew]

14 hours ago, CheezWizHed said:

I've not jumped through the cap gymnastics to figure this out, but part of me wonders if it is time to move on from Khris (post this year)? I worry about tying that much money up in an aging (though very good) player. But I don't think we will have much problem attracting FAs (or a "forced" trades) to get another #2 to Giannis' lead. 

 

So about that first part, the cap gymnastics. The Bucks are so far above the cap that if they let Khris walk, they wouldn't have the cap space to replace him. Which is why they will pay him.

[UpandIn]

15 hours ago, CheezWizHed said:

I've not jumped through the cap gymnastics to figure this out, but part of me wonders if it is time to move on from Khris (post this year)? I worry about tying that much money up in an aging (though very good) player. But I don't think we will have much problem attracting FAs (or a "forced" trades) to get another #2 to Giannis' lead. 

 

You either pay him or you don't pay anyone though. 

Unless you include him in a trade for multiple players and maybe you get a young player back who has some upside and you end up hitting on him, that could be one way to use him. 

But if it's a question between just signing him or NOT signing him, the only thing you're doing is saving the owners money, not fixing the cap. 

 

And I think we're going to have a whole of trouble to attract a #2 for Giannis. What assets do we have? I guess if you...hypothetically got out of Middleton's contract and you renounced ALL rights and all options...meaning you'd lose Brook Lopez, Jevon Carter(a player who's really developing into a key player), Jordan Nwora, Wes Matthews, you'd be left with 7 players on the roster and about 11.3 million in actual cap space. 

So...just like last time, Khris Middleton may not be worth the contract he's going to sign, but he's worth it to the Bucks because it's not about allocating those resources elsewhere. It's about spending them on Middleton, or not spending them at all. 

I'd rather spend them on Middleton. 

And then...at least if you make it a new 3 year deal, in his 3rd year, you might be able to turn that into a nice, younger player that another team who's trying to create cap space is willing to trade for you for his expiring contract. 

 

But you really need t

 

[UpandIn]

14 hours ago, GAME05 said:

Giannis has talked a good bit about having been with Khris for so long it does make me wonder if Bucks' brass has an eye toward keeping the two of them together for as long as possible and giving Khris that Jim Gantner kinda legacy. But it does feel like Khris leaving is the natural order of things. He's won it here and a new team will mean opportunities to score even more points and get out of that very big Giannis shadow to end his career.

I suddenly had a vision of replacing Khris with Kyrie next season and I didn't totally hate the thought.

Khris Middleton isn't big enough to get out from Giannis shadow. 
I don't see him going anywhere(maybe Cleveland, but for a fraction of the money and still not scoring more). 
Giannis sets him up. He doesn't sacrifice points playing with Giannis, Giannis helps him get his shot. 
He'd be leaving Milwaukee at pretty much the same point in his career that Pippen left Jordan(though in this case, it'd be his own decision). Did Pippen leave Jordan's shadow? 

Now...Middleton for Kyrie would be an objective upgrade in terms of talent. And it may very well tear this team apart like it did the Celtics and now the Nets. 

You'd also ONLY be able to trade Middleton to the Nets in this scenario and the Nets would only be able to trade Kyrie to the Bucks. So Middleton would just be going and playing with longer, bigger, better player with similar attributes to him. 

[CheezWizHed]

8 hours ago, UpandIn said:

He'd be leaving Milwaukee at pretty much the same point in his career that Pippen left Jordan(though in this case, it'd be his own decision). Did Pippen leave Jordan's shadow? 

Well, out of the shadow, technically yes.  And the bright lights showed him to be the very good #2 the rest of the league expected he was and not enough to be the #1 on a team.  But that didn't mean he didn't want to try. 

[UpandIn]

4 hours ago, CheezWizHed said:

Well, out of the shadow, technically yes.  And the bright lights showed him to be the very good #2 the rest of the league expected he was and not enough to be the #1 on a team.  But that didn't mean he didn't want to try. 

Yeah, but not really. He left to get paid and little else. He joined up with Hakeem and Barkley, two players who were considered better at the time(he did not disabuse people of that notion). 

But he was always going to live in MJs shadow. When you think of Pipp, you think of Jordan. Where is Middleton going where he's gonna get out from Giannis shadow and establish himself without being tied to Giannis? We know he's not a #1. He's going to make less in every other team in the league unless we do some sign and trade. I would guess Middleton knows how much the Bucks need him and he wants 4 years+PO@ close to 40 AAV and the Bucks probably don't want to go longer than 3+TO.

I assume they'll get it done though. Otherwise...if they have to, I'm alright with trading Middleton next year. Find a team that really needs a wing(Cleveland is the painfully obvious team, but not sure we want to load them up anymore). 

But I guess if he wants out and he wants to get paid, that'd be the only realistic avenue for him to do so. Not sure what the Bucks would get back beyond a 1st and then a few players who's salaries would come within ~8M of Middleton's salary. You'd likely get like a Buddy Hield or someone who a team doesn't want and in return, they get a veteran on a young team in the most likely scenario. 

I doubt that'll happen though. 

[nate82]

Beauchamp with a good game tonight.

[homer]

1 minute ago, nate82 said:

Beauchamp with a good game tonight.

great to see him on the court in the 4th. 

[nate82]

5 minutes ago, homer said:

great to see him on the court in the 4th. 

I think he may become a good rotational piece and the Bucks desperately need someone at SG.  

[UpandIn]

59 minutes ago, nate82 said:

I think he may become a good rotational piece and the Bucks desperately need someone at SG.  

He's definitely providing a spark. 

It's way too early to make any declarations, but he and Carter both look like they could be very key long term pieces. 

Carter as a role player and Beauchamp...he's not gonna be a #3 or #4 scorer this year, but the way he defended Cade Cunningham, the way he gets out on the break, the way he cuts, he's got a natural feel for the game, he's got length and he's explosive. And he busts his ass on both ends. 

I like this kid. 

I THINK the way he's played...it might make the Bucks a little more confident in a potential trade where they deal Allen, Nwora and then maybe...Hill or whatever it may be to match salaries.

Starting to see a couple glimmers of hope as Middleton and Jrue start to get a bit older and need a little bit of time off. Also, outstanding to see this team come out and just dominating teams without 2 of their playoff rotation players, their ~8 deep. Hopefully at this point it's Jrue/Carter, Connaughton/Allen, Middleton/Ingles, Portis, Lopez and Giannis. 

[long ball]

Definitely fun to see Beauchamp have his first sorta break out performance of the regular season. Getting to play with 4 starters in a couple of stints lasts night was definitely cool and seeing Giannis getting him involved feels like a bit of good leadership from Giannis. 

The schedule starts to turn a little bit tougher here in about a week with more playoff teams on the schedule and less home heavy schedule. It's been fun so far, but I'm excited to see the level of competition increase and how the team plays.

[UpandIn]

3 hours ago, long ball said:

Definitely fun to see Beauchamp have his first sorta break out performance of the regular season. Getting to play with 4 starters in a couple of stints lasts night was definitely cool and seeing Giannis getting him involved feels like a bit of good leadership from Giannis. 

The schedule starts to turn a little bit tougher here in about a week with more playoff teams on the schedule and less home heavy schedule. It's been fun so far, but I'm excited to see the level of competition increase and how the team plays.

Sure...they have 5 more that are...reasonably easy or games we should be expected to win, but then Cleveland twice in 5 games.

That's gonna be a good test for this Bucks team. They have seemingly built a team that's designed to play the Bucks. Mostly by accident as I don't think they were thinking that when they traded for Allen and Mobley was kinda the obvious pick, but now they've got two 7 footers and Mobley is an agile defender who can come out and meet Giannis at the FT line instead of playing back on his heels with his foot speed. Allen can sit back and play the Lopez role. 

They have guys who can score it in bunches in Garland and Donovan Mitchell. Problem is, nothing on the Wing. They had the 5th pick in a 3 player draft, but still...you'd think they'd come away with a player with SOME value(Saddiq Bey was in that draft and would fit that team like a glove). 

I feel good with Jrue and Carter defending Garland and Mitchell and I don't know WHO the hell is gonna defense Ingles, much less Middleton when they get healthy. 

But exciting young team. I could see that being a game to keep a 13 game winning streak alive vs 12-2 Cleveland team. Good early season game. 

[CheezWizHed]

Beauchamp certainly did look good last night.  My son and I were joking that it was hard to tell him from Nwora (at least from the upper deck).  But I'd much prefer Beauchamp at this point.  Nwora still can't figure out D unfortunately. 

I was watching Beachamp warm up.  He has a nice shot form, but his consistency is all over the place. One shot drops right in... next is clanging off the back.  Next one nothing but net...followed by an air ball.  Kind of odd.   In the game, he needs some work on shot selection too.  But over all, he certainly looks like a player.  The game isn't too big for him.

[DuWayne Steurer]

Easy win tonight while giving Giannis a rest on the tail end of a back to back. Nice to see some other guys pick up the scoring slack. 

[Jose Cardenal]

Actually if Middleton opts out (likely as he will want a longer term contract) the bucks will have some cap space about ($12-$15)to sign a free agent and then they can resign their own players (Middleton, Lopez).

[GAME05]

But who'd really want Allen and Nwora? They're really our only expendable players but it's hard to figure they'd draw terribly much interest from any developing team trading off it's assets. And if the Buck's one tradable first-rounder would be protected, it's too far out to be of any value. Seems the Bucks are pretty well stuck with hoping a good buyout player falls to them, but that they won't be able to do much in the trade market.

I was particularly interested in the OKC game because I was curious about how that team was looking, but yikes. The injured Chet Holmgren is all they've really got. Though I suspect their GM is secretly happy Holmgren is hurt to make that team even worse this year. Even if they miss out on Webanyama, Scoot Henderson is also a heck of a prospect who'd be an easy #1 pick any other year.

[Brock Beauchamp]

3 minutes ago, JoseCardenal2 said:

Actually if Middleton opts out (likely as he will want a longer term contract) the bucks will have some cap space about ($12-$15)to sign a free agent and then they can resign their own players (Middleton, Lopez).

Welcome to the site!

[GAME05]

You have to wonder when Giannis' career is done, that the biggest factor in ranking him on the top-whatever-all-time list is going to be how many Championships he's won.

[OldSchoolSnapper]

16 minutes ago, GAME05 said:

You have to wonder when Giannis' career is done, that the biggest factor in ranking him on the top-whatever-all-time list is going to be how many Championships he's won.

He'll never shoot well enough to be people's consensus top 2. I don't think he'll move much from where he'd be now, seeing as he'll statistically crush a whole bunch of categories. I'm guessing he'll be on the bottom of most top 5s and have 3 championships...maybe more if he goes chasing rings after Milwaukee. 

[UpandIn]

18 hours ago, JoseCardenal2 said:

Actually if Middleton opts out (likely as he will want a longer term contract) the bucks will have some cap space about ($12-$15)to sign a free agent and then they can resign their own players (Middleton, Lopez).

Yeah, that's not cap space though. To create cap space, they'd have to renounce Middleton and Lopez...~40M, Lopez is a little over 20M, Ingles is nearly 8M, Carter has a PO for 2.4M and they need to find a way to keep him. That's obvious already. 

So yeah, they could create...12M in salary cap space, but you could only sign Lopez and Middleton for either 12M combined or you could use the MLE which would be ~5M then after...but you wouldn't be able to sign probably either player for 12M.

Ingles could be re-signed, Carter should be given the tax payers MLE and hope he taxes it(it's insanely early).

 

But we can't renounce Middleton and Lopez, the only way to create cap space, and then re-sign them. Otherwise teams would just renounce all their cap holds, like the Lakers who had LBJ and AD coming up at the same time, renounce them, then sign a player for 25M and then still go back and max out LeBron and AD. That's the purpose of the cap holds. 

[UpandIn]

10 hours ago, OldSchoolSnapper said:

He'll never shoot well enough to be people's consensus top 2. I don't think he'll move much from where he'd be now, seeing as he'll statistically crush a whole bunch of categories. I'm guessing he'll be on the bottom of most top 5s and have 3 championships...maybe more if he goes chasing rings after Milwaukee. 

He's developing a nice little turnaround here and mid range game whereas MJ didn't REALLY perfect that fadeaway until he was ~27 or so. 

So he won't be a great shooter, but I don't think that'll be the reason. I just think you're talking about such an insanely high bar, that's why he won't get over it. 

He's gotta win...maybe 3 more Titles, and he has to keep this up for...a long time before it's even a discussion if he's in the top 2. I think he could easily end up top 10, top 5 maybe. But these are...just historic greats and he's still just entering his prime. 

[homer]

Trae Young is out tonight. If they don't extend the streak I'll be surprised.

 

edit: I am surprised 

[OldSchoolSnapper]

Doozie of a game. Bucks grab one with the entire Big 3 out. Down by 1 at the end of regulation after a "game-winning 3" but they draw a foul with .6 left and get to OT. Pull it out in 2OT, Carter and Beauchamp with big games. 

[homer]

They tried on numerous occasions to give that one away but had enough in the tank. MarJon looks like a keeper.

[DuWayne Steurer]

awesome to see Beauchamp providing a spark this soon.

also.... Carter with 36 points??!! who saw that coming? wow.

[homer]

I love how straight faced he is. ?