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THE 252 (?) MILLION QUESTION
The most injured, physically and mentally, of any other Bucks player is without a doubt Giannis Antitokoumbo. “Listen” to everything, he is judged more harshly than any other player in the League, most of the time he is judged unfairly. People do not realize that the perfect basketball player does not exist and that every superstar has flaws in his game, they do not appreciate the skills of the Greek Freak and prefer to see his few flaws. Consecutive MVP, meanwhile …
Worst of all is listening to his teammates, people who have written thousands of miles on the ground to level him with … kindergarten, but also to journalists to claim that his colleagues compare him to Jordan, Shaquille and Pipen . Sometimes there is no reason to explain that Shaquille himself called him his successor or that Pipen himself declared that “I didn’t get a consecutive MVP“Just listen and move on, enjoying an athlete phenomenon that Greek sport has never had in its history, a model man and a role model for every young man, a 25-year-old man who has never given rights with his behavior but for someone he increasingly accepts hatred. Let it be …
Let’s close the parenthesis and go back to the purely basketball part. Had it not been for the rivalry with China and the pandemic, if the salary cap had not been under pressure, Antitokunbo would have been counting down for the Bucks to bring in the $ 252 million supermax expansion, the largest contract in US history. the NBA, on the table. hold out until the summer of 2026 in Milwaukee. With the future of the League fluid, with Adam Silver buying time extending the 2020 NBA Draft and the start of Free Agency, it is not easy to calculate the loss that Giannis will have in five years, since the maximum His earnings will be adjusted to the salary cap every year.
The truth is that the Bucks will immediately give you the supermax expansion and nothing less. Will Antitokunbo accept it? John will not leave Milwaukee, he is in an organization that has not achieved the goal of the championship, but it works perfectly, it develops in every part of it, he has clarified in all directions that the Greek Freak is the present and the future, absolute. star, is built around it, sometimes justified and sometimes not. He bought a house on the shores of Lake Michigan and continues to improve, his family enjoys the tranquility of the area. Furthermore, he is not a man who chooses the easy path, he has never had an easy path to cross and will continue to try to achieve it in his own way, with his own strength.
THE SEVEN LINKS WITH CONTRACT
In addition to Giannis, who is under contract through summer 2021 anyway, the Bucks have seven more players with guaranteed salaries for the 2020/21 season. The other two have a player option, so they will judge their own future, while one can be released to secure $ 7 million for additions / additions and depth in the bank.
The guaranteed contracts include Chris Middleton ($ 33,051,724), Eric Blencho ($ 16,875,000), Brooke Lopez ($ 12,697,675), George Hill ($ 9,590,602), Dee Jay Wilson ($ 4,548,280). , by Dode DiVincenzo ($ 3,044,160) and Thanassis Antetokunbo ($ 1,701,593). Player options are Robin Lopez ($ 5,005,350) who has no reason to opt out and Wesley Matthews ($ 2,692,991), while the Bucks are entitled to release Ersan Ilyasova and release $ 7 million.
Since $ 3,169,348 must be paid to John Lowry and another $ 1,865,546 to Larry Saunders and also since a “yesAntetokunbo in the supermax expansion proposal will activate his new contract from the fall of 2021 and not from this year, the Bucks will have committed from 114 to 121 million dollars. What does this mean? How are they going to exceed the salary cap and pay? luxury tax even if they don’t add, which of course they will, because they will need a list of 14-15 people.
CHANGED OR SUPPLIED
The last two seasons have shown that the Bucks are the best regular-season team in the NBA, but they can’t make it through the playoffs. And while last year’s exclusion of the Raptors in the Eastern Conference finals cannot be considered a catastrophic failure, this year the Milwaukee team’s course was certainly a major setback. Big responsibility falls on Mike Budenholzer who presented a minor set of circumstances in the “bubble”, whatever excuses he might have used, he didn’t adapt, he didn’t take risks, he didn’t dare, he didn’t …
Bud has a contract until the summer of 2022. Logic says that he will continue to lead the Bucks, but we must not forget that in the summer of 2018 he threw away two years and 14 million dollars to say goodbye to the Atlanta Hawks that he had caught. . ceiling. With assistant coach Darwin Hamm increasingly playing for vacant NBA spots, Budenholzer needs to find new partners, strengthen the coaching staff, and most of all, accept (one way or another) try new things, get off the … clock. rotation and stop investing in athletes no longer proven to lift the weight and pressure of the playoffs.
THE IDEAL SCENARIO WOULD BE …
Shares of Eric Blencho and Chris Middleton are not up at this time. The former can do almost nothing at a high level and especially in the basketball playoffs, the latter has a huge contract that does not suit his status as a player, so GM John Horst’s hands are pretty tied.
Blenzo disappoints, doesn’t score consistently, doesn’t shoot efficiently from range, plays incredible defense only when he wants to (a member of the second best five defenders this year), overall the Bucks need more than just their main point guard. They need a Chris Paul or even the CP3 itself, but the $ 2 million out of $ 84 million over the next two years makes acquisition difficult. Unless the Oklahoma City Thunder prove … stupid and turn it in for a package with Blenzo, Hill, Lopez. They have no reason to and will not, so the Bucks must look for alternatives.
Middleton, meanwhile, is a peripheral who needs the ball in his hands to be efficient. He can’t act as a point shooter, he’s not Clay Thompson or Duncan Robinson, and with Antitokunbo, as much as they fit on a regular-season roster, they haven’t found a way to coexist perfectly in the playoffs. The coach’s job is to make this duo work, we haven’t seen it until today. Will we see it in the future? The Bucks would gladly give up the incredible pro and man, Chris Middleton, but who’s going to get 147 million over the next four years, for a 30-year regional?
Beyond that, Brooke Lopez’s nearly 13 million is a reasonable amount to either stay in Milwaukee or use as commercial bait. It fits the Bucks style, it opens the field for Giannis, it doesn’t seem logical to give it away unless we see it come in a package that can convince a team to take Blencho or Middleton. He’s not a good rebounder and never will be, but he’s a reliable shooter, he helps with blocks to easily collect the rebound around him, defensively he’s great next to Antetokunbo, especially when Giannis chases his player after a shutdown. and sends it to the racket. You will hardly find a player of these characteristics in Milwaukee, at this price.
NEXT CONATON, CORVER AND WILLIAMS
$ 604,278 Marvin Williams retired. Pat Conaton $ 1,723,050 and Kyle Korver $ 2,564,753 are free agents. All three helped. All three were remarkable. All three played “above” their salaries. But nobody made a difference. Budenholzer may want to stick with the last two with minimal contracts and that’s where the discussion begins. Can you find better players and characters? Can you get more from the athletes who will get the minimum, will they have the eighth, ninth, tenth role having entered a championship environment as a youngster? It is not easy to answer these questions, the balances are too delicate in teams like the Bucks that are under scandalous pressure.
What is certain, however, is that this year’s failure is not the fault of Conaton, Korver and Marvin Williams, but of those who lead “the boat.” more, less less, they have to take responsibility for the overall poor performance without looking for excuses to stop the season, social unrest and anything but basketball and its image within the four lines. The Bucks need an electroshock to refresh their roster, to bring an aura of change to their facility, they have to try something different, change their philosophy, protect their superstar from the cannibalism he’s suffered in the past year.
It will take some time, the tones and pulses will drop, the extreme emotions will disappear before the big decisions are made. The next few months will be filled with uncertainty, everything will seem (and will be) fluid, logic prevails, proper self-criticism prevails, and the Bucks will find a way to stay in the elite and step to the top.
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