The Milwaukee Bucks found themselves in the vortex of trade rumors as the deadline approached with the uncertain status of Giannis Antetokounmpo. Once the dust settled, however, little had changed in Milwaukee. What does that mean moving forward? For all intents and purposes, it means we’ll just have to wait and see.
Scrum for the Play-in? Draft day tank-off? Where do the Bucks go from here?
The Greek Freak remains a Buck. The only players traded were Cole Anthony and Amir Coffey. The only new face is former Thunder forward Ousmane Dieng. While Dieng has upside in theory as a former 11th overall pick, the move itself was rather odd in that the Bucks seemingly gave up more than the production they brought in.
With nearly $12 million in tax space before the deadline, absorbing unwanted contracts in exchange for draft capital would have been a smart play for the future, but they didn’t do that either. The Bucks didn’t sell off veterans to set up a second-half tank or add impact talent to try and compete. While standing pat is a perfectly viable, if uninspiring approach, it was in many ways an odd deadline after weeks of rumors on either end of the buy-sell spectrum. Anticlimactic. That’s the word.
For the players still on the roster, at least, the passing of the deadline no doubt brought a dose of relief. Perhaps now the team can return to playing basketball without a cacophony of background noise. Which, really, became the foreground concerning the Milwaukee Bucks as the games themselves became secondary.
Head coach Doc Rivers has indicated that Giannis plans to return as soon as he is healthy, dispelling the notion that the team would hold him out in order to lose more games for the sake of draft position. While fighting for a Play-in spot at the expense of lottery odds is a questionable approach, if that’s the way the Bucks will play it, the best thing Rivers can do moving forward, though it may chafe against his conservative instincts, is to see what the roster may hold in the way of young talent.
In addition to making sure Ryan Rollins remains a focal point of the offense, that means giving extended burn to Pete Nance and finding out whether Dieng could be a candidate to re-sign in restricted free agency this summer. If the Bucks make the Play-in, great. Maybe that makes Giannis happy. If they don’t, even better. Now they’ll have a better shot at high-quality draft pick either to dangle as trade bait or add to the current mix of young players as a building block for the future.
Doing nothing at the deadline, combined with Giannis’ intended return, leaves the Bucks in a liminal, murky space for the rest of the season. Off the first three-game win streak of the season, how they fare over the next few games ahead of the All-Star break and directly afterward should inform the strategy down the stretch. Keep winning and perhaps competing for Play-in position makes a bit more sense. Go back to losing and embrace the tank. For now, this team is the walking definition of a “wait-and-see” state.
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