The Milwaukee Bucks have had a busy summer of re-signing several key players and also adding a big name in Myles Turner. In addition to bringing back Bobby Portis, the team also re-signed multiple other key players for the upcoming campaign. With a total of $219 million being dolled out, several of Milwaukee’s deals are being seen as unfavorable by analytics.
Understanding Milwaukee Bucks’ Free Agent Deals
Here’s a quick recap of all of Milwaukee’s moves this offseason. AAV stands for Average Annual Value.
- Myles Turner – 4 years, $107 million ($26.8 AAV)
- Bobby Portis – 3 years, $44 million ($14.7 AAV)
- Kevin Porter Jr. – 2 years, $11 million ($5.5 AAV)
- Ryan Rollins – 3 years, $12 million ($4 AAV)
- Gary Trent Jr. – 2 years, $7.5 million (3.8 AAV)
- Gary Harris – 2 years, $7.4 million (3.7 AAV)
- Taurean Prince – 2 years, $7.1 million ($3.6 AAV)
- Jericho Sims – 2 years, $5.2 million ($2.6 AAV)
Outside of Turner and Harris, these are all Milwaukee players being brought back to the team. In addition to Damian Lillard’s release, the Bucks are losing Brook Lopez to the Los Angeles Clippers.
One way to assess a team’s free agency performance is to calculate how valuable each player’s worth is and compare it to the amount of money being owed to them. A player’s value can be calculated via the Estimated Wins (EW) metric, which can be compared to the “cost” of a win in the NBA (which is about $3.8 million).
NBA analyst Mat Issa has done exactly this to determine what the worst free agent contracts are, weighing a player’s worth in EW and comparing it to the value of their contract. In many cases, it does not match. In Milwaukee’s case, three of their free agent deals stack up as some of the worst in the league.
According to Analytics, the Milwaukee Bucks Have Dramatically Overpaid 3 Key Players
This analytical methodology has not taken kindly to Milwaukee’s two biggest deals so far. The Myles Turner deal is currently assessed as one of the top 5 worst deals in the league this summer. Additionally, the Jericho Sims and Bobby Portis deals both crack the top 10 for worst pieces of business so far.
Based on my formula for calculating production value, here are the top 10 worst contracts of the 2025 offseason thus far.
What stands out to you the most? pic.twitter.com/1TBpxeB3Fc
— Mat Issa (@matissa15) July 7, 2025
As shown in the table, both Turner and Portis are being overvalued by their current deals by about 25%. Milwaukee is paying both players a total of about $40 million AAV despite the two combining for just $31.4 million in estimated value.
The Sims deal, while much smaller, is the worst of the bunch according to the analytical assessment. Sims actually has a negative production value, meaning that any deal is going to theoretically hurt the team.
The elephant in the room for this kind of assessment is the nearly $25 million Milwaukee is paying Damian Lillard despite him not being on the roster. That figure essentially counts on Turner, as Lillard was released to allow the team to sign the former Indiana Pacers big man. All in all, it just means that Turner needs to play extremely well for the Bucks for him to be worth the money.
As acknowledged in the article, one flaw in the EW calculation is it punishes players who are coming off of injuries (or in the case of Portis, a 25-game suspension). Portis’ value is dramatically hurt by these missed games where he was unable to contribute to the team. If Portis can play a lot more than 50 games next season, his value would likely be adjudged to be about fair.
It is important to not use such analytics as be-all, end-all of understanding NBA free agent decisions. But it is an interesting perspective on what Milwaukee is paying for, and if it is the best use of their financial assets. Improving the team is the goal, and players like Turner and Portis will need to take steps up this season to help ensure the Bucks can comfortably make the playoffs and hopefully, advance out of the first round this time.
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