NBA Trade: Pistons acquire Ersan Ilyasova from Bucks

The NBA Finals are well underway, but that’s not stopping the Bucks from thinking about the offseason and offloading Ersan Ilyasova.

We may be in the thick of the NBA Finals, but there are 28 other teams trying to figure out the formula to getting where the Cleveland Cavaliers and Golden State Warriors are right now. One of those teams are the the Milwaukee Bucks, who made it back to the postseason for the first time in four years but were quickly bounced by the Chicago Bulls.

There’s not a lot of pessimism in Milwaukee though, as the Bucks went from a team that was gunning for the lottery in early January to a team that surged int he second half to make the postseason with a young roster. That roster was pieced together in a massive trade deadline move that brought on talents like Michael Carter-Williams and Miles Plumlee.

But the Bucks are not satisfied with slow growth and are continuing to build a winning roster using addition by subtraction. On Thursday afternoon, the Bucks shipped longtime big man Ersan Ilyasova off to the Detroit Pistons for low level contracts and a lot of cap space.

Milwaukee has traded forward Ersan Ilyasova to Detroit for Caron Butler and Shawne Williams, league sources tell Yahoo.
— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) June 11, 2015

The Bucks can open up a $22 million cap hole by moving Ilyasova to the Pistons. Ilyasova alone isn’t responsible for this much cap space being freed up, but moving his deal to Detroit and taking on the contracts of Caron Butler and Shawne Williams is a steal for both teams involved.

Detroit gets a big man who can replace the likely departing Greg Monroe and Milwaukee now has the cap room to make a free agent move to bring in a top level guy to help them win in 2015-16.

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