If the Milwaukee Bucks colluded with Gary Trent Jr. to circumvent the salary cap and were stupid enough to write it down thus incurring the fire of a thousand suns ignites their entire draft future until the late 2030s, I will be out of words for this franchise. Clean out.
If you missed this story, the Bucks recently signed Gary Trent Jr. to a four-year, $64 million contract after signing him the previous two seasons to well-below-market deals, $2.6 million in 2024 (the league minimum) and $3.7 million in 2025. That’s all technically legal — the problem is that Gary Trent Jr. … sucks, and just had the worst season of his career by far and is in no way shape or form a $64 million player. This has led to “speculation” that the Bucks had a wink-wink deal with Trent in 2024 to sign him to two smaller deals while they were in their contention window and then give him a larger one once they had cap space. “Speculation” is in air quotes because … that obviously seems like what they did.
The Bucks risking their franchise life for Gary Trent Jr. would be the dumbest move in sports history
This exact move literally happened with Joe Smith in 2000, a scandal which cost the Minnesota Timberwolves five first-round picks. The NBA is investigating, and while we have no information on what a potential punishment would look like if they are caught red-handed, I can’t imagine it’ll be much better than the Kawhi Leonard situation. We’re talking all your first round picks gone, punitive measures against your owner and front office, the whole nine. For Gary Trent Jr. Not Kawhi, not even former-but-ultimately-underwhelming-number-one-pick Joe Smith. This would be a nuclear bomb vaporizing a franchise … for Gary Trent Jr.
I have not been kind to the Milwaukee Bucks in the last few years. I was baffled by their handling of the Giannis Antetokounmpo market and believe the whole saga set their franchise back half a decade or more. I will ensure that the Damian Lillard waive-and-stretch/Myles Turner “supermax” goes down as the dumbest NBA transaction of my generation. But this? This would take the cake. This would take every cake in the history of cakes.
The Bucks obviously cheated, but were they dumb enough to write it down?
First and foremost, they obviously did circumvent the salary cap. There’s no question about that; unless the Bucks ownership group is tens of millions of dollars in debt to Gary Trent Jr. (which would be a … separate investigation, probably), then there’s no other reason they would have given this money to him. There is no logical explanation, and the only actual explanation is that everyone involved is an idiot and they obviously cheated.
Now, this certainly isn’t the first time a wink-wink extension has happened, and not the first that’s been in the news this decade. James Harden famously called Daryl Morey a “liar” amid much speculation that he had reneged on a little handshake extension agreement from the Philadelphia 76ers, and star players have recently taken pay cuts to give their team more flexibility, like Jalen Brunson and Victor Wembanyama, which is legal since other teams were not eligible to sign them.
What isn’t legal is to artificially manipulate the Gary Trent Jr. market by giving him tiny deals in 2024 and 2025 that other teams obviously would have beaten if given a chance before making it up to him after his best playing days are already spent — that’s a blatant competitive advantage. It’s not a competitive advantage that … meant much, at the end of the day, but it is absolutely cheating.
A Clippers-level punishment would kill the Bucks
The only question, then, is was anyone at Klutch Sports or the Bucks organization dumb enough to write this down? It would be absolutely baffling if they were, but it is absolutely baffling that the Clippers did what they did too, and they didn’t have the half-decade track record of incompetent management the Bucks do.
This is legitimately sad. The Bucks were such a likeable team in 2021, and now it's five straight years of the worst possible moves, stories and sagas of suffering. It's like watching an actor you liked on the Disney Channel when you were a kid turn into a dysfunctional alcoholic hedonist who mails in roles on Hallmark movies and then becomes a semi-professional boxer in their mid-40s. What happened, man.
Like with Kawhi, I’ll believe any punishment once I see it. But if the NBA is in a mood to keep making examples out of cheaters and they actually give the Clippers punishment to the Bucks? The franchise will be dead. Stone dead. They already don’t have any of their own picks, and losing yet more of their own picks would make it functionally impossible for a small market team to survive. The NBA will probably take this into account when they receive the results of the investigation, because a similar punishment would, plainly, be a doomsday button for Milwaukee.
And the Bucks took this risk. They took this risk FOR GARY TRENT JR. We won’t know the results of this for a while, but I’ll be there when we do. I will be there no matter what.
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