Yep
Game over.
If the same thing happens as last year, ESPN will have a story about Giannis wanting out within 5 minutes of the final buzzer. It was Malika Andrews' story last year.
@Tschmack posted:Blow this mofo up
Giannis will be the one that determines that. You know he's getting asked immediately after this game. If he says anything other than he's looking forward to coming back next year, he's probably gone.
Horrible missed call on that push off, but it doesn't matter either way.
They should T Igoudala up for acting like an idiot up 8 with 12 seconds left.
How much would have home court advantage mattered? We'll never know, but the Bucks were probably more hurt by the stoppage than any team.
What a downer. Hoping giannis comes back.
@MichiganPacker2 posted:Waiting for the Giannis story to drop in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1....
The story actually dropped before I finished typing that.
@MichiganPacker2 posted:The story actually dropped before I finished typing that.
They had it ready to go. It shows up on the home page (the link isn't active yet) within 10 seconds of the end of the game.
@Pikes Peak posted:And?
If he does an interview after the game it will tell us a lot.
@MichiganPacker2 posted:If he does an interview after the game it will tell us a lot.
The consensus on Twitter among reporters with usually good sources is that he won't demand a trade, but he won't sign the SuperMax either. It sets up a situation where the Bucks could lose him for nothing next summer if they don't trade him. It's a soft way of forcing a trade.
Is he gonna take into account that this year SUCKED??? The virus......CHANGED EVERYTHING IT CHANGED EVERYTHING.
@MichiganPacker2 posted:The following guys are unsigned at the end of this game (edit: I should say this season).
Kyle Korver, Pat Connaughton, Sterling Brown, and Marvin Williams =
Robin Lopez and Wes Matthews have player options. Matthews isn't coming back at the minimum.
They are paying $6M in Cap space for Leuer, Hawes, and Larry Sanders. They can’t keep Connaughton or Korver, Matthews shouldn’t come back, and I’m certain Brown does not want to live in Milwaukee (and he’s not playing). Williams will probably retire.
So the only guys left from the playoff rotation:
- Giannis, Middleton, Lopez, DiVincenzo, and Bledsoe, and Hill off the bench, with Ilyasova and DJW deeper.
I don’t know if any team is going to look at Ilyasova, Bledsoe... even if you dangle DiVincenzo, what do you gain? I’d rather they keep DDivo- he can still get a lot better.
Maybe Sacto will look to move Buddy Hield, since he’s unhappy? He just signed a 4 year extension for $88M... maybe Bledsoe’s 3 years, $55M will be appealing, Add in Ilyasova’s 1 year, $7M and the money works- but for the life of me I don’t know why Sacto would do that trade. Just a cash dump? I dunno- they picked Bagley over Luka, maybe they’d be that stupid. Add in the Pacer pick for fodder.
They have no other G depth and not enough backcourt scoring to compete in the playoffs. Dragic is a FA- maybe put him in the G rotation with the MLE, even though he’s 34. Add Hield... maybe that’s enough to flip the script.
If you are all in for a single year and don't care about the following year, you go all in for Chris Paul.
Paul is owed about 85 million over the next two years. OKC is playing a long game. They tried to move that contract this past summer but didn't get anywhere because of the luxury tax implications.
Sending Eric Bledsoe, Robin Lopez, Ilyasova, George Hill, and DJ Wilson contract filler would work. You'd probably have to throw in a draft pick as well. That's a lot of pieces that OKC could move to other contenders for more assets.
Well, he's saying the right things.
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I’d be on board for Chris Paul... question is would he be? Would Presti take a bunch of loose parts for a guy who can help the Bucks win a Championship?
He’d be the Oscar Robertson acquisition that would catapult their starting lineup- but they’d have no depth left. Then what do they do?
@Goldie posted:Is he gonna take into account that this year SUCKED??? The virus......CHANGED EVERYTHING IT CHANGED EVERYTHING.
The Bucks played to get home court advantage this year and it was all for nothing. That really was the biggest disappointment for them that the virus caused.
That said, even with home court advantage, this team had a weakness that was there all along (3 point defense) and the bubble exposed it. They likely were not going to win it all no matter where they played.
Maybe the weakness that really didn't show up all season until the bubble was that their bench was kind of a fraud and looked slow and old. They had lots of decent bench players, but come the final rounds of the playoffs, you need very good bench players, not decent ones. Add to that the fact that I think Bledsoe cemented that he really truly cannot be depended on as a 3rd option and it led to a real disappointing series.
It's pretty clear this team as currently constituted will not win a Championship. It sucks because the last 2 years have been mostly a hell of a lot of fun, but some semi-major tweaks will be needed to take another step. Maybe they'll even have to take a step backwards to move forwards, but obviously, they have to get the Giannis situations figured out or things could get ugly.
@Music City posted:I’d be on board for Chris Paul... question is would he be? Would Presti take a bunch of loose parts for a guy who can help the Bucks win a Championship?
He’d be the Oscar Robertson acquisition that would catapult their starting lineup- but they’d have no depth left. Then what do they do?
In reality, the playoff series against Miami showed they didn't have that much playoff-caliber depth anyway. George Hill and DDV (at least the last 2 games) were the only guys you'd bring back based on this playoff run off the bench. In the playoffs, most teams cut the rotation to 8 or 9 guys. If you did a Chris Paul trade and gave up Bledsoe and Hill (plus the other guys noted above who didn't even play in this series you get):
Giannis, Middleton, B. Lopez, DDV, Chris Paul as your starting 5. I'm guessing they could add 3-4 guys as good as Connaughton and Wes Matthews that want to title chase to play with that group. In the playoffs that's all you need. The risk is injuries, but that was the case this year as if either Giannis or Middleton went down they weren't going deep even under normal conditions.
Next year, the regular season is meaningless. Win 45 games and be the 6 seed or win 65 games and be the one seed, it really doesn't matter. They could go 82-0 and it wouldn't matter to anyone. They don't need to worry about a 10 man rotation. Giannis/CP3/Middleton would be the best top 3 in the league. Bud's penchant for limiting guy's minutes would be really beneficial for Chris Paul, too.
@fightphoe93 posted:
It's pretty clear this team as currently constituted will not win a Championship. It sucks because the last 2 years have been mostly a hell of a lot of fun, but some semi-major tweaks will be needed to take another step. Maybe they'll even have to take a step backwards to move forwards, but obviously, they have to get the Giannis situations figured out or things could get ugly.
What's really going to suck is that no matter what, the regular season next year is going to be meaningless. As long as they win enough games to get into the playoffs, the number really doesn't matter. It would be nice to get home court at least for the first two rounds, but that's secondary. It's not going to be as fun to watch them as it was the last two years thinking that after 20 years, the franchise was finally building to something big. Giannis could average 40/20/10 in the regular season and it wouldn't matter until he does something in the playoffs.
All Giannis wants is a championship......well he really didn’t help to much because, HE WAS OUT FOR TWO GAMES.
@Goldie posted:All Giannis wants is a championship......well he really didn’t help to much because, HE WAS OUT FOR TWO GAMES.
They weren't going to win it this year whether he was there or not. Miami looked like the better team all the way through that series no matter whether Giannis was there or not.
As for Giannis, It's got to be frustrating because he works his ass off to shoot better, but unfortunately his mechanics are so shaky that all that hard work doesn't really pay off consistently in games. Honestly, I don't think he needs to work on shooting 3s at all and should mostly abandon that pursuit. Focus on Free Throws, Free Throws, Free Throws.
There's only three places I would want Giannis shooting 3s, either right on the 3 point line directly facing the basket above the top of key or corner side 3s. If he's not in those 3 spots, he shouldn't take them at all, and frankly, I wouldn't care if he never took them anywhere, he's just so inconsistent that it ruins the offensive flow and can be costly in tight games.
The most clutch player we've ever seen is Michael Jordan and while he was a better 3 point shooter than Giannis, he did his damage in the mid-range game and at the FT line. I'd rather Giannis perfect the mid-range like Jordan did than try to do something he'll probably never be particularly good or consistent at.
@Music City posted:
They have no other G depth and not enough backcourt scoring to compete in the playoffs. Dragic is a FA- maybe put him in the G rotation with the MLE, even though he’s 34. Add Hield... maybe that’s enough to flip the script.
Dragic impressed the hell out of me. I know he'd been hurt at times this year and I kind of figured he was a little bit washed up. The truth is, he took both Bledsoe and Hill to the woodshed in this series. He's 4 years older than Bledsoe but looked like the younger fresher player.
I thought Dragic more than any other guy on Miami just really was tough for the Bucks to match up with. He seemed to hit every 3 and when he drove he made some fantastic finishes near the rim. That shocked the hell out of me because supposedly Bledsoe is one of the best defensive PGs in the NBA, but he really got schooled by the "old man" Dragic in this series.
To be fair, everyone takes playoff Bledsoe to the woodshed. You have to replace that piece of shit pronto.
Tides are already flowing... Williams has already announced his retirement. Rumors on Hoopshype already pumping the Bucks will be pursuing Chris Paul. And with OKC and Billy Donovan parting ways, they appear to be in rebuild mode- they already have $40M coming off the books (Galinari, Roberson, and Noel), so they will be looking for draft assets and young players. Perhaps the Bucks get the $40M off their books by involving a 3rd team who are interested in some veteran depth. They’ll be turning the franchise over to SGA after his apprenticeship and will certainly be looking to get rid of Paul’s $80M+ over the next two years.
But again- the Bucks are not asset rich. The best hope is for the rest of the league to be sour on adding Paul’s enormous contract and the Bucks emerge as a last resort. The Bucks can trade a crap load of dead money that’s expiring over the next couple years plus some player assets, but they don’t have much else.
If the Bucks want to add Paul, they may need to part with Middleton. He has actual value. Bledsoe has some value, as he is 2x all-defense on a reasonable deal and 3 more years. Whoever gets him will need other Gs who can score. DDivo has some value- he wasn’t great in the playoffs, but he’s basically a rookie and has shown signs of being a pretty good 2-way player. Hill has some value as a 6th man.
I don’t know... it seems to me that it is only going to work out if they give up something they don’t want to.
It may be a pipe dream, but the two guys I’d target first are Jrue Holiday and Bradley Beal. They are on my list for a couple of reasons:
1) they are true #2 compliments to Giannis
2) they are young enough and hungry enough to “go for it” and then get a monster payday or choose other team down the road
With player options in the final year of their deal(s), Holiday is essentially a one year rental and Beal is a two year rental. Washington is stuck with the albatross of the Wall contract and will be in full rebuild/tank mode if the right deal comes around. New Orleans is actually on track to compete sooner than later so might be willing to part with Holiday to pick up additional assets knowing he won’t resign with the Pelicans anyway.
A package of DDV, Bledsoe, and B Lopez would make salaries match not to mention the Indiana first round pick this year.
I know there’s a lot of Chris Paul banter out there and yes I think he could make them better (assuming they don’t part with Middleton) but I don’t like the mileage on him and he’s faded big time come playoffs. Maybe it’s age, maybe he’s just not clutch. Who knows?
And of course there’s the Warriors and Giannis related trade rumors. Nothing new there. And Miami banter as well. Miami is in the catbird seat having young, tradeable assets like Bam and Herro not to mention they clear like 50MM of salary from their books in the off-season. So in theory they could sign two max players to go along with Jimmy Buckets. Imagine the Heat with Butler and Holiday (or Beal) and Giannis? Damn that’s better than even Golden State could probably muster.