NBA Trade Deadline: What It Means For The Bucks

The NBA trade deadline is tomorrow, and the Bucks have strongly been pursuing a power forward. Currently, the Bucks start Luc Richard Mbah A Moute(a natural 3) at the 4 position, and that simply won't get it done against the league's better big men come playoff time. John Hammond is aware of this, and he is willing to be aggressive before the deadline. A trade now will help the team now, and in the future. He is willing to acquire players that have one year left after this year, and to teams looking to start over Milwaukee could be a perfect place to dump worthy players that have a year left on their contracts. Antawn Jamison has already been traded, and Amare Stoudemire was never an option, but the Indiana Pacers' Troy Murphy is a name that has been connected with the Bucks lately.

Most of the discussed deals have involved the expiring contract of Luke Ridnour, and a young talent such as Ersan Illyasova. I would hate to see a deal like this happen. Murphy is 29, and while better than Illyasova at rebounding and is a more consistent shooter, the two possess very similar qualities. Illyasova is only 22, and his early season play has showed that he is capable of being a big time scorer at times. Obviously the long NBA schedule has worn him down a bit, but there is too much potential to sacrifice for the win now attitude. This leads to a proposed Kurt Thomas and Ridnour combination in a trade for Murphy. The Pacers would be wise to make this deal, because both Thomas' and Ridnour's contracts come off the Bucks at the end of the season while Murphy has a 12 million cap hit next year despite the fact that the Pacers won't even be close to sniffing the playoffs next year. The Bucks can afford to make this trade because they aren't going to be players this offseason as far as free agents go due to Michael Redd and Dan Gadzuric combining to make around 25 million.

Quite frankly, the Bucks wouldn't be able to attract a big name free agent anyways, as Milwaukee has been avoided like the plague by big name stars throughout the years. This leads me to why the deadline is important for Milwaukee. The Bucks can be buyers in players that have talent but their respective teams are going nowhere. They do not want to keep the salary burden, so they trade away the years remaining on players contracts to rid themselves of the financial constraint.


The Mavericks just showed us an example of this by acquiring Caron Butler, Brendan Haywood, and Deshawn Stevenson for Josh Howard and spare parts. The Wizards were going nowhere and wanted to clear cap for the future. The Bucks can make a trade like this, and it will greatly help them. Picture next season if the Bucks have the expiring contracts of Michael Redd, Dan Gadzuric, and Troy Murphy. That is around 37 million worth of salary coming off the books. A maximum-deal player starts off at around 17-18 per year, which means the Bucks could in essence acquire two maximum-valued players for these contracts. Will this happen? No. But we will be able to acquire a star or two while getting some valuable role players. By this time next year, a big trade could change the fortune of the Bucks franchise by bringing in a legitimate star next to building blocks Andrew Bogut and Brandon Jennings.