sammybeme93

354 | 5 hours ago

Bucks are not worried till they get a request for comment from Pablo

dwarren44

109 | 5 hours ago

The funny part is that there’s really nothing for Pablo to investigate. The Bucks clearly circumvented the cap.

mas1108

51 | 4 hours ago

I think I even remember Pablo saying on his podcast yesterday, the Bucks situation isn’t even worth investigating lol.

billwest630

7 | 5 hours ago

Any actual proof?

poopy_mc_pantsy

167 | 5 hours ago

https://www.basketball-reference.com/players/t/trentga02.html

SnooChipmunks4208

35 | 4 hours ago

He signed a minimum for a capped team when he had a market and then that team began a rebuild by paying him a ludacris contract when he had no market.

zmichalo

3 | 4 hours ago

Any proof we’ve seen can be covered just as easily by ineptitude, and our owner’s other team is the Browns.

JigglesTheBiggles

3 | 5 hours ago

It seems to be so

KillaMike24

9 | 5 hours ago

I’m laughing so hard at the fact he just posted his basketball reference hahaha

supercoolisaac

-1 | 4 hours ago

Cool thing is you dont actually need any.

Empty-Ad2446

376 | 5 hours ago

yes they absolutely should in my unbiased opinion

professionalJew

49 | 5 hours ago

And Rollins

billwest630

35 | 5 hours ago

Lmao absolutely not.

Empty-Ad2446

23 | 5 hours ago

well you’re biased you’re a bucks fan /s

I_hate_alot_a_lot

2 | 3 hours ago

5 of them, to be exact.

reallinguy

84 | 5 hours ago

Yes.. please give us something for Duren and give him a fat contract

billwest630

47 | 5 hours ago

You can have Myles Turner and Kyle Kuzma

Faps2Downvotes

24 | 5 hours ago

Turner and Herro and it’s a deal.

billwest630

21 | 5 hours ago

I’d do that. Herro looks good but is about to get paid just as much as Duren. A 22 year old fits the timeline way more than Herro does.

fwoompf

10 | 5 hours ago

We would have to do some wild salary stuff for this I think. But it would likely make the team a lot better.

Herro is going to think he is a max guy however.

CazOnReddit

2 | 5 hours ago

I can’t tell if the latter is a dig on Duren’s extension including a weigh clause or not

reallinguy

2 | 4 hours ago

it wasn’t, but good point

Sharcbait

61 | 5 hours ago

Okay I get how bad of a deal the GTJ is, but curious how the league can step in without it being a rock solid paper trail.

The league doesn’t get to step in when players sign below market value and the league doesn’t get to step in when a player gets overpaid.

How will the investigation go “Hey this guy sucks why did you pay them so much” “uhhh because he is a locker room vet” “oh okay”

Literally the team and agent would need to be so dumb for anything to leak that is rock solid enough for the league to be able to act on it without it becoming a shitfest from the players union.

xixbia

37 | 4 hours ago

This 100% happens regularly. It only stands out because Trent Jr had a terrible season.

Silver definitely needs some actual evidence to punish the Bucks. Not just “he had a bad year”.

People seem to forget that for this to have happened, the Bucks must have believed he was worth this contract at some point.

Sharcbait

20 | 4 hours ago

The 6ers and Harden breakup was over this exact thing and the league didn’t step in then.

MudReasonable8185

5 | 2 hours ago

Isn’t that because the sixers backed out of giving him the second contract? They basically just tricked him into taking a discount on his first contract

[deleted]

1 | 3 hours ago

[removed]

neutronicus

1 | an hour ago

Yeah. Basically a guy signs below market at the minimum, plays two years, and then signs an Early Bird deal for ~MLE money. Or tax mid-level after one year, or whatever.

Clippers did it with Batum and Beal. We did it with Reggie Jackson. Bucks with Trent. I’m sure there are other examples I can’t recall.

Anyway, the league has been tacitly tolerating this and I think Silver would need to issue some wrist-slaps to communicate the new direction before actually leveling big-time punishments. Especially since I don’t think the player’s union would be that excited about it going away either.

SnooChipmunks4208

2 | 4 hours ago

There is no need for anything rock solid. This is from section 13 of the CBA:

“A violation of Section 2(a) or 2(b) above may be proven by direct or circumstantial evidence, including, but not limited to, evidence that a Player Contract or any term or provision thereof cannot rationally be explained in the absence of conduct violative of Section 2(a) or 2(b).”

Sharcbait

13 | 4 hours ago

But if they begin enforcing that we can point to the Knicks and Brunson taking a paycut. Or to Harden and his messy exit with the 76ers.

“Rationally explained” can just be that the Bucks like him as a lockerroom vet. It becomes a very slippery slope if the league gets to decide who gets what money, and the players union would throw a massive fit if they try to step in now.

hadmeintiers

11 | 4 hours ago

Brunson didnt take a paycut in the traditional sense, he signed the max available at the time instead of waiting another year for a potential larger contract

Which could be rationally explained by the logic of a small guard locking in his money and not wanting to risk injury (i.e Isaiah Thomas)

SnooChipmunks4208

8 | 4 hours ago

That doesnt explain the 2 minimum contracts in order to get bird rights though.

The player accepted two minimums, even if the team likes the locker room presence, why would he be paid more than a minimum?

Broke_Banker01

8 | 4 hours ago

He can say he took the min to stay because he liked Milwaukee and wanted to play with Giannis.

dusters

4 | 4 hours ago

The Sixers did it with Harden and the league didn’t care.

SnooChipmunks4208

0 | 4 hours ago

Explain your claim.

dusters

1 | 4 hours ago

https://youtube.com/shorts/k7GJhzEdD0k?is=ZPUkKVpu8neenNLf

EthicalBballFan

-1 | 3 hours ago

Well, that’s half the equation. The other half is that for the League to look into it, another team must report it.

Seems like nobody cared about the Harden/6ers, but that someone is mad at the Bucks and did it out of pettiness. The Celtics would have motive to.

Realfan555

1 | 3 hours ago

Ur basically saying salary cap circumvention is close to impossible to police

dgvhjiiuyttrrffcvbjj

0 | 4 hours ago

The league doesn’t get to step in when players sign below market value and the league doesn’t get to step in when a player gets overpaid.

The problem isn’t isolated incidents of one or the other. The problem is both happening sequentially, in the context of squeezing a free agent onto a team that has no cap space and no exceptions to sign them to the contract they should have gotten.

It’s not just a matter of over/underpaying, the issue is that they shouild not have been able to get GTJr at all. They broke the rules for a competitive advantage.

Evening-Review-5216

68 | 5 hours ago

That’s not how that works. If the nba finds a team guilty of salary cap circumvention and they want to take firsts from them, they will take them. Doesn’t matter if it’s next years first or a first 5 years from now

PettyYetiSpaghetti

47 | 5 hours ago

OP sounds like one of the people who believe the “Doctors hate this one weird trick!” spam 😂

InexorableWaffle

6 | 4 hours ago

Not to mention that I feel like blatantly trying to bypass a potential punishment like that would only make them drop the hammer that much more.

If there’s going to be a punishment, better to rip the bandaid off and get it over with sooner rather than later. We aren’t going to be a serious contender in the near-future in all likelihood, so I’d rather have the picks stripped now rather than later when we actually might have something to build around.

Realfan555

1 | 3 hours ago

Yeah, I didnt’t do anything, but I also just traded away all my picks…

SkepticCritic

4 | 4 hours ago

Yeah, they even took the pacers pick from the clippers when that’s never been done before

kyle_993

8 | 5 hours ago

I mean they won’t touch picks that have been traded

emeraldegg

16 | 4 hours ago

They will go as far out as they need to.

BrotherSeamus

5 | 4 hours ago

Yeah, but that’s the future GM’s problem, not mine - Jon Horst

scarywolverine

1 | 3 hours ago

This literally just happened guys. Clippers kept the Raptors picks

MrKentucky

1 | 3 hours ago

That’s not the scenario though, this is about the Bucks trading the Bucks’ picks in an attempt to kick the can down the road.

GetOffMyGradey

5 | 5 hours ago

The NBA kind of acts as if draft picks more than 7 years in the future don’t exist yet.

wormhole222

2 | 44 minutes ago

Not for punishments they don’t. The Stepien and 7 years out rules are for trades. For punishments they can take away whatever they want.

GetOffMyGradey

1 | 42 minutes ago

Is there an example where the NBA took away a pick that was more than 7 years away?

wormhole222

1 | 34 minutes ago

It hasn’t been necessary yet, but when they word some of these punishments they do use the phrasing “next available pick” for what pick they lose. So I’m fairly certain that can apply to picks more than 7 years out.

reallinguy

1 | 4 hours ago

we talking Draft Pick Debt?

phonage_aoi

1 | 40 minutes ago

OP also forgot the league has to approve any trade. So if they strongly think there’s something to their investigation, they’ll likely hold up the trade until that’s done.

xixbia

1 | 4 hours ago

Draft picks in the future have less valie though.

Especially given the Bucks will lilely not be all that good the coming years.

da_Byrd

3 | 5 hours ago

The League needs to approve all trades, and if the investigation is ongoing they most likely would not.

DynastyInProcess [OP]

3 | 5 hours ago

I don’t think the league would stop trades involving picks. They didn’t even stop a trade where the main star in it was under investigation. It was the Raptors who paused it.

MaximumJack44

-2 | 5 hours ago

Right. If the league halted the Kawhi trade till investigations were complete, it surely would do the same here. Edit: Confused by the downvotes. I specify “till investigations were complete.”

Splittinghairs7

8 | 5 hours ago

The league didn’t halt the clippers raptors trade because of the picks at all.

The trade was halted by the raptors because the nba said that raptors need to bear the risk of any potential punishment that might be placed on Kawhi after the trade.

Here there is no potential punishment to Duren at all.

BananaRepublic_BR

6 | 5 hours ago

I thought it was the respective teams that put the Kawhi trade on pause. I don’t think it was the league.

MaximumJack44

1 | 3 hours ago

I’m pretty sure it was the league, but I’m apparently wrong about everything related to this.

Coyote-king8647

0 | 4 hours ago

Then just let it go through with no trouble even though the player and organization were proven to have cheated.

olenikp

5 | 5 hours ago

But is there a limit on how far into the future NBA can penalize them? NBA could take away their 33-38 if they had to I would think

beforeitcloy

5 | 4 hours ago

If you’re going to get a 5 year death sentence, why spend your picks getting a guy who you have to pay hundreds of millions?

Zach Lavine is expiring. Use the picks to get salary off the books.

ohboy360

3 | 4 hours ago

Because no one as good as Duren would sign with the Bucks in free agency.

beforeitcloy

0 | 4 hours ago

But winning with zero 1st rounders and Duren and Tyler Herro as your best players will be impossible. If you’re going to lose either way, you might as well save yourself $200 million.

ohboy360

1 | 4 hours ago

I agree, but there’s also a salary floor. You have to pay someone.

And if Duren plays well, you could always potentially trade him to get some of the picks back.

GetOffMyGradey

22 | 5 hours ago

Getting stuck with Duren on a max seems like it’s own punishment.

Negative_Wish_8291

4 | 2 hours ago

I’ve been seeing people say this jokingly online all day today, but the Clippers also didn’t own some of their upcoming picks so the NBA just took the ones for the years after that.

Like if the Bucks do that then they’ve basically traded 8 first round picks for Gray Trent Jr and Jalen Duren.

illmatic2112

3 | 4 hours ago

Silver gonna strip Duren instead

SnooChipmunks4208

5 | 4 hours ago

Keep going…

randyrectem

3 | 3 hours ago

“Equally severe if not worse”

I mean yeah I’m a bucks fan but why in the world would the Bucks get punished worse? The Clippers were doing some extremely shady bullshit. You can argue that ultimately it’s the same thing so equal punishment but why would it be harsher?

CazOnReddit

4 | 5 hours ago

They should trade for more than Duren but yes, make moves since it’s not like you own your own picks for a while. Heck, you don’t own your 2027 first as is.

MVPhurricane

2 | 5 hours ago

nate duncan ftw

goknicks23

2 | 4 hours ago

As long as nothings in writing, they should be fine. Wouldn’t the whole Morey is a liar situation with Harden be like the same thing except Morey didn’t honor his circumvention promise?

dusters

2 | 4 hours ago

That would just lead to later picks being taken away. Dont kick the can down the road when you are already bad.

bikedork5000

2 | 3 hours ago

Lol what 1st round picks. I don’t think we have one until 2031

No-Economics4128

2 | 3 hours ago

I would not even jaywalk for Gary Trent Jr. if you are going to do crime, at least make it count

likewoahitsaj

2 | 2 hours ago

people are acting like the clippers case didn’t have an insane amount of written evidence.

I think the bucks circumvented the cap, but without written proof it’s going to be hard for the league to punish to the same degree (especially if GTJ doesn’t agree to a punishment). Especially considering taking less money and committing to make good later is an insanely common thing in the nba.

So all this to say, no they shouldn’t just trade away their picks

MrSCR23

1 | 5 hours ago

Can’t the NBA void any hypothetical trade if they do find them in violation of cap rules?

nbaistheworst

1 | 4 hours ago

Sure, let them attempt. Will the Pistons cooperate?

EchoHevy5555

1 | 3 hours ago

The clippers swaps weren’t unaffected by the punishment

The clippers punishment goes into 2033 because they didn’t have any picks

It probably wouldn’t have gone as long if they had picks for the next 3 years

So no they should not trade their picks because they could suffer the same fate

SUPERSAMMICH6996

1 | 3 hours ago

The NBA would just take away their (potentially more valuable) picks further down the line. They would basically just doom themselves to a Clippers’ situation for Jalen Duren.

manimsoblack

1 | 3 hours ago

League would have to sign off on the trade and they might not if it serves to circumvent penalties.

randyjackson69

1 | 3 hours ago

If you’re a big ten/college football fan here you might remember that Brian Ferentz of Iowa allegedly had to have Iowa score 25 points per game in a season to keep his job.

The bucks have nothing to play for this season anyways so it should be a Gary Trent Jr needs to score 30 ppg to keep the picks situation to spice things up. If he gets it the NBA forgets the back room deal, if he falls short they lose the draft picks. Would create great TV down the stretch

manonthem00nn

1 | 3 hours ago

I really doubt they’re gonna find evidence why can’t the bucks just say Trent wanted to play for them and took a pay cut and now they’re rewarding him since their rebuilding and value someone that’s been on the team. Bad contracts aren’t illegal

LurkerFailsLurking

1 | 3 hours ago

Bucks punishment won’t be as bad because they’d work with the NBA because they’re not trying to admit to SEC fraud

LeftHandedGraffiti

1 | 3 hours ago

If you think the NBA isnt willing to nullify a trade intending to circumvent punishment…

Bamboozlled

1 | 3 hours ago

I think it makes less sense if they do know a punishment could come.

They need rookie scale deals and to develop. If they were a competitive team and a starting center away from a playoff run, sure.

Jalen is a really good starting center but Milwaukee would want to sell if a punishment was coming, not buy a solid, not great center.

Even if they did, the league does not care at all about the stepien rule. They’ll just take picks in the future like they did with LA.

itsmb12

1 | 2 hours ago

Take away our picks and i will never watch another nba game in my life. It is so blatantly obvious that the league hates that we won in 2021 and is hellbent on putting us in nba purgatory for forever

ag_fan

2 | an hour ago

lol wut

actually-potato

1 | an hour ago

Yes very much so

TheWindowMerchant

1 | an hour ago

Why wait for the league to tank your franchise when you can do it yourself!

Ironredhornet

1 | 38 minutes ago

If the NBA wanted to punish a team by stripping picks, they wouldn’t suddenly not punsh them because they yraded them all away. They would just strip future assets

thy_armageddon

1 | 5 hours ago

Damn how’d you get so smart. You should be a criminal mastermind.

snailtap

1 | 4 hours ago

Absolutely not, I’d rather lose the picks than trade for Duren

Shingorillaz

0 | 4 hours ago

If the league does find proof they should get the same revised punishment as what the Wolves got and not what the Clippers got.

arrogantmonkey

0 | 4 hours ago

Isn’t that a tough trade for Detroit to agree to if there’s a risk of losing the picks

nbaistheworst

1 | 4 hours ago

Clippers didn’t, so the precedent has been set.

arrogantmonkey

0 | 4 hours ago

What do you mean, NBA warned the Raptors. Implicit warning that Kawhi could be suspended. If they do the same thing here Detroit will be warned that the picks might be taken

nbaistheworst

1 | 4 hours ago

Your posting false equivalence is noted. The league didn’t warn the Raptors or the Clippers that the picks would be taken (from the Clippers). They warned them that the Raptors would have to accept whatever sanctions the league gave Kawhi, which is why the Raptors paused.

arrogantmonkey

1 | 4 hours ago

Yeah man that’s what I said. Kawhi could have been suspended and the NBA implicitly warned them that could happen

Here the Buck could lose picks so why would Detroit trade for those picks if the NBA might take them away?

BackPirateClarkRoom

-3 | 4 hours ago

Bucks are a irrelevant franchise so no idea why so many people care about the story.

Clippers had free agency so I get it.

ZestycloseZeta

0 | 5 hours ago

No, that’s not how it works

The league could also barred any such trades, until the investigation is over, if they want

[deleted]

1 | 5 hours ago

[deleted]

1 | 5 hours ago

[removed]

[deleted]

1 | 3 hours ago

[deleted]

0 | 5 hours ago

[deleted]

If the Milwaukee Bucks know that they’re guilty of cap circumvention with Gary Trent Jr., should they attempt to trade their first-round picks for Jalen Duren now before they’re stripped of them?