The Bucks Plan To Keep Giannis Just Blew Up In Their Face
You see when you are trying to execute a plan to help convince your generational talent to sign a contract extension, sometimes you have to do that in a variety of ways. You can trade a for a player by matching salary and picks. Plenty of teams do that every year, it's pretty straight forward. Then there are times where you need to execute a sign and trade in order to complete a deal. Still fairly common, but a little more complicated. Unfortunately, this is where the Bucks plan went south. You see, in order for this to work, Bogdan Bogdanovic would need to agree to sign an extension in MIL. He's a RFA. Well it appears they made this move without getting Bogdanovic to agree to it. Whoops! Now that deal is dead and all the Bucks are left with at the moment is an expiring Giannis, and Jrue Holiday for 1 guaranteed season. As a reminder, it cost them a total of 5 picks to bring in Holiday. That move made sense if you were also going to bring in Bogdanovic. No Bogy, big problem.
As a restricted free agent, all it takes is one other team with money to make an offer and the Kings will have a decision to make. That team is not going to be the Bucks the last time I checked. I'm not sure they can afford him outright. That was the key to the S&T. Under that, the Bucks would be able to sign him.
If you're Giannis, you have to be pretty pissed right? This is the front office you want to commit to? The one that fucked up the plan that was intended to keep you? Yikes. That's not great. Not when there are well run franchises like the Raptors or Heat as potential options. The plan to keep Giannis is the most important and really only thing that front office has to worry about. That's where all of their energy should be going. You can't screw that up. I know work presentations are tough sometimes. This is one you have to nail and they did the exact opposite. Also, how about the upset of the century that there was a trade mishap involving the Kings and it wasn't actually the Kings! Things are looking up for that franchise already. Sure they'll never recover from not drafting Luka, but hey this is progress.
The Bucks? Well, they might be fucked.