The Bratwurst – Milwaukee Bucks Blog

Reality check.

In my recent post about the value of Andrew Bogut’s contract extension, I pointed out that the realities of the salary cap means that the Bucks are going to have to do something this offseason to avoid a likely luxury tax bill in the 2009/10 season, the first year of Bogut’s extension.

The failure to plan around Bogut’s extension will wind up being the biggest mistake the Larry Harris ever made. He always seemed to believe that he had a much better team than he did, and now the new GM will have to make moves to avoid the cash crunch that Harris created.

I’m not talking about the Bobby Simmons signing, but signing Gadzuric and Bell. At least Simmons was supposed to be a starter.

After drafting Bogut, Harris signed Gadzuric (who was a restricted free agent) to a six-year contract extension that exceeded the midlevel. Of course, even if a team had come to Gadzuric and offered him a near-max deal the Bucks could have afforded to let him go since they not only had Bogut but Pachulia was a restricted free agent as well. Instead, Harris signed Gadzuric to a contract that has paid him more than Bogut up to this point, when Gadzuric was signed to be a full-time backup, and lasts past the point where Bogut is eligible for an extension.

The same disastrous mistake was made with Charlie Bell. Maybe Bell had been a valuable contributor to the Bucks in 2006/07, but he was a contributor to a 25 win team! How much can he possibly be worth? Then, after Bell tried to talk his way out of Milwaukee and got a ridiculous offer from Miami, why wouldn’t the Bucks let him go in order to not pay him $3.5 million in Bogut’s extension year? I have no problem with Charlie Bell getting paid, but why should the Bucks be the ones to pay him?

Anyway, as I showed with this chart, should the salary cap keep growing at the same pace that it has averaged (5% a year) then the Bucks, should they not do anything, would find themselves at the luxury tax in the 2009/10 season with only 11 players on the roster. Assuming that the cap will expand at that rate, however, is a big if, as the economy is doing so poorly and attendance and league revenues are down this season. It is conceivable that the luxury tax in 09/10 could be closer to $67 million, while the Bucks (assuming $11 million to Bogut that year) are already on the hook for $68.

This means that the Bucks are going to have to make a move right now to ensure that a big chunk of salary will fall by the wayside next offseason. The team right now has a painful collection of good players that don’t work very well together. But it’s a fact of life that in order to get better you sometimes have to make trades that make you worse. Let me make one thing clear , these trade proposals that I am writing about now are not supposed to propel the Bucks deep into the playoffs , they are meant to be the first step in rebuilding the roster into a more compatible group of talent.

Obviously, if you want to cut salary then you could trade Michael Redd for a similar, shorter contract. I’m not looking in that direction, since you could never get anything close to fair value back, and you wouldn’t be able to rid yourself of one of the bad contracts (Gadzuric or Simmons) in the process.

For the purposes of this post, I’ve also given up on moving Gadzuric. Since Simmons has a shorter contract with a larger salary, he will have more value than Danny G in a cap-move trade. Basically, the team acquiring Simmons would get a useless player but still have a nice-sized expiring contract to look forward to the following season.

One might say that the Bucks would be better off keeping Simmons instead of dumping him, paying a small luxury tax bill in 09/10 and reaping the cap room when his $10 million contract expires in the summer of 2010. The problem with this is that most of the cap room created by Simmons’ exit will immediately be absorbed by the six players that we do know for sure will still be on the team — $1 million to Redd and Yi, a likely $1 million to Bogut, about $500,000 apiece to the 2008 and 2009 first round picks, and $1-$3 million to the 2010 first round pick. If the Bucks are a near-luxury tax team in the summer of 2010, Simmons’ exit will likely only result in a $3-$5 million savings.

Of course you have to give something up to get something back, and that means it is time for Mo Williams to go. Williams has blossomed into a very, very nice player and efficient scorer, but I don’t think that the combination of him and Redd will ever be good enough defensively to win consistently. Mo has a reasonable, if sizable, contract and could be moved to several teams that are looking for a point guard, and when his contract is combined with Simmons’, it would equal the value of some of the large expiring contracts out there.

So here are four trade scenarios that would serve the purpose of shedding salary. I have not included how draft picks might be included in these deals, but since the Bucks are always giving up the best player in the proposal, one would assume that they should get back something:

The trades and how they affect the Bucks’ projected salary cap situation are available here.

#1: Mo Williams and Bobby Simmons to New York for Stephon Marbury and Renaldo Balkman (Bucks save $19 million in 2009/10): I hate everything about Marbury, both on and off the court, but I like his $22 million expiring contract. Obviously, in this scenario the Bucks would have to draft a point guard with the idea of turning the reins over to him after Marbury leaves. Since Marbury has gone completely nuts, the Bucks would have to bring him in and tell him: “Look, any incident and you are gone, bought out, we never see you again.” But never underestimate the power of the expiring contract to make a player bring his “A” game on the court and keep his mouth shut off of it (see Patterson, Ruben). Balkman would be an excellent addition as a small forward who can defend and rebound, and would have to be included to make up for the fact that the Knicks don’t have any draft picks to trade to make this proposal more equitable for the Bucks. No doubt, though, that the Bucks had better have a plan “B” in place for point guard if they do get Marbury , there are no guarantees he even is capable of running a team any more.

#2: Williams and Simmons to Portland for Raef LaFrentz, Travis Outlaw, and Sergio Rodriguez (Bucks save $13.5 million in 2009/10): It’s a shame that LaFrentz’s knees gave out on him, and he’s good for nothing more than $12.7 million of expiring contract. Outlaw is a talented player who inexplicably spent most of the season out of position and losing minutes to Martell Webster, despite dramatically outplaying him. He is a big, athletic, slashing small forward , exactly what the Bucks need , and has a reasonable 3 years/$12 million remaining on his contract. Rodriguez is a talented, young player who might be the most exciting passer since Jason Williams, but the attendant turnover ration has kept “Spanish Chocolate” on the bench. He’s a worthwhile risk. The Bucks would save money, but would need to find a starting point guard from another source for next season. Portland has been searching for a point guard, and were a rumored participant in the Jason Kidd sweepstakes at the trade deadline.

#3: Williams and Simmons to Seattle for Chris Wilcox, Luke Ridnour, and Donyell Marshall (Bucks save $13 million in 09/10): Seattle gets two things from this deal , they clear part of their point guard logjam by adding a definite starter in Williams and also clear their power forward logjam for Durant, Jeff Green and possibly Michael Beasley. The Bucks, who get three useless players, would need draft picks back in this scenario. But Seattle is a good team to chat with for that , they have five first round picks in the next three seasons — their own, plus Phoenix’s 2008 (lottery protected) and 2010 (unprotected) picks. Also, Seattle will be about $7 million under the salary cap this offseason, so they could theoretically take back more salary than they send out. This means that this trade could be completed without Wilcox.

#4: Williams, Charlie Bell and Dan Gadzuric to Seattle for Chris Wilcox, Luke Ridnour, and Donyell Marshall (Bucks save $13 million in 09/10): I only include this because it is another scenario with Seattle that most likely wouldn’t require the Bucks to get valuable picks back , not only would they lose two awful contracts, but would retain the Simmons bargaining chip, who could be paired with Villanueva in another deal. Both of these Seattle proposals still leave the Bucks in a tough spot regarding a starting point guard , Ridnour doesn’t really fill the role. There is one reason that Seattle may actually want Gadzuric instead of Simmons , Danny G’s contract has an extra year on it, so it will expire right when Kevin Durant becomes eligible for an extension. Sam Presti may actually want a longer contract in order to postpone some of his cap space (potentially $30 million in the summer of 2009) until then.

So there you have it , these are the sort of trades that the new GM is going to have to pursue in order to try and rebuild this team around Andrew Bogut. The good thing is that they would clear salary space to use their one other tradable player , Villanueva , to bring back something that they can actually use. Besides, as much as we love Mo, the facts are clear , he has turned into a terrific player who was only capable of leading this team to less than 60 wins in the past two seasons. It’s time to rebuild, and awful deals like these are where it starts.