Milwaukee Bucks Links: Deadline Deals Edition
Feb 5, 2013; Denver, CO, USA; Milwaukee Bucks guard Brandon Jennings (3) drives to the basket during the first half against the Denver Nuggets at the Pepsi Center. Mandatory Credit: Chris Humphreys-USA TODAY Sports
Brew Hoop: Question: Who is tired of hearing about Brandon Jennings, his agents, and his impending restricted free agency? (*raises hand*)
Jacob McCormick transcribed portions of the WSSP post-game show, which featured Gery Woelfel divulging an anonymous conversation he had with a player agent.
After indicating that would fall somewhere in the $14 – $14.5 million per year range, Woelfel continued:
"“When he saw what Steph Curry got, what (Ty) Lawson got, and what (Jrue) Holiday got, it was more in the $11 to 12 million. Jennings thought he should be maxed. Who takes the hit for that? His agent.Now along comes the All-Star game, and Jennings is snubbed. Again, according to this agent, he was upset … quite a bit that he was snubbed and he believes it was because he’s playing in a small market. Hence, he would like to go to a bigger market. Further hence, he fires Bill Duffy and hires Jeff Schwartz in the hope of course that he will someday play in a bigger market and someday play in an All-Star game.”"
Those quotes were followed by eight seconds of silence befitting something we’ve speculated, but never really confirmed.
I want to just tune all of this information out and concentrate on what it would take to make Jennings a better basketball player. The day-to-day speculation of ‘Will he?” or “Won’t he?” is getting tedious at an ever increasing rate, since nothing can really change between now and this summer except for a trade — and I can’t see John Hammond trading him before then.
Why? Because Hammond has a familiar sense of what the market will bear for Jennings this summer. It’s not a max contract. Teams that need point guards don’t have salary cap space, teams that have salary cap space don’t need a point guard (except for maybe Dallas), and Jennings has done little this season to demonstrate his capability to live up to such a contract.
The market for Jennings is probably more in line with the Lawson/Holiday deals, and it’s worth the risk for Hammond to take his time and find out.
Bucksketball: I wholeheartedly concur with Jeremy Schmidt’s levels of trade likelihood.
On Samuel Dalembert, he writes:
Dalembert’s availability should come as no surprise. Milwaukee’s semi-prized off season acquisition has done little more than collect dust on the bench as a Buck and a contract that expires at season’s end. He’s been useful when he’s played recently though, so it’s possible the market has expanded beyond “nothing” for him of late. Yesterday’s crazy 35-point 12-rebound game in just 27 minutes certainly couldn’t have hurt. He’s a serviceable center with a reputation as a shot-blocker and rebounder if nothing else. The expiring contract combined with that seems to have him in the lead for Buck Most Likely To Be Dealt.
The Classical: I have no idea who Kevin Koczwara is — his tagline notes that he writes primarily about soccer — but he obliterates this piece on Marquis Daniels and his rapper alter-ego, Q6. He takes an even hand to his analysis of Daniels’ avocation. It’s well worth a read.
It’s easy, given Daniels’ reputation as one of the NBA’s blue collar types, to ascribe his reluctance to talk about his musical career to some deeper modesty. While that’s part of it, Daniels is as familiar with the NBA’s kill-it-with-fire discography as the rest of us. He takes his music seriously, and that means being circumspect about leveraging his fame. “If you get a chance with them [rappers], they want to play basketball with us and we want to be in the studio with them,” says Daniels. It’s not an equation that leads to serious work, and Daniels aims to be taken seriously.
It’s as much of a longshot for him as it is for any aspiring rapper. In practice, this pursuit means Daniels is quietly recording songs in the offseason and writing during long plane rides from city to city. He loves making music as much as he loves playing basketball, but goes about it in a covert way.
USA Today: Get well soon, Larry.
When Milwaukee Bucks big man Larry Sanders took a nasty spill against Denver on Tuesday night and hurt his back, there were immediate concerns from within the organization that the injury was serious.
Yet according to a person with knowledge of the situation, fears that the third-year defensive specialist had fractured his back have been allayed and the injury is considered relatively minor.
Drew Gooden has come in possession of some sort of get-out-of-Chipotle free card.