Determining the Value of the Young (and Old) Bucks

Jan 24, 2015; Milwaukee, WI, USA; Milwaukee Bucks forward Giannis Antetokounmpo (34) drives past Detroit Pistons forward Caron Butler (31) in the fourth quarter at BMO Harris Bradley Center. Mandatory Credit: Benny Sieu-USA TODAY Sports

There is less than one month remaining this season to make trades until after the NBA Finals. This means that any team trying to win said finals must make their deals now or soon after now if they want to make them at all. Although the Bucks may not be truly contending this season (although they did lose a very close game to the defending champs on Sunday night), they do have players that could possibly find a new home on a team that is contending. That’s the point of this post, to find the true trade value of the 2014-15 Milwaukee Bucks’ roster.

I intend to go over each and every player currently on the Bucks roster and do two things: assign them a ranking (5 being practically untradeable due to their value and importance to the franchise, 1 being practically untradeable due to their lack of value and unimportance to the franchise) and then list them in order within the rankings.

So for example there are 4 Bucks players who I consider to be 3s. In addition to telling you I believe they are fairly middle of the road in value, I’ll also tell you which of them I believe to be the most valuable 3, which of them I believe to be the second most valuable 3, and so on.

For the sake of this column I ignored injuries for the most part, although if a player has a spotty injury history that was taken into account. But for players like Kendall Marshall and Jabari Parker, who suffered unfortunate injuries that nobody could see coming, the injuries were ignored in gauging their value.

If this idea sounds familiar it’s because it is: on January 23rd Bill Simmons released the first part of his 2015 Trade Value article for the entire NBA over at Grantland which I would highly recommend reading if you have an interest in possible trade deadline moves, enjoy well-written articles, or love hearing about the James Harden trade.

But this article is solely dedicated to the Bucks’ trade values, so let’s get started at the bottom with the 1s.

Next: Worth A Second Rounder?