Milwaukee Bucks Links: Double Nameplate Edition

Hoopsworld.com: In order to lock up second-round pick Doron Lamb for an extra season, the Bucks paid him more than the rookie minimum.  While first-round picks have allotted salary slots, and teams have a special exemption to sign them even if over the salary cap, no such luxury is afforded to the second rounders.  By going above the rookie minimum, the Bucks used $650,000 of their mid-level exception to sign Lamb. However, they have him under contract for three years, plus a fourth if they pick up his qualifying option in 2015-16.

The Bucks are over the salary cap, but they still have part of their mid-level exception available, as well as their biannual exception.

Appleton Post Crescent: The Bucks have added former University of Wisconsin star Brian Butch to their Summer League squad.  He left the Atlanta Hawks team and joined the Bucks after the Hawks had a “change in philosophy”.  So he picked up with the Bucks for the playing time an added exposure.

The Bucks also added D.J. Mbenga, formerly of the Los Angeles Lakers, and before heading out West, they released three players.

The additions of Mbenga and Butch pushed the roster count to 19, and these three cuts bring it down to 16. Here is Summer League roster, with updates forthcoming as they come available:

Journal Sentinel: Ersan Ilyasova signed his free agent contract, making official his return to the Bucks.

Ilyasova stressed his longtime ties to the Bucks organization, which drafted him at age 18 in 2005, and also said it was a family decision to return.

Ilyasova’s wife, Julia, moved to Milwaukee from Belarus at age 16, and the couple met when she was attending UW-Milwaukee. They now have two daughters, Xzenya, age 4, and Catherine, 15 months.

“There was a lot of conversation with my agent, back and forth with different teams,” Ilyasova said. “I think it’s the best decision I made, just to come back to the Milwaukee Bucks.

“I was really comfortable. Not just me but my family as well.”

Hearing Ersan’s words is a double-edged sword.  On the one hand, it sounds like Ilyasova is thrilled to return to the Bucks, or at the very least, to keep his family rooted in Wisconsin.  But on the other hand, it also seems like the Bucks had a decent bit of leverage in the negotiations — given that A) they were the only ones who could offer a fifth year, and B) Ersan wanted to be here more than Brooklyn or Europe.

Terms of his contract weren’t released, but there has been a decent bit of speculation that the fifth year is not guaranteed. So while it looks on paper to be a five-year, $45 million deal, the reality is that the contract is probably more like four-years, $35 million in guaranteed money.

While not a steal, compared to some of the contracts that have been dealt out this week, it does seem rather a fair price to keep Ersan on the Bucks.

NBA.com: On October 9th, the Bucks will play a preseason game versus the Cleveland Cavaliers in Canton, OH, the home of the Cavs D-League affiliate.

Journal Sentinel: Tom Enlund profiles Tobias Harris as the Bucks’ Summer League squad prepares for their trip to Vegas.

“He’s working on just about everything,” said (assistant coach Jim) Boylan. “His overall body composition has gotten better. He’s stronger and leaner. He’s handling the ball a little better and is making better decisions.

“When he first came in last year, he wanted to score all the time, and you can’t do that especially if you’re a young player. So he’s starting to figure out where his shots are coming from and eliminating some of the questionable plays that he would occasionally make. It’s just becoming a more consistent NBA player.”

Before the start of the summer camp Thursday, Harris had been showing up twice a day at the Bucks’ training center. He would hit the weight room in the morning and work on basketball activities in the afternoon.

Harris also went onto say that he has been working on his perimeter skills as a “three-man that can also post up”.  If that’s the case, then signing Ersan will go a long way toward his development, because it will give him the space to operate down low that he wouldn’t otherwise have with the Bucks other power forwards.

SBNation:  Michael Kidd-Gilchrist registered an impressive debut with the Charlotte Bobcats in the NBA’s Vegas Summer  League, scoring 18 points in 22 minutes in a 121-79 win over the Sacramento Kings.  Kidd-Gilchrist routinely knifed his way through the Kings’ defense to get good shots close to the hoop.  For one meaningless summer game at least, he looked like a legitimate threat to earn Rookie of the Year honors.

More importantly, though, his name is really, really long.  In college, his University of Kentucky jersey was made with a smaller font than that of his teammates to accommodate his surname.  In his first pro experience, though, he was given a double nameplate — similar to the one seen on Marques and Mickey Johnson in the early 1980s.