Revisiting The Jared Dudley Trade

It’s been quite the busy off-season for the Milwaukee Bucks.

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Big splashes like adding big man Greg Monroe and re-signing Khris Middleton made many headlines.

However, that isn’t to say there weren’t some moves that certainly came out of left field.

Among the key acquisitions of Monroe and Middleton (reacquisition in Middleton’s case), the trading away of key veterans in Zaza Pachulia and Jared Dudley with lackluster returns certainly left many, if not all Bucks fans scratching their heads.

Both players were key vocal leaders that helped turn around the team’s fortunes in a little over a year and were an integral part of establishing the Bucks as a playoff team that truly no one expected at the beginning of the season.

Where shipping away Pachulia was a little more defensible because of the incoming big man log jam with the addition of Monroe, Dudley’s trade has always been frustratingly confusing.

On a team where one of their key weaknesses is perimeter shooting, Dudley was one of the few players on the team who was proficient in that department.

Further frustration only came a couple of weeks later following an interview given by coach Jason Kidd during a Bucks Summer League telecast, where he tipped his hand by saying the Bucks may still be looking for a veteran outside shooter, the exact role that Dudley excelled at for the majority of last season.

Needless to say, all of this, as well as the lack of an explanation for the Dudley move left many Bucks fans up in arms.

Well on Tuesday night, we most likely found our answer for why the Bucks were quick to ship Dudley to the Wizards, via ESPN.com:

"Washington Wizards forward Jared Dudley is expected to miss the next three to four months after undergoing surgery to repair a herniated disk.“During our discussions with Jared and his agent, Mark Bartelstein, we were made aware that he played with pain for a significant part of last season due to this injury,” Wizards president Ernie Grunfeld said in a prepared statement Tuesday. “After jointly consulting with our team doctors and several specialists, we collectively determined that this proactive approach was the best course of action to have him ready for the upcoming season and to prevent the risk of further injury.”"

In this context, it certainly makes sense why the return for Dudley (a heavily protected future second round pick) was almost next to nothing.

That leads to this next question that many Bucks fans are no doubt asking themselves right now: Does the return for the Bucks validate trading away Dudley, even with what we know now?

Dudley was a player that filled an immediate need for the team, but he was never considered as being a valuable piece to the team a couple of years down the line, although some fans would probably think differently.

But in a league where it’s very hard to find players that know their role and at the same time lead by example, Dudley was the epitome of that type of player.

However, what gave the team pause when it came to figuring out where Dudley fit in long-term was looking at how this past season ended for Dudley.

Before returning to the type of form that he established in the first half of the season in the playoff series against Chicago, Dudley’s numbers had dipped greatly post All-Star break due to the same back troubles that he currently is undergoing surgery for.

Dudley’s injury trouble was the same reason why coach Doc Rivers buried Dudley when he was a member of the Los Angeles Clippers in 2013-14 that led to him eventually coming to Milwaukee.

Another factor for why the team shipped out Dudley is the fact that the team needed a contributor right away who would step up for the team until Jabari Parker returns after fully recovering from his injury.

Because there isn’t a hard timeline for Parker’s return to the court (although it allegedly could be around January) and in light of the recent Dudley news, it would have been very hard to expect that he could have been the player to be that contributor for the team, hence the recent Chris Copeland interest from the team.

From the Bucks’ perspective, they obviously must have felt that while Dudley’s contribution and vocal leadership was hard to give up, if he can’t actually be on the court during a time where the team sorely needed his skills, it made him expendable.

And as a fan of the team, it’s hard to argue with that reasoning.

It also makes sense why Dudley decided to opt into his player option before this year’s free agency period began and why Washington took a flier on him for a very small price, hopefully fully knowing that he wouldn’t be ready to contribute right away.

All of this is a continuation of this question: who will step up for the team now that the two key veterans from last year’s team are off in other cities?

We here at BTBP have questioned that greatly since these transactions took place and while it’s very noncommittal, the answer is we just won’t know until next season begins a few months from now.

As far as Dudley goes, all this recent news doesn’t change what he provided for the team in the very short amount of time that he was a member of the Bucks.

Bucks fans have been sad to see him go since the news of the trade broke a little over a couple of weeks ago, because what he brought to the team was incredibly refreshing from a player both on and off the court, at a time where the team really needed it.

But knowing what we know now, it would have been hard for the team to justify committing (possibly long-term) to a player that has the red flags Dudley has, especially if he couldn’t contribute at a time that the team sorely needed it.

Not every Bucks fan will still agree with the move, especially in the very reactionary way a lot of fans process moves like these (including myself), but this is a rare case where we see the context of a deal after the fact.

Knowing this news still doesn’t fix the team’s problem of trying to find a player who can fill a role similar to Dudley’s, but at least you can see why the team went in another direction.

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