A Trade is Not the Answer for the Struggling Milwaukee Bucks

Things are pretty bad for the Milwaukee Bucks right now, but a panic trade is the last thing Bucks fans should want to see.

The Milwaukee Bucks aren’t winning enough games. There’s an argument often made that the Bucks could go 0-82 and still have a successful season by their standards, because this season is more about development than anything else.

There’s certainly an element of truth to that, but at the same time this Bucks team should be better than they currently are. Everybody is aware of this, and Milwaukee is sort of freaking out about it.

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One way that Bucks fans are venting their angst is through looking into trades. There have been calls for a different point guard to come in to replace Michael Carter-Williams, and even some talk about moving Greg Monroe.

Aside from the fact that trading Moose isn’t even possible yet–most free agents that inked deals this offseason cannot be traded until the middle of December–those ideas are stupid, unless the Bucks got an absolute steal of a trade offer from some other team that’s even more desperate.

Adam McGee wrote an excellent editorial the other day about Jason Kidd and the need to take accountability on this team. Anyone who actually read the article knows that the main message of that piece was not “it’s time to fire Kidd and move on with the team”. The message was, essentially, “there are problems that need to be fixed”.

That’s also the main message of this piece, conveniently. Fixing problems does not mean trading players that aren’t preforming at the moment. It means literally fixing the problems that are facing the team, player by player.

Giving up on anyone on this team after less than one-eighth of their first season all together is lunacy. Even Carter-Willians, who has struggled, clearly has his moments of greatness as well. Giving up on him is the same as giving up on this young team–without him, the Bucks are a starter short.

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This coaching staff can’t just punt on a talented young player without giving them their fair shot. That’s what happened with Brandon Knight, and I sure don’t want to see it happen again to Michael Carter-Williams.

Despite attacking the decision to move Knight, I believe in Carter-Williams. More importantly, I like him. MCW works damn hard to improve his game every single day, and he’s made some strides in that department.

Is he still going to have bad games? Yeah, but that’s just part of the process. Development isn’t just a straight incline that players follow where they get a little bit better each day. There’s steps both forward and back.

And it’s okay for fans to freak out a bit and to send salty tweets after a bad game. That’s part of the process too. But it’s not okay to just punt on MCW because he’s not a perfect point guard yet.

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Benching Carter-Williams after a rough stretch is one thing. A temporary move to light a fire under MCW isn’t the worst idea. But actually giving his starting job to Jerryd Bayless would be almost as bad as trading him outright.

If the question is what do the Milwaukee Bucks need to do to solve their problems, then the answer is patience.

Own the future. It seemed almost like a gimmick a few years ago when it was initiated, but there couldn’t be a more apt slogan for this team right now.

It’s easy to say and hard to follow through with, but the thing to remember about the Milwaukee Bucks is that this isn’t even their final form. It’s not close. But we’ll all have to wait even longer to see a Bucks team contending for a title if Milwaukee tosses away another young, talented player too soon.

Quitters never win, and winners never quit. The Bucks need to remember that, and work to fix the problems that MCW, Moose and many others are having. A panic trade would only make things worse for the Young Bucks.