In light of recent Milwaukee Bucks trade rumors, if the team is looking for players back in a potential Greg Monroe trade, who could they go after?
Regular readers will already have read my thoughts on why it wouldn’t necessarily be a bad idea for the Milwaukee Bucks to have a long, hard think about trading away Greg Monroe, and I’ve also touched on what it might take for the Bucks to listen to offers.
After all of this, Monroe remains the team’s marquee free agent signing. He’s a player who can average close to a double-double every night, even though he certainly hurts his team on defense. With all of that considered, has he not been exactly as billed then?
The issue for Milwaukee likely rests more in the fact that their group as a whole hasn’t necessarily proven as capable of covering up his inefficiencies as many expected, but in spite of that, to the right team Greg Monroe could still offer a really meaningful impact with his offensive skill.
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If it’s not going to work out with Monroe, I would certainly be concerned about the risk of letting him walk away for nothing next summer, as it would be nice to have some return to show from a genuine free agency coup. At the same time though, the Bucks don’t want to tie themselves into a bad position for the future with any trade they make.
With that in mind a return comprised mostly of a mix of picks and expiring contracts seems like a safer option, but if the Bucks were to take players back, what sort of talent should they be interested in?
Specifically, I’d say any deal for Monroe involving players as the core pieces of the trade should center around Milwaukee taking on young talent on cheap contracts with further room to develop, or established role players who could slot in to help the team’s cohesion moving forward without having a crippling influence on usage or the salary bill.
Looking at three of the teams most regularly thrown into the mix for Monroe, let’s take a look at how some of those deals could potentially come about.
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