Milwaukee Bucks: What Happened To Miles Plumlee?

As the 2016-17 Milwaukee Bucks season keeps on rolling, the most consistent aspect of their game so far is Miles Plumlee getting few, if any, minutes.

February 19, 2015 is a day that will be remembered in Milwaukee Bucks history for a long time. It was, of course, the day that sent Brandon Knight to Phoenix, the Lakers first round pick to Philadelphia, and Michael Carter-Williams, Tyler Ennis, and Miles Plumlee to Milwaukee. Since that wintery day, Michael Carter-Williams has been dealt to Chicago, and Tyler Ennis has been shipped to Houston. That leaves one Plumdog Millionaire (Don’t judge my fantasy basketball team name) still in Milwaukee.

In his first (half) season in Milwaukee, Plumlee was nothing but an end of the bench guy, leaving Bucks fans wondering why they even traded for him in the first place. This was a player who had started a fair amount of games during his tenure with the Suns. He didn’t get minutes very often, and left a lot more to be desired.

The 2015-16 NBA season is where the viewers got to see Plumlee’s first full season in Milwaukee. However, to start the season, Miles stayed in his same role at the end of the center rotation, now behind John Henson and Greg Monroe.

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As the season progressed and it was clear the Bucks were not going to succeed playing at that level. Right before the All-Star break, coach Kidd made a tweak that would change the Bucks significantly; he started Miles Plumlee at center. Miles started to thrive at center playing with another experiment of Kidd’s called Point Giannis. He excelled at rim-running, setting screens, and catching lobs. The Bucks thought they had found their center of the future, so obviously they wanted to re-sign him in free-agency in the summer.

The summer of 2016 led many NBA players to receive huge contracts, even if they weren’t worth it, because of the explosion of the salary cap. One of the beneficiaries of that explosion was the Plumlord himself, who inked a four-year, $52 million contract with the Bucks. The plan was for Plumlee to start, with decisions about the Bucks other two centers being made further down the road.

The plan started well with Miles being the opening day starter, but even as a starter he didn’t play very many minutes. He has only started nine of the Bucks 23 games this season, and has had a stretch of five straight DNP-CD’s. Even Thon Maker got double the minutes of Plumlee in the game against the Raptors on December 12.

Although Plumlee’s underwhelming individual numbers have undoubtedly contributed to his reduced role so far this year, considering the commitment the Bucks made to him this summer, it’s hard to feel as if there are details that still remain widely unknown to the general public.

There are not many options for the Bucks with Plumlee. First of all, a gargantuan contract for a player that is definitely not worth it is hard to move, if the Bucks decide to go that route. The best they could do is a salary dump to a team below the cap floor, but the Bucks would certainly have to give up some significant assets for a move like that. Teams will take on short term contracts that seem like dead money, but four-year deals in that mold are a different factor.

Cutting Plumlee would be a disaster for Milwaukee’s future cap hold, and quite simply, isn’t an option in what is for the most part a fully guaranteed deal.

As a result, the best option is to play Plumlee more often. Without minutes, not only does Plumlee have no real chance of figuring things out and re-establishing his role in the starting lineup, but there’s no real way he could work towards building up some trade value either.

As the center minutes continue to go to John Henson and Greg Monroe, Miles Plumlee will be left out of Kidd’s rotations. There’s a chance that they’ll have to rethink that, though, otherwise it’s akin to giving up on Plumlee’s deal as a very expensive mistake from the very beginning.