Milwaukee Bucks will reportedly waive Gary Payton II, sign Sean Kilpatrick

According to reports, the Milwaukee Bucks are planning to waive two-way player and guard Gary Payton II and sign recently waived guard Sean Kilpatrick.

Saturday night not only brought the Milwaukee Bucks their third straight loss, this time coming from the seemingly unstoppable Houston Rockets, we saw that they’re not standing still as they’re gearing up to tweak the latter end of their roster.

Reported first by Chris Haynes of ESPN, the Bucks are planning to waive Gary Payton II, one of their two-way players, in advance of his 45 days of service running out.

In a follow up tweet, Haynes added that the move to cut ties with Payton, who had earned a handful of nods in the starting lineup over the last few weeks, was reportedly not sitting well within the team’s locker room.

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In 11 games with the Bucks this year, six of them being starts, Payton averaged 2.4 points, 1.4 rebounds and .6 assists in 9.1 minutes.

Of course, due to the numerous amount of injuries the Bucks have had to deal with so far this season, Payton’s time with the Wisconsin Herd had been limited to just three games.

In those three games with the Herd, Payton averaged 18.3 points, 7.0 rebounds, 2.3 assists and 3.0 steals in 32 minutes.

Not long after Haynes’ report, Matt Velazquez of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel not only confirmed Haynes’ report, but offered up an additional reasoning behind the move outside of Payton’s 45 days of service running out:

While Velazquez’s dispatch stirred up some speculation, the suspense was short-lived as Haynes once again followed up with another report by relaying that the Bucks were planning on adding guard Sean Kilpatrick, who was recently waived by the Brooklyn Nets as part of the Jahlil Okafor deal.

While Kilpatrick has been one of many modern success stories for the G-League, Bucks fans should already be familiar with the 27-year-old as he has suited up in a Bucks uniform once before.

Playing for the Bucks’ Summer League team in 2015, Kilpatrick showcased the scoring ability that helped him carve out a place in the league as he averaged 18.2 points on 47.4 percent shooting from the field and 45.7 percent shooting from deep in the team’s six games in Vegas.

After launching that into small stints with both the New Orleans Pelicans (in training camp and preseason) and Denver Nuggets months later, Kilpatrick found his first true home in the NBA with the Nets midway through the 2015-16 season.

By doing so, Kilpatrick made his presence known within the team and delivered his penchant for scoring at an efficient rate by scoring 12.1 points on 41.6 percent shooting from the field and 33.8 percent shooting from long range through 109 total appearances across his three total seasons with the Nets.

But after experiencing a slow start this year and subsequently falling out of the Nets’ rotation, Kilpatrick was cut loose by the team late last week with their additions of Okafor as well as Nik Stauskas.

At this time of writing, it’s unknown how the Bucks will ultimately add Kilpatrick, whether it will be as a two-way player or possibly as an injury exception (it doesn’t help that there is confusion over whether Kilpatrick could qualify as a two-way player, given his four years of service, as Adam Johnson of 2 Ways &10 Days pointed out here).

As Velazquez added in his full report on the planned transactions and given Payton’s time with the team would have been strictly limited to the Herd past Monday, the move speaks more to the opportunity to add a capable player of Kilpatrick’s caliber and not a mark against Payton by any means.

"“According to a source, the decision to waive Payton is not a reflection of how the organization feels about Payton. Rather, the organization saw an opportunity to add another player and wanted to make it happen.”"

Next: Win In 6 Podcast #168: Wisconsin Herd talk with Chris Reichert, Bucks mailbag

So with all that, it looks like we shall bid adieu to Gary Payton II and welcome Sean Kilpatrick to Milwaukee.