Milwaukee Bucks: A parting ode to Mirza Teletovic

On the heels of him being waived over the weekend, we reflect on Mirza Teletovic‘s tenure with the Milwaukee Bucks and what could be the untimely and unfortunate end to his professional career.

Saturday night marked the unexpected, but also somewhat unsurprising end of Mirza Teletovic’s tenure with the Milwaukee Bucks. All in all, through a variety of unfortunate factors, Teletovic never wound up truly finding his footing in Milwaukee.

With reports circulating that the team was bringing in veteran NBA point guard and former Buck in his own right, Brandon Jennings, on a 10-day contract, speculation subsequently began over who the team was parting ways with on their roster in order to bring in the Wisconsin Herd guard.

In the end, the decision was made to waive Teletovic, who’s been sidelined for the majority of the year with the recurrence of his pulmonary emboli condition following arthroscopic knee surgery in late November. The move closed the book on Teletovic’s one-and-a-half years in Milwaukee, a time that he would likely admit had more valleys than peaks during that span.

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It was clear why the Bosnian native had been identified as a free agent target by the Bucks and why that led to him coming to Milwaukee after agreeing to a three-year, $31.5 million deal back on the first day of a frenzied free agency in the summer of 2016.

Coming off of their disappointing 2015-16 campaign, one in which they went 33-49 under then-head coach Jason Kidd, there were major issues to address all along the Bucks’ roster. The biggest of which was their inability to adequately space the floor as they ranked dead last in both three-point makes and attempts on the season.

Considering he was coming off a career year as a member of the Phoenix Suns (12.2 points on shooting splits of .427/.393/.774 across 79 appearances) and his ties to Kidd having played under him during his lone year at the helm of the Brooklyn Nets in 2013-14, Teletovic’s services were much-needed for a Bucks team completely devoid of sufficient three-point shooting to thrive in today’s NBA.

Just six games into his stint with the Bucks, we got to see Teletovic’s stylings in full force in what arguably ended up being his best performance in green and cream as he finished with a team-high 22 points on 7-of-9 shooting from beyond the arc in a 117-91 win over the Sacramento Kings on November 5 of that year.

Unfortunately, Teletovic’s volcanic-like eruptions came too few and far between throughout his first year in Milwaukee as he averaged 6.4 points on shooting splits of .373/.341/.778 in 70 appearances (shoutout to all of the residents on Mount Mirza and the encompassing archipelago).

Despite his struggles shooting the ball for the year, Teletovic’s presence on the floor led to positive things for the Bucks, considering he was one of seven players to register a positive net rating by the season’s end, per NBA.com/stats.

While that was a silver lining in a campaign where there weren’t many individually, the truth was Teletovic’s performance left a lot to be desired, something he wholeheartedly acknowledged in his exit interview at the end of the team’s season last year.

With plenty of motivation to right what had gone wrong in his first year in Milwaukee, Teletovic was determined to make an impact in his reserve role with the Bucks before his season was cut short to just 10 games this year.

Above all else, this latest development on Teletovic in what may very well signal the end of his professional career — one that spans 16 years across Europe and in the United States — is just another example of how unforgiving basketball and life in general can be.

To spend years honing your craft year in, year out from a young age and have it be ripped away from you for reasons that are beyond your control is an incredibly tough pill to swallow for anyone in any walk of life.

It’s perhaps coincidental timing to see 13-year veteran and two-time NBA champion Chris Bosh touch on adjusting to life after basketball in a recent profile by ESPN’s Jackie MacMullan, since his own career was cut short due to similar circumstances as Teletovic’s could two years ago:

"“You go from being with the guys all the time, in the locker room, in practice, having a militarized brain in terms of this schedule, and then all of a sudden you are on your own,” he says. “You lose a sense of purpose, you lose a sense of yourself. And you lose confidence. You find yourself saying, ‘I was the best at this and now I’m not the best.’ You have to deal with not being very good. You have to deal with people no longer catering to you.“You start feeling forgotten. You don’t get as many phone calls. You don’t stay at the forefront of people’s minds. It’s natural, it’s life, you have to understand what’s happening, but I definitely see why the divorce rate is so high, and why players go broke."

Of course, this is far from the first test of adversity and hardship Teletovic has had to go through in his life considering he grew up during the Bosnian War during the 1990’s well before embarking on his basketball journey.

If seeing how those set of circumstances defined his life and his basketball mentality is any indication, a hiccup like the one Teletovic is going through currently isn’t above his capabilities to overcome and find solace in what he’s been able to achieve to this point.

Should this truly be the end of his playing career in this capacity, there’s no question Teletovic made a dream under unimaginable conditions, reaching a level like the NBA that only a rare class can say they have managed to.

Next: Milwaukee Bucks reportedly signing Brandon Jennings to 10-day contract

Unfortunately, the reality of having to deal with what comes next is a proposition no player like Teletovic should have to determine well before being ready to move on from the game that brought him much peace and joy.

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