Milwaukee Bucks: Grades and reactions for the George Hill trade

Overall trade grade

The reality of this trade is that there’s no way of knowing if it was a big success or a big mistake until Milwaukee has wrapped up its 2019 free agency business, at the very earliest.

Even then, the true worth of this deal may only reveal itself in the summer of 2021 when the Bucks find out whether they’ve done enough to persuade Antetokounmpo to stay on for the prime years of his career.

With that ultimate goal, and the likely byproduct of perennial contention in mind, this is a deal that has to be praised from a Bucks’ perspective. If anyone was worried that the Bucks were going to sit on their hands and waste a generational talent, Horst has quickly disproved that in his already eventful tenure as Milwaukee’s GM.

This deal builds on an approach that was laid out with the Eric Bledsoe trade, and expanded further with the Brook Lopez coup in free agency. Horst realizes the opportunity the Bucks have got and he’s going at it with everything he has.

That aggression may ultimately come back to bite the Bucks as valuable draft picks convey elsewhere, but equipped with the best player the city has seen since Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, nobody will be able to say the Bucks didn’t do their part to retain Antetokounmpo and build the best possible team they could around him.

This is a trade that has the potential to be rued with hindsight, but if Antetokounmpo does leave in 2021 the Bucks will likely be destined for a return to the NBA’s basement regardless. Such a statement of intent indicates a proactivity in working to prevent that, looking to maximize a championship window, and advancing just how good Milwaukee can be within that span.

Getting off two expensive contracts at a net cost of a single first round pick is good value relative to comparable trades in the NBA of late, and Hill should help the Bucks in the short term too.

The cap space may come to nothing other than a means to retain key players, but that isn’t insignificant in its own right. The Bucks were bad for so long that the chance to sustain competitiveness and success beyond that needed to be grabbed with two hands.

An exciting product on the court and the state-of-the-art surrounds of Fiserv Forum have brought an energy to Milwaukee basketball that has been absent for decades. This deal ensures there’s a chance of the good times getting even better too.

Grade: A

What are your thoughts on the deal? Let us know in the comments below.