Milwaukee Bucks: Grades for Khris Middleton’s five-year, $178 million deal

Khris Middleton will return to the Milwaukee Bucks on a lucrative five-year deal, and have a chance to become a franchise great. How does the deal grade?

It was widely expected to be one of the very first deals of free agency, and so it proved to be when Khris Middleton agreed to re-join the Milwaukee Bucks on Sunday night.

Middleton came to terms on a new five-year deal with the team he’s played with since 2013-14, and stands to make $178 million over the course of the contract. The agreement was first reported by ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski.

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That’s not to say there weren’t a couple of somewhat surprising details to emerge from Middleton’s new deal, though. He did leave $12 million on the table compared to his potential full max contract from the Bucks, while the deal also includes a player option for the fifth year that could see Middleton opt out in the summer of 2023.

Either way, if Middleton sees through four or five years of the contract without being traded, he stands to ascend into very prominent territory in the Bucks’ history books.

Middleton will surpass the current mark for the Bucks’ all-time leader in games played if he even just averages 64 games a year and opts out after the fourth year of his new contract. It’s safe to say Junior Bridgeman‘s record is in doubt, while the same could be said for Bob Dandridge‘s minutes played mark. Five years of scoring at the rate he did last season would even bring him right up to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar‘s franchise record for total points, although Giannis Antetokounmpo may well set the new high point in many of those categories before then.

Of course, that doesn’t even consider the potential team success Middleton could be a part of with Milwaukee.

From his perspective, a return to the Bucks must have been a no-brainer. With Milwaukee, Middleton will be better paid than he could have been elsewhere, in the best position to build a lasting legacy, and will also have the chance to contend alongside the MVP on an annual basis.

Still, did the deal make sense from the team’s perspective? Let’s take a closer look at the various elements involved, and offer up a final grade for the deal.