Milwaukee Bucks: Letting Malcolm Brogdon go was a mistake
By Dan Larsen
Injury risk may have been worth it
The major reason why the Milwaukee Bucks may have decided to move on from Malcolm Brogdon was due to the fact that they may have been seriously concerned about his ability to hold up over the life of that contract.
Brogdon fell to the second round of the 2016 NBA Draft, in part, due to injury concerns regarding his foot. He’s also missed significant chunks of games in each of the past two seasons due to injuries. Brogdon played just 48 games in 2017-18, and was out injured this season, from March until the middle of the Eastern Conference Semi-Finals against Boston in May, due to a injury to the same foot that caused him to be red-flagged by NBA teams during the draft all those years ago.
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His injury risk, however, should have been manageable. Sports science is improving rapidly and teams have gotten smarter when it comes to managing a player’s games and minutes to keep them healthy. Milwaukee had more than enough depth, especially after signing Wesley Matthews, to manage Brogdon’s minutes and games during the season.
Unless the Bucks medical staff felt they had a Brandon Roy situation on their hands, where they felt Brogdon would spend most of the next four seasons injured, that shouldn’t have mattered that much to them. He was too essential to the team to just let go of in free agency.