Signing a veteran minimum deal with the Milwaukee Bucks this offseason, Wesley Matthews may not see the floor as often as he’s been accustomed to throughout his career and it may be better for him in the long run.
After 10 seasons of making a name for himself elsewhere around the league, the next chapter for Wesley Matthews is coming home to play for the Milwaukee Bucks.
That came about after signing a veteran minimum deal on the second day of free agency, leaving Matthews standing as one of the key veteran additions the Bucks made this offseason between himself, Kyle Korver and Robin Lopez.
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With the loss of Malcolm Brogdon marking the biggest departure the Bucks experienced this offseason, Matthews, along with Korver and the rest of the team’s crop of wings and off-guards, will be tasked with collectively filling that void in the wake of Brogdon’s loss.
From that standpoint, Matthews’ stint with his hometown team may prove to be different to what he’s been accustomed to seeing in his previous stays over his NBA career.
Throughout his time split between the Utah Jazz, Portland Trail Blazers, Dallas Mavericks, New York Knicks and the Indiana Pacers, Matthews has logged starts in all 62 of his 724 total career appearances to date and has averaged 32.6 minutes per tilt over his 10 seasons in the league (add in the 35.9 minutes per game he has averaged over his 36 career playoff appearances).
The fact that Matthews has maintained taking on starting level minutes throughout the majority of his career, even after the devastating Achilles injury that he suffered midway through the 2014-15 season with the Blazers, is remarkable in its own right, even if he hasn’t been exactly the same player as he was prior to it.
Needless to say, you don’t garner the ‘Iron Man’ moniker without taking on such an extensive workload and the various knocks and injuries that all NBA players go through and it’s quite clear that Matthews views himself as a starting-caliber player.
That was a very big part of the appeal for the 32-year-old when he joined the Pacers following his buyout from the Knicks midway through last year as he told J. Michael of the Indianapolis Star in February earlier this year after the Pacers lost All-Star guard, Victor Oladipo, earlier in the season:
"“That’s huge,” said Matthews, who’ll slot into the spot vacated after Victor Oladipo’s season-ending right knee injury Jan. 23. “That’s how I view myself and that’s how this organization views me. That’s big right there.”"
There’s an obvious parallel between the set of circumstances that drew the Madison native to Indiana to finish out the season last year and the Bucks losing their 50-40-90 guard in Brogdon, essentially serving as a pseudo-swap of 2-guards.
However, that was before the Bucks were able to swoop up Korver in late July after his a lengthy deliberation following his buyout from the Phoenix Suns and the team’s promising cast of wings between Pat Connaughton, Sterling Brown and Donte DiVincenzo will give the pair of veterans a run for their money once training camp opens up late this month.
Matthews may very well win out the job to be the Bucks’ starting 2-guard once we roll into the start of the season, but the wealth of options Milwaukee has on the wing may lead to the journeyman guard seeing his share of minutes be downsized in some shape or form. That’s not to mention the maintenance and overall load management the Bucks prioritized under head coach Mike Budenholzer in an effort to keep all players sharp and healthy over the course of a long season.
Standing in what’s clearly the back half of his career, it may be the best use of Matthews to preserve his body in a campaign where the Bucks have real title aspirations, and whether they’re successful in that pursuit or not may shape the long-term future of the franchise, for better or for worse.
All of that isn’t to mention the role change he might undergo, as Mathews may even lean more into his three-point specialist tendencies, given the exceptional shot creators on the team and just how many looks the Bucks’ three-point happy system generates on a nightly basis.
How Matthews acclimates to his new surroundings stands as one of the more interesting underlying storylines in a Bucks season that will be intricately covered, given what’s at stake for them at this stage.