If the Milwaukee Bucks are looking to improve the roster later in the year, J.J. Redick and Robert Covington have been suggested by ESPN’s Zach Lowe as potential targets.
At 24-3, and with 18 straight wins under their belts, the Milwaukee Bucks are in a dream spot given their goals for this season.
The Bucks came into the year knowing they had to deal with the pressure, and expectations, of really competing for a championship, and ensuring that they do enough to convince Giannis Antetokounmpo to put pen to paper on a new long-term deal in Milwaukee next summer.
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Even with everything going so well, it’s with that pressure that the Bucks will likely have their eye on potentially making further moves to bolster their roster as the season goes on.
With players who signed new deals as free agents in the summer now eligible to be traded, trade season has officially begun in the NBA, even though it may not be until much closer to the deadline before deals actually get completed.
That rationale is likely what led to ESPN’s insider duo of Zach Lowe and Adrian Wojnarowski convening for a Woj & Lowe TV special on Sunday night. In the course of their conversation, the attention inevitably turned to the Bucks and what they may look to do in the months ahead.
Lowe highlighted the Bucks’ dominance to this point in the season, but also pointed to the sheer importance of Milwaukee getting things right in the months ahead, and all of the stakes that will go with that:
"“Milwaukee is running away with the East. They’re 24-3, they’re killing everybody. If there were ever a 24-3 team that can’t just rest on its laurels of being 24-3 — that has to look really hard at itself and say, ‘Are we sure we’re this good? Are we sure there’s nothing else we can do to make our team better?’ — it’s this Bucks team. This is the biggest moment for this organization, probably since Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was there, with Giannis staring at the supermax in the summer. I would expect them to stand pat, but you’ve got to expect they’re going to look at stuff.”"
Wojnarowski noted that he wouldn’t expect the Bucks, along with the 76ers and Celtics, to look at “wholesale moves”, insisting that in the Bucks’ case, “they’re not going to mess with this”.
Lowe did go further in offering up a couple of names that could end up on Milwaukee’s radar in the months ahead, though:
"“I think they’ll look at a guy like Robert Covington, or J.J. Redick if he were to become available. And I have heard, they’re a little bit under the luxury tax, I think they would go over it for a deal that puts them over the top. And they have the Pacers pick that they got over the summer for Malcolm Brogdon, that’ll be out there.”"
To be clear, that shouldn’t be classed as concrete reporting from Lowe. That comment was not necessarily a suggestion that the Bucks have already been thinking of potential packages for that pair, as much as it was speculation about the kind of players they could be tempted to go after.
In its own right, that makes Covington and Redick particularly interesting, though. Both are top-tier role players who, in addition to being obvious fits with the Bucks, would be in incredibly high demand among contending teams if they were to become available. Therefore, that speaks to the caliber of high profile, and potentially costly deals, the Bucks could yet look too.
That would almost certainly involve the first round pick acquired from the Pacers to come into play, along with possibly multiple more picks, if the kind of frenzied, bidding war market of last year’s deadline was to repeat itself.
It also brings into question the tax situation, as Lowe touched on. It’s reassuring to hear at this point that the Bucks are prepared to pay the tax if that’s what pushes a championship caliber regular season team over the top for the postseason. Having said that, it does also bring up troubling questions about their process in the summer, and how the Bucks allowed a player who would have fit into that difference maker category to walk away.
All in all, the Bucks are basically assured not to be one of the first teams to make a move, given their current form. In all likelihood, just how active the Bucks choose to be at the deadline will be determined by how well this team holds up between now and February, and how the market ultimately unfolds elsewhere.