Milwaukee Bucks: Assessing Sterling Brown’s value in free agency
Set to become a restricted free agent this offseason, what could third-year Milwaukee Bucks wing Sterling Brown fetch in his first trip into the free agent market?
The timing of Sterling Brown‘s first foray into free agency is, as they say, less than ideal.
As we’ve covered extensively in light of the season stoppage, Brown stands among the surplus of Milwaukee Bucks rotation and depth players that will hit the free agent market, though he’s the lone player of theirs that will be a restricted free agent.
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With the Bucks being able to match any offer they receive from an opposing team on Brown, that is quite a bargaining chip they have in their back pocket.
That goes along with the new financial realities that are facing the league and all 30 NBA teams in light of the lost revenue because of the season being suspended for the time being, which further helps the Bucks’ case at the proverbial negotiating table.
A player like Brown, who has shown on and off flashes of being a capable and consummate 3-and-D wing over his 2,475 minutes of playing time over his first three seasons in the league, already had an uphill climb to fetch a deal worthy of meaningful value.
Now, his third-year struggles, especially shooting the ball from 3-point range, makes that challenge even harder for Brown to differentiate himself within a free agent wing class that is surprisingly deep as The Athletic’s Danny Leroux ($) recently broke down.
Add all of those circumstances and Brown’s restricted tag hanging over him and that’s a complicated free agency case, to say the least.
With all that said, there’s always the possibility that Brown may find a team that feels they hold the key to unlocking his role player potential and has the means to lure away from the league’s best-Bucks. ESPN’s Zach Lowe reported in the lead up to the trade deadline that the 25-year-old was a Bucks player that was of interest to opposing teams ahead of this offseason.
In a recent piece to identify some interesting 25-and-under upcoming free agent, The Athletic’s James L. Edwards III ($) looked to Brown as a player the team could theoretically add as they embark on a full rebuild in the coming seasons.
The reason why a team like the Pistons are pertinent in this discussion of Brown’s free agency is they make up one of six teams that are armed with significant cap space this free agency, along with the Atlanta Hawks, Charlotte Hornets, Miami Heat and the Phoenix Suns. What that looks like now for each team, well, that’s a different story as of this writing.
But the fact that many rebuilding teams will have some capital at their disposal to find players to supplement their respective cores as they aspire to return to relevancy stands as a lifeline for someone of Brown’s position. That’s regardless of if he wants to leave Milwaukee and more just trying to regain some power in the upcoming negotiations with the Bucks’ front office helmed by general manager Jon Horst.
The question is whether Brown stands as a player that opposing teams will devote a serious chunk of change to won’t be answered for a few months with the season being pushed back.
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The production he’s shown over his three seasons in Milwaukee wouldn’t lead someone to think they will, but one team is all it takes for Brown to put the fire to the Bucks to see if they value him as a worthy contributor in this championship window. Soon enough, we’ll have the answer to that question.