Milwaukee Bucks: Transaction window set ahead of season restart

As the 2019-20 NBA season looks to ramp back up, the league has set a number of new dates and rules that will be especially pertinent to the Milwaukee Bucks in some cases.

Saturday afternoon brought some much needed clarity for the 2019-20 NBA season and their plans to restart the campaign next month.

As The Athletic’s Shams Charania first reported on, the league has set a transaction window starting this Wednesday, June 23 that will run until the end of the month and will allow for all 30 NBA teams to sign and waive players, convert players on two-way contracts and so on.

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Of course, for the Milwaukee Bucks, they have all 15 of their roster spots filled and both Frank Mason III and Cam Reynolds occupy both of their two-way spots.

While the Bucks may be quiet over this coming window, that doesn’t mean that won’t preclude them from surveying the market as the league’s plans to restart the season will ramp up significantly over the following few weeks.

As ESPN’s Bobby Marks ($$) broke down in great detail, NBA teams will be able to sign substitute players starting July 1 for players that either voluntarily stay home in light of the season restarting and/or test positive for the coronavirus. But the players available for signing are limited to having zero to three years of NBA services under those parameters.

ESPN’s Tim Bontemps reported earlier in the week that players from the 22 NBA teams participating in the season restart will have until June 24, this Wednesday, to report whether they would willingly opt out of playing and living in Orlando starting next month.

To date, only veteran Bucks sharpshooter Kyle Korver has at least entertained sitting out for the rest of the season in light of the overdue need for social change for the black community. With that said, that was under the banner that he would follow what the players feel is best, and Korver talked about the great platform he and all players will have in Orlando to maintain the momentum of speaking out against social injustices and the need for equality for all races in the United States.

In addition to dates for transactions ahead of the resumption of the NBA season, the Milwaukee Bucks learned when the draft and free agency will now take place.

Beyond that, though, the NBA has set dates for this year’s NBA Draft, which would have originally been held this week on Thursday, and the start of this year’s free agency period. Instead, the draft will be on October 16 and free agency will begin two days later on October 18 as ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski reported Saturday.

Those are obviously big dates that will impact the Bucks’ roster, both in the short-term and long-term, as they currently hold the 20th overall pick in the 2020 NBA Draft. Along with that, that same week may give us the answer to the looming question of whether Bucks superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo will sign a supermax extension to stay in Milwaukee long-term.

That will obviously be impacted by the outcome of this strange season and how the salary cap will be affected by the league shutting down for more than three months because of the coronavirus. As Marks noted, the league and the National Basketball Players Association is expected to address the matters related to the salary cap and luxury tax, another pertinent topic to the Bucks, very soon.

What all of that looks like remains to be seen, but clearly, all of the dates and rules that have been set are steps in the right direction as far as the league’s plans to move forward with the season, under the strangest and dangerous set of circumstances.