Reactions to the Milwaukee Bucks waiving rookie Georgios Kalaitzakis

In the continuing cycle of the Milwaukee Bucks never quite being done tinkering their roster, The Athletic’s Shams Charania has reported that the team has waived rookie wing Georgios Kalaitzakis.

This ends a very short stint for Kalaitzakis after being selected 60th overall by the Bucks in the draft. It was a surprise move to many at the time as he wasn’t on many draft radars, so the move caught many fans by surprise.

In his limited time with the team, the 22-year-old played in nine games and played around five minutes a night. He averaged 1.8 points and around a rebound per game in his limited minutes, shooting 5-of-11 in those games.

Reactions to the Milwaukee Bucks waiving rookie Georgios Kalaitzakis

Perhaps the biggest surprise of Kalaitzakis’ short Bucks tenure was that he signed a standard contract with the Bucks and got more than the standard two years for a second-round rookie. The Bucks went into their taxpayer midlevel exception to sign Kalaitzakis for three years, but the final two years of the deal were non-guaranteed.

He was locked into the final spot on the Bucks roster, which was a bit confusing to me and especially so when Sandro Mamukelashvili began to receive more playing time than him.

It wasn’t terribly shocking that the Bucks didn’t trust Kalaitzakis right away, he wasn’t very polished offensively and most of his value came from his energy on defense. Even when the Bucks were banged up at the beginning of the season, they didn’t trust him enough to step in and play more than a handful of minutes.

In the G League, we didn’t see much from Kalaitzakis like we have from Mamukelashvili. In three games, he averaged 11.3 points, 5.0 rebounds, and 1.6 assists. He shot around 18 percent on over three 3-point attempts per game and posted a 54.7 percent true shooting.

There wasn’t much to expect from the final pick in the 2021 NBA draft this season and now he’ll probably be headed back overseas to Greece.

As for the Bucks, it makes sense that they cut Kalaitzakis loose for a player they figure can help them more this season than a dart-throw who probably won’t amount to anything more than a fringe rotation player.

It’s likely that they believe recently-signed Javonte Smart has a more likely chance to develop into a useful player and is only on a two-way contract. I do like that the Bucks are holding those back-end roster spots for younger players to develop but it’s also good to see them cut their losses on someone that they didn’t think would pan out in the end.

I was skeptical of the Kalaitzakis selection (as were many fans) at the time, but it’s the 60th pick in the draft. It was unlikely anyone they picked in that spot was going to turn into anything more than G League fodder.

We’ll see what the next steps are for Kalaitzakis and perhaps he can catch on with a G League team (but not with the Herd, due to his contract) if he wants to stay in North America. Or he’ll return back overseas and develop his game at home.