Reactions to Milwaukee Bucks signing Javin DeLaurier to hardship deal

Although it came a little later than expected, the Milwaukee Bucks have used one of their available hardship contracts and it’s on someone that’s relatively familiar with the organization already.

Due to having three players in health and safety protocols, the Bucks have reportedly signed forward Javin DeLaurier to a 10-day hardship contract, according to The Athletic’s Shams Charania.

DeLaurier has spent the entire season with the Bucks’ G League affiliate, the Wisconsin Herd, and is now the fifth player to be called up from the Herd on a hardship contract, the other four being Rayjon Tucker (Minnesota Timberwolves), Tremont Waters (Toronto Raptors), Jemerrio Jones (Los Angeles Lakers), and Wenyen Gabriel (Brooklyn Nets).

Reactions to the Milwaukee Bucks signing Javin DeLaurier to a 10-day hardship contract

It comes as a bit of a surprise that the Bucks both used the hardship exception at all and that they used it on DeLaurier. It’s a surprise that they used it at all considering Eric Nehm of The Athletic tweeted yesterday that the Bucks were not required to use it.

Due to the number of players entering health and safety protocols around the league, the NBA announced that teams missing a certain number of players were required to sign players to hardship deals to meet the minimum of eight players required to play an NBA game.

The Bucks had 13 players active last night, including Grayson Allen who didn’t play. Therefore they were well above the minimum number of players needed, but have used the hardship exception anyway.

They have yet to release an injury report for tonight’s game against the Dallas Mavericks, so perhaps they’re going to be without some more players tonight either due to injury or health and safety protocols. Or, they wanted to add a big man now that Sandro Mamukelashvili is inactive.

Regardless, it’s still a bit of a surprise they used the hardship contract on DeLaurier, although he does have familiarity with the organization. The team signed him to a non-guaranteed training camp contract in the summer before waiving him and signing him to the Herd.

In 12 games (five starts) with the Herd, DeLaurier has averaged 7.8 points and 6.8 rebounds in 16.6 minutes per game. He has also averaged around a steal and a block per game, so he’s provided relatively solid minutes for one of the best teams in the G League.

He previously spent time with the Greensboro Swarm (affiliate of the Charlotte Hornets) last season in the G League bubble, but only played in 78 total minutes before going to the CEBL in Canada where he dominated. Fun side note for me as a Canadian: DeLaurier becomes the first player from the CEBL to sign an NBA contract! That’s neat.

Don’t expect to see a ton of DeLaurier, especially if the Bucks are close to fully healthy like they were last night (even without Allen). DeLaurier could see some minutes due to their lack of depth up front now missing Mamukelashvili, Giannis Antetokounmpo, and Bobby Portis which has left DeMarcus Cousins as the only true bug available, but it would likely be spot minutes in the right matchup.

Otherwise, I’d expect that head coach Mike Budenholzer will play a lot of small-ball lineups as we’ve seen in the last few games. It has proven to be effective and has given the Bucks chances to win games even while missing some of their best bigs.

Hopefully, we get to see DeLaurier play some action though as it will be his first time playing in a regular-season NBA game, so that will be a nice story to see for the 23-year-old.