The Milwaukee Bucks signed Australian forward Joe Ingles in July to a one-year, $6.5 million contract, using their taxpayer midlevel exception. With that contract now soon expiring, Ingles is set to enter free agency this summer, opening up some questions for the Bucks’ front office.
Milwaukee now stands to lose a lot of its dynamic and bench production with the departure of Ingles. He averaged 6.9 points per game, which was second on the Bucks’ bench just after Bobby Portis. He was a steadying playmaker off the bench who could create his own shot. He was also one of Milwaukee’s more efficient floor spacers, having shot 40.1 percent from 3-point range in the regular season. Those are things the Milwaukee Bucks have been in short supply of these days.
The Bucks have a projected salary of $221 million for the 2023-24 season. They’re over the cap by $27 million and have no cap space in the 2023 off-season. This likely means they will need to use either their mid-level exception or bi-annual exception to sign free agents. But the problem is that access to those options is still murky under the new CBA.
This only means that Ingles’ production will be difficult to replace. The Bucks could look to the free agent market to find a replacement, or they could turn to one of their young players. However, it will be tough to find someone who can provide the same level of production as Ingles.
Here are three free agents who can replace what Ingles brought to the table.
No. 1 – Justise Winslow
Justise Winslow is one equally versatile player who can contribute in a variety of ways. He’s set to be an unrestricted free agent after his 2022-23 season was cut short due to an ankle injury. He played in 29 games for the Portland Trail Blazers, averaging 6.8 points, five rebounds, and 3.4 assists per game. He shot 40.9 percent from the field and 31.1 percent from 3-point range.
Winslow is a good defender, rebounder, and passer. He also has some ability to create his own shot and create opportunities for others, although the former has begun to slowly diminish as he’s racked up injuries over the years. But he does stand at 6-foot-6 and is also a bit of a hybrid defender, which has always been a constant in his game. This makes him a valuable asset to any team, as he can be used in a variety of ways in the same way Ingles has.
Considering he bowed out of this past season due to injury again, the Bucks could sign him to the same cheap, prove-it deal that they used to snag Ingles. He would certainly need to be willing to play at a discount, but the promise of playing for a contending team next to Antetokounmpo might be all the Bucks need to pull him away from Portland. His extensive injury history is also likely to make other teams think twice before giving him an offer.
Though Joe Ingles lacked any sort of burst or lateral quickness at this stage in his career, he was a more solid defender than the eye test would show. Where he lacked hustle and energy, he played with craftiness and size that allowed him to guard multiple positions relatively decently. While the eye test says he’s prone to get beat off the dribble, matchup data on NBA.com/stats paints a much different story. When Ingles was the closest defender, guards only converted on 38.5 percent of their shot attempts.
This is where Winslow can fill in the Ingles-shaped hole the most, as he was actually a very good defender in his own right as well. Per PBP Stats, opponents would score 5.3 points fewer per 100 possessions when Winslow played versus when he was on the bench.
Winslow could look to fill in Ingles’ playmaking duties as well. According to Cleaning the Glass, he assisted on 18 percent of the Blazers’ made baskets whenever he was on the floor. That puts him at the 84th percentile in his position on that stat. He also registered an excellent 1.15 assist-to-usage ratio, good for the 95th percentile.
No. 2 – Dillon Brooks
Dillon Brooks is another proven role player with the grit and braggadocio the Milwaukee Bucks could look to consider to take Ingles’ place. To borrow P.J. Tucker’s nomenclature, Brooks is a dawg.
He’s certainly a more brash and inflammatory player than Ingles, but he can do the things Ingles did, albeit to a lesser degree. He is also a generally good, if not average, ball-handler, and he is also a good finisher at the rim.
Standing at 6-foot-6, Brooks can more than hold his own when tasked with defending a variety of positions. He is a gaudy, switchable defender on the ball on top of being a competent help defender. Brooks is a veteran player with significant playoff experience — a valuable commodity in today’s league, and one that the Bucks sorely need. According to NBA.com/stats, Brooks held opposing forwards to 41.8 percent FG efficiency as the closest defender. Opposing teams’ offensive ratings also went down -4.3 points per 100 possessions in the minutes Brooks played versus when he sat on the bench, per Cleaning the Glass.
The biggest downside with Brooks isn’t his on-court theatrics: it’s that he’s wildly inefficient. He shot 32.6 percent from 3-point range and a horrid 39.6 percent from the field overall. Even with numbers like this, Brooks has made it clear he wants a bigger offensive role than he’s gotten thus far with Memphis.
Though Ingles only averaged 2.3 assists per game, he was a more than capable ball-handler to facilitate the pick-and-roll whenever he was called upon. In particular, he was able to build up strong chemistry with big man Brook Lopez and was one of the main reasons Lopez had his best scoring season for the Bucks.
For a 6-foot-9 forward, Ingles actually handled the ball for 30.2 percent of his offensive possessions and finished the season at the 71st percentile among pick-and-roll ball handlers, according to play-type data on NBA.com/stats. Ingles has always been a good passer who can create scoring opportunities for his teammates.
To a much lesser degree, Brooks is one of the more affordable free agents who can replace some of that pedigree. He also handled the ball over a fifth of his offensive plays. But he only scored on 35.4 percent of these opportunities — good for 0.76 points per possession. It’s clear he’s not as crafty a ball handler as Ingles, as he finished in the 29th percentile in ball handling. But he’s available, and he has the reps: perhaps lowering his frequency and giving him a better pick-and-roll partner would up his numbers in this area.
Given Brooks’ reputation being down in the dumps this season, the Milwaukee Bucks can look to offer him a prove-it contract to give him a chance to play on a winning team.
The Bucks could keep Joe Ingles
If he’s willing to take a smaller contract to run it back with the Bucks, re-signing Ingles should be on the table for Milwaukee. Ingles could value the continuity that staying in Milwaukee would give him, considering Milwaukee was where he was able to revitalize his career post-injury. The Bucks also gave him a decent role that maximized his talents.
Ingles was a low-risk, high-reward experiment that paid off quite well for the Milwaukee Bucks. He came back from a knee injury to be a savvy veteran and a positive locker-room presence for the team. On the court, he had something of a steadying influence on offense despite his shortcomings on the other end of the court.
To be sure, there are also some reasons why the Bucks might not want to re-sign Joe Ingles at age 36. For one thing, he is not getting any younger, and he might not be able to stay healthy for an entire season, given his injury history as it currently stands. Ingles might also be looking for a big contract to end his career on, and the Bucks might not be willing to pay him what he wants.
But the reality is that the Bucks may not be able to fully fill the Ingles-sized hole in their roster if Joe decides to sign elsewhere. Teams will likely be going after the bigger and more obvious names like Kelly Oubre Jr., Kyle Anderson, and T.J. Warren, who will all likely be commanding contracts for larger than the Bucks can afford.
Say what you want about how sluggish he looked half the time, but Ingles was an elite play connector who helped the Bucks move the ball and create scoring opportunities for teammates all season long. Given the Milwaukee Bucks’ offense’s propensity to grow stagnant for long stretches, Ingles was a sort of antithesis to all of Mike Budenholzer’s bad habits on that end of the floor in the same way that P.J. Tucker was on defense.
At the end of the day, there’s really no one player who can provide the same dynamism that Joe Ingles brought to the Bucks. He was a relatively complete if unathletic player across the board for the Bucks, and it’s his playmaking and shot-creating at his size that will be hard to replace. At the same time, losing Ingles isn’t the worst thing in the world, as the Bucks eventually had to hide him on defense in the playoffs. What the Bucks should be looking to get back in his place is a good defender, shot-creator, or play-connector.
The Milwaukee Bucks should still be looking to get younger overall and begin developing younger players in-house, but Ingles is a good regular-season piece who can help them do that too.
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