When Jon Horst hauled in a massive multi-player package from Miami to kickstart the post-Giannis Antetokounmpo era, Jaime Jaquez Jr. arrived in the 414 with plenty of pedigree. Fresh off a stellar campaign where he averaged 15.4 points, 5.0 rebounds, and 4.7 assists per game and showed the kind of tough-minded, high-IQ play that every modern roster craves, he looked like an immediate building block. But now, as the front office evaluates its long-term cap sheet, that acquisition is breeding a very tricky financial riddle.
The Milwaukee Bucks are backing themselves into a classic contract-year corner when it comes to extension talks with Jaquez, and the root of the problem comes down to a bit of a crisis regarding his actual role with the team in the season to come.
Bucks are in a tight spot with Jaime Jaquez Jr.'s contract situation
The stats paint a complicated picture of Jaquez Jr.'s game. Per PBP Stats, Miami's net rating increased by net-plus 2.51 whenever Jaquez stepped on the floor for them this season. That's good enough to put Jaquez at around the 64th percentile in his position. Not bad, not great.
But the ugly: he shot 31.7 from distance and gave up 45.8 percent field goal percentage when defending other forwards, according to NBA.com/stats. He's clearly the kind of player who puts up good-to-great counting stats, but with whom you just have to take the good with the bad. Do the Bucks need that at this point in time as they rebuild?
In Erik Spoelstra’s system down in Miami, Jaquez carved out a niche as the ultimate weapon off the bat. He showed he can be a dynamic spark plug who could shred opposing second units, attack closeouts, and make plays out of the mid-post. But walking into a rebuilding Milwaukee squad under Taylor Jenkins, the expectations shift.
So the question for the Bucks is this: how do you commit a substantial, multi-year financial investment to a player when you don't even know if he's a permanent starter or primarily a high-end bench piece? It's difficult to come up with an accurate valuation when the circumstances are totally different and you don't know how he'll perform without the likes of Bam Adebayo and Norman Powell around him this time around.
The modern NBA doesn't hand out starting small forward or wing jobs based on trade return hype. And if you pay him a lot and he's a bench guy again, that's obviously going to be an issue for a team still paying for its Damian Lillard waiver.
If Horst and the front office decide to extend Jaquez this season, they are essentially forced to pay starter-level money. If you lock him up on a lucrative, long-term deal anticipating a full-time ascension, only to watch him settle back into a bench role as youngsters like Brayden Burries and Nate Ament chew up the high-usage minutes they need to develop, you’re suddenly tethering significant cap space to a reserve. (Which is already happening with Gary Trent Jr. as it is!)
Conversely, if you lowball him or hesitate out of fear of financial bloat, you risk alienating a prime asset just as you're trying to establish a stable, forward-thinking culture. If you give him his potential asking price, you also essentially have to give him the role commensurate to that money, which is difficult for a roster that already has Kyle Kuzma and Ousmane Dieng in the rotation. It’s a brutal balancing act.
Do the Bucks keep Jaime Jaquez Jr. around going forward?
For this writer, any form of extension for Jaquez, or any move to keep him on the team, simply makes no sense. He's by no means an old player, but neither does he match the ultra-young timeline that the rest of the team is functioning on. By the time the likes of Brayden Burries and Nate Ament hit their stride in this league, he'll be close to declining, even though he'll still very much be a serviceable role player by then. Better to cut him loose sooner rather than later.
Extension windows wait for no one, and the front office has to decide whether Jaquez is a foundational pillar worth betting the ledger on, or a luxury piece whose true ceiling in Milwaukee remains completely undefined. Getting a player of Jaquez's caliber in the blockbuster reset was a coup. But deciding how much to pay him when his exact spot on the depth chart is still a moving target is where the real test begins.
Stay tuned for more Milwaukee Bucks analysis.
Add us as a preferred source on Google