Is the Bucks' crooked Gary Trent Jr. contract punishment enough?

Milwaukee stuns everyone with a two years' late contract for Gary Trent. Plus: Bam Adebayo addresses Tyler Herro's apparent criticism.

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Gary Trent Jr., despite a legacy name (his dad had a 9-year NBA career) and having attended a legacy school (Duke), entered the league as a second-round pick for the Blazers and had to make good. The Raptors picked him up during their weird season in Tampa in the Norman Powell trade, and Trent thrived well enough to earn a nice contract as a restricted free agent: three years, $51 million.

That deal expired three summers ago, and despite Trent maintaining his status as a solid bench scorer and high-end three-point shooter, he ended up taking a minimum deal with the theoretically contending Bucks in 2024-25 and, the following summer, a two-year deal just over the minimum with Milwaukee with a player option on Year 2. Rumors from the time indicate Toronto was willing to bring Trent back, but not above $15 million a year. He signed for $3 million. Those contracts always felt below-market and positive for the Bucks' quest to build another great Giannis Antetokounmpo, but it really didn't pan out, either for Trent (whose role diminished under Doc Rivers) or the Bucks. Trent, now 27, averaged just 8.1 points per game last season. Milwaukee is in a full-on rebuild.

And yet, in a grand twist, the Bucks just signed Trent to a 4-year, $64 million fully guaranteed contract.

This is patently crooked. When fans asked how the Bucks got a 25-year-old Gary Trent Jr. to reject multi-year offers from Toronto to take the minimum in Milwaukee in 2024-25, apparently the correct answer was not "Trent bet on his own market potential and lost." The correct answer was salary cap circumvention. It's pretty clear that the Bucks must have promised Trent a lucrative future deal if, while the team was balancing the Giannis and Damian Lillard salaries, he took a small contract. And they totally wouldn't have gotten away with it if Trent's production wither and if the Giannis trade package didn't result in a glut of guards on the team.