The NBA’s investigation into Gary Trent Jr.’s new contract may end up doing the Bucks an unexpected favor: it gives Trent a built-in chip on his shoulder heading into his third season in Milwaukee.
That’s the backdrop after Milwaukee handed Trent a four-year, $64 million deal following one of the least productive seasons of his career. The price tag raised eyebrows right away. A lot of people looked at the number and immediately started asking whether there had been some kind of handshake arrangement last summer that would have paid him later if he re-signed then.
The league is now looking into the matter, and there’s no timetable for a ruling. Whether the Bucks did anything wrong or not, the message Trent is hearing is pretty clear: people around the league don’t seem convinced he’s worth that kind of money.
That kind of scrutiny can either hang over a player or light a fire under him. For Trent, it ought to be the latter.
He has a chance to make this whole thing look a lot different with one strong season. One down year in a messy environment has suddenly made a lot of people forget what he was bringing before that.
If this contract had happened last summer, it probably wouldn’t have caused much of a stir at all. He was coming off a strong postseason run, averaging 18.8 points and 2.6 steals over five games, and that version of Trent looked like a real weapon.
Now he’s got to show that wasn’t a fluke and that last season wasn’t the new normal. Milwaukee’s guard group is crowded, so his role isn’t totally clear yet, but he’s going to have one.
Teams don’t hand out this kind of money just to stash a player on the bench. And if the Bucks end up moving sharpshooter AJ Green, Trent could slide into a bigger spot as a dependable shooter.
The encouraging part for Milwaukee is that the track record is still there. Trent has averaged 13 points in his career while shooting 38.7 percent on 6.1 3-point attempts per game.
That kind of perimeter production has real value. If he gets back to the level he showed with the Toronto Raptors - or even the level he flashed in his first year with the Bucks - this contract starts to look a lot more reasonable.
For now, the ball is in Trent’s court. The investigation may have brought the noise, but it also gives him a perfect reason to come out swinging.
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Jonathan Kuminga, Patrick Watson and Bennedict Mathurin have all been floated as names who could change the look of the lineup, depending on how trade and free-agent talks unfold. Each would bring a distinct skill set and a different way for Milwaukee to balance its current pieces, which is why the speculation has become so focused on starting combinations instead of just backup depth. For now, it remains a matter of possibilities, but the fact that the Bucks are being linked to such varied options says plenty about how open this summer could be around Giannis. [Read more 🡒]