Bucks offseason primer: Milwaukee’s key roster questions as NBA Draft nears

For a third consecutive season since winning the franchise’s second NBA championship in 2021, the calendar has flipped to June and the Milwaukee Bucks are no longer participating in the postseason.

Rather than worrying about how to get players, coaches and staff from city to city, the organization is trying to figure out which college prospects should make their way to Milwaukee for workouts as the Bucks try to figure out what to do in the NBA Draft and what free agents might fit into their roster for next season.

Let’s set the offseason scene for the Bucks.

Current projected depth chart

As of this moment, the Bucks have eight players — Giannis Antetokounmpo, Damian Lillard, Khris Middleton, Brook Lopez, Bobby Portis, Pat Connaughton, MarJon Beauchamp and Chris Livingston — on guaranteed contracts for next season. On top of that, Andre Jackson Jr. is signed to a partially guaranteed deal for the 2024-25 season and A.J. Green is signed to a non-guaranteed contract that doesn’t fully guarantee until July 8.

Point guard: Damian Lillard
Shooting guard: Pat Connaughton, A.J. Green, MarJon Beauchamp
Small forward: Khris Middleton, Andre Jackson Jr., Chris Livingston
Power forward: Giannis Antetokounmpo, Bobby Portis
Center: Brook Lopez

There were five players on the Bucks roster at the end of the season that will be unrestricted free agents this summer: Thanasis Antetokounmpo, Malik Beasley, Patrick Beverley, Jae Crowder and Danilo Gallinari. If the Bucks want these players to return to Milwaukee next season, they have the opportunity to sign them to minimum contracts again or give those players a slight raise by offering them contracts worth 120 percent of their minimum contracts from the 2023-24 season.

2024 NBA Draft

As of now, the Bucks have the rights to two draft picks in the 2024 NBA Draft.

They have the rights to the No. 23 pick, which comes to them instead of the No. 21 pick in this year’s draft because of a pick swap that they sent along to the New Orleans Pelicans in the trade for Jrue Holiday in the 2020 offseason. And they have the rights to the No. 33 pick, which comes to them from the Portland Trail Blazers via the Sacramento Kings from the four-team deal at the 2022 trade deadline that sent Donte DiVincenzo to the Kings and brought Serge Ibaka to Milwaukee.

Bucks salary cap

There are a couple of things to keep in mind when looking at the Bucks’ salary cap. If you’re a Bucks fan, you’ve probably gotten accustomed to a couple of these realities.

First, the Bucks will be over the salary cap of $141 million as they enter the 2024-25 season and they won’t have cap space to sign any unrestricted free agents. Second, barring a trade that cuts a good chunk of salary, the Bucks’ total salaries are also going to be over the NBA’s luxury tax threshold of $172 million, which will place further restrictions on what types of players that they can sign.

Before diving deeper into the NBA’s two luxury tax aprons where things can get a bit more confusing, let’s break down what gets the Bucks over the salary cap and luxury tax lines.

Both Giannis Antetokounmpo and Damian Lillard will make $48,787,676 next season, which means their combined salary of $97,575,352 will take up roughly 69 percent of the $141 million salary cap. Add in $31,666,667 for Khris Middleton and $23,000,000 for Brook Lopez and the Bucks will have spent $152.24 million, or roughly 108 percent, of their allotted $141 million salary cap on their core four players.

From there, the Bucks have two more players on contracts that are not either rookie scale contracts or minimum salaries. When you add in $12,578,286 for Bobby Portis and $9,423,869 for Pat Connaughton, the Bucks will have spent roughly $174.24 million on their six most veteran players, or a little more $2 million past the NBA’s luxury tax line of $172 million for the 2024-25 season.

But while the luxury tax line only affects the pocketbooks of the Bucks’ ownership group, the luxury tax apron thresholds brings about punitive restrictions for the team as general manager Jon Horst goes about building a roster around the team’s core. The Bucks will struggle to find their way under either of those thresholds as they build up their roster to 15 players.

Using the four other players on the roster — Beauchamp ($2,697,120), Green ($2,120,693), Jackson ($1,891,857), Livingston ($1,891,857) — as it stands today, the Bucks’ salary obligations move up to roughly $180.85 million, which takes them over the first luxury tax apron of $178,655,000.

Add in the salary of the No. 23 pick in the 2024 NBA Draft ($2,951,760) and the minimum first-year salary ($1,160,544) for a second-round pick for the No. 33 pick in the NBA Draft, plus two veteran minimum contracts, which will count against the cap at $2,903,637 a piece next season, and the Bucks’ salaries total $190.77 million, which takes them above the second luxury tax apron of $189,485,000 for only 14 players for the 2024-25 season. And that is before adding in another $2.3 million for the unlikely incentives on Middleton’s contract for the 2024-25 season.

So unless the Bucks make a move that chops roughly $3.6 million dollars from their salary cap for the 2024-25 season (as projected above), they will find themselves above the second apron heading into next season.

If that is the case, that means the Bucks will:

• Not have access to sign a free agent using the $5.1 million tax-level midlevel exception.
• Not be able to send out cash in a trade (like they did when they traded Robin Lopez to the Sacramento Kings at the trade deadline this past season).
• Not be able to aggregate contracts in a trade (for example, trading Portis and Connaughton for a player that makes $20 million).
• Not be able to sign a player waived during the regular season that made more than the full mid-level exception.

Those limitations are in addition to the first apron limitations that keep the Bucks from taking back more money in contracts than they send out in a trade, acquiring a player in a sign-and-trade deal, and using a trade exception they created in a previous season. As a second apron team, they can also not use a trade exception, period.

Overall, the cost of contending year-over-year has put the Bucks in a perilous position when it comes time to try to add talent to their roster.

Roster needs

As the Bucks have found out over the last five seasons, roster building is incredibly difficult once you get to a position where your top four players take up nearly all of your salary cap space and you need to find players who can impact games while not making much money.

In 2021, when the Bucks won an NBA championship, they got contributions up and down the roster. Not only did Antetokounmpo, Middleton and Jrue Holiday excel at the top of the roster, the Bucks also had former role players like Donte DiVincenzo, P.J. Tucker, and Bryn Forbes help out, as well as guys that have stuck around over the years such as Connaughton and Portis. In the Eastern Conference Finals, even backup point guard Jeff Teague made some big plays and helped the Bucks pull out a few wins without Antetokounmpo to close out the series.

So, whether it comes from internal improvement from players already on the roster or newcomers brought to Milwaukee this summer, the Bucks need to find more players who can contribute to winning next season.

Point of attack defense

Even though they didn’t get a ton of chances to prove it because of the injuries that robbed them of the opportunity under head coach Doc Rivers to end the season, the Bucks have enough offensive creators on their roster between Antetokounmpo, Lillard, and Middleton. With strong offensive players such as Lopez and Portis also on the roster, the Bucks have more than enough talent to be a highly efficient offense next season.

To be an elite team, they will need to improve on the defensive end and much of their improvement will need to be made at the point of attack. As we covered in the offseason here at The Athletic, the Bucks have an elite rim protector in Lopez and one of the league’s most dangerous help side defenders in Antetokounmpo. Their struggles in the 2023-24 season largely came in the moments that they needed to keep the ball in front of them defensively.

Some of those problems are a function of starting Lillard at point guard. Lillard gives effort on the defensive end of the floor and understands team concepts, but he just isn’t an impactful defender, especially when considering the Bucks had grown used to having one of the league’s best on-ball defenders, Jrue Holiday, on the floor in previous seasons. But with Lillard handling most everything the Bucks need from the backcourt offensively, the Bucks are free to look for a player that can excel defensively next to Lillard.

Heading into last offseason, the Bucks thought they needed find some more offense and shooting next to Holiday, so they went after Beasley. This offseason, they will have to prioritize defense alongside Lillard to build a better fitting roster.

Wings

This has been on the list of offseason roster needs every year we’ve done this exercise and it is simply a function of the NBA. Playoff basketball is about problem solving. The more versatile the group of players on the roster, the easier it is to solve the diverse set of problems presented throughout a deep postseason run.

To win a championship, there will be times where the Bucks need to lean on traditional lineups with five clearly delineated positions. But there will also be times where they need to be able to dominate with their size. There will be moments where they need small ball configurations. Sometimes, they’ll need more speed. Yet, other instances will call for more shooting. To be able to have the right mix of players in those moments, the Bucks will need to find a more versatile group of wings.

Middleton is a great creator and scorer, but no longer profiles as a strong on-ball defender. So, the Bucks should be seeing if they can find someone that can serve as the primary defender on some of the elite scoring wings around the Eastern Conference. After knocking down 39.5 percent from deep in the 2021-22 season, Pat Connaughton has only made 34.1 percent of his 3-point attempts across the last two seasons, so the Bucks might want to see if they can find a wing that can knock down shots, even if they are not as good in other categories.

Some of the answers to some of the questions presented in the postseason on the wing might already exist on the roster in Milwaukee, but the Bucks will need to find more answers to make a deep run in the postseason next season.

Backup big man

This is a lower level concern for the Bucks because Lopez and Portis have largely been iron men in Milwaukee. Removing the 2021-22 season in which Lopez struggled with a back injury that ultimately required surgery, Lopez has played in 96.2 percent of the Bucks’ 391 games in the other five seasons he been in Milwaukee. Portis has played in 91.2 percent of games in his four seasons with the Bucks.

The Bucks could look for another big man at either forward or center positions. If the Bucks want to try to play Antetokounmpo more at center, maybe it would make sense to look for a power forward that could fit next to Antetokounmpo. Or if they wanted more defensive options, they could look for a center that could execute a pick-and-roll strategy different than Portis’ blitzing and trapping and Lopez’s drop coverage.

Again, this offseason should be about finding different options to answer the questions that teams pose to the Bucks in the postseason and that focus should not change when considering alternatives in the post.

(Photo of Pat Connaughton, Malik Beasley and Bobby Portis: David Sherman / NBAE via Getty Images)