Back in February, the Milwaukee Bucks traded starting point guard Brandon Knight in a three-team deal that netted Michael Carter-Williams from Philadelphia and young players Tyler Ennis and Miles Plumlee from Phoenix. Knight’s contract was up after the season, and his trade from Milwaukee freed up salary space for guard/forward Khris Middleton. Middleton blossomed in his third year in the league, hitting 40.7 percent of his threes and playing strong defense for the young Bucks, who rewarded the 24-year-old with a five-year,
Khris Middleton is sneaky good
Khris Middleton received a 5-year, $70 million extension this offseason from the Bucks. He isn’t heralded as a star, has never been an All-Star and was even traded once. And he just turned 24. [Read more…]
Scotto: Sheridan Hoops Top 10 Shooting Guards
The familiar days of Kobe Bryant and Dwyane Wade leading the shooting guard rankings are over. In fact, Bryant, Wade and Monta Ellis are the only players over 30 to crack our top 10 rankings at the position. James Harden, Klay Thompson and Jimmy Butler are the new – and younger – top dogs at the position. DeMar DeRozan, Bradley Beal and Khris Middleton are three rising young stars listed that could vault within the top five by next season. Shooting guard is thin
Five Things To Watch: Milwaukee Bucks
The Milwaukee Bucks were one of last season’s biggest fairy tale stories. It’s not a common occurrence in the NBA for a team to go from a sorry 15 wins in one season to the playoffs in the very next campaign. But that’s exactly what the Bucks did in 2014-15. If that wasn’t remarkable enough, it is the factors that contributed to Milwaukee’s success that really stand out. Caoch Larry Drew was fired and replaced by Jason Kidd after Kidd’s power play
Bernucca: NBA’s Largest Pay Raises Show It Pays To Be Patient
It pays to be patient. That is the financial lesson of the NBA’s offseason, which saw the biggest pay raises go to players who turned down contract extensions and gambled on themselves. Among the top 11 pay increases this summer, five went to players who felt like they were being lowballed by their teams — and proved it when they cashed in with bigger deals as restricted free agents this summer. Chicago’s Jimmy Butler, Orlando’s Tobias Harris, Detroit’s Reggie Jackson, Oklahoma City’s Enes
NBA players react to a glorious first day of free agency on twitter
The golden age for NBA players wasn’t supposed to arrive before 2016 when the new TV deal would kick in, but it has clearly arrived early enough for the free agents of 2015. It started just as the free agency period kicked in with the calendar turning July when Anthony Davis agreed to the largest single contract ever for an NBA player. While other big-name players like LaMarcus Aldridge, Monta Ellis and Marc Gasol are still trying to figure out what they want
PODCAST: Will Khris Middleton Get a Max Offer in Free Agency?
Last summer, we ran a post detailing which players received the biggest raises in salary from the previous year. The list was made up of three types of players. A. Players who received maximum salary deals as their second contracts, such as DeMarcus Cousins. B. Former first-round picks who received sizable contract extensions, although not necessarily max deals, such as Larry Sanders. C. Second-round picks who had been making near league minimum and signed new deals, such as Lance Stephenson. The latter category has
PODCAST: Michael Scotto on 2015 and 2016 Free Agency
Five top sleeper free agents are all playing in the playoffs with the hope of cashing in big this summer as I outlined in a previous SheridanHoops column. With the NBA projected to increase the salary cap to roughly $90 million in 2016, teams will spend big this summer with the hope those deals will be bargains in retrospect once the new salary cap kicks in. Despite the anticipated gold rush for free agents in 2016, there are some players who would