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Hoo boy. OK, so the obvious place you have to start with Gary Trent Jr. is his contract. It is the elephant in the room. There’s natural resentment toward Trent because of the contract. I get that. However, to me, the ire of fans shouldn’t go toward the player; it should go toward the GM, who—in his flailing desperation to put the best team possible around Giannis last offseason—made a deal with the devil that could have much harsher implications than simply having what is, for all intents and purposes, $64m of dead money on your cap over the next four seasons.
Selfishly, I hope the league cannot prove a handshake deal was made and thus chooses not to prosecute, but as I understand it, they don’t need to. All the NBA needs to deduce is that, aside from cap circumvention, there is no other reasonable conclusion for why one of the NBA’s worst players last year inked such a lucrative deal. Look, there are smokescreens Jon Horst can throw out that are at least somewhat plausible—”he took minimums to play with Giannis, and now the Bucks have cap space and have to spend it on someone“—but none of them pass the smell test. That said, I also want to highlight that the “take consecutive minimum deals to get early Bird rights and then sign a big contract” tactic has been used by everyone over the years; GT’s deal just stands out more because he played so poorly the season before signing it.
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In any event, it happened, and we will see what transpires from here. If the Bucks are penalised—and especially if the penalties are severe—Horst should be on thin ice; it’s tough to have much faith in his decision-making after this whole fiasco (if it wasn’t before that). Now let’s move on to the basketball side of things. As has been well-documented, Trent is coming off what was essentially his worst year in the league last season. Other than his rookie campaign, the 27-year-old has never had a worse shooting season. He averaged just 21.8 minutes per game—also the lowest since he was a rookie—and even spent stretches out of the rotation completely. Anecdotally, Trent’s defensive effort and engagement were…
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Publish date : 2026-09-21 12:00:00
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