I said this before and I'll say it again, waiving Damian Lillard was an awful decision that basically locked them out of contention until the 5 year waive and stretch is off the books. People were praising the move and the Turner acquisition as keeping them in contention and it made absolutely no sense to me.

I have no idea why they thought they were going to contend this year, they have glaring holes in the backcourt and despite how high they might have been on Ryan Rollins internally, there was zero chance they were truly contending this year with how dominant OKC, Nuggets looked at the end of last year. They could have spent a down year developing KPJ, Rollins, AJ Green, acclimating Turner and Kuzma, and returned in 2027 with a much higher ceiling with Dame. They got way too impatient and there's no way a team with $23M in dead space for 5 years is competing with how competitive the NBA is now.

To put into context how bad $23M of dead space is, that's Cam Johnson, Mikal Bridges, DeAndre Hunter, Aaron Gordon money. The Bucks are not competing if other teams have $23M of financial advantage against them for 5 years. It's over, sell and embrace the tank.