Explaining the Bucks’ bold decision to use the stretch provision on Damian Lillard and sign Myles Turner

The Milwaukee Bucks made an unprecedented move on Tuesday, waiving Damian Lillard with two years and $112.6 million remaining on his contract. They used the stretch provision on Lillard, which means that they will pay the nine-time All-Star the rest of what he’s owed over the next five years. Lillard, who tore his Achilles tendon in Game 4 of the Bucks’ first-round series against the Indiana Pacers 65 days ago, will soon be a free agent.

In related news: Milwaukee will sign center Myles Turner to a four-year, $107 million deal (with a player option on Year 4). He will replace Brook Lopez, who reportedly agreed to a two-year, $18 million contract with the Los Angeles Clippers on Monday.

There is a lot to unpack here.

What’s all this waiving and stretching about?

The stretch provision is a way for teams to get short-term salary-cap relief. Using it does not save a team any money, but it allows a team to pay the waived player over twice the number of years remaining on his contract plus one.

Before waiving Lillard, the Bucks owed him more than $54 million next season and more than $58 million in 2026-27. Now, they owe him $22.5 million every season through 2029-30.

That sounds like a lot. Is this normal?

Not remotely. This is the largest waive-and-stretch transaction ever. In fact, Lillard’s contract was almost too big to be stretched. The most that a team can pay in “stretched” money is 15% of a given year’s salary cap, which means a max of $23.2 million in 2025-26. (For this reason, the Phoenix Suns, who waived Nassir Little and E.J. Liddell in 2024, cannot waive and stretch Bradley Beal this offseason unless Beal agrees to give up almost $14 million, as The Athletic explained.) 

The closest comparison: Five years ago, the Charlotte Hornets used the stretch provision on the final year of Nicolas Batum’s hefty-for-its-time contract. Instead of paying him $27 million in 2020-21, they paid him $9 million per season through the 2022-23 season. This allowed them to sign Gordon Hayward in free agency.

So Turner is the Bucks’ Hayward?

In a way, yes. But waiving Lillard did not on its own create enough cap space for Turner to legally sign his reported deal. Milwaukee followed this up by sending Pat Connaughton’s $9.4 million expiring contract and their 2031 and 2032 second-round picks to the Charlotte Hornets in exchange for Vasilije Micić, per ESPN.

Micić has been rumored to be on the verge of leaving the NBA for Euroleague champions Fenerbahçe. Sending Charlotte those second-round picks only makes sense for the Bucks if Micić is about to give up enough of his $8.1 million salary that they can fit Turner in under the cap. (If Micić gives up about $6 million, they can waive and stretch his contract and sign Turner, per Yossi Gozlan of capsheets.com.)

What’s next for Lillard?

He likely can’t play next season, but that doesn’t prevent him from signing with another team this summer. Before the blockbuster deal that sent him to Milwaukee two years ago, he famously wanted to be traded to the Miami Heat. The Heat were coming off an appearance in the NBA Finals at that point, though, and now they’re coming off a 37-45 season and no longer have Jimmy Butler on the roster. Does he still see Miami as an appealing destination? Do the Heat still think Lillard, who will be 36 at the beginning of the 2026-27 season, fits their timeline? We will find presumably find out pretty soon.

This is definitely not how Lillard envisioned his tenure with the Bucks coming to an end. As strange as this must be for him, though, the good news is that he can go wherever he wants. Given what the Bucks still owe him, he doesn’t necessarily have to prioritize teams that still have spending power. He is “elated,” according to The Athletic.

Was this a good move for the Bucks?

I will answer this question with another question: What were their alternatives with Lillard?

As soon as Lillard ruptured his Achilles, his potential trade market effectively evaporated. Some observers speculated that they could have swapped him for Beal, but Beal has a no-trade clause and it’s unclear if the Suns, who still seem intent on being competitive next season, would have even been open to such a deal.

Assuming Lillard couldn’t be traded, Milwaukee would have had a difficult time finding a suitable Lopez replacement right away. The team has reportedly agreed to sign Gary Harris and re-sign Gary Trent Jr., Taurean Prince, Bobby Portis, Kevin Porter Jr. and Jericho Sims, but, even in a weakened Eastern Conference, it would have had a hard time overcoming its lack of rim protection next season. Had the Bucks chosen to essentially run it back without Lopez and Lillard, though, they could have tried to trade Lillard next summer, waited until then to waive-and-stretch him (over three years instead of five) or simply let him play out the remainder of his contract.

The argument for the Lillard and Turner moves is straightforward: With Giannis Antetokounmpo “considering his future and whether his best fit was with the Bucks moving forward,” per ESPN, they had to do something to reassure him that 2025-26 would not be a wasted season (or simply trade him and start over, and there’s no indication that they want to do that). If they were going to do something like this, Turner is a sensible target in that he fits well with Antetokounmpo. There aren’t many shot-blocking, floor-spacing centers on the planet.

But isn’t it risky?

Extremely! It is not a coincidence that no team has ever willingly put this much dead money on their books. The decision was particularly stunning because most of the other front offices in the league are being extra careful, payroll-wise, due to the team-building restrictions in the new collective bargaining agreement.

The Bucks are kinda, sorta doing what the Denver Nuggets did with their big trade on Monday: prioritizing the present over the future in order to do right by their franchise player. Crucially, though, Denver’s deal created financial flexibility at the expense of a future first-round pick, while Milwaukee’s created financial flexibility at the expense of … future financial flexibility.

This brings us to the argument against these moves: The Bucks might be too far away from contention for them to pay off. Jon Horst’s front office was creative here, manufacturing the ability to sign one of the top free agents on the market of thin air, but what evidence is there to suggest that swapping Lillard and Lopez for Turner and Harris will turn Milwaukee into a championship team? Last year’s Bucks went 48-34 and outscored opponents by 2.1 points per 100 possessions in non-garbage-time minutes, the 12th-best mark in the league, per Cleaning The Glass. Turner allows them to play the same style as they have with Lopez, but his presence doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll fare better.

If this gambit feels desperate, it’s because so much is riding on it. In the event that next season is underwhelming, what is the Bucks’ path forward? They surely know that, if Antetokounmpo is still playing for the Bucks in 2027-28 and beyond, the dead money going to Lillard will make it much harder to continue building a competitive team around Giannis. Maybe they figured that if they didn’t do this, there’d be no chance Antetokounmpo would be around by then anyway.

So Antetokounmpo is sticking around now, right?

Milwaukee must think so, since it just mortgaged its future, but it depends who you ask. Chris Haynes reported that Antetokounmpo wasn’t pleased with the team waiving Lillard, then elaborated on NBA TV: “He just didn’t like how it was handled.” According to Haynes, Lillard didn’t see this coming and found out about it the way the rest of us did.

ESPN, however, reported that “Turner and Antetokounmpo both valued the opportunity to partner on the court during the process.”

Here’s how Antetokounmpo reacted on social media:

The only opinion that Antetokounmpo has shared publicly as of Tuesday afternoon is that Lopez’s jersey should be retired. Even if he makes it clear that he’s thrilled with what the front office has done and will not request a trade this summer, it would only temporarily quiet the noise. The moment that Milwaukee starts to struggle, you can expect rumors to start swirling again. 

Some Antetokounmpo suitors may be feeling better about their chances of landing him than they did yesterday. The least generous appraisal of the Bucks’ bold moves is that they simultaneously delayed an Antetokounmpo trade and made one inevitable.