Last season before the trade deadline when the Milwaukee Bucks were leaning fairly heavily on Brandon Knight, they were 30-23 and had set themselves up as a playoff team. After the trade deadline when Michael Carter-Williams took over at the point, and through the start of this season, the Bucks have gone 16-26.
Certainly there are a lot of other factors in play with those numbers, but the team’s offense took a hit when Knight was moved (he is in Phoenix now and racked up a triple-double for them Monday). So, why did they do it? The Bucks didn’t think he was the long-term answer, Jason Kidd said Tuesday, as reported by Charles F. Gardner of the Journal Sentinel.“I wouldn’t say we gave up a lot,” Kidd said."He (Knight) was having a great season, and he’s having a great season this year. But it wasn’t we gave up Brandon. We had a decision to make between our backcourt.
“It wasn’t Klay Thompson or Stephen Curry. We weren’t going to max out our backcourt. As an organization, we had a decision to make, and we made it.”
To be clear, what Kidd is saying they liked Khris Middleton — the Bucks gave him a $70 million contract extension to this summer — and they weren’t sure about paying Knight. I can accept that, but will add I’m far from convinced Carter-Williams is the long-term answer at the point in Milwaukee (he is just coming back from injury).
The Suns gave Knight $70 million this summer to pair with Eric Bledsoe in their backcourt. So far that has worked out pretty well, but it’s going to be a long time before we know which side (if any) made out in this trade.