Nikola

Mirotic

Mirotic shocked many when he turned down several NBA offers last season to head overseas, but you can’t blame him for wanting to play on one of the best teams in his home country at this point in his career. “I’m very happy and very grateful to the club for this new opportunity,” he said in a statement. “I’m happy to have extended my contract. 2025 sounds great. So many years wearing this shirt and hopefully achieving further success. I look forward to repaying that trust.”

Back in June of 2019, it was stunning to find out that Mirotic was headed back to Europe to play for Barcelona, and he had some takes on the NBA. “The game was completely different,” Mirotic said about the NBA. “Games were played every other day, a more individual game and – what I had the hardest time understanding in the first season – is that everything revolves around the stars of the team: training, games, plays.” Mirotic would’ve fit in great on a lot of NBA teams to space the floor, but it sounds like he won’t be coming back to the NBA.

Barcelona will now play Real Madrid, Mirotic’s former club, in the Supercopa Final. It’s still shocking that Mirotic decided to leave the NBA, but it’s good to see him flourish in his first game back in Spain.

Well this is certainly surprising considering that Mitotic had plenty of interest from multiple NBA teams, and would have secured a contract in the neighborhood of $50 million this offseason. From a fantasy perceptive, this is a bummer for those GM’s that owned Mirotic in keeper formats.

He won’t be a top priority for Dallas, but will likely be available, as it will be difficult for Milwaukee to retain him once they give Khris Middleton the max and attempt to bring back both Brook Lopez and Malcolm Brogdon. The Jazz have also expressed interest in Mirotic, and that would be a much better landing spot for him in terms of fantasy hoops.

After starting the first four games of the series and 20 or more minutes in each game, Mirotic saw just nine minutes over each of the final two games. He enters the offseason as an unrestricted free agent.

He’s been brutal throughout this series and even lost some second-half minutes to Sterling Brown. Mirotic is -37 in this series and he might be bumped from the rotation entirely on Saturday.

No reason for the Bucks to switch things up, as Mirotic started the final four games of Milwaukee’s second-round series vs. Boston and the Bucks won all four games. Mirotic averaged 10.3 points, 7.3 rebounds and 1.8 treys in 26.6 minutes over those four starts.

“He needs more game minutes, more game action,” Budenholzer said after Saturday’s practice. “We plan to continue to increase Malcolm’s workload and minutes. To say exactly how it’s going to play out -- the next step will be him playing a little bit more in Game 1.” Luckily for the Bucks, the other Eastern Conference semifinal series was pushed to a Game 7, which gives Brogdon a few more days to heal up. His minutes will gradually rise, barring any setbacks, which means that Nikola Mirotic would likely stay in the starting unit for the time being.

Brogdon hadn’t played since tearing his plantar fascia in mid-March, forcing him to miss nearly eight weeks. His return may cut into the available minutes for Pat Connaughton (28 minutes), and he bumped Sterling Brown (four minutes) from the rotation until garbage time. The Bucks’ starting lineup is cruising and Brogdon is limited by conditioning, so he’ll likely continue to come off the bench. That leaves Nikola Mirotic starting alongside the regulars -- Eric Bledsoe, Khris Middleton, Giannis Antetokounmpo and Brook Lopez. No matter where he begins the game, Brogdon’s return means a terrific team just got even better.