Counting down the Milwaukee Bucks' most valuable assets - Bye Bye Bayless

We're counting down the Milwaukee Bucks' most valuable assets one by one to get a clear picture of how Bucks fans view the current roster. With most of the supposed "dead weight" contracts now eliminated, possibly productive veterans and cheap young guys are going to be next in line. This is where the cuts begin to get painful.

The most recent cut is new arrival Jerryd Bayless, who signed a two-year deal worth about $6 million dollars this summer after a modestly productive 2013/2014 season split between Memphis and Boston. The Bucks grabbed Bayless to bolster a thin backcourt rotation, and Bayless is capable of manning both the 1 and 2 spots if needed. He's a fairly good three-point shooter and has solid passing instincts, but's a pretty inefficient scorer himself (50.6 TS% over the last two seasons).

All told, Bayless' deal looks like it should be a decent value for Milwaukee, considering he'll make less over the life of his contract than O.J. Mayo will make this season while providing much of the same sort of production. Is that enough to make him a true asset? Bayless has been tossed around the league quite a bit already, but that's not necessarily a knock on his value. In fact, he netted the Trail Blazers a first-round draft pick from New Orleans after just two decent seasons and change. His 2011/2012 season with Toronto was quite strong, when he tallied over 56% true shooting and a 17.7 PER, but it was also cut short by injury.

At those Toronto numbers, Bayless would definitely be an asset for the Bucks, whether as a player or trade chip. But he hasn't really approached that performance since, and he's got some competition for minutes in Milwaukee.

I said above that the cuts will start to hurt at this point in the exercise, and this is the first one that feels like the Bucks could be losing an asset with real potential.

With the consensus "bad" assets all off the board now, I've added the remaining high-value options back into the poll, including one wrinkle: I've included "2015 Unprotected First-Round Pick" into the mix, just to give us one more major asset to consider relative to the players already on the roster.

Milwaukee Bucks Roster Asset Rankings

18. O.J. Mayo
17. Carlos Delfino
16. Chris Wright
15. Miroslav Raduljica
14. Zaza Pachulia
13. Jerryd Bayless