Report: Milwaukee Bucks Sign Brook Lopez to One-Year Deal

Don’t worry Bango, this isn’t the Lopez known for terrorizing mascots. He is the more interesting one from a basketball standpoint in my opinion though. Of course, I’m talking about the report from Chris Haynes that Milwaukee has agreed to sign Brook Lopez to a one-year, $3.4M deal using their bi-annual exception.

Lopez started at center for the young Lakers last year, averaging 13 points, 4 rebounds and 1.7 assists per game. Those numbers came on an average of 23 minutes per night, probably a tidy figure for prognosticating how much he’ll be playing in Milwaukee with John Henson and Thon Maker behind him. Haynes said in his article, “Milwaukee is expected to pencil in the 10-year veteran as its starting center.”

It’s always interesting to hear those likely promises in free agent meetings leak to the press, presumably his agent’s power play to let Milwaukee’s other centers know the state of affairs heading into training camp. Barring injury, I would guess Lopez does start with this squad given his budding ability to space the floor as a five, where he shot 34.5% from deep on 4.4 attempts per game last season. The year prior, he was 34.6% on 5.2 attempts per game. So there’s a decent sample size showing players have to respect him out there.

It continues the trend of finding Bud style players in free agency, as Budenholzer utilized Dewayne Dedmon extensively last season as a stretchy five. Ersan fits into Bud’s mold too, and played underneath him for awhile. Milwaukee’s roster stood at 15 players before this move, so look for the possibility of waiving Tyler Zeller or Brandon Jennings non-guaranteed contracts to make way for Lopez. Presumably, it will be Zeller who gets the boot given their positional overlap. If they’re able to shuttle Zeller off to another team though, Brandon Jennings may not have to worry about his shifting guaranteed date of August 1st any longer.