Tuesday Morning Media Roundup: September 20th, 2022

Never before and probably never again will so much attention be focused on one Jordan Nwora — the final Buck we’re awaiting contract news on this offseason. As a restricted free agent, Milwaukee offered him a qualifying option for $2.04 million which he could take for the 2022-2023 season, but nothing has come across the wire about his actually signing it or the Bucks rescinding it. Presumably he’s being shopped (and aware of it) as part of possible trade packages with the QO as a last resort to guarantee an income in case GM Jon Horst can’t find a satisfactory deal.

It’s the least sexy of an incredibly unsexy thing known as fringe NBA player contract minutia, but with the signings of Iverson Molinar and Ibou Badji to Exhibit 10 deals to bring them into Milwaukee’s training camp, Nwora is quite literally the last moving piece on the board. And yet, no matter how the saga should turn out, there’s something to interest everyone: He gets traded and we can place all our hopes and dreams in whatever nearly-retired player we’d get back, or he stays and we get another season trying to answer the unanswerable in determining if Nwora is a basketball player.

So here’s to you, Jordan, king of the transaction castle. All seven Bucks fans who are paying attention right now are watching in eager anticipation of your future.

Let’s roundup!

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Bucks’ Iverson Molinar: Inks Exhibit 10 deal with Milwaukee & Bucks’ Ibou Badji: Inks Exhibit 10 deal with Milwaukee (CBS Sports)

Milwaukee’s two newest signings are guys getting brought in for training camp tryouts. Molinar spent this past Summer League with the Bucks where he appeared in just two games and averaged something like 5.5 points and an assist a game.

Badji is likely the more interesting prospect if only because 1) He’s 19 years old and 2) He’s 7’1” or 7’2” tall and has played five seasons at various levels of the Spanish basketball pyramid. He appeared in 47 games for Barcelona B in what I think I read as Spain’s third division, was promoted to the A squad but only got the nod in four games as a victory cigar, and finally spent last year as part of ICG Força Lleida in the second division. He played in 31 games on a 22-9 team, averaged 8.4 points, 4.2 rebounds, and 1.2 blocks, and is now making the NBA leap.

Here’s his Tankathon stat profile, and some random videos I found:

It looks like he can kind of dunk and block sometimes. Cool. Welcome!

Miroslav Raduljica turns down Euroleague offer to drive Route 66 with Serbian rock band (Sportando)

Fantastic news out of Middle America as Large Serbian Man and former Buck Miroslav Radulijca forgoes a deal with the basketball arm of Red Star Belgrade in order to keep on trucking. Literally! As far as I can tell, this is the band he’ll be serving as a roadie for:

Bucks Sign, Waive Alex Antetokounmpo & Bucks Sign, Waive Rob Edwards (Hoops Rumors)

File these two bits of information as almost solely Wisconsin Herd-related moves. I’m not sure if signing and immediately waiving these guys gives them an option of receiving more bonus money if they play a certain amount with the Herd, but obviously they’re of such little consequence for the Bucks main squad that we didn’t even bother with newsers. They’ll look great in a Herd starting lineup with Mamu and Ibou.

Bucks season preview: Quietly the best team in the league? (Hoopshype)

Mmm... we’ll probably be pretty good while dealing with a little injury trouble here or there before hoping we get into the playoffs mostly in good health. As my friend and colleague Kyle Carr has pointed out, the 2021-2022 Bucks season — and therefore next season — has been made out to rest on the shoulders of a Christ-like Khris Middleton’s absence. With Milwaukee’s Son of God’s wrist in a cast, it’s just too hazy right now to confidently say whether we’ll be the best of the best.

Giannis Antetokounmpo signs on as executive producer on ‘The Flagmakers,’ a National Geographic movie about workers at Oak Creek’s Eder Flag (Journal Sentinel)

An interesting film from what I’m reading, and it is cool Giannis signed up to play some role in it (whatever being an executive producer means; will he learn how to edit in post-production?). That they already have a whole poster drawn up and filmed the whole thing in 2020 suggests he’ll help out with getting the film marketed and placed on a streaming service like Disney+ one day.

Creating his own miniature Hollywood right alongside Lake Michigan.

Milwaukee Bucks Become Latest NBA Team to Launch AI Chat for Fans With GameOn Technology (Sport Techie)

How about we spend less money on chat bots that inevitably get confused after two inquiries before directing you to a 1-800 number, and spend more money on getting Marques Johnson in a recording studio so we can have him take the place of a Siri/Alexa/other actively listening voice and answer our inane questions? Is ownership completely asleep at the wheel again?

Fan Post of the Week

At the risk of funneling all those bots that infect the advertisement sections of this venerable website into burt snipes’s hard drive, I want to promote that an offer to join their 2022-2023 fantasy league is in! “BrewHoop Fantasy League” is the tale of how 12 people (might) get together and (could) create rosters that are (maybe) better than what (alleged) GM Jon Horst assembled here in Milwaukee.

The FPOTW committee duly thanks burt for hitting the word count criteria for the award. Join up!

The Social Media Section

Another really interesting Giannis media product. On Amazon Prime September 21st, apparently!

Of course Thanasis goes ALL OUT signing the Greek national anthem (can I get a translation on those final lines they’re belting out?)

This guy...

He’s mesmerizing

Georgia looks nice this time of year

Thanasis the kind of dude to actually get a solid gold basketball and then sign it with a Sharpie

He’ll fit right in here

Proof that Jason Kidd is everywhere

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Sorry to all the Greeks and Greek fans for the flameout against Germany last week. Such are the risks of one-and-done formats like the EuroBasket tournament. From what I can tell the team did themselves well in the group stage and fought back from tough moments while Giannis looked every bit a world-beater and Thanasis did his chaos engine thing. Hopefully the Antetokounmpos can bring back some takeaways from playing in a new system for over a month and apply it to the season to come.

In any event, congrats to the team for having played well!

Training camp opens up in the coming weeks and preseason will not be all that far behind. We’re back to the basketball-less desert, but not for all that long.

Happy Tuesday!