Breaking: Bucks trade Khris Middleton, AJ Johnson, and pick swap for Kyle Kuzma

Franchise icon Middleton is no longer a Buck

Apparently, where there’s smoke there’s fire: the Milwaukee Bucks have traded three-time All-Star Khris Middleton—their second-longest tenured player—plus 2024 first-round pick AJ Johnson and a 2028 first-round pick swap to the Washington Wizards for forward Kyle Kuzma, Wisconsin native Patrick Baldwin Jr., and a 2025 second-round pick. This per ESPN’s Shams Charania:

Steam picked up on this deal in the past two days, as we’ve noted twice. For the deal to work, Washington would need to add outgoing money in order to meet salary-matching requirements, and they do that in the form of UWM alum Patrick Baldwin Jr. The pick info comes courtesy of NBA insider Chris Haynes:

Let’s get something out of the way first: Khris Middleton is an all-time Buck who deserves to have his number in the Fiserv Forum rafters. Injuries in the last couple of seasons kept him off the floor often, but when he played, he was still very good—don’t get it twisted. Yes, there was all the nostalgia for pre-2022, but let’s not act as if he wasn’t still helping the team. He had the best plus/minus among this year’s Bucks and despite playing on a bad ankle, put up an all-time series versus Indy. We’ll have more on Middleton’s departure in the coming days.

AJ Johnson got his most significant run as a Buck two days ago in OKC. The now 20-year-old was a surprise pick at 24th overall in last June’s draft and was viewed as a project. At the time, I speculated that picking him based on future potential might be done with the idea of simply trading him before long. That seems to be part of GM Jon Horst’s calculus here, as he’s about the closest thing the Bucks can offer to a 2025 first-rounder (a pick they don’t have).

Now onto Milwaukee’s return. Kuzma will turn 30 this summer and is in the midst of a down year. Over 32 contests with the Wiz, he’s shooting a career-worst 42% from the field and 28.1% from three, good for 15.2 PPG, his lowest total since his last year as a Laker. Never a very efficient player, his true shooting has cratered this year to a miserable 48.8%. Defensively, he’s pretty average: he’s long, but isn’t an exceptional athlete and doesn’t have plus footspeed. The 6’9” eight-year vet is more of a four than a three, which is likely where he’ll play if he becomes a starter.

Patrick Baldwin Jr. is a name that will be pretty familiar to Milwaukeeans. Born in Evanston, IL, PBJ grew up there until moving to the Waukesha County suburb of Sussex, WI, where he attended Hamilton High (like BH’s own Riley Feldmann). That’s because his father was hired away from his assistant gig at Northwestern to coach the Panthers (he’s since been fired). A five-star recruit, Junior played for Senior for one season, good enough to make him the 28th overall selection in the 2022 draft. However, he hasn’t established himself in the league at all, appearing in just 91 games over his two-plus seasons and spending more time in the G League.

Finally, the draft compensation. Per ESPN’s Bobby Marks, Milwaukee will send a “re-swap” of their 2028 first-round pick to Washington in this deal. They already traded the right to swap that pick to Portland in the Damian Lillard trade, and what this means is that Washington is now in on this too. Essentially, the Blazers will receive the most favorable pick of the Wizards’, Bucks’ and their own 2028 first-rounders. The Wiz get the second-best pick, and the Bucks would get the lowest pick. The Athletic’s Eric Nehm reports that the Bucks will receive the second most favorable of Washington’s two or three (depending on some swaps with Golden State, Detroit, Boston, and Utah) second-round picks in 2025.

Let’s now look at the cap implications here. Kuzma is making $23.5m this season and has two more years left on his contract with a descending salary. Though he also has $3m of unlikely benefits on his deal each year, the Bucks move beneath the second apron by swapping his and Baldwin’s salary in for Middleton’s and Johnson’s. This occurs because Kuzma is waiving his trade bonus in the deal, per Marks. They are not hard-capped at the second apron, but they currently have $1.3m in space beneath it, meaning they’d have room to add a buyout player if they can open up another roster spot.

Now free of second apron restrictions, the Bucks gain greater ability to aggregate contracts in trades, send out cash in a trade, and use a portion of their mid-level exception. However, doing any of this would hard-cap them at $188.9m, which they’re now very close to. This also means that their 2032 first-round pick will not be frozen if they finish the year under the second apron.

Some final notes here: Jake Fischer of The Stein Line reports that Giannis may have his fingerprints on this one. He relayed that “a key element of the trade talks that brought Kyle Kuzma to Milwaukee in exchange for championship mainstay Khris Middleton [is] a large vote of support for Kuzma from one Giannis Antetokounmpo.” While Giannis may like Kuz a lot, did he like him enough to permit Milwaukee to trade Middleton, one of his closest friends on the team and a member of his wedding party last summer? We might never know.

This is a developing story and we’ll update it as more info comes out.