The Bucks Said No to Two Second-Round Picks for Kevin Porter Jr., Then Waived Him for Nothing.

Milwaukee had 16 guaranteed contracts and room for 15. Denver offered two future second-round picks, a second-round pick swap and Zeke Nnaji for Kevin Porter Jr. The Bucks said no, waived Porter on October 19 and are now carrying his $5.39 million salary as dead money.

The reported objection, from Jake Fischer of The Stein Line: Milwaukee did not want to absorb Nnaji's $7.47 million player option for 2027-28.

Five Rival Cap Executives Would Have Taken the Deal

Fischer polled five salary cap specialists from other teams. All five said they would have done it. That is not a split decision.

The arithmetic is not complicated. The Bucks own four second-round picks and none at all between 2028 and 2032. Denver was offering three pick assets in exchange for taking on one optional year of a contract. Milwaukee instead paid $5.39 million to clear a roster spot it had to clear anyway, and got back nothing.

Milwaukee is also projected to have close to $50 million in cap space next summer and is not expected to pay the luxury tax. The money was never the constraint it was treated as.

Porter Led the Team in Assists Last Season

This was not a fringe player getting cut. Porter averaged 17.4 points, 7.4 assists and 5.2 rebounds in 38 games for the Bucks last season, leading the roster in assists per game and finishing second in scoring. He shot 46.5 percent from the field and 87.8 percent from the line.

He is 26, a 6-5 guard, and he was playing on a $5.39 million player option he had exercised in June. The 38 games were the product of a torn meniscus in his right knee and arthroscopic surgery in April that ended his season.

Head coach Taylor Jenkins did not pretend it was easy.

“Very difficult decision,” Jenkins said. “I think Scoot had been great for us. He added a lot to the group.”

Jenkins framed it as clearing runway for the young guards: rookie Brayden Burries, the 10th pick out of Arizona, and 20-year-old Kasparas Jakucionis, alongside Ryan Rollins and Tyler Herro.

The Bucks Are 0-3 and Cannot Afford to Waste Assets

Milwaukee traded Giannis Antetokounmpo and Bobby Portis to Miami in July for Herro, Kel'el Ware, Jaime Jaquez Jr., Jakucionis, the 13th pick and a stack of future firsts. Doc Rivers resigned in April. Jenkins was hired two weeks later and is three games into his first season in Milwaukee, all losses: at Washington, home against Chicago, at Philadelphia.

A team in that position should be collecting every draft pick within reach. Milwaukee has four seconds and a five-year hole in the middle of the next decade. Denver was offering to help with that at no basketball cost.

Porter Is Still Unsigned

Rosters are set league-wide now, which is the cruel part of the timing. Porter is an unrestricted free agent and most contenders no longer have the flexibility to add him. Fischer expects him to target playoff teams on a minimum deal.

Porter was the 30th pick in 2019 and has played for Cleveland, Houston and the Clippers, with a season at PAOK in Greece in between, before Milwaukee traded for him in February 2025. The Bucks re-signed him that summer on a two-year, $11 million deal and were reported at the time to have prioritized getting it done.

Sixteen months later they turned down three pick assets and let him walk for free. There is no version of this where Milwaukee comes out ahead.

Carlos Garcia

A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.