How Caris LeVert Can Help Bucks After Trade From Pistons

Caris LeVert spent all of last season buried on a Detroit bench that had no real use for him, and he now gets a fresh start somewhere that does.

The Pistons sent LeVert and two second round picks to the Milwaukee Bucks on Tuesday in exchange for Taurean Prince and Gary Harris.

The trade had more to do with clearing money for Detroit than finding a taker who actually wanted LeVert's game, but it worked out for both sides since Detroit needed cap room after an aggressive summer and Milwaukee needed another ball handler while it figures out life after trading Giannis Antetokounmpo.

The deal is part of a larger six team trade that also sent Marcus Sasser to Dallas and Isaiah Stewart to Memphis, and it saves the Pistons roughly $7 million while opening up a $15 million trade exception it can use later this summer.

LeVert never found his footing in his one season in Detroit, where he signed a two year, $29 million deal last summer expecting to provide scoring punch off the bench.

Instead, he posted career lows across the board with 7.4 points, 2.0 rebounds and 2.7 assists in 19.2 minutes a night, numbers that got even smaller once the games mattered most, since LeVert slid behind Duncan Robinson and Daniss Jenkins in the rotation as the East's top seed at 60-22 lost to Cleveland in the second round.

Milwaukee is a much softer landing spot after finishing 32-50 and missing the playoffs for the first time since 2016, and the front office has already begun restocking around the return from the Antetokounmpo trade, headlined by Tyler Herro and Jaime Jaquez Jr.

LeVert now joins a backcourt built around Ryan Rollins, who broke out with 17.3 points and 5.6 assists a night, giving new coach Taylor Jenkins another proven ball handler who can play alongside Rollins or steady the second unit on nights the Bucks need someone who has actually logged real playoff minutes.

Nobody in Milwaukee is worried about wins right now, which means LeVert gets to play through mistakes instead of getting buried the way he did in Detroit.

The best thing Milwaukee gives LeVert is the lack of pressure, since Detroit was chasing a title and had no patience for a bench player struggling as badly as he was.

The Bucks can afford to let him work through a slump because they are not trying to win a championship this season.

LeVert is only two years removed from averaging 20.2 points a game between Brooklyn and Indiana, so the talent never actually left, it just never got the minutes it needed behind Cade Cunningham and a crowded Detroit backcourt.

Milwaukee still has plenty of room under the cap to keep adding around him, and a losing season with real minutes should do more for LeVert's confidence than another year stuck at the end of a contender's bench.