Why Bucks Could Be Willing to Acquire Overpaid Nuggets Forward

The Bucks are deep into a rebuild, and rebuilds change the math on everything.

Milwaukee traded Giannis Antetokounmpo to Miami this summer, committed to a younger roster, and started hunting for players who fit the next good Bucks team instead of the last one.

That search keeps leading back to Denver, where restricted free agent Peyton Watson remains unsigned.

The newest wrinkle in those talks is not about Watson at all.

According to HoopsHype's Michael Scotto, Milwaukee has not put a first-round pick on the table for Watson, but there is another path.

"While the Bucks haven't offered a first-round pick yet, they'd consider absorbing Nuggets forward Zeke Nnaji as part of a Watson sign-and-trade, HoopsHype has learned," Scotto wrote.

Nnaji is owed nearly 15 million dollars over the next two seasons, including a player option for 2027-28, and he gave Denver just 3.7 points and 2.6 rebounds in about 12 minutes a night last season.

Denver has been asking for at least one first-round pick and one notable player, and so far nobody in the field has met that price.

Milwaukee is reportedly viewed as the frontrunner regardless.

For a contender, absorbing Nnaji's deal would be a problem.

For a Milwaukee team coming off a 32-50 season with no urgency to win right away, it is simply currency.

The Bucks can treat that money as the cost of landing Watson, who broke out with 14.6 points, 4.9 rebounds and 1.1 blocks a game last season and is exactly the type of young wing a rebuilding team should collect.

Keeping the first-round pick in the deal matters more than the cap hit, because picks are the fuel of this deal, and one glance at the ceiling and floor of next season's roster shows how much runway Milwaukee still has to cover.

There is a version of this that works for everyone.

Denver sheds a contract it regrets and gets something back for a player it can no longer afford to keep, while Milwaukee turns spending room into a breakout player without touching its draft capital.

One recent breakdown already sketched out what a framework could look like, and the pieces line up cleaner than most rumors do in August.

The Bucks spent a decade chasing titles and paying whatever it cost, so nobody in that building is squeamish about an ugly contract.

Spending money on someone else's mistake to speed up the rebuild would be a smarter use of it than most of what teams in Milwaukee's position usually do in August.

The only real mistake available here would be blinking and giving up the pick instead, because a rebuild that trades its future to shortcut its present usually ends up doing neither well.

Patience plus a willingness to eat money is a genuine advantage in a market like this one, and Milwaukee should lean on it until the deal gets done.