The Boston Celtics (and 3 other teams) are having a bad start to free agency

Milwaukee Bucks are struggling in free agency

The Milwaukee Bucks got off to such a promising start. They traded for Jrue Holiday (paying an absolute fortune in draft capital, by the way) and then conducted a sign-and-trade for Bogdan Bogdanovic. The thing is, they did this several days before free agency was to begin, which opened the deal up to all sorts of tampering concerns.

Damage control began, the deal was scuttled, and the Bucks ended up moving on by releasing and re-signing various elements of the deal (Ersan Ilyasova got his walking papers and Pat Connaughton got himself a nice new deal, more on that later). So now they won’t get their sharpshooting wing to join Giannis Antetokounmpo and Holiday, and the Bucks have found themselves having to scramble.

Instead of Bogdanovic, they’ve signed Bobby Portis and D.J. Augustin, and after initially re-signing Connaughton to a two-year deal worth $8.3 million, the Bucks clicked some more buttons and modified that deal to a three-year, $16 million deal.

Any time you can overpay more for longer, you should do it, apparently.

All of this ineptitude takes place under the specter of Antetokounmpo’s max-extension decision. The Bucks need to get him to stay by any means necessary (he becomes a free agent next summer if he doesn’t sign an extension), and the last few days can’t possibly have impressed him in the least.