'Reckless': What league insiders are saying about this stunning set of Bucks moves

The Milwaukee Bucks stunned the NBA universe Tuesday morning when they agreed to a four-year, $107 million contract with former Indiana Pacers center Myles Turner, the top free agent on the market.

Milwaukee wasn't a team with cap space, yet it created the necessary room by waiving future Hall of Famer Damian Lillard, an All-Star in his two seasons in Milwaukee who was owed more than $110 million over the final two years of his contract.

The Pacers, meanwhile, lost their longest-tenured player after the franchise reached its first NBA Finals in 25 years. With Turner in the lineup, the Pacers knocked the Bucks from the playoffs in the first round each of the past two seasons.

Before Game 7 of the NBA Finals, Indiana looked as if it would head into next season as the likely favorite from the Eastern Conference. Tyrese Haliburton's torn Achilles injury, and now Turner's departure, has fundamentally changed where the Pacers sit in a wide-open East race led by the Cleveland Cavaliers and New York Knicks, and made much more interesting by a flurry of moves from the Atlanta Hawks and Orlando Magic.

With Turner, the Bucks believe they are in that mix, too, once again swinging a risky deal to maximize superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo's prime. Here's a look at the ramifications of Milwaukee's shocking maneuver, one that will have ripple effects across the NBA, and how league insiders are reacting.

Grades: Turner to Milwaukee | Free agency grades

What does this mean for the Bucks?

With Antetokounmpo on the roster, the Bucks are always under pressure to win. And, after losing in the first round of the playoffs in three consecutive seasons, including a five-game rout to the Pacers this spring, that pressure only intensified.

During that series, Lillard went down with an Achilles tear, leaving Milwaukee with a $54 million hole on its roster this season and limited draft assets to fill it. Antetokounmpo has made public his desire to win multiple championships, and ESPN's Shams Charania reported earlier this summer Antetokounmpo was planning to monitor the team's moves while considering whether Milwaukee remained his best path to title contention.

So, rather than just re-signing most of their players -- outside of center Brook Lopez, who agreed to a deal with the LA Clippers Monday night -- the Bucks sprung the most surprising move of the offseason and found a younger version of Lopez, to boot.

But Tuesday morning's move was shocking on multiple levels -- both for what the Bucks did (landing Turner) and how they did it (waiving and stretching Lillard's remaining $112 million on his contract).

While Turner is a quality player, stretching such a staggering amount of money to create the salary cap space to sign him wasn't seen favorably by rival executives.

"Reckless," one executive said.

"That's a move you talk yourself into in the boardroom in July when you have nowhere else to go," said another, "and you turn a bad situation into a worse one. They're going to look at this in two years and say, 'What did we do?'"

Turner played a huge role in Indiana's run to the Finals, giving them the coveted combination of rim protection and 3-point shooting from a 7-footer. But Lopez did the same thing for Milwaukee the past several years, which is why he was such a perfect fit to play alongside Antetokounmpo in the Bucks' frontcourt.

Turner is eight years younger than Lopez, but their numbers last season were virtually identical. And he's now making three times as much money -- and that's before you factor in the more than $22 million in roster charges that will now be on Milwaukee's books over the next five seasons because of the decision to waive and stretch Lillard's deal.

Once a team stretches the salary of a player, there is no turning back. They can't trade that salary, or reduce it in any way, shape or form. Instead, it is stuck on their books until it goes away. Essentially, the Bucks are paying more than $50 million a year for the right to have Turner on their roster. The Bucks have yet to find a replacement for Lillard's production -- 24.9 points, 7.1 assists and 4.7 rebounds per game, and shooting 38% from 3 -- and had a roster that finished fifth in the East last season.

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Windy: Pacers players should be 'disgusted' by Myles Turner's departure

Brian Windhorst reacts to the "stunning turn of events" that sees Myles Turner leaving the Pacers and heading to the Bucks.

What does this mean for the Pacers?

Indiana had been signaling throughout their playoff run that it was going to re-sign Turner, who had spent the first 10 seasons of his career with the team and had become the backbone of their locker room.

However, doing so would have meant going into the luxury tax -- something the Pacers haven't done in 20 years. Every time Indiana would indicate it was comfortable paying the tax, rival teams would question whether that was actually the case, or whether it was posturing to try to tamp down on the market for Turner -- the best unrestricted free agent center on the market in a year where there was very little cap space to seek out.

But no one saw the Bucks creating salary cap space to sign Turner. And, once they did, they could then outbid Indiana's offer. Minnesota signing center Naz Reid had already complicated the Pacers-Turner negotiation to a five-year, $125 million contract last week. Turner, a starter on a Finals team, justifiably had reason to believe he was worth more than the $25 million annual value for Reid, a backup big for Minnesota.

Although Turner is coming off one of the best seasons of his career, he struggled during the later rounds of the playoffs and especially in the Finals against Oklahoma City, averaging 10.6 points on 37.7% shooting (21.4% from 3). Still, his skillset is difficult to find in the NBA among big men, and one Indiana doesn't have on its roster.

As one rival assistant coach said this afternoon, incredulously, "Why didn't they pay him?"

But while Indiana's present has now taken a significant hit between both Haliburton's injury and Turner's departure, it could lead to a positive impact on the franchise's future. With Haliburton likely sidelined for the year, and the Pacers in control of their own first-round draft pick in 2026, they would benefit with a from a higher draft pick if they take a step back until Haliburton's ready to return.

So where will the Pacers go from here? They offered Isaiah Jackson, a bouncy center who tore his Achilles in November 2024, a qualifying offer to make him a restricted free agent, meaning he will likely be in their center rotation next season. The remaining options to replace Turner as free agents now are slim, after several names went off the board early in free agency. The top one remaining is former No. 1 overall pick Deandre Ayton was bought out of the final year of his contract by the Portland Trail Blazers this week -- a contract Indiana actually signed him to before the Phoenix Suns matched that offer sheet to bring back Ayton in the 2022 offseason.

How does this impact Giannis Antetokounmpo's future?

Teams have been waiting to see if Antetokounmpo would choose to ask out of Milwaukee going all the way back to 2020, when Bucks general manager Jon Horst swung his first massive deal for an impact player -- acquiring Jrue Holiday from the New Orleans Pelicans -- to help convince Antetokounmpo to stick around, a move that helped spur the Bucks on to the title the following season. Three years later, Horst used Holiday as a main part of the package to acquire Lillard from Portland.

Now, it appears Horst has managed to do so a third time by securing the services of Turner, who will continue to provide the necessary floor spacing and rim protection next to Antetokounmpo that's required to maximize his talents, as Antetokounmpo is under contract for $54.1 million this coming season and $58.4 million in 2026-27 before he has a $62.7 million player option for the 2027-28 season.

And after he had a strong close to the regular season, essentially playing as the team's point guard while Lillard was dealing with the blood clot in his calf that knocked him out for the last month of the regular season, it's clear he's going to be reprising that role again this season. That has appealed to Antetokounmpo in the past, especially as he compares himself to other great players who can be the hub of an offense. "I always felt like that would be my last phase," Antetokounmpo said in April after the Bucks playoff series loss. "As a guy that can playmake and can set up a team, be like a legit point forward out there." Over the final few weeks of the season with Lillard sidelined, Antetokounmpo averaged a preposterous 33.4 points, 15.6 rebounds and 6.6 assists while shooting 60% from the field -- numbers he could potentially replicate next season with the Bucks, given how often he will have the ball in his hands.

That could leave him in contention to win a third Most Valuable Player award -- if he can power Milwaukee to enough winning and can stay on the court under what will be an immense workload, even by his usual standards. Still, sources told Charania that Antetokounmpo and Turner are excited to get the chance to play together.

What about Damian Lillard?

It's a rather unceremonious ending to Lillard's two-year tenure in Milwaukee and his partnership with Antetokounmpo, a star duo that never truly reached the heights projected when they joined forces in the summer of 2023. The Bucks went 73-43 during the regular season when both Antetokounmpo and Lillard shared the floor, but they played in just three playoff games together -- the last of which left Lillard with a torn Achilles.

But, while it might not seem like a fitting end for Lillard's Milwaukee tenure, it arguably gives Lillard the best possible outcome for his career moving forward. While at least the current expectation, sources said, is that Lillard won't sign with anyone for the 2025-26 season, he now will get all of the money owed to him and will get the chance to spend the next 12-18 months rehabbing his injury, then choosing his next destination for the first time in his career as an unrestricted free agent.

But while Lillard is a free agent now, there's not a lot of reasons for anyone to be rushing to sign him now - or for him to rush into a deal. Yes, any team could sign him now, but they would only have his "non-Bird" rights, meaning they could only give him a small raise without using salary cap space or a salary cap exception next summer. And, unlike in other sports where teams have more flexibility over how to structure contracts, under the NBA's collective bargaining agreement year-over-year raises are extremely limited in multi-year contracts, preventing a team from offering Lillard a minimum this season and then giving him a balloon payment for the 2026-27 season once he's healthy.

How does the Turner signing impact other teams around the league?

Let's circle back to a trade that floated under the radar during the NBA Finals, when the Pacers sent the 23rd pick in this year's NBA draft to the Pelicans in exchange for Indiana's own 2026 first round pick -- which New Orleans received from the Toronto Raptors a few months earlier as part of the trade for Brandon Ingram.

It was interesting -- but not completely uncommon -- for Indiana to make a trade while competing in the Finals. But it was also curious why the Pelicans were looking to acquire a selection in the 20s for one with at least some chance of improving next season.

But that deal happened before Haliburton's torn Achilles in Game 7 of the NBA FInals -- an injury that made it seem likely the Pacers will finish outside of the top handful of teams in the NBA next season.

In retrospect, that deal looks much worse for New Orleans. The Pelicans went on to make one of the most reckless trades in recent memory using that selection, attaching an unprotected pick that will be the better of New Orleans and Milwaukee's selections in 2026 to the Atlanta Hawks to jump to 13th and draft Maryland big man Derik Queen. And with both Haliburton hurt and Turner elsewhere, Indiana's own 2026 pick just got a lot more promising.

If the Pelicans hadn't made that initial trade, perhaps they'd be sitting not only on their own pick -- projected to be at least a mid-lottery selection -- but they could have had a second potential lottery pick from Indiana, whose pick was top-4 protected and very likely to convey. (Sorry, Pelicans fans. We know it's been a long week.)