A year ago, Brook Lopez settled for the room exception from the Bucks.
He turned into Giannis Antetokounmpo’s most important teammate. Lopez’s 3-point shooting and rim protection proved awesome complements to Milwaukee’s superstar. The Bucks won 60 games and reached the conference finals with Lopez playing an important role.
Now, as expected, Lopez will get rewarded.
Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN:
Once free agency opens at 6 PM ET, Brook Lopez is planning to sign a four-year, $52M deal to stay with the Milwaukee Bucks, league sources tell ESPN.
— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) June 30, 2019
With those terms, Lopez’s lowest-possible starting salary is $12,093,023. The Bucks have enough cap space to pay that and keep cap holds for Khris Middleton and Malcolm Brogdon. After signing Lopez, Milwaukee can use Middleton’s and Brogdon’s Bird Rights to exceed the cap.
That could get expensive and push Milwaukee into the luxury tax. It’s unclear how much tax ownership will pay. But retaining the team’s core is at least now allowable under salary-cap rules.