The Bucks and Brandon Knight have ended negotiations about an extension, setting up the fourth-year point guard for restricted free agency in the summer, sources tell Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports (Twitter link). An extension had reportedly been unlikely even though the team and agent Arn Tellem planned to keep talking until the deadline. They took discussions close to tonight’s 11:00pm Central cutoff, but it appears there’ll be no deal.
Milwaukee’s brass appeared enthusiastic early this month about reaching an agreement as the sides opened talks, and coach Jason Kidd spoke of his desire to keep the player taken eighth overall in the 2011 draft. Knight nonetheless had seemed an odd candidate for an extension based on his inability to establish himself as a front-line point guard during his first three seasons in the league. He scored 17.9 points per game last season, but they came for a Bucks team that finished with the league’s worst record.
I suggested that Tellem would attempt to capitalize on Milwaukee’s desire to reach an extension with proposals involving eight-figure salaries, though it’s unclear just what sort of numbers were on the table from either side. The Bucks made an unusual commitment this week to Knight’s backup, Kendall Marshall, when they guaranteed what had been a non-guaranteed contract for the former 13th overall pick. Perhaps that’s a sign that Milwaukee decided at some point that it prefers to evaluate his performance against Knight’s, with both poised to hit free agency in the summer, though that’s just my speculation.