JULY 29TH, 11:23am: Copeland has officially signed with the Bucks, the team announced.
JULY 23RD, 2:24pm: The Bucks and Chris Copeland have a verbal agreement on a one-year deal, reports Jared Zwerling of Bleacher Report (Twitter link). Marc Stein of ESPN.com reported Tuesday that the sides were finalizing a deal, but the Spurs and Thunder remained in the mix, as Marc J. Spears of Yahoo! Sports revealed shortly afterward. The John Spencer client will see in excess of $1.1MM on his contract, league sources tell Shams Charania of RealGM (Twitter link). That indicates that he’s receiving a slice of Milwaukee’s $2.814MM room exception, since the minimum salary for the three-year veteran is $981,348.
Gery Woelfel of The Journal Times first identified the Bucks as an interested party nearly two weeks ago, and he heard last week from some higher-ups around the league that Milwaukee had become the front-runner for him. The sides met on Tuesday, Woelfel later reported, and he worked out for the team that day as well, according to Spears.
Copeland just finished a two-year deal with the Pacers that he signed after a surprising season as a rookie for the Knicks in 2012/13. He and Bucks coach Jason Kidd were teammates in New York. The Pacers elected not to make a qualifying offer of more than $3.9MM, so Copeland has been an unrestricted free agent this month.
The 31-year-old was the victim of a stabbing outside a New York nightclub in April that left him with injuries that curtailed his season, one in which he’d fallen out of the Pacers rotation after injuries to others thrust him into use. Normally a strong outside shooter, he made just 31.1% of his three-pointers in 2014/15, and he never made the sort of impact in Indiana that he did with the Knicks.
Do you think Copeland will be a part of the rotation for the Bucks this year? Leave a comment to let us know.
He should get chance to be in the rotation, but unless he improves his shooting from behind the arc, I don’t know how he stays on the floor. He is the type of player who can defend multiple positions, so that should help.
Bucks have a fairly deep team and Cope is below average on offense and defense. He is more of an emergency/injury insurance type player
Other than Jabari, there aren’t any true 4’s on the roster. Middleton played a bit of 4 in various small-ball lineups, Giannis could get a bit of a run there, and the ’14 2nd rounders JOB and Inglis aren’t likely to get regular rotation minutes.
That leaves a “Tall Ball” lineup with Henson at the 4 or someone like Copeland. If he can shoot his career avg (37%) from downtown, I’d bank on him getting a long, hard look. I know the dude isn’t that athletic and on the wrong side of 30, but this feels like a low-risk, nice upside signing if he can find his 3-pt stroke.
He replaces Jared Dudley at a significantly lower price. Copeland has much better on-ball skills and should do well in the limited minutes he’ll see as long as he can remember how to shoot the three.
He’ll won’t be able to do what he did in New York filling in for Carmelo (which was really fun to watch–a few 30 point games), but I can see him opening up the offense a bit more than the stand-and-shoot Dudley. He’ll play the stretch 4 and has better size than Dudley at that position, too.