MAY 8: Bryant is leaving Maccabi Tel Aviv and will sign a two-year contract with the Bucks, a source tells Sportando. According to Carchia and Cohen, the Israeli team will receive a buyout worth $500K.
As Carchia reports and as Shams Charania of The Athletic confirms (via Twitter), Kurucs is expected to be waived to make room on the roster for Bryant.
MAY 5: The Bucks are expected to sign guard Elijah Bryant once he leaves his current team in Israel, Maccabi Tel Aviv, according to Emiliano Carchia of Sportando and Roi Cohen of Sport5 (Twitter links).
Bryant, however, doesn’t have a buyout clause in his contract, which could complicate any agreement between the sides. As Stefan Djordjevic of EuroHoops relays, Maccabi Tel Aviv views Bryant as an important piece to its team and could request up to $750K for a buyout to be formally processed.
Should the agreement go through, Milwaukee could part ways with forward Rodions Kurucs to make room for Bryant, Carchia adds (Twitter link). Kurucs has only appeared in five contests since being acquired in a trade with Houston in March.
Bryant averaged 9.8 points, 3.0 rebounds, and 2.0 assists per game in 34 EuroLeague contests (23.3 MPG) this season, shooting 44.0% from the field and 36.9% from deep. The 26-year-old went undrafted in 2018 after spending collegiate seasons at Elon and BYU. He also played summer league ball with the Bucks in 2019.
Milwaukee currently holds the third-best record in the Eastern Conference at 41-24 and officially clinched a playoff berth by defeating the Nets on Tuesday.
Kurucs has faltered since showing early promise for the Nets a couple years ago. He is still young and, assuming he’s resolved his legal issues, he could still turn his career trajectory around somewhere.
Why? I love our team but god are we behind the 8 ball on signing players. If the bucks lose to the nets in the playoffs it’s because they got aldridge(I know he retired) and Blake Griffin and we got pj tucker.
Ooo boy what a stupid take.
I’m sure that’ll be the reason, not the 3 top 15 players in the league.
Tucker doesn’t provide much on offense, but he’s still an elite defender.
Plus he rarely misses on corner threes, especially in the playoffs.
Didn’t someone here say that Kurucs was the prize of that trade back in March?
With all of the injuries Houston has dealt with they’ve been forced to use DJ Wilson a lot more than expected and even he has been way better than Kurucs this season.
If Bryant is just leaving Israel now, would he be eligible to join the team before the playoffs started? I know Israel has been very successful with vaccinations, but I still think the standard wait for anyone traveling internationally is 14 days. It may be 7 days if there were no positive tests. I think Mike James was in New York for a week before he signed his first ten-day contract with the Nets. I’d guess Rodi would remain with the team until Bryant officially signs. I think Bryant can sign no later than May 16th.