Bucks Release Guard Cam Thomas After Just 18 Games – What Went Wrong?

The Milwaukee Bucks are already done with the Cam Thomas experiment, releasing him after 18 games following being waived by the Brooklyn Nets.

The Bucks have converted forward Pete Nance’s contract from a two-way to a standard contract in response to releasing Thomas.

The former first-round pick out of LSU has never had a problem scoring; it is just everything else that has hampered Thomas in finding a home.

Thomas averaged 24 minutes per game with the Bucks and averaged 15.6 points per game. On the surface, those numbers aren’t bad, but his inability to impact the game on the other end of the court and his lack of playmaking make it hard for him to be a consistent part of a rotation.

This does seem really early, especially for a non-contending team like the Bucks to split from Thomas, even after the team was super high on him when they first signed him. Head coach Doc Rivers compared the guard to his former players, Jamal Crawford and Lou Williams.

“They’re similar, but they’re all different in their own ways,” Rivers said after they signed him. “Cam wants to do right. He wants to play well. You can see that. And we’re going to give him every opportunity. I mean, the guy is a natural scorer, and you can see that. Probably forced one or two today where he overdribbled. You live with that, and you teach that to get that out of him. But overall, he was fantastic.”

The Thomas split comes in the wake of the Giannis Antetokounmpo saga, after not being traded at this year’s trade deadline, to now the Bucks wanting to shut down their superstar, but Antetokounmpo wants to continue playing this year.

The Bucks have a huge off-season ahead, with uncertainty about Rivers’ future as head coach and whether Antetokounmpo will ask for a trade.