January 7th and 10th are important dates on the NBA calendar. On the latter date, all partially or non-guaranteed contracts become fully guaranteed. The former date—at 4 p.m. Central time, specifically—is
when a team would need to waive a player on such contracts to avoid his salary becoming fully guaranteed, because the waiver process takes two days, thus clearing waivers and hitting free agency by the 10th. The Bucks have one player whose salary becomes fully guaranteed in three days: little-used veteran wing Amir Coffey, who’s on a one-year, veteran’s minimum contract. He was not waived by the deadline today, so he will continue as a Buck for now, and the 15-man roster remains full.
This doesn’t preclude Milwaukee from waiving him later, though. Should they decide to open up a roster spot by waiving Coffey, they’ll still owe him the $2.3m salary being guaranteed this week, but that’s not a significant financial problem. With a cap figure of $176.4m, they are $11.5m clear of the luxury tax threshold, and $16.8m beneath the first apron, where penalties begin. If they waive Coffey, those numbers remain the same, but they’d have plenty of room to fill the spot or add salary in trades without paying the tax, which is an apparent goal for the franchise after doing so the last several seasons, in order to reset their repeater penalty clock.
Coffey, 28, is averaging a meager 1.5 PPG this year on .423/.250/1.000 shooting. The Minnesota alum has gotten into 22 games, though nearly all would be classified as garbage time appearances. He was somewhat in the rotation through Milwaukee’s first dozen games, but since November 14th, he’s logged 14 DNP-CDs and entered eight times when games were out of reach (unfortunately, that means he’s been a part of six losses). His most recent minutes came on December 26th in Memphis.
On paper, he has the exact kind of size the Bucks are sorely lacking on the wing at 6’7”, probably able to play the four in smaller lineups too. But Doc Rivers continues to go small, splitting minutes at the three between the nominal starter AJ Green, ahead of Kyle Kuzma, plus reserve guards Gary Trent Jr., and Gary Harris. Kuzma has played his fair share there too, of course, but is a natural four, and the others are much better suited to the two.
To be frank, Coffey hasn’t looked particularly good when he’s played this season. But other than for injury assurance, I’m not sure why they’re keeping him around since they clearly prefer not to use him. Even Giannis’ injury didn’t get him out of mothballs. He’s stuck behind the trio of guards, Kuz, and probably even Andre Jackson Jr., so it may take at least two of those guys being out for him to see meaningful minutes.
