The Bucks plan to use their cap space to sign a free-agent center, with Tyson Chandler and Brook Lopez as top targets, according to ESPN. Milwaukee has max money to spend after dropping $7.9 million off next season’s salary cap by trading Ersan Ilyasova to the Pistons.
Jason Kidd has relationships with both players from his days in Dallas and Brooklyn.
League sources say the Bucks want a proven center in free agency if they can score one, and have pinpointed two kinds of former All-Stars — Dallas’ Tyson Chandler and Brooklyn’s Brook Lopez — as targets for the top of their wish list.
Bucks coach Jason Kidd knows both of them well, having played alongside Chandler in both Dallas and New York and having coached Lopez with the Nets. And word is that Milwaukee intends to chase both hard come July 1 in hopes of emerging as a serious contender for at least one of them.
Chandler, though 32 now, holds appeal not only for his unquestioned rim presence defensively, but also the veteran know-how he’d lend to a team full of kids crying out for more on-court guidance.
The offensive-minded Lopez, meanwhile, is obviously a completely different player, but he’d certainly provide a focal point for all of those still-developing Milwaukee youngsters to play off of if Kidd and the Bucks could actually convince the 27-year-old to leave Brooklyn, where Nets general manager Billy King has made no secret of the fact he wants to keep Lopez at (virtually) all costs.
