Gary Trent Jr. surprisingly signed minimum deals with the Milwaukee Bucks the last two years. It sure seems like Milwaukee had a backdoor deal to eventually reward him, because this summer Trent signed for $64 million over four years. No other team was going to come close to matching that deal with Trent coming off one of the worst seasons of his career. He likely would have been a minimum player again on the open market, but instead cashed in big time at a time when the NBA's middle class has taken a big hit.

The penalty for the Bucks' cap circumvention really should just be paying Gary Trent Jr. this much. It's immediately one of the worst contracts in the league, and he also serves no purpose for a Bucks team in a deep rebuild post-Giannis. I'm surprised someone filed a complaint against the Bucks for this, but it was obvious cap circumvention all along.