（1天内）塔克交易评级

The Milwaukee Bucks have added a key player to their frontcourt rotation, acquiring P.J. Tucker in a trade with the Houston Rockets on Wednesday, according to a report by ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski. The Bucks also receive Rodions Kurucs and their own 2022 first-round pick back, with D.J. Augustin, D.J. Wilson and a 2023 unprotected first-round pick headed to Houston. Milwaukee is sending forward Torrey Craig to the Phoenix Suns, as well.

After Tucker's shaky start to the season, what should the Bucks expect from him in the playoffs? How did Houston and Phoenix do here?

Kevin Pelton breaks down the deal and hands out his trade grades.

After trading two first-round picks and two swaps to the New Orleans Pelicans for Jrue Holiday last fall, the Bucks -- already out the first-round pick they got back in this trade -- didn't have much ammunition left to add to their roster at the deadline. They used much of what was remaining to add Tucker, who will give them more interesting options in the postseason.

As successful as Milwaukee's drop coverages have been in the regular season, they've proved problematic, at times, against playoff opposition. Switching is an obvious alternative. During the 2020 playoffs, the Bucks switched just 7% of playoff pick-and-rolls, according to Second Spectrum tracking, making them the only team to do so less than 10% of the time. By contrast, all four teams that reached the conference finals switched at least 24% of opponent pick-and-rolls in the postseason.

We have seen Milwaukee coach Mike Budenholzer experiment with more switching this season. The Bucks have already switched more picks (398) than they did during the entire 2019-20 regular season (297), per Second Spectrum, doing so on 14% of opponent picks as compared to 6% in the 2019-20 regular season with mixed results.

In part, Milwaukee needed a more switchable defender to play next to Giannis Antetokounmpo than centers Brook Lopez and Bobby Portis to facilitate switching without needing to play small lineups. Enter Tucker, who has switched the second-most picks of any big man behind former teammate Clint Capela since signing with the Rockets in 2017-18. His track record as a wing defender makes Tucker ideally suited to switching out on guards.

The question here is how much Tucker has left at the other end of the court. Long a reliable 3-point shooter on the kinds of wide-open attempts from the corners generated by Houston's offense -- he has made 77 more corner 3s than any other NBA player since joining the Rockets, per NBA Advanced Stats -- the Tuckwagon has sprung a leak this season. He is down to 35% accuracy in the corners after hitting 39% plus over the past three seasons.

Without James Harden and Russell Westbrook around to set him up, Tucker also isn't threatening defenses at all. His 5.3 points per 36 minutes are the fewest by a player averaging at least 25 minutes per game since Jason Collins in 2005-06, according to StatHead.com.

It wouldn't be surprising if Tucker were simply wearing down after years of logging heavy minutes and defending bigger opponents. He'll turn 36 before the end of the regular season. The Bucks will have to hope that returning to a contending team will spark Tucker, who will certainly get more open shot attempts in Milwaukee.

The good news from the Bucks' standpoint is that even if Tucker doesn't prove reliable enough to contribute in clutch situations in the playoffs, the price wasn't bad here. First, Milwaukee will almost certainly swap back several picks in this year's draft from the team's own first-round pick (projected to land 26th on average, based on simulations using ESPN's Basketball Power Index) to Houston's second-round pick (projected 34th on average). Based on my draft pick value chart, that swap is equivalent to a pick in the back half of the second round.

To facilitate the Bucks trading this year's first-round pick, the teams had to also swap out Milwaukee's 2022 first-round pick -- originally sent to the Cleveland Cavaliers in the 2018 trade for George Hill and acquired by the Rockets for Jarrett Allen and Taurean Prince as part of the Harden deal -- for their 2023 first-rounder, ensuring the Bucks would have a first-round pick in one of the next two years.

Part of the benefit for Milwaukee here is cleaning up the books. Constrained by a hard cap at the luxury-tax apron after using their non-taxpayer midlevel exception to sign Augustin and Bryn Forbes this past offseason, the Bucks wouldn't have even been able to fill out their 15th roster spot for another few weeks. Now, they've got $3.5 million in wiggle room and could create more by sending Kurucs to a team capable of taking on his contract via cap room or trade exception.

It surely also doesn't hurt that Milwaukee is potentially out of the luxury tax, depending how many of the incentives in Holiday's contract he achieves -- including $1 million if they win the championship and he plays 75% of playoff games.

The Bucks will have to be active in the buyout market to fill out the roster. They've got two open roster spots and would open up a third by dealing Kurucs. Milwaukee also now has a gaping need at backup point guard, where Augustin had been playing 19 minutes per game.

Although Augustin is a poor fit for a switching defense and had struggled to coexist with the similarly undersized Forbes, lineups with him and one of the other Bucks' guards had performed well. In the short term, Milwaukee will probably play bigger with Khris Middleton handling playmaking duties and Tucker essentially replacing Augustin in the rotation.

For the Rockets, the interesting gamble here is the choice between Bucks first-round picks. The further out Houston goes, the better chances that either aging or Antetokounmpo asking out causes Milwaukee to slide in the standings and makes an unprotected draft pick potentially valuable. I have to assume that was a key part of the return given the limited value of swapping up a few spots this year.

It also might reflect that the market for Tucker was softer than expected given his subpar play this season. With Tucker headed toward free agency and the Rockets in some sort of a rebuilding process, there was little leverage for them to do anything but take the best available offer before the deadline -- particularly after Tucker decided not to play following the All-Star break.

Houston takes back some long-term salary with Augustin's contract, which pays him $7 million next season and has a tiny guarantee ($333,333 out of $7.3 million) in 2022-23. Augustin doesn't really fit the Rockets' timeline, so it wouldn't be surprising to see him move again before the deadline.

Simultaneous to the Milwaukee-Houston trade, the Suns also dealt with the Bucks to grab Craig, who can be added without sending a player back in return because he is making the veterans minimum. Phoenix will have to send back cash, the rights to a former draft pick who has not played in the NBA or a second-round pick (presumably protected for the top-55 picks).

It was a little surprising that Craig never found a role in Milwaukee. A key contributor for the Denver Nuggets over the previous three seasons, including making 14 playoff starts, he never looked comfortable with the Bucks after suffering a nasal fracture early in the season.

Craig joins a crowd on the wing for the Suns, who already have Jevon Carter, Langston Galloway, E'Twaun Moore and Abdel Nader all battling for the scarce minutes behind starters Devin Booker and Mikal Bridges. So it's possible Craig won't earn much more playing time in Phoenix. Still, the Suns weren't likely to do any better to fill the 15th and final spot on their roster.