Joe Alexander has an internet connection, and he’s not happy.
Alexander, you’ll recall, was drafted by the Milwaukee Bucks eighth overall in the 2008 NBA draft. After an unremarkable but not entirely awful rookie season, the Bucks declined to option the third year of his (quite affordable, at under $3 million a season) rookie contract. Alexander didn’t play for the Bucks in 2009-10, under coach Scott Skiles, instead spending time on the injured list with a hamstring pull and working in the D-League. In February, he was traded to Chicago. Eight Bulls games and five years later, Alexander has yet to play another NBA minute.
And he’s not quite chill with being called a “bust,” even if by the oft-used NBA definition of the term, he can certainly be classified as one.
From an interview with Basketball Insiders:
“I don’t think there is a hard definition of what a ‘draft bust’ is,” Alexander told Basketball Insiders. “Ultimately not being in the NBA is on me, but as far as ‘who is a bust?’ you have to look at Milwaukee and the management that drafted me. If you want to label anyone with the term ‘bust’ — it’s the Bucks. When Milwaukee drafted me, I was touted as a ‘project’ and someone with a lot of potential who could contribute had I learned to play the game. That’s what the Bucks told me. I needed time. I didn’t start playing basketball until I was 16 years old, but I was the most athletic guy in the entire draft. The Bucks knew that. Everyone understood this. I could’ve been drafted by any other team in the league and they would’ve given me time to develop.
“Obviously the No. 8 pick is expected to have an illustrious and longer NBA career than I’ve had, so that’s fine, but I think that Milwaukee should certainly share that [bust] label. They contributed heavily to it. Heavily. For the Bucks to pull the plug on me, I thought, was dramatically irresponsible on their part. What it did was label me as some sort of a problem player. It made everyone in the league look at me different when 12 months before any team would’ve died to have me.”
Perhaps “dramatically irresponsible” is a bit much for the Bucks, but “quite Bucks-ian” is possibly the best way to put it. There is a reason that Milwaukee has factored as a championship contender just once in the last three decades. The team has been poorly run to a severe degree.
At one point in Alexander’s career, though, would every NBA team have “died to have” him? That’s hard to say. Especially when seven other teams decided they were just fine in that year’s draft in passing on Alexander.
The West Virginia product certainly could jump, and it’s very well possible that Bucks general manager John Hammond selected Alexander as a project even though he was a relatively older (turning 22 two months into his NBA career) prospect in that draft’s lottery class. In a move not unlike Hammond’s selection of Giannis Antetokounmpo in the 2013 draft, he probably took Alexander as a prospect-type to stash on a team the GM assumed would be right back in the playoffs in 2009.
The Bucks missed the playoffs that year, though, and only made the first round of the playoffs in 2010 after picking up Brandon Jennings in the 2009 draft. Alexander was long gone by that playoff run.
The Bucks, for years, refused to start over; until they couldn’t help but back into the league’s worst record last season after foolishly expecting to make the playoffs. The team’s fans, until this recent turnaround, had just about had enough of the approach.
Declining to pick up a third-year option, though, is a bit of a shocker. It would have paid Alexander less than half of the league’s average salary, salary the Bucks ended up using on signing players like Drew Gooden and John Salmons during the 2010 offseason. Alexander was not great with the Bucks in his rookie year, but he did still barely contribute a double-digit Player Efficiency Rating. Not what you’d like from a 22-year old lottery pick, but still better than a bustier-type (if you’ll allow) like Hasheem Thabeet.
And right in line with the PER marks created by players with similar draft standing like Yi Jianlian (whom the Bucks drafted the year before Alexander) and Ekpe Udoh (whom the Bucks traded for in 2012).
Turning the second-year man into a lame duck was a weird anti-commitment to make after just one season of play, especially considering Alexander’s raw skills, and especially considering the relatively cheap salary.
Alexander does himself no favors in expounding on his lone year in Milwaukee, though:
“I had a normal, mediocre NBA rookie season,” Alexander said. “If you look at my per-36 numbers, I was on par with every player in the draft except for Derrick Rose. There are players in the league who a few years ago played spotty minutes and made mistakes, but were able to learn from them. That’s an opportunity I wasn’t given in Milwaukee.”
Alexander averaged about 14 points and six boards per 36 minutes in Milwaukee. That’s not quite on par with Russell Westbrook (16.9 points per game, 11.3 combined rebounds/assists per game), Kevin Love (nearly 16 points and 13 rebounds), Brook Lopez (15.4 and 9.6), or Marreese Speights (17.3 and 8.4). Javale McGee, Roy Hibbert, Ryan Anderson, and Anthony Randolph all had far superior PERs, a stat that takes into account-per minute production.
Joe Alexander had a good enough rookie season to warrant the Bucks picking up his third-year option, th team should have hung around to develop him, and the Bucks have been a cesspool dating back decades His season, however, was not “on par with every player in the draft except for Derrick Rose” on a per-minute basis.
Alexander, now 28, lost out on an NBA roster spot in 2013 and last fall, but he’s continued to put up superb D-League and international stats. In a move telling of the D-League’s limits on low pay, Alexander declined to stay with the Santa Cruz Warriors this season for long enough to make it to the league’s Showcase last week, preferring to take the guaranteed paycheck from Maccabi Tel Aviv, an entirely understandable move.
His anger at the way the Bucks gave up on him too early while possibly poisoning his status as an NBA prospect, is also understandable.
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