Sonny Weems officially is in the conversation for coolest name by a Bucks player.  With Sonny Weems and Jodie Meeks the Bucks have two players with names straight out of some 70s sitcom.

The Bucks acquired Weems along with Walter Sharpe for Malik Allen and his expiring contract.  Here are some observations on Weems summer league play from Roundball Mining Company, the Denver Nuggets TrueHoop blog:

Sonny Weems – Based on the stats it looks like Weems is playing horribly, but he has shown flashes of very goodness. He is doing a great job of rebounding, averaging eight defensive rebounds a game, and pushing the ball back up the floor. In fact, he is doing a little too good of a job as he has pushed the bounds of being out of control. The result has been 4.5 turnovers a game. His athleticism and speed is off the charts and he is absolutely capable of getting his own shot. He has the ability to create space whether it is through contact or his footwork. So far his shot has not been falling, however, it is clear that the Nuggets want to see if he can carry the scoring load. If he proves he can it will make it easier for George Karl to start J.R. Smith knowing he has Weems ability to score available off the bench. Weems really reminds me a lot of a young(er) J.R. He is the best athlete on the floor and it is clear he can make exceptional plays. He does not have the passing ability of J.R., especially on the pick and roll, but he can use his talents to get his teammates easy shots. He also reminds me of J.R. on the defensive end. When he focuses on defense he shows an ability to be disruptive he just lacks consistency.

Not only does Weems sound like a potential rotation player for this year’s Bucks, but it sounds like yet another guy who can play in an uptempo system.  Are we seeing a pattern here?  This move could be a bad sign for the Charlie Bell’s and Bruce Bowen’s.  We all know Bowen is going to be gone by August 1, but Bell’s name hasn’t come up much in rumors.  It may begin to circulate a little more now.  Could the Heat rekindle the interest they had a few years ago?  Not likely, but I’d look for the Bucks to shop Bell around the rest of the summer.  Especially if the Bucks end up matching an offer for Sessions.

Ah, Ramon Sessions.  How does this deal impact him?  Well, probably not a lot.  Initially I thought this deal may have been designed to free up space to lock up Sessions without having to buy out Kurt Thomas, but that doesn’t appear to be the case.  Taking on Walter Sharpe’s guaranteed contract does not give Milwaukee any additional cap room.  And that’s all the Bucks are going to get out of Sharpe.  Word is that he’s got a torn ACL and won’t be playing basketball any time soon.

If the Bucks made this move to cut Sonny Weems they’ll be saving around 330k, as his contract is only partially guaranteed until August 15th, when it becomes fully guaranteed.  More likely, they’ll attempt to shop Bell now and garner savings on his deal if they’re really serious about having money to match a Sessions offer sheet and stay under the luxury tax AND be flexible for other deals.  The Knicks seem to be moving ever closer to offering their mid-level deal to Sessions, considering they have little of value to offer in a sign and trade deal.

Hold on tight, it should be an interesting week for Bucks fans.

UPDATE:  If this trade seems like it shouldn’t have happened, with regard to the CBA and players who were just traded being traded again with another player there is a reason why this one was okay.  We go to Roundball Mining Company again:

In conclusion, for those of you who love reading the Collective Bargaining Agreement you will wonder how Sharpe can be traded with Weems so soon after the Nuggets acquired him. The rule is a player cannot be traded with another player for two months after he is initially acquired via trade or signed off of waivers. The Nuggets and Bucks can get around this by using trade exceptions. Milwaukee apparently has a trade exception of $1.853 million and we all know about the Nuggets trade exceptions. Denver c an easily fit Allen in what remains of the Atkins exception and in return will receive two trade exceptions back from Milwaukee for $736,420, which will both be practically useless.

Lots of buzz going around a Malik Allen for Denver’s Sonny Weems trade right now.  For some info on Weems check out Roundball Mining Company.  If the deal actually goes through straight up Allen for Weems that would be the steal of the year for the Bucks.  Weems contract guarantees on August 15th for 736k but if he’s released before then it’s only 175k.  I don’t know that the Bucks would want to cut him unless they plan to try and bring back Sessions, as he seems fairly talented.  Straight up they would save about 700K if they keep him just by dumping Malik Allen.

Methinks that makes no sense for the Nuggets though.  I’d suspect the Nuggets will want to add someone else, or get something of value in addition to Allen.  A pick?  Them unloading a bad contract?  Who knows.

John Hammond would not confirm or deny the trade on an appearance on 540 ESPN’s the D-List today.

If anything is announced and official I’ll have another update about it today.

When Amir Johnson made the decision to play in the Bucks summer league everyone was excited.  A fifth year guy, Johnson could easily have worked out on his own and not risked getting involved with younger guys scrapping for minutes and trying to make names for themselves.  Summer league basketball bares little resemblance to that of an actual NBA game and it’s questionable whether it is more or less beneficial than spending time working with a trainer.  But Johnson saw it as a good training ground for the things he was trying to get better at and an opportunity to spend some time with guys who will actually be seeing a lot of minutes come October.  Now that summer league is done we can look back and say, how did it work out?

Like most things in life, and in basketball, there were ups and downs.

Johnson certainly appears to be forming a chemistry with Brandon Jennings.  Constantly running, Johnson seems ever-ready to flush alley-oops, while Jennings seems more than willing to comply with his new partner’s alley-oop eagerness.  They paired up for numerous sweet looking lobs, including one Jennings threw from half court.  A lob from half court not only requires great timing and skill from each player, but trust and a similar mindset, the two seemed to have developed those two things nearly instantly.  Johnson didn’t get a lot of opportunities to run the court, or even get consistent minutes, in Detroit, and he at times looks as if he’s been freed when he sees Jennings getting ahead and pushing.

But it wasn’t all lobs and love for Amir.

For seemingly every thunderous conversion of a Jennings pass there was another silly foul.  The knock on Johnson had been his inability to stay on the court and out of foul trouble.  How did that go in Vegas?  Game One: 24 minutes played 8 personal fouls.  Game Two: 23 MP 6 PFs.  Game Three: 25 MP 6 PF.  Game Four: 29 MP 7 PF.  So we’re not quite there yet.  File the foul work under: what happened in Vegas will hopefully stay there since it made it’s way there from Detroit.  To be fair, one out of every three players in Vegas summer leagues plays absolutely no defense.  When you’re a big man protecting the hoop this leaves you vulnerable to foul trouble.  Jennings in particular was taking lots of risks, leaving Johnson to pay for it.

The foul trouble wasn’t the only thing I found to be underwhelming about Amir’s summer league work.  When I first got word of the trade for Johnson one guy came to mind.  Andray Blatche.  Blatche is the proverbial underachieving high school player.  Drafted the same year as Johnson, the Wizards have long been waiting for him to get it together, on the court and off since he joined the team.  Blatche showed serious positive signs in Vegas.  In his three summer league games, Blatche averaged nearly 20 points to go along with over 11 boards.  He’s given a lot more opportunities than Johnson to score, but rebounds are not given, they are taken.  Johnson has historically been a terrific per minute rebounder, but showed little of that in Vegas.  He did not crack double digits and was not once the Bucks sole rebounding leader in a game.  For a guy slated to make his coin off his shot blocking and rebounding, that’s a bit of  a problem.

But it’s just summer league, I know.  Really, all summer league does is gives us something to distract us from the daily trade rumors and inactivity from the Bucks.  Bucks fans should probably just be glad to have a guy like Johnson around to compete with Ersan Ilyasova and learn from Kurt Thomas about how to be a power forward.  It will be fun to see what kind of lobs he’ll be able to convert come October, but it’s not always about dunks and running the break.  Here’s to hoping summer league was a mere blip on the Amir Johnson radar screen.

On behalf of Milwaukee Bucks fans everywhere I want to extend a big SHHH to Kevin Arnovitz and everyone else talking about Ramon Sessions.  We’ve been trying to keep this whole Ramon Sessions thing to ourselves guys.  No one pays attention to the Bucks at all during the year, now one potential jewel is in Milwaukee and everyone wants to blow the whistle on the Bucks.  From TrueHoop:

Troubling.  Troubling because the Knicks are one of four teams I suspected to be  hot for Sessions and Gary Woelfel confirmed that via twitter today.  The Knicks need to show some promise if they are going to be able to recruit a big name free agent next off-season (like I don’t know, Lebron James?) and they don’t have much right now.  Adding Sessions to a team that has potential prospects Danilo Gallinari and Jordan Hill would make them a much more appealing destination.

If the Knicks make a four or five year offer it puts the Bucks in an awkward position.  Hammond seems to have made it his creed to avoid overpaying and tying up cap space.  He’s been the anti-Larry Harris.  A five year deal starting at the mid-level exception would leave the Knicks offer somewhere between $29 and $35 million.  The Bucks could match this and be okay considering the vast amount of cap space coming off their books in the next two years, but is Sessions really worth it?  Tough call.

He’s a developing point with good vision and a knack for getting to the hoop.  But he’s obviously not the Bucks ideal future at the position.  His defense left something to be desired and he seemed to lack focus at times on the court, resulting in the ball bouncing away from him or other silly turnovers.  He’s got a very bright future, but the Bucks would need to ask themselves if he and Jennings would impede each others growth.  Neither is a particularly strong three-point shooter at the respective junctures in their careers, but that may be something that develops as they continue to improve.

Regardless of how Jennings and Sessions would coexist as Bucks I’m left a little baffled right now, as everything about how the Bucks have handled Sessions over the last year has struck me as curious.  It’s always seemed that they don’t hold him in quite as high of regard as the general public does.  Is there something they are seeing that the rest of us aren’t?  Why would Sessions not play at all in the first two games of the year last year?  Why have the Bucks taken a very VERY conservative, “wait and see” approach to his resigning this off-season?  Letting other teams dictate his value seems to imply that they aren’t sold on him being worth what the general idea of him would suggest.

It will be interesting if the Knicks make an offer to him.  But methinks there is more to this situation than meets the eye.  And I have a feeling the longer Sessions free agency plays out, the less likely it will be that the end result is Sessions in a Bucks uniform.