In the NBA, “interest” is cheap. Due diligence is not. So when league sources describe the Milwaukee Bucks as having done recent background work on Sacramento Kings guard Zach LaVine, while also noting Milwaukee has checked in before, that matters, even if it doesn’t mean a deal is close. It signals something more practical: the Bucks are again scanning for a high-end scoring guard who can raise their offensive ceiling in the only way contenders typically can when they’re cap-strapped; by reshuffling money, not by shopping freely.
LaVine fits the on-court part of the conversation cleanly. He’s a premium shot-maker, an above-the-break three-point threat defenses have to respect, and a self-creation option who can take possessions off the plate of a superstar. For a Milwaukee team perpetually thinking in “Giannis windows,” that archetype is always going to get a look.
The problem isn’t the player. It’s the price tag, and the mechanisms required to move it.
LaVine is on a maximum deal that balloons into the high-$40 million range. Contract trackers show his 2025–26 base salary at $45,999,660 with a cap hit of $47,499,660, and a 2026–27 player option worth $48,967,380.
That kind of money doesn’t just make a trade complicated; it shapes the entire market for the player. Teams don’t “add” a $46–$47 million contract. They reorganize their roster around it. Matching salaries alone often forces uncomfortable decisions, either sending out multiple rotation pieces, or surrendering a single large contract that might be part of the team’s core identity. And when the acquiring team is already operating in a tighter team-building ecosystem, the list of plausible pathways narrows fast.
That’s where Sacramento’s side becomes the key. League reporting has framed LaVine as a player who “could certainly help several contending teams,” yet whose deal can be “nearly impossible” to move without an added incentive, some form of sweetener, typically draft compensation.
That’s the uncomfortable truth of the modern cap era: the better a player is relative to his contract, the more teams will call. The more the contract is seen as risk, age curve, durability, defensive fit, tax implications, the more the calls come with conditions.
And those conditions land squarely on the desk of Scott Perry, Sacramento’s first-year general manager, who took over the role in April 2025.
Perry’s challenge isn’t merely to decide whether LaVine “should” be moved. It’s to determine whether moving him is even rational if the cost of moving him is to pay for the privilege. When a front office has to attach draft value to unload salary, every conversation becomes a referendum on timeline: Are you clearing the books to reset? Are you making room for a different star? Or are you simply trying to restore flexibility you already spent?
Milwaukee’s interest, meanwhile, reads as both logical and constrained. The Bucks can see the basketball fit. But they also understand the economics: a LaVine deal likely requires either sacrificing depth, surrendering draft capital, or both; exactly the types of costs that can hurt a team that’s already top-heavy.
So where does that leave this rumor cycle-conclusively?
It leaves it in the most common place NBA trade talk ends up when the player is good and the contract is huge: the idea is real, the fit is real, the homework is real, and the transaction is still unlikely unless one of two things changes. Either Sacramento decides it’s worth attaching real value to create financial air, or the market produces a team that views LaVine not as a contract to survive, but as a scorer worth absorbing without a discount.
