The Milwaukee Bucks are abruptly pulling the plug on the Cam Thomas experiment.
Milwaukee is waiving their shooting guard Thomas, Shams Charania of ESPN reported on Monday. The move ends Thomas’ run with the Bucks just over one month after they signed him as a free agent in February.
Thomas, the 24-year-old former first-round pick, has quickly become one of the most polarizing players in the NBA. He played the first four-and-a-half seasons of his career with the Brooklyn Nets and scored an impressive 24.0 points per game for them last year.
But Thomas quickly wore out his welcome in Brooklyn this year. He missed significant time thanks to a hamstring injury and only averaged 15.6 points per game for the Nets when healthy (even getting benched by the team at one point for stat-padding).
Thomas was waived by Brooklyn in early February and signed with Milwaukee days later (eventually taking multiple parting shots at the Nets after doing so). But Thomas was even worse for the Bucks, averaging just 10.7 points in 16.6 minutes per game over 18 total appearances the bench and posting rough shooting splits of 43/28/75.
It appears that NBA defenses have fully caught up to Thomas, an inefficient shot-chucker who has difficulty getting all the way to the rim and is also not enough of a playmaker to warrant his high usage rate. Thomas would no longer be eligible for this year’s playoffs even if he does get signed by another team, so it remains to be seen what his pro career might look like from here.
