The Brooklyn Nets cutting Cam Thomas after the trade deadline seemed like another ugly instance of the battle to the bottom going on in the NBA. However, the Milwaukee Bucks just proved it wasn’t that radical a decision.
One of the top stories in the NBA right now, for the wrong reasons, is the ongoing battle by close to a dozen teams to tank their way into getting a top pick in June’s NBA Draft. The tankathon is worse than previous years because the 2026 class is absolutely stacked, and getting a top-five pick could net a team a franchise-altering talent.
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Usually, teams will trade star players with value to get draft assets. However, some teams actually upgraded their rosters. But to keep losing, they have either made the new additions healthy scratches or, like the Utah Jazz, sat them during crunch time.
The Nets were already among the league’s worst teams after the NBA trade deadline, but aimed to increase their odds of landing a top-three pick when they surprisingly cut Cam Thomas despite being one of their top scorers over the last few seasons.
Bucks cut Cam Thomas a little over a month after Nets release
Jeff Hanisch-Imagn Images
It was a move viewed around the game as a slap in the face of competitive play. However, beyond trying to lose more games, the Nets may have had a good reason to release the impending free agent. This week, the Bucks surprisingly cut Thomas from their roster a few weeks after snapping him up after he was let go by Brooklyn.
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Thomas had a fantastic 34-point debut for Milwaukee early in February, but in recent weeks, he has gotten fewer and fewer minutes from head coach Doc Rivers. When asked about why he seemingly fell out of favor recently, the veteran coach was cagey with his response.
“There are things that we don’t need to talk about,” he said [h/t The Athletic]. “That’s not anybody’s business. As I said before, that’s where, as a coach, you have to make decisions on what’s the best thing for the team at that time.”
Thomas, a player who was viewed a few months ago as one of the better players in 2026 free agency, has now been cut by two teams in a couple of months. The Nets’ choice to cut him was stunning at the time, but the Bucks may have shown it wasn’t that bad a decision by the New York team.
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