The Bucks wasted no time diving right into the fervor of free agency on Thursday evening by reportedly agreeing to a one-year deal with veteran forward Joe Ingles, a source confirmed to The Athletic. Renae Ingles, Joe’s wife, was first to report the news.
BREAKING NEWS:
Sources very close to free agent @Joeingles7 can confirm that he has agreed to a one-year deal with the Milwaukee Bucks.
CEO of the house, Renae Ingles, is thrilled for Joe and their family.
Joe himself, is said to be very bucking happy.#nba #nbanews pic.twitter.com/4yra9gQst3
— Renae Ingles (@RenaeIngles) June 30, 2022
Yahoo’s Chris Haynes is reporting the one-year deal will be worth $6.5 million, which would be the entirety of the Bucks’ taxpayer midlevel exception.
Ingles, 34, averaged 7.2 points, 2.9 rebounds and 3.5 assists in 24.9 minutes per game last season with the Utah Jazz, the only team he has ever played a game for, before tearing his left ACL and getting traded to the Portland Trail Blazers after being ruled out for the remainder of the season.
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For the Bucks, Ingles is an interesting target on the first day of free agency, considering what has happened to the eight-year NBA veteran in the last year.
On Jan. 30, Ingles tore his left ACL in the Jazz’s 126-106 loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves. While still healing from the injury, with Ingles’ full permission, the Jazz traded Ingles to the Trail Blazers on Feb. 9 for Nickeil Alexander-Walker and Juancho Hernangomez in a three-team, five-player deal at the NBA trade deadline. Once in Portland, Ingles, with the swelling in his left knee dissipated, underwent successful left ACL reconstruction surgery on Feb. 23.
Surgery done, attack rehab & coming back better!!
Some don’t believe, just watch. 😤😤 https://t.co/8oj5ad9WZG
— Joe Ingles (@Joeingles7) February 23, 2022
Ingles remained stateside to rehab the injury before heading back to his native Australia on June 4, according to Ingles’ Twitter account. His Twitter updates would suggest he has spent the last month in Australia rehabbing his injury, drinking coffee and watching his Renae make a return to the netball court for the first time in three years. On Monday, the 6-foot-8 forward was spotted at the Australian national team’s training session for the team’s World Cup qualifiers.
Spotted at Boomers training 👀#WeAreBasketball pic.twitter.com/yEOyz56twg
— Basketball Australia (@BasketballAus) June 27, 2022
Ingles has not played since his left ACL surgery in February, so the Bucks truly cannot know what to expect from him from an athletic standpoint. They used their biggest contractual asset of the offseason on a player who will likely start the season on the injured list. The team is placing significant faith and trust in its sports science team, led by Troy Flanagan, to get Ingles back on the floor and back to the player he was before the first significant injury of his eight seasons in Utah. (Before last season, Ingles played in 545 of a potential 554 regular-season games in his first seven NBA seasons.)
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While the Bucks are clearly taking a chance in signing a player recovering from a serious injury, there is a serious upside to the deal. While Ingles may not have the star power of Donovan Mitchell or Rudy Gobert, it is hard to overstate just how important he was to the success of the Jazz during Quin Snyder’s tenure as head coach.
My colleague, and our Jazz beat writer here at The Athletic, Tony Jones attempted to explain that idea in the wake of Ingles’ injury:
“Make no doubt. Not having Ingles is a proverbial gut punch for the Jazz,” Jones wrote on Feb. 1. “Simply put, the small forward has been a heartbeat for the Jazz organization almost since coming to Utah after being cut in training camp by the Los Angeles Clippers in 2014. Ingles has been a part of numerous wins. His ability to raise his game significantly helped the Jazz ease the loss of Gordon Hayward. At his peak, he was one of the best role players in the league. Just last season, he was in the running for the league’s Sixth Man Award, an honor that went to teammateJordan Clarkson.”
After a down season and a serious leg injury by Ingles, the Bucks hope he can regain the form he showed in his first seven seasons with the Jazz when he was one of the NBA’s most efficient role players.
Offensively, everything starts with Ingles’ shooting. Last season, he made just 34.7 percent from 3, but that poor shooting season dropped his career 3-point shooting percentage to only 40.8 percent. Ingles is not only a catch-and-shoot threat either; he can also hit 3s off the bounce. In the two seasons Ingles flirted with the NBA’s Sixth Man of the Year award, 2019-20 and 2020-21, only 65 and 71 percent of his 3s were assisted respectively, numbers that fall in line with a player like Khris Middleton, who has seen between 60 and 70 percent of his 3-pointers assisted during the Mike Budenholzer era in Milwaukee.
While not the quickest player, Ingles leverages his shooting to force teams to go over the top of pick and rolls and then uses his body masterfully to create opens and gaps for dribble penetration and passing lanes.
While he never posted a usage percentage over 20 percent with the Jazz, per Cleaning the Glass, Ingles was an incredibly efficient passer, finishing every season in the 93rd percentile or better at his position in assist-to-usage rate, a statistic that calculates how often a player records an assist given how much he actually has the ball. Essentially, when Ingles got the ball with the Jazz, he put the ball in the basket at a high rate and when he didn’t shoot the ball, he created a bucket for his teammates at an incredibly high rate.
And the film matches up. Ingles is a creative passer who can create angles for his teammates with ease.
With the Jazz, Ingles was a pick-and-roll maestro. He did not just find Gobert rolling down the lane; he also manipulated defenders to create open corner 3s.
When Middleton went out with his injury during the postseason, the Bucks struggled to create open shots. As a role player, Ingles can actually help create for his teammates while not needing the ball in his hands on every possession. If Ingles gets the ball after the initial action failed, he can create for his teammates or he can be the player that bends the defense to make things easier for the Bucks’ big 3.
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His addition could help Bucks general manager Jon Horst fill one of the holes he saw on his roster heading into the offseason.
“It’s really to figure out how you have to get better, be in a position to win, no matter what,” Horst said on June 17, when asked about his team’s needs heading into next season. “I think with this group, it feels like playmaking, shotmaking and I think a little bit of a flavor of the month is wing size, big wing size. And I think we talk about all those things, but our identity — we’ve been one of, if not, the best defensive team in the NBA over the last four years.”
“The regular season this year, we were above average, maybe not as elite as we were, but we played almost the entire season without Brook and that matters. Offensively, we’ve been one of the best offensive teams. So, I think being great at both things actually matters. When you lose, theoretically, because you weren’t good enough offensively, you react offensively. If you lose because you’re not good enough defensively, you react defensively. I think our job is to stay balanced, stay in the pocket, understand that being great offensively and defensively, having players that fit around Giannis, that fit coach’s system, is the most important.”
If Ingles can return to his pre-injury form, he fills pretty much every category Horst wanted to improve this offseason and gives the Bucks a real rotation player who can be trusted in clutch situations on a cheap contract. But his health will continue to be a serious question.
Ingles was not super quick before the injury, so will the torn left ACL keep him from being able to find the small bits of separation he used so well on the offensive end over the years to be an impactful playmaker? Would becoming half a step slower on defense turn him into a negative defensively instead of someone who can use his size and smarts to be a solid team defender?
These questions will linger over the signing until Ingles gets on the floor for the Bucks and people get to see what he can do after the injury. Until then, it will be difficult to know what the Bucks have actually done with their surprise signing to open free agency.
(Photo of Joe Ingles: Jeff Swinger / USA Today)
Eric Nehm is a senior writer for The Athletic covering the Milwaukee Bucks. Previously, he covered the Bucks at ESPN Milwaukee and wrote the book "100 Things Bucks Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die." Nehm was named NSMA's 2022 Wisconsin Sports Writer of the Year. Follow Eric on Twitter @eric_nehm
