The Milwaukee Bucks don’t consider Stephen Curry “the one that got away,” but it’s worth wondering “what if?”
Bucks owner Marc Lasry revealed in a profile The Athletic’s Frank Isola published Tuesday the team pulled the plug on a potential trade, which would have sent the Golden State Warriors superstar to Milwaukee during the 2011-12 season. Lasry said the Bucks’ medical staff believed Curry’s then-balky ankles represented a long-term threat to his NBA success.
Lasry couched the story of the Curry trade that-never-was within his response to Warriors owner Joe Lacob’s 2016 assertion his team was “light years” ahead of the rest of the NBA.
“I don’t know if they can be light years ahead if they traded Steph Curry to the Bucks for Andrew Bogut,” Lasry told The Athletic. “That was the deal. But the Bucks’ medical staff didn’t think Steph’s ankle would hold up. That killed the deal. So, I don’t know if that’s being light years. It’s luck. And that’s fine.”
The Bucks ultimately traded Andrew Bogut and wing Stephen Jackson to Golden State in exchange for Monta Ellis and Ekpe Udoh.
Curry overcame those ankle woes and developed into one of the NBA’s best players, winning the MVP award in 2015 and 2016 and leading the Warriors to NBA championships in 2015, 2016 and 2018.
After completing his purchase of the Bucks in 2014, Lasry took action against Bucks staffers whose doubts about Curry led to the potential trade’s collapse.
“I think we got rid of that medical staff when we bought the team.”
Who can blame him for that?
