Damian Lillard's Contract Was Waived by the Bucks, but What Does That Mean?

The Milwaukee Bucks made the rather shocking decision in July of 2025 to waive star Damian Lillard and his contract. The move comes as Dame continues to recover from a torn achilles, and is expected to miss a huge portion of the upcoming season.

Waiving a contract is not unprecedented in the NBA, but it is exceedingly rare. Following the news that Dame was waived, many wanted to better understand what it means and what the implications of the decision are. Here's what we know.

Waiving a player means that you release them from their contract, and they enter the waiver wire for 48 hours, when they can be traded. If no trade occurs in that time period, then they become an unrestricted free agent, meaning that they can sign with any team for any amount of money.

The reason waiving players is exceedingly rare in the NBA is because doing so means that you, as a team, are agreeing to pay the player even though they are no longer on your team.

Because of a provision in the CBA (the agreement between the player's union and the league), the Bucks can stretch the remaining two years of Dame's contract out over five years, meaning that they will be paying him $22.5 million a year for the next five years, even though he will no longer be on the team. Given that the CBA also gives teams a pretty fixed amount of money they can spend before being taxed, this limits what the Bucks can spend on other players.

When a player is waived, it usually happens at a much smaller scale. Now, the Bucks are looking at a lot of dead money that will severely hamper their ability to compete for the next five years.

The decision to waive Dame was likely made in part because of a desire to win now. Giannis Antetekoumpo, the team's best player and one of the best players in the league, has been with the Bucks for his entire career.

Because the Bucks have struggled to make it out of the first round of the playoffs in recent years, though, there has been plenty of speculation that Giannis might ask for a trade to a team where he can compete for championships. Thus far, he has not taken that step, but the Bucks clearly feel an urgent need to create a team that can compete for a championship every year.

That urgency has only increased following a raft of injuries that have decimated the Eastern Conference headed into next season, leaving many teams feeling like they have an opening to get to the Finals. Waiving Dame means that he'll be on a new team next year, and it also means that the Bucks will be dealing with dead cap for years to come. Hopefully, in the end, they find that that trade-off was worth it.