{"id":345281,"date":"2025-10-16T16:08:11","date_gmt":"2025-10-16T16:08:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/345281\/"},"modified":"2025-10-16T16:08:11","modified_gmt":"2025-10-16T16:08:11","slug":"nba-free-agency-milwaukee-bucks-waive-chris-livingston-standard-roster-at-15","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/345281\/","title":{"rendered":"NBA Free Agency: Milwaukee Bucks waive Chris Livingston, standard roster at 15"},"content":{"rendered":"

With just under a week until the Bucks tip off their 2025\u201326 campaign in Milwaukee and their preseason concluded, the front office has begun the process of paring down their standard roster to 15 players (note that two-way players, like the recently-signed Alex Antetokounmpo, aren\u2019t included in this). As Jack discussed earlier this morning<\/a>, there are essentially four guys competing for two spots: Exhibit 9 signee Amir Coffey, 2023 second-round pick Andre Jackson Jr., 2024 second-rounder Tyler Smith, and 2023 60th overall pick Chris Livingston. It turns out that the first casualty is Livingston, who the Bucks waived this morning, as reported to ESPN\u2019s Shams Charania.<\/p>\n

This ends a somewhat bizarre summer for Livingston, who just turned 22 yesterday. His original contract with the Bucks included two guaranteed seasons, but a non-guaranteed 2025\u201326. Ahead of his early July guarantee date, Milwaukee waived him just two days into the NBA\u2019s free agency period on July 2nd, rather than keeping him on that guarantee; this had a lot to do with creating the necessary cap room to sign Myles Turner. However, Livingston was still a part of the Bucks\u2019 Summer League roster, and after an impressive showing in Vegas, Milwaukee signed him to a new contract on July 16th, fully guaranteed for one year at the veteran\u2019s minimum. So it seemed like he was in their plans after all.<\/p>\n

But a lackluster preseason may have made GM Jon Horst reconsider. He only appeared the Bucks\u2019 first two preseason games versus Miami and Detroit; while he scored eight in the first (on 4\/4 from the field) and nine in the second (all on 9\/10 shooting at the line), it was perhaps foreboding that he didn\u2019t sniff the floor this week. Of course, we don\u2019t know how he looked in practice, but with the veteran Coffey also in camp and also in the mix at forward, he had competition. Coffey also hasn\u2019t looked great this preseason, but he is a proven NBA commodity, unlike the third-year Kentucky alum.<\/p>\n

In all likelihood, this will end Livingston\u2019s Milwaukee tenure (though who knows\u2014he\u2019s still eligible for a two-way if they\u2019d rather have him than Pete Nance) after two seasons, where he appeared in 42 games (one start). His final shooting line reads .408\/.077\/.750 in just 383 minutes of action with averages of 1.3 PPG, 1.3 RPG, and 0.2 APG. The 6\u20196\u201d forward is probably in line for a two-way deal at this point, and fortunately for him, nine teams have two-way openings right now.<\/p>\n

As for the Bucks, this reduces their standard roster to 16 guys, with 14 of them fully guaranteed. The battle for spot 15 is now down to three, and of Smith, Jackson, and Coffey, only Smith is fully guaranteed at $2.0m. Jackson, who turns 24 next month, is partially guaranteed for $800k, and his salary doesn\u2019t reach its full guarantee of $2.2m until opening night. The 28-year-old Coffey is non-guaranteed right now, but if he wins the spot over Ajax and Smith, his Exhibit 9 contract would become a one-year, vet minimum deal at $2.3m next week.<\/p>\n

Unless Livingston is claimed off waivers, the Bucks will carry his $2.3m salary on their books for the rest of the year. That\u2019s not a problem when it comes to the tax or either apron, as even when Livingston\u2019s money is added to the $20.9m in stretched salary to account for Damian Lillard and Vasilije Mici\u0107, they\u2019re currently about $16.1m beneath the $187.9m tax threshold. If they were to waive Ajax similarly to what they did today with Livingston and fill the spot with a minimum deal for Coffey, they\u2019d still have $15.2m in room.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With just under a week until the Bucks tip off their 2025\u201326 campaign in Milwaukee and their preseason…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":345282,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3775],"tags":[7,103,40296,102,121,3871,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-345281","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-milwaukee-bucks","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-bucks","10":"tag-bucks-free-agency","11":"tag-milwaukee","12":"tag-milwaukee-bucks","13":"tag-milwaukeebucks","14":"tag-nba"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/115384714176152438","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=345281"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345281\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/345282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=345281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=345281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=345281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}