On Oct. 29 this site told Los Angeles Lakers fans to stop pricing Kel’el Ware. The argument had two legs. The Milwaukee Bucks had no reason to sell a 22-year-old center they controlled cheaply for two more seasons, and the Lakers had no first-round picks left to change Milwaukee’s mind, having spent every tradeable one on Walker Kessler. The conclusion was flat: “Ware was never going to be one of the options.”
Four days later Milwaukee answered the first leg in writing. Jim Owczarski of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that the Bucks had exercised Ware’s team option for 2027-28 at $7.1 million, along with Kasparas Jakučionis’s at $4 million. The 2027-28 money this site read off Basketball-Reference as already on the books was a team option until that day. A rebuilding team that means to flip a young big does not guarantee his last rookie-scale year first.
The Bucks Are Paying a Player They Will Not Start
What the Oct. 29 piece got wrong was the shape of Ware’s role rather than the price. He has come off the bench in all eight Bucks games, and Myles Turner has started every one of them at center. Calling Ware Milwaukee’s starting-caliber young center described a player the Bucks themselves have not promoted.
The production argues the other way. Through eight games ending Nov. 4, Ware averaged 10.2 points and 8.2 rebounds in 18.9 minutes, against 8.5 points and 5.6 rebounds in 27.9 minutes for Turner. He is shooting 41.9 percent from the field and 6-of-26 from three, and his 151 regular-season minutes are too few to settle what he is. They are enough to say Milwaukee is not sitting him because he is losing the matchup.
A 1-7 Start Is Not Leverage on This Particular Player
The temptation is to read the Bucks’ record as a seller’s posture. Milwaukee has lost its last four by 32, 25, 12 and 7, and the two players carrying its offense are Tyler Herro at 22.2 points a game and Jaime Jaquez Jr. at 16.8.
Ware is the cheapest piece of whatever Milwaukee builds next, and Taylor Jenkins, the Bucks’ coach, used the same week to ask for more rather than less from him. “When he’s active at that five [spot] and he’s an anchor and we’re in our drop coverages, I want even more out of that,” Jenkins said of Ware’s work at center, per Owczarski.
If Milwaukee does sell a big before the Feb. 11 deadline, the likelier name is the one it starts. This site argued on Oct. 28 that a Golden State Warriors pitch for Turner works everywhere but Milwaukee. Eight games of a 1-7 season is not a reason to revisit that yet. It is the file to keep open.
The Lakers’ Center Window Is Dec. 15, Not Milwaukee
None of this fills the hole. The Lakers are 7-2 after Wednesday’s 116-103 win over the Sacramento Kings, Walker Kessler is playing through a finger splint, and Kevon Looney’s minutes behind him remain the weakest thing on the roster.
The route still open is the one named here on Oct. 31: Day’Ron Sharpe of the Brooklyn Nets, who costs second-round picks and Jaden Hardy’s eight minutes a game instead of first-rounders the Lakers do not have, and who cannot be traded until Dec. 15.
So the Oct. 29 verdict stands, and it is stronger now than when it ran. Ware was never cheap to acquire; since Nov. 2 he is also not plausibly for sale. The correction owed is narrower and more interesting than the headline call: Ware is better than his minutes, and Milwaukee has just paid to keep him that way.
Sources: Jim Owczarski of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on the option exercises and the Taylor Jenkins quote. Minutes, scoring, rebounding, shooting splits, starting lineups, scores and records computed from ESPN box scores for all eight Milwaukee Bucks games and all nine Los Angeles Lakers games of 2026-27, through Nov. 4, 2026. Contract figures for Day’Ron Sharpe and Jaden Hardy, trade-eligibility dates and the Feb. 11 deadline as previously reported on this site from Basketball-Reference and Hoops Rumors.
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