Cam Thomas has earned his reputation as a lethal scorer in the NBA. However, the Milwaukee Bucks waived him less than two months after signing him.
The move raised eyebrows around the league, given the Bucks' dire need for players amid an injury-plagued campaign. The timing of the move was also interesting, since Thomas is no longer eligible to join a team destined for the playoffs.
When asked about the matter, Bucks head coach Doc Rivers declined to go into the details.
Rivers said the decision was a tough one, but one they had to make. Thomas' removal from the Bucks paved the way for third-year pro Pete Nance to sign a standard contract. While the development is well and good for Nance, it raises a lot of questions, given how raw the 6'9" power forward is and how proven Thomas' scoring abilities were.​
"It's just a tough one, honestly. We ran out of bodies. At the end of the day, there were guys we had to make a decision on, and I thought Cam was really good overall," Rivers stated . "And maybe someday, we'll revisit, but where we're at right now, not really in the hunt like when we signed him, we thought it was the right thing to do for the rest of the guys right now."
It wasn't too long when Rivers was high on Thomas' insertion into the Bucks.
In only his second game for Milwaukee, he popped off for 34 points in only 25 minutes to get a win over the Orlando Magic . After the game, Rivers remarked that Thomas reminded him of iconic sixth men like Lou Williams and Jamal Crawford .​
A few weeks later, Thomas is no longer with the Bucks, and Rivers can't even explain why.
"There are things that we don't need to talk about," he said. "That's not anybody's business."
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After that scoring explosion, Thomas' minutes and production dropped. In his last 16 games with Milwaukee, he played only 16.3 minutes per game and averaged 9.6 points. According to former NBA champion Channing Frye , Thomas needed to prove to the Bucks that his game had more depth.
" Cam Thomas is a talent when it comes to scoring that basketball, but at a certain point I think you need to — like he needs to kind of look at what else is part of basketball and not just scoring, like doing other things," Frye said on the "Road Trippin'" podcast.
"There's 12 games left in the season. What did you do so bad that they were like, 'Man, get out of here.'" ​
Kendrick Perkins , though, had a different idea when it came to what happened between Thomas and Bucks. He speculated that his presence meant they had someone who could drive them to win, which is the exact opposite of what the franchise wants right now.
"If you have Cam Thomas on the floor, they gonna try and win. A guy that gonna light your a—s up for 50, and then they happen to win two or three games that they're not trying to win," Perkins said. "Because obviously they told us when they, you know, with this whole Giannis and the Bucks having this disagreement — because they don't want Giannis to play — that they, hey, we're tanking."
"We don't want to put product out there that's gonna help us win ball games. We want to lose. The season is over," he concluded.
This story was originally published by Basketball Network on Mar 25, 2026, where it first appeared in the Latest News section. Add Basketball Network as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
