The time the Warriors almost traded Stephen Curry to the Bucks

It would’ve been a bucking good deal.

Milwaukee Bucks co-owner Marc Lasry said the team “killed” a trade with the Warriors that would have swapped Stephen Curry for Andrew Bogut during the 2011-12 season, according to a report.

The Bucks’ medical team at the time was concerned about Curry’s ankles, causing the team’s management to nix the idea, he told the Athletic.

Lasry was questioning the notion that the Warriors had a leg up on other teams because of their owners’ backgrounds as venture capitalists, as Golden State co-owner Joe Lacob told the New York Times Magazine in 2016.

“That was the deal. But the Bucks’ medical staff didn’t think Steph’s ankle would hold up,” Lasry said of the negotiations, which occurred over two years before he bought the team in 2014. “That killed the deal. I don’t know if that’s being light years. It’s luck. And that’s fine.”

He added: “I think we got rid of that medical staff when we bought the team.”

The Bucks ended up sending Bogut and Stephen Jackson to the Warriors in exchange for Monta Ellis, Ekpe Udoh and Kwame Brown. At the time, the 7-foot big man was playing in his seventh year with the Bucks as a former No. 1 draft pick.

Curry, on the other hand, played in just 26 of 66 games during the lockout-shortened season, scoring 14.7 points per game and shooting 45.5 percent from beyond the arc. He missed those 40 games due to right ankle and foot injuries.

Curry, who wouldn’t play in an All-Star Game until 2014, signed a new contract with the Warriors after the 2012-13 season.

Former Warriors general manager Larry Riley acknowledged that Curry was a part of trade negotiations during an interview with SiriusXM NBA Radio in 2017, but said the Warriors just used Curry to get trade negotiations going.

“A couple of things happened with that,” Riley said. “I wanted to switch the deal over to Monta all along. But in order to get a conversation going, we had to do that.”

In 2012, the Warriors hadn’t won an NBA championship since 1975 and struggled on the floor. That season, Golden State finished with a 23-43 record.

But since then, Curry has led the Warriors to three NBA titles, and his ankle has largely stayed healthy.

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