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Bucks make offer to Sessions, but will allow Villanueva to leave

MILWAUKEE — The Milwaukee Bucks have made qualifying offers to restricted free agent guard Ramon Sessions and forward Ersan Ilyasova, but will not make an offer to forward Charlie Villanueva—allowing one of their top scorers from last season to become an unrestricted free agent.

Meanwhile, the team also is dealing with a potentially embarrassing YouTube moment from first-round draft pick Brandon Jennings.

Bucks general manager John Hammond said Monday that the team already had sent offers to Sessions and Ilyasova, giving Milwaukee the right to match any contract offers from other teams. But with today’s deadline for teams to make offers to their restricted free agents looming, the team decided not to make an offer to Villanueva.

Posting on his Twitter account Monday evening, Villanueva noted that “my journey in Milwaukee has come to (an) end,” thanking fans and Bucks owner Sen. Herb Kohl for “three great years.”

With a mid-level exception at their disposal, the Cleveland Cavaliers are expected to have interest in signing Villanueva.

-- Hammond, who said he did not want to elaborate on the reasons behind the free agent decisions, did address another issue facing the team this week: Jennings’ involvement in a profanity-laced and provocative video clip that was posted on the Web site YouTube. “We are aware of the story,” Hammond said. “This is a team matter, and we’ve been in contact with Brandon regarding it.”

The clip, which showed rapper Joe Budden having a speakerphone conversation with someone identified as Jennings, had been removed as of Monday afternoon.

But according to a partial transcript of the clip posted on sportingnews.com, Jennings said he was confident that Sessions would not return to the team, boasted that he would beat out Luke Ridnour for the Bucks’ starting point guard job and made a profane comment about the Knicks for not drafting him.