Mo's offer from Bucks will be tough to match

The Milwaukee Bucks structured their offer sheet to Utah restricted free-agent combo guard Mo Williams in a way that makes it tough on the Jazz to keep him.

But they could.

And they probably will take all 15 days, starting from when they received the paperwork, to make their choice, said senior vice president of basketball operations Kevin O'Connor on Monday after perusing the deal.

"From a business standpoint, it is to our benefit to wait as long as we can to make a decision," O'Connor said, declining to elaborate about why or what the Jazz's concerns are in either matching or not. "There's a lot of questions; I'd rather not get into them."

So far, the Jazz's decision has not been made.

"If we were going to not match it, we'd do that right away," O'Connor said, "and if we were going to match it, we'd do that right away. We're going to look. It's not something that we're inclined to do right away."

The offer — three years for $5.5 million, according to Williams' agent, Mark Bartelstein — "was just about what was said in the paper," said O'Connor. "So we'll evaluate it and make some decisions based on our team and on our franchise."

After looking at the offer, O'Connor said, "I would say that they made it as difficult as they possibly could to match it.

"Are we capable of matching it? Yes."

He would not speculate on what the Jazz might do if they should allow Williams to sign with Milwaukee. "We've got 12 (players) under contract," O'Connor said. If they match the Bucks' offer and re-sign Williams, they'd have 13.

Teams can have a dozen active players and up to three on the "injured" list. The Jazz like to leave at least one spot open, meaning they might want one or even two more players, though they don't like to have players who aren't actually injured on that list.

O'Connor wouldn't talk about whether Williams' spot, should he be allowed to go, would be filled or whether the team would look for a third point guard or use the roster spot for a big man. "The first consideration we have to have is what we do with Mo, and then we'll look at it from there," he said. "It depends on what we do in this situation."

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