Three Things NBA Preview: Milwaukee Bucks

As I detailed a couple weeks ago, I’m once again re-appropriating the Three Things I Noticed on League Pass format to preview the upcoming season. Instead of three things I noticed, it’ll be something more along the lines of three things I’m looking forward to, interested in, or want to see. Some of them might be narrative-based, some might be stats, and some might include video. But they'll all be focused on the 2025-26 campaign.

The schedule for those posts will be as follows:

• Sept. 1-5: Atlantic Division (BOS, BKN, NYK, PHI, TOR)
• Sept. 8-12: Central Division (CHI, CLE, DET, IND, MIL)
• Sept. 15-19: Southeast Division (ATL, CHA, MIA, ORL, WAS)
• Sept. 22-26: Pacific Division (GSW, LAC, LAL, PHX, SAC)
• Sept. 29-Oct. 3: Northwest Division (DEN, MIN, OKC, POR, UTA)
• Oct. 6-10: Southwest Division (DAL, HOU, MEM, NOP, SAS)

So without further ado, let's get to the Milwaukee Bucks, who last season were eliminated in the first round of the playoffs in rather embarrassing fashion.

Myles Turner, the gambit

I obviously wrote a bit about this signing in the free agency live blog:

The Bucks are apparently waiving and stretching Damian Lillard's contract to make that all happen. He'll still collect his $113 million over the next two years (and it gives him the money that he actually might have opted out of next summer, according to Marc Spears, plus he can now go and sign wherever he wants after he was traded to a team that he didn't want to go to in the first place), but his cap hit will drop to around $22.5 million on Milwaukee's books for the next five seasons.

That is an absolute ton of dead money for a very long time, but I suppose they think the calculation is worth it to keep themselves in contention for the length of Giannis Antetokounmpo's contract. Lillard probably wasn't going to be able to contribute this year and wouldn't be himself in 2026-27 due to the combination of his age and his Achilles tear, but this is still absolutely wild stuff.

Say this about the Bucks, they go down swinging every single time there are rumors about Giannis potentially wanting out. They traded for Jrue Holiday, they traded for Lillard, and now they're swinging for Turner. They show him they're serious every single time there's even a question about it. Giannis is apparently not thrilled about this, according to Chris Haynes, but it's always worth questioning who benefits from reporting like this (Dame) and taking it with a grain of salt. Especially when Shams reported that Giannis was excited about playing with Turner.

Okay, now we get to the on-court fit for Turner. Obviously, he makes for a good fit with Giannis in the same way that Brook Lopez did. He's amazingly still only 29 years old, so he shouldn't yet be subject to the same age-related decline we saw from Lopez last year. He's a good shooter (and coming off a career-best 39.6% from deep) who can protect the rim, which is extremely rare, even in the modern NBA. He didn't have the best playoffs or Finals as a shooter or scorer,; but his defense mostly held up quite well (especially on Chet Holmgren). His rebounding still leaves something to be desired (which gives him something in common with Kyle Kuzma), but that can be offset in some way by Giannis.

Does this actually keep the Bucks in contention in the East? I'm somewhat skeptical, but with multiple contenders taking significant steps backward, it should at least keep them in the mix for a top-six spot, which was looking very questionable not too long ago. Long term... it could be a significant problem. Especially if Giannis eventually asks out. That $22.5 million dead-money charge for five years is a lot to handle on a yearly basis.

A few months later, I think you have to say that the gambit worked as intended, at least in the short term. Giannis is still on the team. So is Thanasis, which means Giannis isn't going anywhere soon — probably until at least next summer, and possibly not at all. And to me at least, that was the entire purpose of signing Turner in the first place.

But a few months later, I think I'm even more skeptical of the 2025-26 Bucks, and of the idea that Giannis will be there for the duration of his contract and beyond. The rest of the roster around Giannis is just so bad, and if they're not even on the fringes of contention after making this signing, it's easy to see Giannis say okay, thanks for the memories, but I only have so much time left in my career. That could perhaps happen as soon as next summer, if the team is as bad as I think it will be.

Guard play, a major question

In alphabetical order, these are the guards on Milwaukee's roster: Cole Anthony, A.J. Green, Gary Harris, Andre Jackson Jr., Kevin Porter Jr., Ryan Rollins, and Gary Trent Jr. That is ROUGH stuff.

I'm most intrigued by the addition of Anthony, who at least has shown the occasional ability to be a microwave scorer type. If the Bucks are going to win this season, I think it's going to have to be with their offense (other than Giannis and Turner, Taurean Prince (kind of) might be the only positive defender on the roster), and Anthony plays into that style.

So does Kevin Porter Jr., but his decision-making is bad enough and his defense is bad enough that he's a negative-value player when he's on the floor. I know the Bucks will probably start him because that's what they did at the end of last year once Dame went out, but that seems like the kind of experiment that comes to an end at some point once Doc Rivers gets frustrated with his mistakes.

The Gary Harris and Gary Trent Jr. duo is ... fine, I guess. Trent shot it really well last year (41.6% from deep) and, I think, probably just needs to start over Prince this season. Prince shot well last year, too, but he's not quite the defender of guards that the Bucks seem to think he is, and if you're not going to defend guards well anyway, you might as well roll with the guy who has been the more consistent shooter throughout his career, which is Trent. But he's never been a truly plus defender and putting him out there with Porter and Kyle Kuzma would result in the Bucks being extremely flammable on the perimeter.

Rollins is actually kind of intriguing, too, now that I think of it. He showed some stuff (11-4-4 in 24 minutes a night while shooting 53-44-75 across 13 games) when counted on to start in place of Dame down the stretch of the season. But the Bucks brought in Anthony to presumably play ahead of him, so maybe they don't really see much there.

Edit: I just realized I forgot to write about Green, who might actually make the most sense here. He's a knockdown shooter and showed some ability to defend last year. Maybe I should be slightly higher on this group? (No, I shouldn't. It's a bad group. But Green is pretty good.)

The Kuzma question

There was a very (very) brief "see, all the nerds were wrong about Kyle Kuzma" rush to judgment in the immediate aftermath of the trade. The Bucks went 9-3 in his first 12 games and he averaged 15.2 points, 7.2 rebounds, and 2.4 assists in 33.4 minutes per night.

They went 12-9 the rest of the year and he dropped to 14.1 points, 4.6 rebounds (this was key), and 2.1 assists, and he was a complete disaster in the playoffs to the point that he was benched and nearly out of the rotation for the last two games of the ridiculous series loss to the Pacers.

The Bucks now desperately need him to be the guy he was for those first 12 games, and the guy he was very briefly during his time with the Lakers, but that he hasn't been for the significant majority of his career and yet people for some reason keep buying into him being all the time despite the lack of evidence that he can be that guy with any degree of consistency. I wrote about this in the trade deadline wrap-up:

I said this on the ole Twitter machine in the immediate wake of the deal, but the theory of Kuzma as a player has been quite a bit better than the reality for like 85% of his career. He had the like 1.5 seasons in L.A. where he played exactly the way you want a player like him to play, and the Lakers won the title in one of them. He has not been that guy any time other than that. He’s only shot better than 34% from three once, for example, and he’s only defended at an appropriate level something like twice.

If the guy from 2020 and 2021 is still in there somewhere, then this can work for the Bucks because he can be the big wing/combo forward type who can make the Giannis-at-center lineups work, and the Bucks have been searching for that since forever. But I think expecting that guy to be in there is a little misguided. I understand that Khris Middleton’s knees and ankles don’t work right anymore, but I don’t love this either on the court or from a price perspective. (And no, it doesn’t matter to me that Giannis was OK with it. He was also OK with hiring Adrian Griffin. Pushed for it, even.)

How likely is it that the Bucks actually get that guy? Not very! Again, this plays into why I think this roster is really bad, and why I'm even lower on the prospect of them being a contender than I was in the immediate aftermath of the Turner signing, and why I think we could be talking about Giannis' future once again next summer. (But probably not until then. Thanasis is there again, so he's not going anywhere this season, I would think.)