Bucks: the offseason so far
the record
The desk keeps a day-by-day record of everything that happens to the Milwaukee Bucks: results with the players who decided them, injury changes, roster moves, reports, milestones and the schedule ahead. The story of the offseason is written from that record every week; the timeline below is the record itself, each line linked to the page that proves it.
The projection
all 30 teams →The season depends most on Ryan Rollins (9.2 wins without him), AJ Green (8.5 wins without him), Kevin Porter Jr. (1.8 wins without him), Jaime Jaquez Jr. (1.6 wins without him) and Myles Turner (0.1 wins without him): on/off from 2025-26, details under Injuries. Computed Thu, Sep 10; the method is on the methods page.
Day by day
1 days on the recordThe franchise today
Updated 2026-09-09Now
Taylor Jenkins runs this team now, hired April 30, 2026, after four seasons in Memphis; he was on Mike Budenholzer's staff back in 2018-19, so this is a return more than an introduction. The core arrived in one stroke: on June 23, 2026, the Bucks sent Giannis Antetokounmpo and Bobby Portis to Miami for Tyler Herro, Jaime Jaquez Jr., Kel'el Ware and Kasparas Jakučionis, then used that year's draft to add Brayden Burries at ten and Nate Ament at thirteen. Around them sit Ryan Rollins, Kevin Porter Jr., AJ Green, Myles Turner and Kyle Kuzma. Last season was ugly: 32-50, offense ranked 24th in the league, defense 26th, net rating -6.1, 25th of 30 teams. Doc Rivers resigned when it was over. The payroll sits at $191.4 million across 19 contracts, over the $165.0 million cap but under the $200.4 million tax line, with room under the $209.0 million first apron. Herro's $33.0 million is the largest number on the books, then Turner at $26.6 million, Kuzma at $20.3 million, and a $22.5 million player-option charge still tied to Damian Lillard. Milwaukee's draft ledger going forward is mostly swaps: the first-round picks from 2027 through 2030 are all swap rights, the only outright ones are the 2027 second and the 2030 second, and that 2030 second is owed to Orlando.
Identity and rivalries
The Bucks used to be defined by size and force at the rim behind Giannis Antetokounmpo, an identity that carried them to the 2021 championship and four straight 60-percent seasons. That group is gone now, dealt away this summer, and this season's roster is built around shooting and ball-handling instead — Herro, Rollins and Porter Jr. running things, Turner protecting the paint. The rivalry that matters most right now is with Indiana: the Pacers eliminated Milwaukee in the first round in both 2024 and 2025, the second time ending Lillard's season with a torn achilles, and Turner only became a Buck by leaving that same Pacers team this year. Miami is newly personal too — the Heat now employ the player who defined this franchise for over a decade, while Milwaukee tries to win with the guard it got back in return. Chicago and Boston remain the old Eastern Conference measuring sticks from the franchise's deeper history.
Home, owners and numbers
Fiserv Forum, which opened August 26, 2018, sits in Milwaukee and gave the Bucks their first true home upgrade since the Bradley Center. The ownership group is led by Wes Edens and Jamie Dinan, joined by Jimmy and Dee Haslam, who bought Marc Lasry's 25 percent stake in 2023, and by Junior Bridgeman, the former Bucks player who bought in for 10 percent in 2024. Aaron Rodgers is also among the listed owners. Bridgeman's own number, 2, hangs retired by the franchise, a player who became an owner. Bango, in his Bucks uniform since 1977, still works the crowd at Fiserv Forum on game nights.
What they are chasing
Milwaukee is chasing a return to the playoffs after missing them last season for the first time since 2016-17, and trying to do it with almost an entirely new identity — Herro, Turner, Kuzma, Rollins, Porter Jr. and Jaquez Jr. replacing the Giannis-era core. The payroll sits comfortably under the $200.4 million tax line for now, at $191.4 million, which buys Jenkins time to find his rotation without ownership forcing a teardown. Fans argue over whether the Herro-for-Giannis framework was a fair return, and over what Milwaukee's own future first-round picks are even worth when most of them through 2030 are tied up in swap rights instead of outright ownership.
The Milwaukee Bucks are a National Basketball Association franchise based in Milwaukee, playing in the Central Division of the Eastern Conference. The team was founded in 1968 as an expansion franchise, awarded to Milwaukee Professional Sports and Services, Inc., a group headed by Wesley Pavalon and Marvin Fishman. A fan contest drew over 40,000 entries; judges chose "Bucks" over the more popular "Robins," honoring Wisconsin's white-tailed deer. The Bucks marked the NBA's return to Milwaukee after the Hawks had left for St. Louis in 1955. Their first regular-season game came in October, before a Milwaukee Arena crowd of 8,467.
The franchise has won two league championships, in 1971 and 2021, three conference titles (Western: 1971, 1974; Eastern: 2021), and 19 division titles between 1971 and 2024, plus the 2024 NBA Cup. They are the only NBA team to win a championship in both the Western and Eastern Conference. The 1971 title came in the team's third season, after Milwaukee won a coin flip for the rights to draft Lew Alcindor, who later took the name Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and then traded for Oscar Robertson. That team went 66–16 and swept the Baltimore Bullets. The Bucks returned to the Finals in 1974, losing to the Boston Celtics in seven games despite Abdul-Jabbar's double-overtime "sky hook" in game six. Abdul-Jabbar was traded to the Los Angeles Lakers in 1975 for Elmore Smith, Junior Bridgeman, Brian Winters, and David Meyers.
The Bucks stayed competitive under coach Don Nelson, who won NBA Coach of the Year in 1983 and 1985, with players like Sidney Moncrief, Marques Johnson, Bob Lanier, and Terry Cummings. In 1983 they swept the Celtics, the first team to do so in a best-of-seven series. The 1990s brought seven straight losing seasons and a costly draft-day trade sending Dirk Nowitzki to the Dallas Mavericks for Robert Traylor. The team rebuilt around Glenn Robinson and Ray Allen, and under coach George Karl the "Big Three" of Allen, Sam Cassell, and Robinson reached the 2001 Eastern Conference Finals, losing to the Philadelphia 76ers in seven games.
The modern era centers on Giannis Antetokounmpo, Khris Middleton, Jrue Holiday, and Damian Lillard, culminating in the 2021 championship. Abdul-Jabbar and Antetokounmpo combined for five MVP awards for the franchise, and both are the only Bucks players to win Finals MVP.
Ownership has passed from Herb Kohl, who bought the team in 1985 to keep it in Wisconsin, to a group led by Wes Edens and Marc Lasry, approved by the NBA's Board of Governors on May 16, 2014. Jon Horst, formerly the team's director of basketball operations, now runs basketball operations, succeeding John Hammond. The Bucks played for years at the Bradley Center, renamed the BMO Harris Bradley Center after a 2012 naming-rights deal, before moving to their current home, Fiserv Forum.