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The Milwaukee Bucks officially will start the 2025-26 season with media day on Sept. 29, less than two weeks away.
With players beginning to make their way back to Milwaukee, it is time to start thinking about the upcoming season and what can happen. For the first time since Giannis Antetokounmpo entered the MVP conversation in 2018, the Bucks are not part of preseason conversations involving favorites to represent the Eastern Conference in the NBA Finals. But that doesn’t mean the upcoming season will lack for intrigue.
With that in mind, let’s take a closer look at five questions that could define their season.
1. How much can Giannis realistically do?
In each of his last two seasons, Antetokounmpo averaged at least 30 points, 11 rebounds and six assists per game while shooting better than 60 percent from the field. He is the only person in NBA history to put together such a season and the only person to put together a 30-11-6 season (without the field-goal percentage qualifier) outside of Oscar Robertson in the 1961-62 season with the Cincinnati Royals.
With that outrageous level of production, it’s still likely that the Bucks will need even more this season as they move into a new era after waiving and stretching Damian Lillard this offseason.
Myles Turner is a great player, and he should be able to help with offensive production, but even his best scoring season (18 points per game in the 2022-23 season with the Indiana Pacers) would be almost seven points fewer than what Lillard scored per game last season. The Bucks will obviously count on a committee of players to help replace Lillard’s production, but it won’t just be his scoring that’s needed. Lillard also was the Bucks’ leader in assists last season (7.1 per game), so a creation void will need to be filled, as well.
As a point forward, or whatever the organization will call the position this season, Antetokounmpo will get the first shot at taking up extra scoring and playmaking opportunities. But at some point, there is only so much one player can do. Antetokounmpo will have the chance to show the world how much can he do, and he has always relished such opportunities, but this season may end up revealing what the limit will be in this regard.
2. Who will step up at point guard?
Lillard’s time in Milwaukee did not go as well as the Bucks hoped when they first obtained him two years ago. In 131 games, Lillard averaged 24.6 points and 7.1 assists per game and started in each of the last two All-Star games, but injuries to Lillard and Antetokounmpo in the last two postseasons kept the Bucks from finding the playoff success they wanted in pairing two members of the NBA’s 75th Anniversary Team.
Lillard, however, still made a significant contribution with his scoring and playmaking. According to Cleaning the Glass, the Bucks were sixth in offensive efficiency during the 2023-24 season and seventh in offensive efficiency last season. But while Lillard was able to keep the offense afloat without Antetokounmpo on the floor, the Bucks struggled on the defensive end; they put up a negative net rating when Lillard took the reins and Antetokounmpo rested.
| OFF RTG | DEF RTG | |
| Antetokounmpo + Lillard | 117.9 | 112.5 |
|
Lillard, no Antetokounmpo
|
114.2 | 121.3 |
|
Antetokounmpo, no Lillard
|
124.3 | 115.3 |
With Lillard now in Portland, there is significant opportunity for the point guard corps of Kevin Porter Jr., Ryan Rollins and Cole Anthony, who the Bucks added in July after the Memphis Grizzlies agreed to a contract buyout. With how often Lillard handled the ball to score and make plays, the Bucks will need all three players to step up and help fill the playmaking void alongside Antetokounmpo. Additionally, the Bucks might have more opportunity to improve on the defensive end.
3. How much can Myles Turner produce?
With the Pacers, Myles Turner led the NBA in blocks per game twice, averaging 2.7 for the 2018-19 season and 3.4 for the 2020-21 season. According to Basketball Reference’s Stathead tool, Turner was one of only 12 players in the NBA last season standing 6-foot-10 or taller to attempt at least five 3-pointers per game, and he knocked down a career-best 39.6 percent of his 5.5 attempts per contest.
If the Bucks are going to be a playoff team, they will need Turner to show off his standout skills on both ends of the floor.
For the last seven years, the Bucks used this exact formula with Brook Lopez. On offense, he was expected to line up deep 3s and spread the floor for Antetokounmpo. On defense, he was expected to protect the rim and block shots in order to allow Antetokounmpo the freedom to work as an off-ball menace blocking shots and getting in passing lanes. And while Lopez did not stack up rebounds, his ability to eat up space and box out helped the Bucks dominate the glass. Turner’s teams of the past have not shown that same ability to dominate the glass, but that may change playing alongside Antetokounmpo.
Similarly to Antetokounmpo, the Bucks will ask for a lot from Turner. While Lopez handled those responsibilities with aplomb during his Bucks tenure, he was never asked to be Milwaukee’s second-leading scorer. His highest scoring average came in the 2022-23 season when he finished third on the Bucks behind Giannis Antetokounmpo — who contributed a career-high 31.1 points per game — and Jrue Holiday (19.3). Lopez also finished second in Defensive Player of the Year voting that season.
It would be a lot to ask from Turner to put together that type of two-way performance while also averaging more points per game, but that may be what the Bucks need from him this season.
4. Can Kyle Kuzma put together a bounce-back season?
At the trade deadline, the Bucks sent Khris Middleton and rookie guard AJ Johnson to the Washington Wizards for Kyle Kuzma in what eventually became a four-team trade. The move took a sizable chunk of their luxury tax bill, allowed the Bucks to gain significant financial flexibility and brought Kuzma to his third NBA team.
Despite getting a chance to play on a playoff team after 3 1/2 seasons with the Wizards, Kuzma never found a rhythm with the Bucks. In 33 regular-season games played, he averaged 14.5 points and 5.6 rebounds in 31.8 minutes per contest, but he struggled mightily in the postseason (5.8 points, 2.2 rebounds, 34.3 field-goal percentage, 20 percent 3-point percentage). Facing elimination in Game 5 against the Pacers, head coach Doc Rivers only played Kuzma 13 minutes in favor of other options.
With their second-leading and fourth-leading scorers — Lillard and Lopez, respectively — exiting the roster this offseason, there will be plenty of opportunity for Bucks players to contribute more in the 2025-26 season, and Kuzma could become one of the beneficiaries of those changes. For that to happen, he will need to play at a higher level than he did last season, and a much higher level than he did last postseason.
5. What lineups will Doc Rivers lean on?
Following last season’s All-Star break, Rivers used a new starting lineup featuring Lillard, Taurean Prince, Kuzma, Antetokounmpo and Lopez. That lineup put up a plus-6.7 net rating in 428 possessions in the regular season, per Cleaning the Glass, but it featured both Prince and Kuzma playing out of position at shooting guard and small forward respectively.
When Lillard went down with a diagnosis of deep vein thrombosis, Rivers replaced Lillard with Rollins and kept using Porter off the bench. That lineup put up a plus-13 net rating in 294 regular-season possessions, but Rivers moved away from both Prince and Kuzma as the Bucks’ playoff series against the Pacers progressed.
| KUZMA MINUTUES | PRINCE MINUTES | |
|
Game 1
|
21:35
|
19:37
|
|
Game 2
|
31
|
19:25
|
|
Game 3
|
20:36
|
3:07
|
|
Game 4
|
16:03
|
14:47
|
|
Game 5
|
12:45
|
4:14
|
In Game 5, Rivers started AJ Green and Gary Trent Jr. in place of Prince and Rollins, and he used Porter in place of Rollins. Green and Trent played 41 of the game’s 53 minutes together, including the final 17 minutes in the fourth quarter and overtime. The Bucks lost Game 5 — and the series — in heartbreaking fashion, but the lineups in that game were much different than the ones from the start of the series. After going big for the second half of the regular season, Rivers moved to a much smaller lineup in the Bucks’ elimination game. How much will he be willing to experiment and try out different things this season?
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Eric Nehm is a senior writer for The Athletic covering the Milwaukee Bucks. Previously, he covered the Bucks at ESPN Milwaukee and wrote the book “100 Things Bucks Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die.” Nehm was named NSMA’s 2022 Wisconsin Sports Writer of the Year. Follow Eric on Twitter @eric_nehm
