Ousmane Dieng was traded to three different teams hours before the NBA trade deadline, but he has found a home in Milwaukee.
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Heading into the final game before the NBA All-Star break, most players are excited about where they’re off to next. For some players, like Giannis Antetokounmpo and Bobby Portis, that could be All-Star Weekend. For others, that could be a tropical destination for a few days away from the grind of 82 NBA games.
Excitement over an All-Star break extended to Ousmane Dieng, but the Milwaukee Bucks’ new forward wasn’t going anywhere after Milwaukee’s final game. He was staying in Oklahoma City and couldn’t have been more thrilled. With only the travel bag he had packed when leaving Oklahoma City for the second night of a back-to-back on Feb. 3, Dieng had been through a bit of a whirlwind in just over a week.
In a matter of days, he was affiliated with four different teams and then forced to acclimate with a new team for the first time in his four NBA seasons.
On Feb. 4, the 22-year-old forward found himself in Texas, waiting to suit up for a Thunder game against the San Antonio Spurs. But he never got that opportunity, as he was traded to the Charlotte Hornets. And then very quickly rerouted to the Chicago Bulls.
“I was in San Antonio,” Dieng recalled to The Athletic. “I got traded to the Hornets, so I stayed in my room for, like, three hours. Then, the Chicago trade happened, so I flew to Chicago.”
Once in Chicago, Dieng and his new team got to work on his medical evaluations to get him ready for the Bulls’ next game in Toronto on Feb. 5. He had been medically cleared by the morning of the game, so he hopped on a flight from Chicago to Toronto.
There was just one problem.
“As soon as the plane took off, the Milwaukee trade happened,” Dieng said. “(The Bulls) were already in Toronto. I was by myself on a regular plane to Toronto. It was crazy.”
So, with that trade — his third in less than 48 hours — Dieng finally knew his last destination at this year’s trade deadline and got on a flight to Milwaukee. After working through medical evaluations with the Bucks, Dieng was made available for the team’s Feb. 6 game against the Indiana Pacers, but he didn’t play.
Nevertheless, Dieng — who actually wore a New York Knicks hat across the stage of the 2022 NBA Draft before getting moved to the Thunder in a draft-night trade — was thrilled with his new home.
“It was a little crazy, but I’m excited to be here,” Dieng said. “I know they were trying to get me for a while here in Milwaukee, so I’m excited and just ready to help the team.”
While Dieng didn’t get on the floor in his first game with the Bucks and only recorded five minutes (with the game out of reach) in his second game on Feb. 9, he did get the chance to play extended minutes in Milwaukee’s last two games before the All-Star break — and he made quite an impression.
In the Bucks’ 116-108 win over the Orlando Magic on Feb. 11, he put up 17 points on 6-of-10 shooting and made 5 of 8 from behind the 3-point line — a single-game career high — off the bench. He also added three rebounds.
In his return to Oklahoma City the following day, Dieng scored a season-high 19 points on 7-of-12 shooting and grabbed a career-high 11 rebounds, while also dishing out six assists and blocking four shots. In helping the Bucks to a 110-93 win, he started his first game with his new team. It was his first start of the season and only the third start of his career.
Dieng also helped Milwaukee (23-30) to its fifth win in six games.
“(He) knows how to play, that’s the first thing we noticed,” Milwaukee coach Doc Rivers said. “He can really put the ball on the floor. He can make plays. A natural three. Now we finally got a big three on our hands. (He’s) really trying defensively; you can see that, as well.”
In his first start of the season, Ousmane Dieng, now playing for the Milwaukee Bucks, had a big game on the road against his former team, the Oklahoma City Thunder.
Dieng’s potential is part of the reason the Thunder traded three first-round picks to move up and select him with the 11th pick in the 2022 NBA Draft, but it was never realized in Oklahoma City as other players performed well and moved past him on the depth chart. By the trade deadline, it was clear that he would not crack the rotation of head coach Mark Daigneault this season, and the organization would be in a position to move him before he entered restricted free agency this summer.
In Milwaukee — for at least two games — Dieng was given a chance, and he has run with it. In fact, he took more shots in each of the last two games than he had in any game this season with the Thunder.
“We need him to play with confidence,” Rivers said after the Bucks’ win in Orlando. “We kept telling him, just shoot the ball, and he did. That’s good for him. Listen, the kid’s been in the league. He’s been waiting for his turn, and now he’s getting it.”
In those two games, Dieng made eight of his 14 3-point attempts (57.1 percent), which would be a significant departure from his 31.6 percent shooting on 304 3-point attempts in Oklahoma City. While he likely is not going to turn into one of the NBA’s best shooters now that he plays for a new team, even the momentary blip speaks to his underlying potential and the chance he has in Milwaukee.
“Opportunity. Just show what I can do,” Dieng said of what excites him most about his new team. “I feel like I’m pretty versatile and can guard multiple positions, so I’ll do whatever the coaching staff wants me to do. We have a great team here. I feel like we can win a lot of games. I’m just ready to help.”
Moving forward, Dieng will need to continue to work on ways to impact games without his 3-point shot falling at a high rate. The Bucks don’t have many players on the roster who are the size of NBA wings, as Rivers noted in Orlando, so doing the simple things like being in the right spots defensively and grabbing rebounds should keep Dieng in position to continue getting opportunities. Offensively, showing a greater ability to get into the paint to draw fouls or finish at the rim would be great, as well as continuing to make the right reads as a passer.
Ultimately, Dieng is the youngest player on the roster, and even if it took two days and three trades to get him to Milwaukee, the Bucks have a promising young player to develop after the All-Star break.
“I think he’s just scratching the surface,” Bucks lead assistant coach Darvin Ham said in Oklahoma City. “He’s so young, and just his size, his athleticism, his smarts … some of the passes he made, some of the finishes, the 3s, the defense, like, he’s just scratching the surface. We found a jewel.”
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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
