NBA 2025 Offseason Check-In: Milwaukee Bucks

Hoops Rumors is checking in on the 2025 offseason for all 30 NBA teams, recapping the summer’s free agent signings, trades, draft picks, departures, and more. We’ll take a look at each team’s offseason moves and consider what might still be coming before the regular season begins. Today, we’re focusing on the Milwaukee Bucks.

Free agent signings

• Myles Turner: Four years, $108,868,482. Fourth-year player option. Trade kicker (15%). Signed using cap room.
• Bobby Portis: Three years, $43,564,242. Third-year player option. Re-signed using Bird rights.
• Ryan Rollins: Three years, $12,000,000. Third-year player option. Re-signed using Early Bird rights.
• Kevin Porter Jr.: Two years, $10,524,700. Second-year player option. Re-signed using room exception. Waived right to veto trade.
• Gary Trent Jr.: Two years, $7,579,065. Second-year player option. Re-signed using Non-Bird rights. Waived right to veto trade.
• Gary Harris: Two years, minimum salary. Second-year player option. Signed using minimum salary exception.
• Taurean Prince: Two years, minimum salary. Second-year player option. Re-signed using minimum salary exception. Waived right to veto trade.
• Jericho Sims: Two years, minimum salary. Second-year player option. Re-signed using minimum salary exception.
• Thanasis Antetokounmpo: One year, minimum salary. Signed using minimum salary exception.
• Cole Anthony: One year, minimum salary. Signed using minimum salary exception.
• Chris Livingston: One year, minimum salary. Re-signed using minimum salary exception. Waived right to veto trade.
• Amir Coffey: One year, minimum salary. Non-guaranteed (Exhibit 9). Signed using minimum salary exception.
• Cormac Ryan: One year, minimum salary. Non-guaranteed (Exhibit 10). Signed using minimum salary exception.

Trades

• Acquired Vasilije Micic from the Hornets in exchange for Pat Connaughton, the Bucks’ 2031 second-round pick, and the Bucks’ 2032 second-round pick.
  • Note: Micic was subsequently bought out.

Draft picks

• 2-47: Bogoljub Markovic
  • Will play overseas with Mega Basket.

Two-way signings

• Mark Sears
  • One year, $85,300 partial guarantee.

Note: The Bucks carried over Jamaree Bouyea and Pete Nance on two-way contracts from 2024/25

Departed/unsigned free agents

• Brook Lopez (Clippers)
• Stanley Umude (Spurs)

Other roster moves

• Waived and stretched Damian Lillard ($112,583,016 guaranteed salary over two years)
• Bought out and stretched Vasilije Micic (gave up $6,109,150 of $8,109,150 salary).

Salary cap situation

• Operating over the cap ($154.6MM) and below the luxury tax line ($187.9MM).
• Carrying approximately $174.1MM in salary.
• No hard cap.
• Portion of room exception ($3,647,000) available.

The offseason so far

NBA free agency has lost some of its luster in recent years, with many of the league’s best players agreeing to extensions well before they hit the open market, while most of the top players who do become free agents simply signing new contracts with their current teams. This offseason, for example, nine of the top 10 free agents on our top-50 list re-signed with their previous clubs.

The one exception in that top 10? Longtime Pacers center Myles Turner, who left Indiana after a decade with the franchise to sign a four-year contract with the rival Bucks.

Turner’s deal with the Bucks was one of the only truly shocking developments of NBA free agency. The veteran big man had been widely expected to stick with the Pacers after they got within one win of a championship, while Milwaukee entered the offseason operating well over the cap and not particularly well positioned to pursue a top free agent.

But the Bucks’ front office had plenty of reason to be bold this summer. The team had just been eliminated in the first round of the playoffs for a third straight year, and star point guard Damian Lillard suffered an Achilles tear in the postseason that would almost certainly sideline him for the entire 2025/26 season. Given that Giannis Antetokounmpo had spoke openly in the past about wanting to make sure he can keep legitimately competing for titles, Milwaukee couldn’t afford to essentially waste another year of the star forward’s prime waiting for Lillard to return.

Trading Lillard would have been an option for the Bucks, but with two years and $112.6MM left on his contract, the 35-year-old would have had limited trade value even if he were fully healthy — recovering from an Achilles tear, he was very much a negative asset, meaning that even if Milwaukee attached its lone tradable first-round pick (either 2031 or 2032) to him, acquiring an impact player for Lillard would have been a very tall order.

Lillard’s diminished value – combined with the fact that working out a sign-and-trade with a division rival for Turner would’ve been difficult, if not impossible – spurred the Bucks to go to extreme measures to create the cap room necessary to sign the longtime Pacer. A series of transactions was necessary in order to open up that room, including trading for Vasilije Micic for the sole purpose of buying him out, but the major move that ultimately got them over the goal line was using the stretch provision on Lillard’s contract, spreading the $112.6MM still owed to him across the next five seasons and reducing his 2025/26 cap charge by more than $31MM.

It was an unprecedented move (at least until a couple weeks later, when the Suns pulled off something similar with Bradley Beal), but one that made sense for a Bucks team desperate not just to head off a possible Antetokounmpo trade request but to get the two-time MVP some help while he’s still at the top of his game.

Sure, it’s not ideal that Milwaukee will still be carrying $22.5MM annually on its cap for Lillard three or four years from now, but it was a necessary evil to upgrade the roster in the short term. And if this gambit backfires and the team has to shift into rebuilding mode a couple years from now, those dead-money cap hits wouldn’t be as significant an impediment — just look at the current Nets, who have been trying to spend enough in recent weeks to simply reach the minimum salary floor.

This still isn’t a roster without holes, but in Turner, the Bucks now have a younger, more athletic, and more versatile version of Brook Lopez, the team’s former starting center who left for the Clippers this summer. Lopez’s ability to stretch the floor on offense and to protect the rim on defense – two things Turner can do very well too – were major factors in Milwaukee’s success in recent years.

And because the Bucks didn’t have to trade a first-round pick to move off of Lillard’s massive contract or to acquire Turner, they still have some trade ammunition in their back pocket to search for a mid-season deal that would further upgrade the roster.

After going under the cap and then using up all their room to sign Turner, the Bucks had limited flexibility to fill out the rest of their squad this offseason, but they took advantage of their remaining rights on their own free agents while also making a handful of savvy minimum-salary signings.

Big man Bobby Portis was re-signed using his Bird rights; point guards Ryan Rollins and Kevin Porter Jr. were brought back using their Early Bird rights and the room exception, respectively; Gary Trent Jr. returned to Milwaukee on a Non-Bird contract; and Gary Harris, Taurean Prince, Jericho Sims, Cole Anthony, Chris Livingston, and Thanasis Antetokounmpo all received minimum-salary deals from the Bucks.

Many of those players were members of last year’s team that was ousted in the first round of the postseason, but there’s a belief in Milwaukee that younger players like Rollins and Porter are capable of taking another step forward in regular, full-season roles, and that newcomers like Anthony, Harris, and especially Turner can help make the Bucks a more well-rounded team. We’ll see if that belief pays off.

Up next

The Bucks are carrying 15 players on fully guaranteed salaries for 2025/26, but they also have Andre Jackson Jr. on a partially guaranteed deal and Amir Coffey – a productive rotation player for the Clippers last season – on a non-guaranteed Exhibit 9 deal. In other words, those 15 roster spots likely aren’t set in stone yet, a fact that general manager Jon Horst acknowledged on media day earlier this week.

If the Bucks do trade or waive someone with a guaranteed contract in order to clear space to hang onto Jackson and/or Coffey, the players most at risk would likely be 2023 second-round pick Livingston and 2024 second-rounder Tyler Smith. Neither Livingston nor Smith has earned regular rotation minutes yet, and neither one is owed guaranteed money beyond this season.

If we were evaluating the roster purely based on projected performance, Thanasis would be a logical release candidate as well, but it’s hard to imagine the Bucks waiving Giannis’ brother while they’re doing all they can to convince him to remain in Milwaukee long-term.

Speaking of which, while it was good news that Giannis didn’t seek a change of scenery this summer, his comments on media day – confirming he weighed his options during the offseason and saying he didn’t remember a meeting with governor Wes Edens in which he reaffirmed his commitment to Milwaukee – probably won’t shut down speculation about his long-term future with the organization.

As long as no trade request comes, the front office likely won’t be all that bothered about outside chatter, but Antetokounmpo’s remarks were a far cry from fellow NBA MVP Nikola Jokic talking about his plan to “be with the Nuggets forever.” The simplest way to ensure Giannis conveys a similar sentiment a year from now will be for the Bucks to win.

With that in mind, it will be interesting to see what happens with Kyle Kuzma this season. The veteran forward scored a career-low 14.8 points per game and made just 30.7% of his three-pointers in 2024/25. He’ll need to be better for Milwaukee to have a shot at contention in ’25/26. Even if he is, Kuzma could be a prime trade candidate, since he’s one of the only players on the roster earning more than about $5MM this season.

Kuzma is eligible for a contract extension before the season begins, but I don’t expect him to get a new deal at this point — it’s more likely we hear mid-season chatter about the Bucks gauging the trade value of Kuzma and their lone tradable first-round pick.

The more logical extension candidate on the roster is fourth-year sharpshooter A.J. Green, who will remain eligible for a new deal all season long if he doesn’t reach an agreement within the next few weeks. The 26-year-old more than doubled his minutes per game to 22.7 last season while registering a career-high three-point percentage of 42.7%.

Although Green’s counting stats (7.4 points and 2.4 rebounds per game) don’t jump off the page, he’s a reliable shooter and solid defender who fits well next to Antetokounmpo. As long as the price isn’t exorbitant, working out a new contract with him would make a lot of sense for Milwaukee.