The silver lining on the worst season of basketball in a decade for the Milwaukee Bucks is a lottery pick, the No. 10 selection in the first round of the 2026 NBA Draft on June 23. Milwaukee landed the pick after their original selection – No. 8 – was sent to Atlanta, by way of New Orleans, as remnant of the 2020 trade for Jrue Holiday.
The last time the first round of the draft truly mattered in Milwaukee was when the team took Jabari Parker No. 2 in 2014. Since then, the team either used first-round picks as trade capital to land players to affect winning in the short term or took wild swings in the hopes of finding the next Giannis Antetokounmpo.
The trades largely worked: The team won the 2021 championship and the most regular-season games in the NBA from 2018-25.
The big swings were all whiffs, however. Rashad Vaughn (2015, No. 17), Thon Maker (2016, No. 10), D.J. Wilson (2017, No. 17), MarJon Beauchamp (2022, No. 24) and AJ Johnson (2024, No. 23) are either out of the league or barely hanging on.
The best picks in the last decade were future Rookie of the Year and Sixth Man of the Year Malcolm Brogdon (2016, No. 36) and Donte DiVincenzo (2018, No. 17), but neither signed a second contract in Milwaukee.
Even Parker washed out, and not just due to multiple injuries and lack of defensive aptitude. As he entered the league, the evolving play styles within the game essentially rendered his offensive skillset obsolete as it picked up pace and stretched beyond the 3-point line.
It’s a long way to say the Bucks have not really done much in terms of selecting its own players since Antetokounmpo developed into one of the greatest players of all time.
“We are doing our due diligence to study every part of the player and the person because we want this to be an important addition to a great roster that can be here for the long term,” Bucks head coach Taylor Jenkins said.
“We want to get this right.”
It’s why there is a palpable buzz over the No. 10 pick.
“There’s a ton of excitement for what it can do for the organization,” Bucks general manager Jon Horst said in early May. “[It is] an opportunity to add a player to our roster that can have a big impact and hopefully a big, impact quickly.”
Team co-owner and governor Wes Edens was on hand in Chicago on May 10 when the draft lottery was held. The team will have a presence at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn for the draft itself. The organization is throwing watch parties in and around Milwaukee.
The team has worked out a bevy of players who could be available at No. 10, and even some who some think may be selected a bit beforehand.
“It’s really exciting to go through the process,” said Horst, who has yet to make a lottery selection in his tenure as general manager. “We’re going to be very intentional about the person. We’re going to start with competitiveness. We’re gonna start with basketball IQ, physical toughness. Knowing that these players in this range are really talented. And most of them are really high character, which also matters to us a ton. But we really want to focus on kind of those more intangible things.”
Can the Bucks find a star with No. 10 pick?
Milwaukee’s history in the draft hasn’t been great since unearthing Antetokounmpo out of Greece in 2013 with the No. 15 selection. Since then, however, Nikola Jokić (2015, No. 41) and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (2018, No. 11) have also won MVPs despite being deeper picks in the draft.
Beyond that, of the 58 different players to make an all-NBA team since Antetokounmpo’s rookie year, a whopping 23 of them have been drafted No. 10 or later. Six of them were picked in the second round.
And the experts believe such talent exists in this draft.
Washington GM Will Dawkins, who is in possession of the No. 1 pick, acknowledged the draft is “really deep in the top 10.”
ESPN analyst Seth Greenberg went a little further when he told USA TODAY, “the top 15 is off the charts.”
The Bucks undoubtedly hope that is the case, and that their selection pops more than the recent sample size of players taken at the No. 10 spot specifically. Beginning with the Bucks’ selection of Thon Maker in 2016, that spot has yet to produce an all-star.
The best player picked at No. 10 since then is New York’s Mikal Bridges (2018), who made one all-defensive team. Cam Reddish (2019) has been a solid rotation player in his career. Oklahoma City’s Cason Wallace (2023) looks like he, too, could be an all-defensive team member in the future.
Milwaukee is also hoping luck is on their side, too, with this draft class.
They took Jimmer Fredette No. 10 in 2011, but he was immediately dealt in a draft-day trade to Sacramento. Brandon Jennings was the No. 10 pick in the 2009 draft and made the all-rookie team.
Sandwiched in between those picks was six-time all-NBA and nine-time all-star forward Paul George, who went No. 10 in 2010 to Indiana. Center Brook Lopez was picked No. 10 by the then-New Jersey Nets in 2009. Of course, Lopez would help the Bucks win the 2021 NBA title.
Could the Bucks trade the No. 10 pick?
From the very beginning of the offseason, Horst and assistant GM Milt Newton have said in interviews that trading the No. 10 pick was something they would be open to. Naturally, they kept the parameters of such a deal to themselves, but they could:
Use it in conjunction with other assets to move up in the draft. Use it to acquire multiple picks further down in the draft. Use it (perhaps with other assets) to acquire an established player.
When is the NBA draft?
First round: 7 p.m. CT June 23 (ABC and ESPN)
Second round: 7 p.m. CT June 24 (ESPN)
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: The Bucks have the No. 10 pick in the 2026 NBA Draft. Can they find a star?
Reporting by Jim Owczarski, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Jim Owczarski, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel | USA TODAY Network
