Milwaukee traded away its franchise cornerstone and came home with four new starters, a new coach, and a roster nobody outside the building fully expected.
The Milwaukee Bucks will open the 2026-27 season without Giannis Antetokounmpo for the first time since he arrived in 2013, and that alone makes this the most graded offseason in franchise history.
Milwaukee sent Antetokounmpo and Bobby Portis to the Miami Heat and received Tyler Herro, Kel'el Ware, Jaime Jaquez Jr., Kasparas Jakučionis, the 13th overall pick, and future draft considerations, closing out thirteen seasons that included a championship and the best player in franchise history.
Every piece of that return earns its own grade, and so does everything that followed it.
Grading the Return for Giannis
Start with what the Bucks gave up.
Antetokounmpo leaves Milwaukee as its all-time leading scorer, and he did it while averaging 24.1 points, 9.9 rebounds and 5.0 assists a game over 895 career appearances.
Replacing that with a trade package was always going to leave the deal feeling uneven, and that is fine, because no return for a player like Giannis was ever going to look clean.
Herro is a proven scorer who put up 20.5 points and 4.1 assists per game in his last season in Miami, and he steps into Milwaukee as the clear top option.
There could be a case for Herro earning a genuine All-Star nod in his first year with the Bucks, and the workload alone should get him close.
Ware and Jaquez are young pieces to grow, Jakučionis gives Herro a ball handler to pair with, and the picks include the one that became Arizona guard Brayden Burries.
The grade for the return lands at a B.
New Coach and a Different Roster
Milwaukee did not stop at the trade.
The Bucks also moved on from Doc Rivers and hired Taylor Jenkins, who spent six years running the Memphis Grizzlies.
Bucks co-owner Jimmy Haslam said the hire was an easy call.
"We knew who we wanted to hire as our coach, and it was Taylor Jenkins," Haslam said.
Jenkins now inherits a roster built around Herro, Kuzma and Myles Turner, with Ware, Jaquez, Jakučionis and Burries as the young core.
There is also the case for Kuzma, Turner and the rest of the veterans to set the tone this season, and that job only gets harder with a first-year coach and this many new faces.
Picking a coach with his own program instead of a retread is a fair bet on culture over shortcuts.
The Final Grade for Milwaukee's Offseason
Taken as a whole, this was a competent teardown rather than a clean rebuild, and that is the right way to grade it.
Milwaukee got real players and real picks, and paired that with a coaching hire that fits a team starting over.
There is still a real question about who becomes Milwaukee's next true star, and who fills that role in the post-Giannis era.
Training camp begins September 29, and the Bucks open the regular season October 20, giving Jenkins and this retooled roster only weeks to find an identity.
The overall offseason grade lands at a B-minus, with real room to move up if Herro and the young pieces play like the front office expects.
