Why Bucks Should Be Excited About Rookies Brayden Burries and Nate Ament

Rebuilds are supposed to be painful, but the early returns from summer league made it easier for Bucks fans to get excited about what comes next.

Brayden Burries, the 10th overall pick out of Arizona, averaged 23.5 points, 4.5 rebounds, and 4.3 assists across four summer league games and was named to the All-Summer League First Team.

The 6-foot-4 guard came into the draft with a reputation as a high-floor, steady player who could defend and score at all three levels, but summer league showed his ceiling might be higher than people expected.

His best game came against the 76ers, when he scored 27 points with five assists, four rebounds, and hit a contested layup with just over a second left to win it 96-94.

He shot 49 percent from the field for the summer and 39 percent from three, and he looked comfortable running the offense in ways that his college numbers did not always show.

Scouts have compared him to Jrue Holiday and Derrick White because of his defensive instincts and ability to impact games without needing the ball all the time, and those are exactly the kinds of players who help teams win.

Nate Ament arrived as the 13th overall pick out of Tennessee, acquired through the package that sent Giannis Antetokounmpo to Miami, and he brought a completely different skill set than Burries.

At 6-foot-10, Ament is a forward who handles the ball like a guard and shoots with a high, smooth release from deep.

He averaged 11.2 points and 4.8 rebounds across five games, shot 50 percent from the field and 39 percent from three, and had a breakout performance of 23 points and six rebounds against Charlotte.

The Bucks front office has talked about how Ament's versatility fits the direction they are headed, and his combination of size and ball-handling gives Milwaukee something it has not had in a while.

He was a Julius Erving Award finalist as the top small forward in college basketball, and if his shot translates to the NBA, he has the tools to become a legitimate scoring option at the three or the four.

Milwaukee went 32-50 last season and is clearly in the early stages of building around a new core after trading Giannis.

Tyler Herro, Jaime Jaquez Jr., Kyle Kuzma, and Myles Turner give the Bucks a group of established players to surround the rookies with, and the development of Burries and Ament will go a long way toward determining how fast this rebuild moves.

Jon Horst picked in the lottery for the first time as general manager this year, and the early signs suggest he made the right calls with both selections.

The wins may not come right away next season, and Milwaukee is not going to be competing for a playoff spot in April, but the pieces the franchise added through the draft look like players who can grow into something real over the next few years.

For a franchise that just traded its best player in a generation, that is about as much as anyone could ask for heading into a new era.