Bucks Rookie Brayden Burries Lights Up Vegas as the Post-Giannis Era Takes Shape

The Milwaukee Bucks spent most of this summer saying goodbye, so it was nice of Brayden Burries to give the city something to wave hello at. The rookie guard closed his Las Vegas run on Saturday by beating Philadelphia 96-94 on a contested layup with just over a second left, then capped the week on Tuesday by being named to the official All-NBA Summer League First Team. In the first offseason of the post-Giannis Antetokounmpo era — and yes, that phrase is still strange to type — the No. 10 pick out of Arizona did about as much as one teenager in July can do to convince a grieving fan base that the Milwaukee Bucks have a future worth watching. It was the best week of a very complicated month.

Burries owns Vegas

Milwaukee finished 2-3 in Las Vegas, but the record is a footnote. The Bucks dropped their early games — including a 119-86 blowout against, of course, Miami's summer squad on July 10 and a 90-80 loss to San Antonio two days later — then won their last two, 110-91 over Charlotte on July 15 and that 96-94 escape against the Sixers on July 18. Burries finished the finale with 27 points, four rebounds and five assists, and his game-winner was the kind of downhill, through-contact finish that made scouts fall for him in the first place.

Across four appearances, Burries averaged 23.5 points, 4.5 rebounds and 4.3 assists, numbers strong enough that CBS Sports made him its pick for summer league MVP even though the league's official award went to Golden State's Yaxel Lendeborg. The official recognition still came: on July 21, the NBA named Burries to the All-Summer League First Team alongside top picks like Cameron Boozer and Caleb Wilson. Fellow first-rounder Nate Ament, taken 13th with the pick Milwaukee got from Miami, had a quieter summer but ended on an encouraging note, scoring 12 points against Philadelphia and shooting 38.8 percent from three in Vegas — notable for a forward whose jumper was the main pre-draft question. Second-year guard Kam Jones chipped in 12 in the finale, and fan sites spent the week lobbying for summer standout Zack Austin, a shot-blocking wing, to get one of the open two-way slots.

The trade that reset the franchise

All of this optimism-scavenging exists because of what happened in late June. The Bucks agreed on June 23 — and formally completed on July 6 — the trade that sent Giannis Antetokounmpo and Bobby Portis to the Miami Heat. The return: Tyler Herro, Kel'el Ware, Jaime Jaquez Jr., Kasparas Jakucionis, the No. 13 pick in June's draft (which became Ament), first-round picks in 2031 and 2033, a 2030 pick swap and a 2033 second-rounder. Miami reportedly outbid Boston, which had dangled Jaylen Brown, and Pat Riley wasted no time declaring Giannis "one of the top five players in the league."

The divorce had been building for a year — through flirtations with New York, a miserable season, and increasingly public friction over injury management. However you apportion the blame, the outcome is stark: the greatest player in franchise history, a champion and two-time MVP in Milwaukee, is now the face of an Eastern Conference rival. The Bucks' farewell statement leaned on gratitude. Fans will need a little longer.

What the Milwaukee Bucks roster actually looks like

The good news is that Milwaukee did not tear it down to the studs. Herro, a Wisconsin native who grew up in the Milwaukee suburbs, arrives as the new No. 1 option and has been vocal about being energized by the homecoming. Myles Turner, signed away from Indiana last summer, is still around to anchor the middle, and Ware gives the Bucks a second young big with lob-and-block athleticism. Jaquez is a proven rotation wing, Jakucionis a 2025 lottery pick still on his rookie deal, and holdovers like AJ Green and Ryan Rollins fill out a backcourt that suddenly skews very young.

Squint and you can see the outline of a competent team: Herro creating, Turner and Ware protecting the rim, Burries and Ament developing behind them, and a war chest of Miami draft capital arriving right when Giannis and Bam Adebayo hit their mid-thirties. What you cannot see is a top-ten player, which is the thing Milwaukee has had on the roster every season since 2013. The interesting tension is positional: Herro, Burries, Jakucionis, Green and Rollins all want backcourt minutes, while the wing rotation is thinner than the front office would like — one reason the summer league push from a three-and-D type like Austin got so much local attention.

New coach, new channel

The man charged with making this coherent is Taylor Jenkins, hired in the spring after Doc Rivers' exit. Rivers stepped away in April at the end of a 32-50 season that ranks among the most disappointing in franchise history, and Jenkins — who built his reputation developing young rosters in Memphis — is a logical fit for a team that just got a decade younger in one transaction. His first media rounds in Vegas were mostly about tone-setting; the actual basketball questions — who starts next to Herro, how fast the rookies play real minutes, what an offense without a gravity-warping superstar even looks like — start in late September.

Off the court, the Bucks made a move that genuinely affects more households than any trade: the team announced this month that every game this season will air on free over-the-air television in the Milwaukee market via My24, ending the FanDuel Sports Network era locally. For a franchise about to ask its fans for patience, making the product free to watch is smart politics.

Where the Bucks sit in the East

Nobody in Milwaukee's front office is using the word rebuild, but the East will render its own verdict. The Knicks just won the championship. Miami added Giannis to Adebayo. The Bucks, by contrast, are betting on internal growth from Ware, Jakucionis, Burries and Ament while Herro and Turner keep the floor respectable. A play-in berth feels like the honest ceiling of the current group, and that's fine — the real scoreboard for this season is developmental. If Burries' July translates to competent rookie minutes and Ware takes a leap, the Giannis return starts to look less like a consolation prize.

Milwaukee Bucks news to watch next

The calendar between now and camp is mostly housekeeping, but there are real decisions embedded in it:

• August: full 2026-27 schedule release, including the date every fan is already dreading — Giannis' first return to Fiserv Forum in a Heat uniform.
• Late September: media day and training camp, Jenkins' first with the full roster.
• Roster margins: two-way and camp-invite decisions for summer standouts like Austin, plus clarity on the final bench spots.
• October: opening night of a season with the lowest external expectations Milwaukee has faced in a decade.

The Milwaukee Bucks will spend 2026-27 answering a question they haven't faced since the Obama administration: who are they without Giannis Antetokounmpo? This week offered the first draft of an answer — a Vegas-tested rookie with late-game nerve, a homegrown scorer in Herro who wanted to be here, a coach who knows how to grow a young team, and every game on free TV so the whole city can watch the experiment unfold. It is not a title contender. It might, sooner than people think, be something interesting.