Across the last two summers, the win-now Milwaukee Bucks have selected teenagers with each of their last three draft picks.
Last year, Milwaukee selected AJ Johnson, a 6-foot-4 shooting guard, with the No. 23 pick. He appeared in just 29 regular season games, averaging 7.6 points on .385/.267/.865 shooting splits, 2.6 assists and 2.0 rebounds. Milwaukee then drafted 6-foot-11 southpaw power forward Tyler Smith with the No. 33 pick. Smith appeared in just 23 bouts, averaging 2.9 points on .480/.433/.750 shooting splits and 1.1 boards per.
Neither player was a part of head coach Doc Rivers' playoff rotations during the Bucks' brief five-game first round series loss to the Indiana Pacers.
On Thursday, Milwaukee drafted Serbian forward Bogoljub Marković with the No. 47 selection. Like Johnson and Smith, Marković was 19 years old at the time of his selection.
When pressed by Eric Nehm of The Athletic about his team's repeated decisions to select raw, win-later players, assistant general manager Milt Newton tried to explain the Bucks' thinking.
The Bucks drafted two teenagers last year in the NBA Draft and neither played regular rotation minutes in Milwaukee, so I asked why they decided to draft another teenager knowing that he might not be able to contribute right away.
— Eric Nehm (@eric_nehm) June 27, 2025
Assistant general manager Milt Newton: pic.twitter.com/2ErjXUR7PS
"For one, we also look at upside. To have a player with that length, who can do the things that he can do, those are [transferable], translatable things that you can do in the NBA," Newton said.
The 6-foot-9 forward suited up for 30 games with international squad Mega Basket in 2024-25, averaging 13.7 points while slashing .538/.370/.760, 6.8 rebounds, 2.7 assists, 0.8 steals and 0.8 blocks a night.
Whether Marković winds up joining Milwaukee on a standard roster deal or a two-way contract — or just stays in Europe for another season or two of seasoning — remains to be seen.
For a club that won 48 games last year and is striving to add cost-effective role player help around 30-year-old All-NBA First Team power forward Giannis Antetokounmpo, using all these picks on players who aren't ready to compete at the NBA level is a bit of a head-scratcher. Then, again, with the No. 47 pick the upside play makes sense, since it's late enough in the draft that there's no guarantee anyone there will stick at all.
"But like I said, going back to the fact that playing with grown men, playing in a physical league and being able to have some success in that, we think that is something we can look at and think that, you know what, in a year, two years, he will be able to compete on the NBA level, if not sooner than later," Newton added. "The potential is there, and the upside is there that we just couldn't pass on."
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