Bucks media day is four weeks from yesterday and preseason basketball five weeks from yesterday, so that means our annual and much-beloved exercise is back for its twelfth incarnation. If you’re unfamiliar, each year since 2014, we’ve polled Brew Hoop readers about which player is more important to Milwaukee’s success as opposed to his teammates, ultimately putting together a list that has grown from 15 to 18 names as NBA rosters expanded with two-way contracts. Teams usually are pretty solid by this point in the offseason, and while there are some exceptions this year due to ongoing restricted free agency standoffs, the Bucks aren’t one of them. Granted, they have surprised us in late September before and thrown our ratings off, but we press on.
How do we rank the roster? Well, we haven’t always had the same criteria as the Bucks’ title aspirations rose in the last seven years or so. As we’ve done since then, we’ll rate each Buck in terms of how we think they’ll impact postseason success, rather than their future importance, as we might have done in 2016 or so. Managing editor emeritus Adam Paris wrote this once we shifted to that line of thinking, and since it still rings true, here is our main recommendation on how to vote:
Postseason success should be paramount in your mind when considering your rankings. Regular season competency is a bonus, especially if they can help the team get to a higher seed that yields dividends in the Playoffs, but think about how you envision each individual player factoring in when postseason games arrive.
One constant among our rankings is Giannis, who has predictably taken the top spot each season since we began ranking the roster. There usually wasn’t any drama for second and third place either, with franchise stalwart Khris Middleton finishing second often, joined by trade splashes Jrue Holiday and Damian Lillard every year since 2020. Brook Lopez also found himself fourth very often too. Of course, none of those guys are Bucks any longer, and for the first time, Middleton won’t be on our list. So I’m particularly excited to see how voters decide spots two through five. I imagine newcomer Myles Turner will take second, but how high will 2025 deadline acquisitions Kevin Porter Jr. and Kyle Kuzma place? Will Bobby Portis—fifth every year since coming to Milwaukee—move up? Only one way to find out. But before we begin, let’s look at historical rankings among the current roster:
| Current Player | 2024 Rank | 2023 Rank | 2022 Rank | 2021 Rank | 2020 Rank | 2019 Rank | 2018 Rank | 2017 Rank | 2016 Rank | 2015 Rank | 2014 Rank |
|---|
| Giannis Antetokoummpo | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Myles Turner | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – |
| Kyle Kuzma | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – |
| Kevin Porter Jr. | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – |
| Gary Trent Jr. | 5 | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – |
| Bobby Portis | 6 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | – | – | – | – | – | |
| Ryan Rollins | 17 | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – |
| Taurean Prince | 8 | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – |
| AJ Green | 9 | 11 | 17 | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – |
| Jericho Sims | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – |
| Andre Jackson Jr. | 11 | 13 | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – |
| Chris Livingston | 12 | 14 | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – |
| Gary Harris | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – |
| Cole Anthony | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – |
| Tyler Smith | 15 | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – |
| Thanasis Antetokounmpo | – | 15 | 15 | 12 | 15 | 15 | – | – | – | – | – |
| Jamaree Bouyea | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – |
| Mark Sears | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – |
| Pete Nance | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – |
| Amir Coffey | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – |
As of Sunday, we welcome Thanasis back to our rankings and perhaps we already have his customary 15th spot warm for him. Now there are three members of the 2021 title team still on the roster! Besides Middleton, Lopez, and Lillard, two other longer-tenured guys we won’t see this year are Pat Connaughton (finished sixth or seventh most years dating back to 2019 before falling to 10th last year) and MarJon Beauchamp (fell from ninth to 14th). There are still plenty of holdovers from last year, though, and I see two names that should both rise significantly in AJ Green and Ryan Rollins. Taurean Prince seems likely to fall, but the others might stay in similar spots.
Of course, it seems very likely there will be some movement at the end of the roster between now and Opening Night, when the standard roster must be reduced to 15 players max (plus three two-ways). With Thanasis’ signing, the standard roster is currently at 17, and 15 of those guys are fully guaranteed; Andre Jackson Jr.‘s contract is only partially guaranteed, and Amir Coffey is on a training camp deal. To accommodate one of these guys (probably Thanasis), most speculate that Ajax is gone, but perhaps Tyler Smith is in danger too. With all this in mind, we’ll rank everyone who’s currently on the roster, since a decision may not be made until mid or late October.
The other element in our polls is the Gut Check, which is where you rate your confidence in a given player that they’ll be in the playoff rotation on a 1–5 scale (1 means riding the bench and 5 means logging heavy minutes). How did our holdovers from last year fare in this regard?
- Gary Trent Jr. – 4.72
- Giannis Antetokounmpo – 4.58
- Bobby Portis – 4.30
- Taurean Prince – 3.72
- AJ Green – 3.23
- Andre Jackson Jr. – 2.67
- Chris Livingston – 1.86
- Tyler Smith – 1.55
- Ryan Rollins – 1.25
And with all that preamble out of the way, I send you to the voting booth to determine the least important/20th most important Buck (
editor’s note: this is our new poll feature, which will have more sophisticated options for future polling, like selecting multiple answers). Tomorrow we’ll unveil those results and preview the lucky (or unlucky, in this case) player for the season ahead, and you’ll get to vote on 19th. Right now we’ll keep the options pretty open, shaving them down as we go along.
