A trade in 2022 helped submerge this version of the Bucks

On By Littum

The Milwaukee Bucks (1-4) could use a young, athletic guard who can shoot the three. Two years ago, they traded exactly that kind of player.

At the February 2022 trade deadline, Milwaukee traded 25-year-old Donte DiVincenzo to the Sacramento Kings as part of a four-team trade that brought 33-year-old Serge Ibaka to the Bucks. It didn’t work out well.

Ibaka averaged seven points in 19 games for the Bucks that season. In their first-round loss, he played just 3.7 minutes per game. game, after which he only suited up for 16 games in 2022–23. DiVincenzo went on to sign with the Golden State Warriors, then was a breakout star for the New York Knicks in last year’s playoffs, averaging 17.8 points and shooting 42.5% from three-point range.

The Bucks compounded their depth issues last summer when they shipped out Grayson Allen and Jrue Holiday to add Damian Lillard. Lillard is a great scorer, but he didn’t play much defense even in his prime, and now he’s 34. On the wings, the Bucks have Gary Trent, Jr., Delon Wright and Pat Connaughton, all inferior players to DiVincenzo, plus the oft-injured Chris Middleton.

Even if they had chosen to move on from DiVincenzo, they could have gotten far more than a handful of games from a washed-up veteran center in return. It’s a huge waste of an asset for an aging team that is running out of them.

DiVincenzo was a rare successful draft pick for the Bucks, who declined the fourth-year option on 2022 first-rounder MarJon Beauchamp this week. Trading DiVincenzo was the first domino in a series of ill-fated transactions that have so far turned Milwaukee into a disaster in 2024-25.