A trade in 2022 helped put this version of the Bucks underwater

At the February 2022 trade deadline, Milwaukee traded 25-year-old Donte DiVincenzo to the Sacramento Kings as part of a four-team swap 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 this season. In the first round defeat, he only played 3.7 minutes per game and was then only used for 16 games in the 2022/23 season. DiVincenzo then signed with the Golden State Warriors and was then a breakout star for the New York Knicks in last year's playoffs, when he averaged 17.8 points and shot 42.5% from three-point range .

The Bucks compounded their depth issues last summer when they sent Grayson Allen and Jrue Holiday to sign Damian Lillard. Lillard is a great scorer, but even at his best he didn't play much defense, and now he's 34. On the wings, the Bucks have Gary Trent Jr., Delon Wright and Pat Connaughton, all worse players than DiVincenzo often injured Khris Middleton.

Even if they had chosen to move on from DiVincenzo, they could have gotten far more than a handful of games from a scrappy veteran center in return. For an aging team that is running out of these resources, this is a huge waste of assets.

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