CHICAGO – Milwaukee Bucks general manager Jon Horst remembers what it felt like to move down in the NBA Draft.
In 2008, he was the franchise’s representative in the lottery’s drawing room as the Bucks fell to the No. 8 pick. That happened despite having the seventh-best odds when the Chicago Bulls jumped from ninth all the way to the top spot to draft Derrick Rose. So, with the Bucks back in the lottery for the first time in ten seasons, Horst decided to stay outside of the drawing room and send vice president of basketball operations Dave Dean to the drawing room instead.
And Dean did the job. While the Bucks did not hit on their small odds to grab the second, third or fourth overall pick, they did not fall in the lottery and instead stuck at No. 10 in the 2026 NBA Draft.
“I think we’re really excited about this position in the draft,” Horst said. “We’ve done a lot of studying in this position in the draft. We’ll be prepared for it. It’s a really deep draft. It would have been great to have been at the top. It’s really, really great not to move down any spots. We’re super excited with the outcome.”
While a top-10 pick in a strong draft is a great potential building block for the Bucks, like everything else in Milwaukee at the moment, that pick will be affected by the future of Giannis Antetokounmpo.
If Antetokounmpo is still on the team at the start of next season and the Bucks use their pick, the player drafted 10th overall will have an opportunity to grow next to one of the NBA’s best players, a spectacular spot for any prospect. But that is only one of the possible ways things could go in Milwaukee.
In the final week of the season, Horst told local reporters that while the Bucks will consider potentially trading Antetokounmpo this offseason, they might also consider moving their first-round pick, as well as the two other first-rounders (2031, 2033) they will be eligible to trade on draft night to get more talent on the roster like they did when they traded draft capital for Jrue Holiday and Damian Lillard. He confirmed that will still be a consideration on Sunday after the 2026 NBA Draft Lottery.
“I think, obviously, both paths are very alive for us, and we’ll explore and learn a lot in the coming weeks as to what the benefit for the organization will be,” Horst said. “No matter what, it’s a great opportunity for the organization. This is a really great draft. We believe that. We don’t think it’s just on paper.
“I think there are a lot of opportunities to add someone that could really help our team do the things that we talked about the other day with our press conference, to compete, to get better now and to really win together. So, I think we’re really excited to draft it, but we’ll keep all options open as we always do.”
With so many different paths to be considered, this week in Chicago will be vital for Horst and the team’s front office. There are, of course, draft prospects to meet and connections to make, but the whole league converging in one place means Horst will have an opportunity to chat with executives from every team in the league and gather information to make the most informed decision about the team’s path moving forward.
“It’s a really exhausting time period, but it’s the best,” Horst said. “For us, and I think every NBA team, it’s really like a convention. I think we have this time of year, and then, we have summer league, but this is so much of offseason planning and talking to other teams and touching base and checking with agents.
“It’s really kind of a 7 a.m. til 11 p.m. type of thing, but it’s awesome. We’ll learn a lot about our options, and we’ll start building on those things, and we’ll have a great four or five weeks and hopefully make some great offseason decisions.”
Antetokounmpo’s future will undoubtedly be at the center of the work that Horst does this week in Chicago.
Earlier this week, Bucks co-governor Jimmy Haslam created a deadline of sorts for Horst to make a decision about trading Antetokounmpo. He told reporters he believed the team would need to figure out the path forward with their star player by the NBA Draft on June 23 and 24. While that deadline could be interpreted as a clear sign to teams that their best offer for Antetokounmpo needs to be made in the next six weeks, Horst told reporters on Sunday that he did not feel as though Haslam’s declaration changed much of anything from the general manager’s perspective.
“Listen, Jimmy, Wes (Edens), myself, Taylor (Jenkins) now, I think we’re all aligned on how we want to approach this,” Horst said. “We have an unbelievable opportunity with this pick, with our roster, with other assets that we have, the contracts that we have under control to really have parallel paths.
“Our job is to figure out how to compete, to win, to get better. We want to build on last year. We have a lot of opportunities to do that. That is a deadline because it’s a draft, and a lot of those trades happen. After that, they become the next cap year trades, and then, it kind of opens up again. For us, it’s really about just having a great offseason and keeping both paths open.”
In considering those two paths with Antetokounmpo, Sunday’s lottery failed to provide much of a push in either direction.
The Bucks did not move up or down and stayed put at No. 10 in the 2026 NBA Draft. Teams known to previously chase Antetokounmpo like the Golden State Warriors and Miami Heat struck out in the lottery like the Bucks. The Nets, who have stockpiled enough first-round picks to try to put together a compelling trade package for a superstar, dropped down to sixth, despite being one of three teams with the best odds at getting the first overall pick.
With no obvious nudge from the lottery, Horst will embark on a journey down the parallel paths the organization have laid out in a pivotal week in Chicago.
