A 2022 trade helped submarine this version of the Bucks

At the trade deadline in Feb. 2022, 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, then 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, 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 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. At the wings, the Bucks have Gary Trent, Jr., Delon Wright and Pat Connaughton, all inferior players to DiVincenzo, plus the oft-injured Khris Middleton.

Even if they’d 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’s 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 string of ill-fated transactions that’s made Milwaukee a disaster so far in 2024-25.