Brayden Burries didn’t wait long to make his mark with the Milwaukee Bucks.
The No. 10 pick has wasted no time flashing the kind of scoring punch that can change a team’s outlook. According to RealGM, his 23.5 points per game is the highest Summer League average for any Bucks player since 2007-08. That’s not a small note when you consider how many different names have cycled through Milwaukee since then.
He’s also not just clearing the bar - he’s well above it. Tobias Harris sits second on that Bucks Summer League list at 20.8 points per game, followed by Christian Wood at 20.4 and Jordan Nwora at 20.3. All three built reputations around putting the ball in the basket, and Burries has already outpaced them in that department.
What really popped, though, was how natural he looked doing it. Burries seemed comfortable from the jump, whether he was attacking the lane for a game-winner or letting fly with a step-back three early in the shot clock. He played with confidence on every touch, and the production backed it up: he hit 50 percent of his shots overall.
There was one loose end. Burries shot 66.7 percent from the free-throw line in Summer League, which stands out a bit because he made better than 80 percent of his foul shots during his college career. Even so, that feels more like a small blemish than a real concern given everything else he showed.
The bigger picture is still straightforward: Summer League is Summer League, and the NBA is a different level. Plenty of players are just trying to hang around. Burries still has to prove he can do this against real NBA competition, and there’s no guarantee a strong July turns into immediate stardom.
Even so, the path to minutes is there, though the Bucks’ guard situation is crowded. Burries may not get a clear runway right away, but it’s going to be tough to keep a talent like that buried for long. If he can carry even part of this Summer League scoring touch into the season, Milwaukee may have something bigger than just a promising rookie.
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Naji Marshall Joins NBA Pushback Over Disrespectful T.J. McConnell Take
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For Bucks fans, it is a reminder of how much respect McConnell has earned across the league, even in conversations that are meant to be casual or hypothetical. The pushback also underscored a familiar split in basketball circles: one-on-one talent is its own argument, but it does not always translate cleanly to NBA competition, where McConnell has built a career on skill, toughness and winning the trust of teammates and opponents alike. [Read more 🡒]
Bucks Face A Tough Jaime Jaquez Jr. Decision Sooner Than Expected
The Bucks have landed in one of those roster-building spots that can define a front offices direction long before opening night. Jaime Jaquez Jr. arrived from Miami with the kind of productive track record that normally makes extension talks straightforward, but Milwaukee is trying to fit him into a roster that is still being reshaped, and that has made his value harder to pin down than the raw numbers suggest.
Jaquezs next contract will hinge on more than what he already showed with the Heat. Milwaukee has to decide whether it sees him as a starter-level piece or a useful reserve, and that answer matters both for his role and for the money attached to it. In a rebuild, those judgments carry extra weight, because the Bucks are trying to stay flexible financially while still giving themselves enough talent to grow into something stable. [Read more 🡒]
Pacers Face An Early Roster Squeeze Fans Will Notice
While the Pacers sort through an early roster squeeze, the Bucks have been making their own quiet summer rounds in Texas. Myles Turner organized a players minicamp there, and nearly the whole roster showed up, a useful sign of buy-in as Milwaukee begins stitching together the next phase of its season.
It is the kind of get-together that matters before camp even opens, especially for a team trying to stay aligned around health, roles and continuity. In a league where other teams are already juggling cap constraints and late roster decisions, the Bucks at least have one small edge in seeing so many familiar faces on the floor together this early. [Read more 🡒]