The Milwaukee Bucks are staring at a very different future after the trade that sent Giannis Antetokounmpo and Bobby Portis to the Miami Heat became official. In return, Milwaukee landed Tyler Herro, Jaime Jaquez Jr., Kel'el Ware and Kasparas Jakučionis, along with several draft picks. It’s the kind of deal that closes one chapter hard, but also leaves the Bucks with a few real candidates to build around.
The biggest question now is simple: who takes over as the team’s No. 1 option next season?
For the first time in more than a decade, Milwaukee has to answer that without Antetokounmpo. Since 2016, he led the Bucks in scoring every year and gave them a clear centerpiece. Now the offense has to find a new face, and on paper the list isn’t long.
Tyler Herro looks like the safest bet to take the top spot. He has the most established scoring track record of the group, and his career already shows he can carry a heavy offensive load.
In five of his seven NBA seasons, Herro has averaged more than 20 points per game with the Heat. He led Miami in scoring in 2024 and tied Jimmy Butler for that honor in 2023.
He was an All-Star in 2024, won Sixth Man of the Year in his third season while putting up 20.7 points per game, and has already built a reputation for delivering in big moments with several game-winning shots.
Herro also said recently that his years in Miami prepared him for exactly this kind of responsibility. “I think my time in Miami has prepared me for this,” Herro said. “Playing with great players - Jimmy (Butler), veteran guys, Andre Iguodala, Jae Crowder, Goran Dragić... and to kind of be in that lead role now, it’s a responsibility that I think I’m ready for.”
That sounds like a player expecting to have the ball in his hands plenty in Milwaukee.
Ryan Rollins is the next name in the mix, and his rise last season gave the Bucks something they badly needed. He turned in the best year of his young career, averaging 17.3 points, 4.6 rebounds, 5.6 assists and 1.5 steals while shooting 47.2% from the field and 40.6% from 3-point range. He scored efficiently at all three levels and started getting attention around the league for it, including a recent ranking from Bleacher Report that placed him at No. 3 among the NBA’s most underrated players.
Rollins also stood out in a season where Milwaukee’s scoring was spread around. Antetokounmpo and Kevin Porter Jr. were the only players who averaged more points than him, but Rollins matched the number of games they played combined.
He scored more than 30 points in a season for the first time and did it three times, including a career-high 36 against the Portland Trail Blazers. In a year where the Bucks leaned on committee scoring, he looked like their most steady option.
Jaquez Jr. rounds out the top three, and he’s the wild card with room to grow into a bigger role. After a second season that dipped to 8.6 points per game, he bounced back with 15.4 points, 5.0 rebounds and 4.7 assists while shooting 50.7% from the field. That production made him the first bench player in NBA history with more than 1,000 points, 300 rebounds, 300 assists and 50 three-pointers in a season, and it helped him finish second in Sixth Man of the Year voting.
He was a spark plug off the bench for Miami, scoring at least 20 points in 22 of his 75 games and dropping a season-high 32 against the Washington Wizards. Over 216 career games, he has come off the bench 178 times, but the expectation now is that he’ll step into a starting role with the Bucks. He showed enough in the starts he got with the Heat to suggest he can handle that kind of responsibility, including a 41-point game against the Wizards in 2025 during one of his 17 starts.
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