Jaime Jaquez Jr. is coming off the best season of his career, but the next step for him with the Milwaukee Bucks may come down to a pretty specific issue: taking better care of the ball.
That part of his game stood out for the wrong reasons last season. Jaquez finished with 148 turnovers, the most of any bench player by a wide margin.
Naz Reid was next on the list among reserve players with 123. That total also has to be viewed through the lens of how much Jaquez was asked to do.
He played the most minutes of any bench player in the 2025-26 season, and with that kind of workload, mistakes were going to happen.
Still, the way those turnovers piled up is what makes this such an obvious area to attack. Nearly 40 of them were recorded by NBA.com as “lost ball turnovers,” which points to a lot of self-inflicted mistakes.
Sometimes he simply lost control of the dribble. Other times, he couldn’t hang on to the ball before it slipped away.
Tightening up his handle would go a long way toward cleaning that up.
Bad passes also played a part, and those are part of the turnover story too. But there’s a difference between forcing a pass and just flat-out losing the rock, and Jaquez’s season had too much of the latter.
That matters even more because contract talks are still hanging over his future. Barring something unexpected, Jaquez is likely to start the new NBA season without an extension from the Bucks. That puts the ball in his court, at least for now, and gives him a chance to prove where he belongs in Milwaukee’s plans.
He’s already shown the scoring, rebounding and facilitating that make him valuable. The question is whether he can pair that production with better ball security.
Cutting down the turnovers won’t lock in a new deal by itself, but it would strengthen his case. For Jaquez, this season is about showing he can build on a career year - and make his biggest weakness less of a problem.
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