Plenty Of Familiar Faces As The Milwaukee Bucks Open Training Camp

For a complete list of all the players in camp, payroll break down and injury report, check out the Bucks Training Camp Primer.

For the first time in recent memory, the Milwaukee Bucks opened training camp rested, refreshed and ready to go.

A combination of deep playoff runs and scheduling quirks due to the COVID-19 pandemic — not to mention the rescheduled 2020 Olympics that immediately followed Milwaukee’s championship parade last summer — have wreaked havoc on players’ recovery and preparation the last few years but getting a full summer off was one of the few upsides from the second-round playoff lost to Boston that brought the Bucks’ season to a premature end.

“There’s something to be said about being on top, having the short offseason, then trying to do it agains but having the full off-season was awesome,” point guard Jrue Holiday said.

Now, the Bucks are ready to get back to work and make no mistake about it, their sights are set on reclaiming the title they lost last May.

“I kind of got jealous seeing Golden State’s parade,” Giannis Antetokounmpo said of the Warriors’ championship celebration. “You know that feeling and you know what’s getting stripped away from you.

“I want to win (another) championship.”

He’ll try to do that with most of the players he celebrated with back in July 2021. Milwaukee brings back almost its entire roster from a year ago, when the team overcame a season-long rash of injuries to finish 51-31 and win a fourth straight Central Division title along with the Eastern Conference’s No. 3 seed in the playoffs.

That includes fellow All-Star Khris Middleton, who never returned to the floor after suffering a knee sprain in Game 2 of Milwaukee’s first-round series against the Bulls, as well as point guard Jrue Holiday who rounds out the Bucks’ “Big Three.”

Center Brook Lopez is back and healthy after a back injury limited him to 13 games a year ago as is guard Grayson Allen.

The Bucks’ bench will have a similar feel, too, after fan favorites Pat Connaughton and Bobby Portis agreed to multi-year contract extensions. Veteran Wesley Matthews, a Wisconsin native, is back for a 13th season hoping to finally win his first championship.

In all, 17 of the 20 players on the roster to start training camp were with the Bucks last season, a kind of continuity that’s almost unheard of in the modern National Basketball Association.

“I think it’s a record for me in my almost 30 years in the NBA,” head coach Mike Budenholzer said during the team’s annual media day event. “It speaks mostly to the belief in and the quality of our players. We feel blessed because we have a really good team and it’s really hard to keep a team together. When you’re winning at a high level, teams want your players. I just can’t say enough about how excited we are.”

Even with so many players under contract for 2022-23, general manager Jon Horst’s offseason was far from quiet. In some ways, his job was even more challenging than years past as he tried to fill the few open spots on the roster with talented players while also navigating a challenging salary cap situation — a situation that became even more challenging after working out the deals for Connaughton and Portis.

“It’s hard to bring back a team, particularly when you have a successful team with young players that other teams want,” Horst said. “And it’s hard to add impactful players when you have so many cap limitations but that’s our job.”

Horst’s most significant offseason acquisition was veteran swingman Joe Ingles, who will miss the beginning of the regular season while continuing his rehab after undergoing ACL surgery in February.

Beyond that, though, he and Budenholzer are counting multiple internal factors to help the Bucks get back to championship form: improvement from Milwaukee’s veterans, growth from the young players and most importantly, a return to full-strength for those who battled through injuries last season.

“We believe in our group,” Horst said. “I think there’s a lot of strength and value in internal improvement.”

So, too, does Antetokounmpo who says he’s just as desperate to win another championship as he was to win his first. And knowing who he’s going into battle with makes him all the more confident that it can happen.

“I love playing with people I’ve played with before,” Antetokounmpo said. “You know (their game) and what kind of people they are. Its good to have the same people around. We have a team full of great human beings

“I’ve been with Khris (Middleton) 10 years now. With Jrue (Holiday) three years. PC (Pat Connaughton), Brook (Lopez) five years, Bobby (Portis), three years. It’s just nice to have the same people around, people that you’ve won a championship with. We try to work harder and get better to win another one. So you don’t see it very often in the NBA when you have the same group of people and you just add to it.”