Over the last three years, the Milwaukee Bucks have taken five players in the NBA Draft: Tyler Smith, AJ Johnson, Chris Livingston, Bogoljub Markovic, and Andre Jackson Jr. Only one of them is on the roster to open the 2025-26 NBA season, and it's Jackson, who had three years of college experience. Combined, the rest of them had just one year total before coming to the Bucks.
All this shows is that drafting project players when contending for a title is tough to do because there isn't a clear-cut pathway to develop them, which leads to some tough calls down the line.