Nets might be biggest surprising winners of early-season Bucks struggles

If you're basking in the slow start of the 2024-25 Milwaukee Bucks, you might be a Brooklyn Nets fan. Or maybe you're just a hater. To each their own, right? If you do fall into that first category, though, you hope the Bucks 1-6 start is a sign of things to come in Milwaukee this year, and it has nothing to do with this shot:

Well, it might have a little to do with that shot (again, to each their own), but it's mostly because the Nets own the Bucks first-round pick in 2025, so the worse Milwaukee is, the better that pick will become for the Nets.

Granted, Brooklyn is also hoping Milwaukee doesn't fully bottom out because the pick is top-four protected — meaning the Bucks keep the pick if it falls in the top four — but Giannis Antetokounmpo and Damian Lillard are still on this team so Nets fans probably don't have to worry about that much of a disaster.

In a stacked 2025 NBA Draft that includes Duke super-prospect Cooper Flagg and plenty of other top-flight freshmen, having their own pick and another potential lottery pick from the Bucks is a pretty great spot for the Nets to be in.

How did the Brooklyn Nets receive this pick?

Are you paying attention? There will be a quiz on this at the end of the article.

Brooklyn acquired Milwaukee's 2025 pick from New York in the Mikal Bridges trade in June 2024. New York had the pick from Detroit via the 2023 draft night trade which sent Jalen Duren from the Hornets to the Pistons and picks to the Hornets. Detroit got the pick from Portland in the Jerami Grant trade. Portland had that pick from the CJ McCollum trade to New Orleans, and New Orleans had the pick because of the Jrue Holiday trade in 2020.

So, just to recap, this pick has gone from Milwaukee to New Orleans to Portland to Detroit to New York to Brooklyn.

What on Earth?

No matter how the Nets got this pick, they're pretty thrilled to have it right now as Milwaukee sputters to start the season. Giannis and company are going to figure things out at least to a degree, so this pick probably won't be as juicy by season's end as it looks now, but still — two weeks in, it seems like a pretty good year to have the Bucks first-round pick.