MILWAUKEE — For the first time since the 2025 NBA trade deadline, Milwaukee Bucks general manager Jon Horst spoke with reporters on Monday night about his team’s roster decisions.
The Bucks were busy at the deadline, making two moves that sent out four players and brought back three players to Milwaukee. In a four-team deal, the Bucks sent Khris Middleton and AJ Johnson to the Washington Wizards and received Kyle Kuzma from Washington and Jericho Sims from the New York Knicks. In another move just before the deadline, the Bucks sent third-year wing MarJon Beauchamp to the L.A. Clippers for Kevin Porter Jr., a 24-year-old guard in his fifth NBA season.
The headliner, though, was the decision to part with Middleton, 33, a three-time All-Star who over the course of a 12-year run made himself one of the greatest players in franchise history. Horst said it was not easy to trade a man who played such a huge role in the team’s 2021 NBA title run.
“I’m incredibly close with Khris personally, his family. I love them,” Horst said. “I probably have more Middleton jerseys in my house than anything and will still have more Middleton jerseys in my house than anything. So not comfortable with it.”
But Horst said he had to set his personal feelings aside and make a trade that he thinks will help the Bucks maximize their current championship window, saying he does “believe that we did the right thing for the right reasons, and hopefully in the right way.”
Horst went into detail in a wide-ranging interview, explaining why he traded Middleton, why Kuzma was the guy he wanted in return, and more. Here are the highlights.
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Why trade Middleton?
While Horst may not have ever gotten comfortable with the idea of trading his veteran star, he was steadfast in his belief that it made the Bucks better.
“This isn’t a Khris or a Kyle comparison, although that’s the easy thing to do,” Horst said. “It’s the team before the trade deadline and the team after the trade deadline … we felt like in totality, we positioned ourselves to have a better run this year.
“In a really weird way — that doesn’t do anything to diminish the multi-time, three-time All-Star, Olympian, NBA champion, pillar in the community, everything that Khris Middleton was for this franchise for over a decade. … So, not comfortable with it. Still never will be comfortable with it. But do believe that we did the right thing for the right reasons, and hopefully in the right way.”
In Horst’s opinion, it isn’t necessarily just about the two headliners in the deal, because moving Middleton created greater depth throughout the roster.
“I just think collectively, I think we’re deeper in the spots we needed to be deeper,” Horst said. “This gave us an opportunity to diversify a little bit, to kind of put money and talent and roster spots in other places where I thought we needed help.”
Why Kuzma?
In 32 games with the Washington Wizards, Kuzma averaged 15.2 points, 5.8 rebounds and 2.5 assists in 27.7 minutes per game on 42 percent shooting from the field, 28.1 percent from 3.
While those numbers were not impressive, both Horst and head coach Doc Rivers believe that Kuzma has a better chance of realizing his potential by playing on a good team with more talent around him in a smaller role.
“At 29 years old, we strongly believe that he’s in his prime and so we can see better basketball out of Kyle Kuzma than we have the last couple years,” Horst said. “We believe that, in our system, playing with our guys.”
On top of that, the Bucks’ lead decision-maker believes Kuzma gives the Bucks more versatility on the offensive end.
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“I think that Kyle gives us more chances to compete with more, like different teams, different matchups,” Horst said. “Kyle is a great ball-mover. His assists numbers and box score stats may not always show his impact, but he just passes to move the ball, he’s not hunting assists. So I think that is something that is going to help us.”
On the defensive end, Horst believes the 6-foot-9 Kuzma can affect the game in a vastly different way than Middleton and offer the Bucks a greater diversity of options.
“You watch him go from guarding [Tyrese] Maxey to [Joel] Embiid in a game and I would say pretty effectively, I think that shows some of his defensive versatility,” Horst said. “Coming over on a weak-side shot block, he’s a good rim protector. Not always as your primary first rim protector, but as a secondary rim protector coming over and making plays like that, he’s very good.”
Horst also pointed to Kuzma’s work in transition as giving a different look to the Bucks’ attack, calling him “Giannis-like in effectiveness and efficiency and frequency in transition.”
How much did money play a factor in the deal?
Milwaukee’s deadline moves put the team under the NBA’s prohibitive second apron. By doing so, the team cut a large chunk off their luxury tax payment for the season and also opened up greater roster flexibility moving forward.
When asked about the financial benefits of his moves, Horst told reporters that there was no mandate from ownership to get under the second apron.
“The goal and the intent from Jimmy (Haslam), Dee (Haslam), Wes (Edens), Jamie (Dinan), they’ve done nothing but resource this team and want to win,” Horst said. “Their only mandate is, ‘We want to win this year. What do we do to try to win this year?’ And we believe that this gives us a better chance to win this year.
“It happens to also put us under the second apron, which gives us some benefits going forward. There’s no question. And we’ll hopefully maximize those benefits. But that wasn’t the intent.”
Ultimately though, Horst admitted that the moves the Bucks made at the deadline did not happen by accident.
“It didn’t fall out of the air,” Horst said of the benefit of moving under the second apron. “But when you navigate different transactions and opportunities, starting with the fact that we want to get better, we want to get deep, add to our versatility and you start studying the ways in which you can execute those, and if you can generate that opportunity, you go for it. That’s how we approached it. But it was by no means the motive.”
Did Horst ask Giannis about the trade?
Antetokounmpo, the Bucks’ two-time NBA MVP, has never played a game without Middleton on the Bucks’ active roster. For 12 seasons, those two were the standard bearers of Bucks basketball.
But Horst insists that he did not ask Antetokounmpo about trading Middleton before making the deal.
“It didn’t happen,” Horst said.
From Horst’s perspective, Antetokounmpo trusts him to run the franchise and make the moves that will make the team better and being asked about moves could only put his star player in an awkward position.
“I didn’t talk to him about this,” Horst said. “And that comes out of a career together, of going through transactions, understanding what he expects of us to run a franchise and do our jobs, what we expect of him to do his job. And he trusts. And it doesn’t mean he agrees with it. He would or would not have stamped it, I don’t know. And I decided not to put him in that position.”
Required reading
(Photo: Morry Gash / AP)
