What’s there to say about the Milwaukee Bucks right now? At this point in the season, the team has added some veterans to bolster its bench. Starters are missing time to tend to minor injuries and rest up for yet another—hopefully lengthy—postseason run. And depending on who you ask, Khris Middleton is either the second coming of Michael Jordan or the worst player in NBA history. We’ll save our hand-hitting analysis and bold takes for the playoffs and, instead, dive into some different numbers at this point in the season: uniform numbers.
Over the course of the franchise’s over-half-century history, the Bucks have employed a lot of players. Each of those players had a jersey number (well, almost all of them). Some guys even wore more than one number during their time with the team (such as two-way player and default best Buck to ever wear number 66 Axel Toupane). Shockingly, lots of numbers have never been worn by a Bucks player in the regular season. Others, such as numbers like 21 and 34 are stacked with both current and former stars who have donned the numeral. Numbers like 51, on the other hand, are pretty slim pickings.
Just as we’ve done with Packers and Brewers jersey numbers before this, we figured we’d determine the best Milwaukee Bucks player to wear every jersey number. Just to be clear, we’re selecting the player had the best career AS A MILWAUKEE BUCKS PLAYER—sorry, Gary Payton!—while wearing that particular number in the regular season. Some picks are no-brainers. Some selections are controversial. Two of them are Ersan Ilyasova. We stand by all of them. Enjoy!
00 — O.J. Mayo
0 —Donte DiVincenzo
1 — Oscar Robertson
2 — Junior Bridgeman
3 — Brandon Jennings
4 — Sidney Moncrief
5 — Tim Thomas
6 — Andrew Bogut
7 — Ersan Ilyasova
8 — Marques Johnson
9 — Michael Beasley
10 — Bob Dandridge
11 — Brook Lopez
12 — Luc Mbah a Moute
13 — Glenn Robinson
14 — Jon McGlocklin
15 — Jim Price
16 — Bob Lanier
17 — Anthony Mason
18 — Curtis Perry
19 — Dick Cunningham
20 — Sam Cassell
21 — Jrue Holiday
22 — Khris Middleton
23 — Alex English
24 — Desmond Mason
25 — Paul Pressey
26 — Kyle Korver
27 — Zaza Pachulia
28 — Andrew Lang
30 — Blue Edwards
31 — John Henson
32 — Brian Winters
33 — Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
34 — Giannis Antetokounmpo
35 — Christian Wood (There are no standout 35s and this will make some people weirdly happy)
36 — Dave Cowens
40 — Frank Brickowski
41 — Nikola Mirotić
42 — Vin Baker
43 — Jack Sikma
44 — Keith Van Horn
45 — Randy Breuer
50 — Dan Gadzuric
51 — Michael Ruffin
52 — Chucky Brown
53 — Alton Lister
54 — Brad Lohaus
55 — Scott Williams
66 — Axel Toupane
77 — Ersan Ilyasova