The Milwaukee Bucks opened their season against the Washington Wizards for the second straight year, but this one carried a sharper edge: it was Milwaukee’s first official game without Giannis Antetokounmpo on the roster in 13 years. For a franchise that built its recent identity around him, the opener was less a routine start than the beginning of a new phase.
That is why the Bucks vs Wizards matchup drew attention on opening night. Milwaukee came in after going 2-3 in five preseason games, while Washington entered with a roster that has been heavily reworked and is supposed to look more competitive now. The game put those two tracks side by side, with one team trying to start over and the other trying to prove its reset is real.
Giannis had already made clear how much the end of his run meant, calling it “one hell of a ride” and saying that all good things must come to an end. The Bucks now have to show that the next part can work without him. Taylor Jenkins has set that path around defensive intensity and rebounding, the kind of basics that matter most when a team is trying to stabilize after a major loss.
Washington has been in a different kind of transition. Over the past three seasons, the Wizards went 50-196 and sank to a 17-65 record last season, then tried to pull themselves out of that cycle by drafting Alex Sarr with the second pick in 2024 and adding AJ Dybantsa as the final piece of the rebuild. AJ was out for the game with an ankle injury, which only added to the sense that the roster is still being assembled in real time.
The strange part is that Washington is also trying to win now. It traded for Trae Young midway through last season and signed him to a gargantuan deal, while Anthony Davis, Deandre Ayton and Khris Middleton have all been part of the roster changes that followed. Middleton, in particular, came back to Washington after the Wizards dealt him to the Mavs as part of the Anthony Davis trade at last season’s deadline, turning the opener into a reunion as much as a season start.
That is the friction inside this game. Washington is supposed to be out of the tanking phase, but it is still carrying the look of a team learning itself one piece at a time. Milwaukee, meanwhile, is trying to define what comes after Antetokounmpo. The answer will not come in one night, but the first test of that life arrived immediately, in a season opener against a team trying to prove its own rebuild has finally turned the corner.
