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Bucks to hire familiar face as new head coach ahead of critical Giannis Antetokounmpo summer

The Bucks are turning to a former assistant to be their next head coach with the Giannis Antetokounmpo situation looming as Milwaukee enters the offseason.

The Bucks wasted zero time in searching for a new head coach after Doc Rivers opted to step down at the end of the 2025–26 season. On Thursday, reports emerged they’d found their man—and he’s a familiar face.

ESPN’s Shams Charania reported on Thursday afternoon that Milwaukee was finalizing a deal with Taylor Jenkins to become the next coach of the franchise. The 41-year-old was an assistant with the Bucks back in 2018–19 under Mike Budenholzer, the same year in which Giannis Antetokounmpo won his first MVP award, before getting hired as the Grizzlies coach. Jenkins lasted six seasons in Memphis, making three playoff appearances and compiling a 250–214 record during that span.

Jenkins was fired by the Grizzlies in March ‘25, an unexpected and shocking move at the time considering he had Memphis in the middle of the West playoff picture at the time.

He comes aboard in Milwaukee at a critical juncture. The relationship between the franchise and Antetokounmpo slowly crumbled over the course of the past season while losses and trade rumors piled up in equal measure; the final weeks of the year saw the two sides move into open warfare, with Antetokounmpo publicly demanding the NBA investigate his team for not letting him play. The Greek superstar could be on his way out this summer.

But for the meantime he has a new head coach in Jenkins. Antetokounmpo loved playing under Budenholzer and won a championship with him on the sideline, so perhaps this hire will begin to smooth things over between him and the Bucks.

Jenkins enjoyed brief, successful tenure in Milwaukee as an assistant

As noted above this marks Jenkins’s second time around on the bench at the Fiserv Forum. His first was quite successful.

Jenkins broke into the league at large with the Spurs’ G League team but his first NBA bench job came in Atlanta, where he was hired by Budenholzer to join his Hawks staff in ‘13. He then followed Budenholzer to Milwaukee when he was hired by the Bucks in ‘18.

Jenkins’s first and only season on the bench in Milwaukee was a good one. The Bucks won 60 games, a 16-win leap year over year, and Antetokounmpo brought home his first MVP award as he officially burst onto the “best player in the world” scene. They fell to the eventual champion Raptors in the second round of that year’s playoffs—but it proved a good audition for Jenkins, who was hired by the Grizzlies to become their new head coach that offseason.

Jenkins’s time in Memphis came to extremely abrupt end

The veteran coach had a good run in the Volunteer State. Jenkins was hired the same year the franchise drafted Ja Morant, joining 2018 lottery pick Jaren Jackson Jr. as the next young nucleus of the franchise. Under Jenkins they rose to great prominence and Morant in particular seemed ready to take the mantle as the next young superstar point guard in the NBA.

But, as we now know, that core wasn’t to be for very long. Memphis peaked with 56 wins in ‘22 and were defeated by the eventual champion Warriors in the second round of that year’s playoffs. The wheels came completely off afterwards, with suspensions and injuries dramatically derailing Morant’s career.

Jenkins’s time ran out last season. He was fired with only six games remaining in the year and it still isn’t entirely clear why. It may be as simple as it was time for a new voice in the locker room and ownership felt it couldn’t wait until the offseason. Either way he was replaced by Tuomas Iisalo, who was given the full-time job after Memphis was quickly eliminated in the first round of the ‘25 playoffs before going 25–57 in his first full season in ‘25–26.