Gracin Bakumanya
The second pick for the Herd is a player who does have some brief history with the Bucks organization, which may have played a role in his selection.
Bakumanya entered the 2016 NBA Draft class as a complete mystery, puzzling NBA execs as to why he hadn’t withdrawn his name from contention and waited for another year. During that process, Bakumanya did visit the Bucks for a workout on June 21, 2016, in their final grouping prior to that year’s draft.
Having unsurprisingly gone undrafted in the following weeks, the native of the Democratic Republic of Congo did finally get the chance to show the wider NBA world his game when he joined up with the Northern Arizona Suns last season.
For his year with the Suns, Bakumanya only averaged 10.4 minutes across 40 games, racking up 2.7 points and 3.2 rebounds per game on 48.5 percent from the field.
While those stats aren’t exactly eye-popping, Bakumanya is still very young, raw, and capable of being molded into a real talent with the help of a top-class support system around him.