The Milwaukee Bucks went through one of the most dramatic offseasons of any NBA team by pulling off a move no one expected heading into the summer.

With nine-time All-Star Damian Lillard expected to miss much of the 2025-26 season recovering from a torn left Achilles tendon, the Bucks made the difficult decision to waive Lillard and then stretch the nearly $113 million remaining on his contract over the next five seasons. While the move puts roughly $22.5 million of dead money on their salary cap books each of those five seasons, it also helped open up enough cap space for the Bucks to sign Myles Turner, one of the biggest free agents on the market, to a four-year, $108.9 million contract.

But for Bucks general manager Jon Horst, there is one guiding principle behind all decisions.

“Maximizing Giannis’ prime, our opportunities to win, I feel like that’s our responsibility always,” he said in an exclusive interview with The Athletic this week. “So it was really a now versus future decision.”

The rest of the offseason was a bit less dramatic as the Bucks have only added three new players from outside the organization thus far and brought back six of their own free agents who played in Milwaukee last season, but that combination of moves was still one of the most surprising roster shake-ups of the summer.

To discuss everything that happened this summer, The Athletic sat down with Horst at NBA Summer League for a wide-ranging conversation that touched on each move and some of the larger philosophical ideas behind the team’s offseason. Below, you will find Part 1 of that conversation, focusing on big-picture topics for the franchise.

On Friday, we will post Part 2 of that conversation that goes deeper into each move and the impact Horst believes those players will have for the Bucks next season.

Highlights from Part 1 include Horst explaining:

• How improving the team for next season outweighed the future risk of dead money on the salary cap books: “We were dealing with a really big hurdle and complication that we had to figure out how to deal with now.”

• When the organization started contemplating using the waive-and-stretch to acquire Turner: “This was (an avenue) that we were always exploring. And Myles has always been a target.”

• Why the team has decided to lean into Giannis Antetokounmpo’s playmaking even more: “He truly is becoming a real point guard.”

• Why he believes in Doc Rivers: “He’s a championship-level coach. He’s the right coach to get us to where we want to go.”

• Whether the organization has done enough this offseason: “I’ve done everything within my human possible power this offseason.”

(This interview was lightly edited for clarity.)

Let’s start with the biggest move of the offseason. You had the chance to talk about Myles Turner already in his introductory news conference, so I wanted to talk about the move itself. At The Athletic, we called it a risk, a gamble to put $22.5 million of dead money on your books for the next five years. That impediment, that dead money, how do you feel like you will be able to work around it to once again put the team in position to contend in the Eastern Conference?

I think every decision, every move that you make, has risk and reward, so there’s nothing unique about that in this case. We looked at the opportunity to acquire a highly productive, elite free agent, who is in the prime of his career, and who is an incredible fit next to Giannis, as an opportunity for these next two seasons in particular, instead of what would have been Dame on our books at a full salary, as really opportunistic, more than anything.

The carry for the following three years, there’s no question that if you want to call it an impediment or another hurdle, that’s fine. But we were dealing with a really big hurdle and complication that we had to figure out how to deal with now, and the now matters more than anything. Maximizing Giannis’ prime, our opportunities to win, I feel like that’s our responsibility always. So it was really a now versus future decision.

That being said, Myles is an incredible player in the prime of his career for four years. So four of those five years, we have Myles Turner, so it wasn’t like we just did something now and then we have to take four years of risk beyond this year and four years of carry without any production. We have four years, at least, of Myles Turner at elite production while that’s on our books. And there (are) other things that we did, there (are) other moves that we made, other players we’re able to acquire because of this move now that I believe will outweigh the carry of the 20-plus million dollars that we have.