Bucks take T&T’s Malique ‘Baby Giannis’ Lewis in NBA draft

Trinidad and To­ba­go-born small for­ward Malique Lewis was se­lect­ed by the Wash­ing­ton Wiz­ards with pick num­ber 30 (60th over­all) of the sec­ond round of the 2026 NBA Draft at Bar­clays Cen­tre in Brook­lyn, New York, on Wednes­day night. Hav­ing been se­lect­ed by Wash­ing­ton, Lewis was then trad­ed im­me­di­ate­ly to the Mil­wau­kee Bucks.

Stand­ing at six feet and eight inch­es tall, with a wingspan of sev­en feet and one inch, the San Fer­nan­do na­tive comes in­to the league via an in­ter­est­ing path that took him from T&T to Spain, the Unit­ed States, and fi­nal­ly to Aus­tralia be­fore his big draft night.

A late bloomer in a man­ner of speak­ing, Lewis didn’t start play­ing bas­ket­ball un­til his ear­ly teens, af­ter be­ing con­vinced to switch from foot­ball to bas­ket­ball by Jef­frey Har­ris, then the phys­i­cal ed­u­ca­tion teacher at Pleas­antville Sec­ondary School in San Fer­nan­do. Lewis moved to Spain at age 16 in 2021, where he joined Fuen­labra­da in the Liga ACB, the top pro­fes­sion­al bas­ket­ball di­vi­sion of the Span­ish bas­ket­ball league sys­tem.

In his first sea­son, Lewis logged just two min­utes in three ap­pear­ances but showed enough promise to be en­trust­ed with 19 games the fol­low­ing sea­son at an av­er­age of 18 min­utes per game. Lewis scored 4.8 points and pulled 3.5 re­bounds. In May 2023, he scored 24 points against Obradoiro to be­come the league’s fourth-high­est sin­gle-game scor­er ever.

These stat lines con­tin­ued to high­light Lewis’ po­ten­tial and would earn him a move to the NBA G League for the 2023-2024 sea­son, join­ing the Mex­i­co City Cap­i­tanes. He would go on to play 50 times for them while av­er­ag­ing 8.3 points and 5.8 re­bounds, log­ging more than 25 min­utes per game.

His next ad­ven­ture took him to the South East Mel­bourne Phoenix in Aus­tralia’s Na­tion­al Bas­ket­ball League (NBL) as part of the league’s Next Stars pro­gramme ahead of the 2024-25 sea­son. With­out hes­i­ta­tion, Lewis meshed seam­less­ly in­to the new en­vi­ron­ment. A sea­son-high 15-point game in No­vem­ber 2024 un­der­pinned a stel­lar de­but sea­son where he av­er­aged 6.8 points, 4.1 re­bounds and 1.0 as­sists per game.

Lewis de­clared for and then with­drew from the 2024 and 2025 NBA drafts be­fore go­ing on to im­prove his NBL ca­reer high with 23 points for Phoenix in a 103-102 vic­to­ry over the Tas­ma­nia Jack­Jumpers on No­vem­ber 6, 2025.

The phys­i­cal­i­ty of the NBL pro­vid­ed the foun­da­tion for him to be­come a bit more pol­ished be­fore this year’s draft, and af­ter com­plet­ing six pre-draft work­outs with var­i­ous clubs, Lewis ap­peared to prove his readi­ness when the Bucks, via the Wiz­ards, con­curred and made him the 13th play­er to be draft­ed di­rect­ly from the NBL to the NBA.

Lewis’ man­ag­er and men­tor, Jonathan Weekes, told Guardian Me­dia Sport that it was a strate­gic move which paid off, say­ing, “So the first year he went, he wasn’t ready. Then he pulled out last year be­cause, one, we didn’t get any guar­an­tees of him get­ting draft­ed. And two, we had an op­por­tu­ni­ty in Aus­tralia to de­vel­op and to grow his game.

“The NBL is prob­a­bly in the top five leagues in the world and prob­a­bly the top three in terms of phys­i­cal­i­ty af­ter the NBA and ACB. So he played in two of the tough­est leagues in the world pri­or to get­ting to the NBA. So his ex­pe­ri­ence jour­ney has been prepped for this type of sit­u­a­tion.”

With Lewis, the Bucks ac­quire a play­er nick­named ‘Ba­by Gi­an­nis’ be­cause of a strik­ing re­sem­blance to the re­cent­ly trad­ed Mil­wau­kee leg­end and two-time NBA MVP Gi­an­nis An­te­tok­oun­m­po. But com­par­isons to the Greek Freak do not stop at ap­pear­ance, ac­cord­ing to Weekes.

“If you look at Gi­an­nis, they could be cousins; they could be broth­ers, but yeah, play­ing style too,” he said.

Ex­perts de­scribe Lewis as a “three-and-D” play­er, re­fer­ring to his rep­u­ta­tion as a re­li­able three-point scor­ing op­tion from catch-and-shoot three-point op­por­tu­ni­ties as well as his abil­i­ty to play tough, ver­sa­tile de­fence.

Si­mon Mitchell, gen­er­al man­ag­er of bas­ket­ball op­er­a­tions at the Mel­bourne Phoenix, said, “Malique came to us as an ath­let­ic tal­ent, and through his ded­i­ca­tion to his craft and the sup­port from our per­for­mance team, he has ex­it­ed as a re­al­ly strong pack­age at that wing spot. The Bucks are get­ting a great three-and-D play­er, some­one who can make de­ci­sions off the drib­ble, but above all else, they’re get­ting a re­al­ly great per­son.”

Af­ter sur­pris­ing­ly trad­ing An­te­tok­oun­m­po to the Mi­a­mi Heat on Tues­day, it might be in­struc­tive that the Bucks moved moun­tains to get Lewis. The 2024 NBA cham­pi­ons didn’t have a sec­ond-round draft pick at the start of pro­ceed­ings at Bar­clays Cen­tre, but were part of a three-team trade in­volv­ing the Or­lan­do Mag­ic and the Wiz­ards to gain the rights to the fi­nal pick of the night, which they used to choose Lewis.

Weekes said the prospect of Lewis be­ing ex­posed to a fran­chise that holds a blue­print to de­vel­op a play­er of a sim­i­lar na­ture and tra­jec­to­ry is what ex­cites them the most af­ter the draft.

“They share a lot of sim­i­lar­i­ties that the Bucks are fa­mil­iar with, you know?” he said.

“They have some­one who did it al­ready. So you could fol­low that foot­step. Some­one who came from the Span­ish route, who was very raw, whose first sport was foot­ball.

“I’m more re­lieved be­cause I’ve been on his jour­ney with him since he was 15. A lot of ups and downs, a lot of sac­ri­fices, a lot of fail­ures, for this one big vic­to­ry. So for me, it’s more about see­ing and en­joy­ing some­one’s win, en­joy­ing some­one’s hap­pi­ness, and just be­ing along for the ride.”