Milwaukee was awarded an NBA expansion franchise in 1968 and, after a 27-win debut season, won a coin flip for the rights to UCLA star Lew Alcindor, who would become Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. The acquisition of veteran guard Oscar Robertson in 1970 turned the young roster into an immediate powerhouse, and the Bucks won 66 games and the franchise's first NBA championship in just their third season, adding a second Finals trip in 1974 before Abdul-Jabbar was traded to Los Angeles in 1975. Don Nelson then guided Milwaukee through the late 1970s and 1980s with Sidney Moncrief and Marques Johnson leading a run of division titles, though the team could never return to the Finals and eventually slid into a long stretch of losing seasons during the 1990s.

A brief resurgence under coach George Karl, led by Ray Allen, Glenn Robinson, and Sam Cassell, produced a trip to the 2001 Eastern Conference finals, but the Bucks again drifted toward the league's lower tier for much of the 2000s and early 2010s. The 2013 draft of Giannis Antetokounmpo reshaped the franchise's future; his development into an MVP-caliber forward, paired with new ownership's 2018 move into Fiserv Forum, built a perennial contender that broke through for the franchise's first championship in half a century in 2021, with Antetokounmpo named Finals MVP. The team remained competitive through the mid-2020s, winning the 2024 NBA Cup, before a difficult 2025-26 season and front-office changes led to Antetokounmpo's departure.