Former Virginia Military Institute standout Jake Stephens is getting another opportunity to reach the NBA.<\/p>\n
The Milwaukee Bucks announced Thursday that they have signed Stephens, a 6-foot-11, 270-pound center who spent last season playing professionally in Croatia.<\/p>\n
Stephens, 26, appeared in 61 games, including 30 starts, for KK Split in the Croatian A-1 League and Adriatic League ABA. He averaged 9.1 points, 4.6 rebounds and 1.1 assists in 16.1 minutes per game while shooting 54.2% from the field.<\/p>\n
He earned Adriatic League ABA Round 4 MVP honors and scored in double figures 26 times, including four 20-point games and one 30-point performance. He also recorded four double-doubles.<\/p>\n
The Bunker Hill, West Virginia, native began his professional career in the NBA G League during the 2023-24 season, playing 41 games between the Capital City Go-Go and Stockton Kings.<\/p>\n
Before turning pro, Stephens spent five seasons in college, playing at VMI from 2018-22 before transferring to Chattanooga for his final season.<\/p>\n
Across 144 collegiate games, including 122 starts, Stephens averaged 13.5 points, 6.7 rebounds, 2.5 assists and 1.4 blocks per game. He shot 50% from the field and earned All-Southern Conference honors three times.<\/p>\n
Stephens finished his college career as the Southern Conference\u2019s career leader in defensive rebounds with 767. He also ranked ninth in conference history in games played and 12th in blocks.<\/p>\n
The Bucks\u2019 roster currently lists Stephens as a center. His signing comes as Milwaukee prepares for training camp and adds another big man to the team\u2019s front court competition.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 by WSLS 10 – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former Virginia Military Institute standout Jake Stephens is getting another opportunity to reach the NBA. The Milwaukee Bucks…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":838807,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3775],"tags":[7,103,19765,217,325,4251,102,121,3871,6,87337],"class_list":["post-838806","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-milwaukee-bucks","tag-basketball","tag-bucks","tag-chattanooga-mocs","tag-college-basketball","tag-college-sports","tag-local-sports","tag-milwaukee","tag-milwaukee-bucks","tag-milwaukeebucks","tag-nba","tag-vmi-keydets"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/117296565031514314","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/838806","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=838806"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/838806\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/838807"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=838806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=838806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=838806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}