YESTERDAY. TODAY. TOMORROW: Milwaukee Bucks Assistant GM Milt Newton on Faith, Perseverance, and Building the Future

From sneaking past the neighborhood brush to hoop on locked courts as a kid in St. Thomas to hoisting both an NCAA National Championship trophy with the 1988 Kansas Jayhawks and an NBA Championship ring as Assistant General Manager of the Milwaukee Bucks in 2021, Milt Newton’s story is anything but traditional. On the latest episode of Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow, host A-Biz sits down with Newton for a wildly entertaining, deeply transparent conversation that uncovers the grit, humor, and heart behind one of basketball’s sharpest front-office minds.

This isn’t just a standard sports recap—it’s a masterclass in resilience and real life. Newton opens up about his early years navigating D.C. as a 13-year-old with a thick island accent, including his chaotic first day of high school at Coolidge High, where the principal broke up a hallway brawl by putting boxing gloves on Milt and his opponent and sending them down to the basement to finish their business (followed by a mandatory month of cafeteria duty). He recounts how meeting his lifelong mentor and father figure through a simple game of pool turned his academic focus around, and how Hall of Fame legend Larry Brown helped launch his executive trajectory with a single phone call.

Newton takes listeners through the full arc of his career: building the NBA G League from scratch out of a hotel room, making early scouting calls on talent like Chris “Birdman” Andersen, and facing the raw heartbreak of getting let go in Minnesota after 24 years of grinding to reach the GM chair. Instead of folding during those 14 months out of the league, he humbly pivoted—becoming a self-described “master landscaper and master painter” at home, leaning into family time, and holding out faith until Milwaukee Bucks GM Jon Horst called him out of nowhere while he was running a youth camp back in the Virgin Islands.

Packed with iconic stories—like PJ Tucker completely shifting the Bucks’ locker room culture during the 2021 title run by teaching the squad to step over any line in the sand, Jrue Holiday’s late-night 2 a.m. declaration about his role, and the golden wisdom Milt received from his grandma (“If your ship don’t come in, swim out to it”)—this episode is an incredible look at what it truly takes to build a winning life on and off the court.

Stream the full episode of Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow with A-Biz now on HYFIN.org or on your favorite podcast app.