Former NBA player Gilbert Arenas had a notorious “hit list,” a reminder seared into his brain of every team who let him slide into the second round of the 2001 NBA Draft. Finally snagged with the 32nd pick by the Golden State Warriors, Arenas then methodically set about extracting payback against those teams throughout his career.

Malcolm Brogdon isn’t as outspoken as Arenas, nor as blatant in resenting the slights he felt on June 23 as team after team passed on him at the 2016 NBA Draft in Brooklyn. But he was paying attention then, and he’s paying attention now in what so far has been an overachieving first season as a Milwaukee Bucks point guard.

“My whole career, I’ve been an underdog, I’ve been underestimated,” Brogdon said after Milwaukee’s game against New York on Friday. “Therefore I’ve had a chip on my shoulder my entire career.

“Being drafted in the second round when you think you’re supposed to be in the first round, a lottery pick, the chip grows bigger. And you have more to prove.”

Brogdon’s use of “entire” in describing his career has more than a little to do with the latest helping of disrespect he had to swallow last summer. He wasn’t a one-and-done prospect in college, instead spending four seasons at Virginia and sticking around for five scholastic years (redshirted in 2012-13 after foot surgery).

Even when he enrolled at the Charlottesville, Va., school, Brogdon only caught the eye of coach Tony Bennett at the Peach Jam AAU tournament in the spring of 2010. Bennett liked what he saw of Brogdon’s game – he was sturdy and big for a point guard then, a full 6-foot-5 and 215 pounds now – and assumed the big dogs of the NCAA, North Carolina and Duke, stalking him.

Nope. Only Clemson.

Bennett phoned Brogdon later, sealing the deal from his side immediately. “Within like a minute, you could tell he was different, just by the way he spoke,” the Cavaliers coach said.

Brogdon’s maturity impressed folks along the way – he averaged 18.2 points, 4.1 rebounds and 3.1 assists as a senior – and one Bucks insider who met him at a pre-draft camp last spring came away thinking, “We need this guy. Whether he ever plays for us or not.” But the meat market that is the draft favors talent, timed and measured skills and the sort of raw potential more typical of 19-year-olds, not 23-going-on-24-year-olds such as Brogdon.