Milwaukee Bucks

The Milwaukee Bucks are an American professional basketball team based in Milwaukee. The Bucks compete in the National Basketball Association (NBA) as a member of the league's Eastern Conference Central Division. The team was founded in 1968 as an expansion team, and play at Fiserv Forum. Former U.S. Senator Herb Kohl was the long-time owner of the team, but on April 16, 2014, a group led by billionaire hedge fund managers Wes Edens and Marc Lasry agreed to purchase a majority interest in the team from Kohl, a sale which was approved by the owners of the NBA and its Board of Governors one month later on May 16. The team is managed by Jon Horst the team's former director of basketball operations, who took over from John Hammond.

The Bucks have won two league championships ( 1971, 2021), three conference titles (Western: 1971, 1974, Eastern: 2021), and 17 division titles (1971–1974, 1976, 1980–1986, 2001, 2019–2022). They have featured such notable players as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Oscar Robertson, Bob Dandridge, Sidney Moncrief, Bob Lanier, Terry Cummings, Glenn Robinson, Ray Allen, Michael Redd, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Khris Middleton and Jrue Holiday among others. Abdul-Jabbar and Antetokounmpo have been named the NBA's Most Valuable Player while playing for the Bucks, for a total of five MVP awards. They both are also the only players to win Finals MVP for the franchise. The Bucks are the only team to have won a championship in both the Eastern and Western conference.

Franchise history

1968–1969: Team creation

On January 22, 1968, the NBA awarded a franchise to Milwaukee Professional Sports and Services, Inc. (Milwaukee Pro), a group headed by Wesley Pavalon and Marvin Fishman. A fan contest was held to name the new team, with over 40,000 fans participating. While the most-voted fan entry was the ''Robins'', named for Wisconsin's state bird, the contest judges went with the second-most popular choice, the ''Bucks'', which was a reference to Wisconsin's official wild animal, the white-tailed deer. One fan, R. D. Trebilcox, was awarded a new car for his part in reasoning why the Bucks was a good nickname, saying that bucks were "spirited, good jumpers, fast and agile." The Bucks marked a return of the NBA to Milwaukee after 13 years; their previous team, the Hawks, played for four seasons in the early 1950s before moving to St. Louis in 1955 (they are now based in Atlanta). In October, the Bucks played their first NBA regular-season game against the Chicago Bulls before a Milwaukee Arena crowd of 8,467. As is typical with expansion teams, the Bucks' first season ( 1968–69) was a struggle. Their first victory came in their sixth game as the Bucks beat the Detroit Pistons 134–118; they won only 26 more games in their first year. That year, the Bucks' record earned them a coin flip against their expansion cousins, the Phoenix Suns, to see who would get the first pick in the upcoming draft. It was considered a foregone conclusion that the first pick in the draft would be Lew Alcindor of UCLA. The Bucks won the coin flip, but had to win a bidding war with the New York Nets of the upstart American Basketball Association (ABA) to secure him.

1969–1975: The Kareem Abdul-Jabbar era

With the addition of Alcindor, the Bucks finished with a 56–26 record in 1969–70, second-best in the league behind the New York Knicks. Not only was this a near-reversal of their inaugural season, but the 29-game improvement was the best in league history – a record which would stand for ten years until the Boston Celtics jumped from 29 wins in 1978–79 to 61 in 1979–80. The Bucks defeated the Philadelphia 76ers in five games in the Eastern Conference semifinals, only to be dispatched in five by the Knicks in the Eastern finals. Alcindor was a runaway selection for NBA Rookie of the Year.

The following season, the Bucks traded for Cincinnati Royals guard Oscar Robertson to complement Alcindor. Subsequently, the Bucks, now in the Western Conference, finished 66–16, the second-most wins in NBA history at the time, and still a franchise record. During the regular season, the Bucks recorded a then-NBA record 20-game win streak. Posting a 12–2 record in the playoffs, they won their first NBA championship on April 30, 1971, by sweeping the Baltimore Bullets in four games. By winning the championship in only their third season, the Bucks became one of the fastest true expansion teams in North American professional sports history to win a league championship.

The Bucks remained a powerhouse for the first half of the 1970s. In 1972, Alcindor, who had already privately converted to Islam and changed his name, publicly announced his name change to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. The Bucks reached the division/conference finals for the third year in a row, but lost to the Los Angeles Lakers in six games. In 1973, they recorded their third consecutive 60-win season, the first NBA team to do so, but injuries resulted in an early playoff exit. The Bucks were back in the 1974 NBA Finals against the Celtics. In game six of the series, Abdul-Jabbar made his famous " sky hook" shot in a classic double-overtime victory. However, the Bucks then lost in game seven, and did not return to the NBA Finals until 2021.

As the 1974–1975 season began, Abdul-Jabbar suffered a hand injury and the Bucks got off to a 3–13 start. After his return, other injuries befell the team, sending them to the bottom of their division with a 38-44 record. When the season ended, Abdul-Jabbar announced that he no longer wished to play for the Bucks and wanted to play in a larger market, either Los Angeles or New York. After the front office was unable to convince him to stay, the Bucks obliged Abdul-Jabbar's request by trading him to the Lakers on June 16, 1975, for Elmore Smith, Junior Bridgeman, Brian Winters, and David Meyers. The trade triggered a series of events that led to a change in the team's ownership. Minority owner and cable television executive Jim Fitzgerald opposed the trade and wanted to sell his stock. Although Fitzgerald was the team's largest single shareholder, he did not own enough stock to control the team.

1976–1979: Post-Abdul-Jabbar era

After the deal, the Bucks had several seasons in transition, but most of these players would go on to help the team. After being sold to Fitzgerald and several partners in 1976, the Bucks would enter into another era of greatness. It began with Don Nelson who became head coach in November 1976 after Larry Costello abruptly resigned. In the 1977 draft, the Bucks had three first-round picks and drafted Kent Benson, Marques Johnson and Ernie Grunfeld. Johnson would become a staple in the Bucks for years to come. Rookie Sidney Moncrief made his debut in 1979. Don Nelson went on to win two NBA Coach of the Year awards with the Bucks, both during seasons where the team won division titles, in 1983 and 1985.

On October 18, 1977, Abdul-Jabbar, playing with the Lakers, punched Benson during a game. Abdul-Jabbar broke his hand in the process. Benson had been aggressive under the boards and Abdul-Jabbar, a martial arts blackbelt, snapped. Abdul-Jabbar was fined $5,000 by the NBA and missed the next 20 games. Meanwhile, Benson never played as aggressively again and the Bucks traded him to the Detroit Pistons in 1980 for veteran center Bob Lanier to fill in the hole left by the departure of Abdul-Jabbar. They then won the Midwest Division title in 1980. After losing to Seattle in the semi-finals, the Bucks moved to the Eastern Conference's Central Division.

1979–1990: The Sidney Moncrief era

There, they would win six straight division titles and have .500 seasons for the next 11 years. Within those years, the Bucks became perennial Eastern Conference contenders, primarily due to the strong play of Moncrief, Marques Johnson, Paul Pressey, Junior Bridgeman and the arrival of Craig Hodges, Terry Cummings, Ricky Pierce and Jack Sikma from trades with the Los Angeles Clippers and Seattle SuperSonics respectively. However, the Bucks were unable to make it to the NBA Finals again, being eliminated by either the Celtics or the Sixers each time.

For much of the 1970s, the Bucks' colors were forest green, deep red and white. In 1978, they added various shades of green to the uniforms, and in 1985, they eliminated red from the team colors.

Noteworthy for the 1980s Bucks is that in 1983 they became the first, and until 2003, only team in NBA history to sweep the Boston Celtics in a best-of-seven playoff series, being the first team to meet and defeat Michael Jordan in a playoff series (during Jordan's rookie year), and hosting Julius Erving's final NBA game in the 1987 NBA playoffs, which would see the Bucks advancing with a game five first-round playoff victory.

Ownership and arena changes

In 1985, Fitzgerald and his partners (one of which was Stuart Shadel) decided to sell the Bucks. Fitzgerald was having health problems and some of his investors wanted to get out, and he was reeling from the failure of Sportsvue, a pioneering regional sports network–a failure that came in part because Milwaukee itself was not wired for cable. By then, Milwaukee Arena was the smallest arena in the NBA, and the city did not want to build a new one. Milwaukee businessman and future U.S. Senator Herb Kohl bought the Bucks after fears that out-of-town investors could buy the team and move it out of Milwaukee. Before the transaction was complete, broadcaster Lloyd Pettit and his wife, Jane Bradley Pettit

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