The Milwaukee Bucks are coming off the worst record in franchise history, have had exactly one winning season in the past 11 years and are projected to top out at around 30 wins in 2014-’15.
I could not be more excited.
Contrary to Drake’s experience, I started at the top in my Bucks fan career. And now I’m here at the bottom, eyes toward owning the future with visions of Jabari and Giannis 2-on-1’s dancing in my head.
Understanding why the Bucks’ minuscule fan base is excited at a time like this requires a lesson in history. Let’s take a look back at the team’s demoralizing decline and subsequent reasons for revival.
When Milwaukee lost to Philadelphia in the 2001 Eastern Conference Finals, I actually started crying. It’s the only time I ever remember crying for a professional sports team, though I’m sure I teared up at least once watching the always miserable, early-aughts Brewers lose, and lose, and lose.
I was only six years old at the time. At that age you don’t really understand sports, you just follow whichever team your dad likes. And when that team’s season ends and you experience sports heartbreak for the first time, it’s devastating.
In an effort to console me, my dad turned to me and said, “They’ll be back next year.”
We haven’t won a playoff series since.
Gary effing Payton
“Wait,” said a slightly-more-informed-but-still-only-eight-years-old Bucks fan. “We just traded Ray Allen for some old guy named Gary Payton? Like, my favorite player Ray Allen? The guy whose jersey I have? He’s gone!?”
Yeah, Milwaukee’s franchise cornerstone was traded for a total of 34 games of Gary Payton before he left in free agency. The Bucks gave up 27-year-old and three-time all-star Allen, two other players and a first round pick, for a 34-year-old Payton and Desmond Mason.
For a while I convinced myself that Mason was my favorite player as a defense mechanism. You get used to having defense mechanisms when you root for a team with a perpetual inferiority complex.
This trade was the beginning of the free fall. The Bucks still haven’t had a seminal player like Allen since he left, though there may be an answer or two on the roster. More on that soon.
Offseason misadventures
God, where do I start? Let’s just kick it back to 2005 for a shining example. General manager Larry Harris was there to screw with the team and chew bubble gum, and I'm all out of cliches.
First, the Bucks landed the No. 1 overall draft pick. Great, right? The two previous years saw LeBron James and Dwight Howard get taken first overall. We got Andrew Bogut. Hooray!
Then the Bucks gave sharpshooter Michael Redd a six-year, $91 million contract. Redd was really, really good, but he only played in 266 of a possible 492 games during the deal due to injury.
Then time for some Bobby Simmons action. The Bucks originally pursued Simmons, the reigning Most Improved Player, in case Redd left in free agency. He didn’t. Sign Simmons anyway! And give him five years and $47 million to boot. Simmons averaged 10.6 points per game in his Bucks career.
Oh, but Harris wasn’t done yet! Remember, he drafted Bogut, a center, with the top overall pick. So naturally he signed the current center on the roster, Dan Gadzuric, to a six-year, $36 million deal. Sigh.
There was also Yi, Charlie Bell, Joe Alexander, Drew Gooden and Tobias Harris-for-J.J. Redick in the years to come, but 2005 was a microcosm of the Bucks’ recent history: bad timing, bad luck and bad decisions.
That one time we thought Brandon Jennings was really good
In his seventh game as a pro, rookie Brandon Jennings dropped 55 points on Golden State. Almost immediately he was anointed as the “Young Buck,” a label that can basically be applied to any random young player on the roster (and this guy).
This would go on to be the “Fear the Deer” season, the one tiny bit of Bucks’ revival in the past decade. The team went 46-36 and lost in seven games to Atlanta in the playoffs, thanks to great years from Bogut and midseason pickup John Salmons.
Jennings basically stalled after that, never really developing any further. He was supposed to be the point guard of the future; instead he just alienated fans by alluding to his unhappiness in the city. He was traded in the summer of 2013.
“Giannis WHO?” Oh wait never mind
The quote in the subtitle was the collective opinion of my friends and I when the Bucks selected Giannis Antetokounmpo in the 2013 NBA Draft. Who was this guy? Another no-name player to add to the Bucks’ roster.
We were all wrong. From his endearing personality to his immense athleticism, Giannis quickly won over the entire fan base.
He’s 19 years old and can play any position on the floor. If that doesn’t get you excited then you must not have a pulse.
New ownership and Jabari Parker
Longtime owner Herb Kohl sold the Bucks in April to a group led by businessmen Marc Lasry and Wes Edens. Kohl deserves all the credit in the world for keeping the Bucks in Milwaukee, but he really had no idea how to run a basketball team.
During Kohl’s tenure, the front office was routinely pressured to field a semi-competitive team. The Bucks were stuck in NBA purgatory—never good enough to make a playoff run, never bad enough to consistently land high draft picks (maybe Larry Harris has an excuse ... No, no he doesn’t).
Though the Bucks were engineered to make the playoffs last season, they bottomed out (thankfully) and landed the No. 2 pick in the draft, taking Duke’s Jabari Parker. This gives Milwaukee two young studs in Parker and Giannis. As they progress and the team adds more talent around them, the Bucks will become legitimate contenders in the Eastern Conference.
They aren’t there yet, that’s for sure. But they’re finally on the right track. Buckle up. (Ha, get it? Couldn’t resist.)
