SSDL BLOG: “NBA Playoffs: The Milwaukee Bucks”
“NBA Playoffs: The Milwaukee Bucks”
June 21, 2021
“The First of Four Profiles of the 2021 NBA Final Four”
Los Angeles, California - I will not complain. The greatest franchise in all of sports, the defending NBA champion Los Angeles Lakers, was eliminated from the 2021 NBA playoffs in the first round, but I will offer no excuses nor express any dismay. One can have this kind of disposition when one’s favorite team has basically dominated the league since one was eight. It was that magical year of 1972 that the Lakers captured their first championship in the city of Los Angeles.
Over the almost 50 years of which I speak, the team wearing purple and yellow, or forum blue and gold if you prefer, has been to the NBA finals 19 times and have hung 12 championship banners. Bam! Step to that Celtics! Your numbers are half those in the last half century, with a mere nine appearances in the finals and only six championships. What rivalry?
That said, let us not forget, I am an almost respected writer who sometimes adheres to the idea of journalistic integrity. Therefore, I will now turn my attention to the four teams still standing in the next four blogs I publish. Given my affection for history and pop culture, I will be evaluating the remaining four teams in the 2021 NBA playoffs through that lens.
It is the Milwaukee Bucks and the Atlanta Hawks in the Eastern Conference finals, the Phoenix Suns and the Los Angeles Clippers in the Western Conference finals. In the past 50 years for those franchises have combined for two NBA Finals appearances and only the ’71 Bucks have won an NBA championship. I am not needlessly bragging on the Lakers 19 and 12, just giving perspective. That’s what nearly award winning journalists do in this business.
Up first, the Milwaukee Bucks.
The Milwaukee Bucks (est. 1968, 1971 NBA Champions):
It took a “Shock Rocker” from Detroit, Alice Cooper, to teach us in the 1992 film “Wayne’s World”, that Milwaukee is pronounced "mill-e-wah-que" which of course is Algonquin for "the good land.” The franchise, founded in 1968, was an expansion team and for a long stretch of time was owned by former U.S. Senator Herb Khol. That was, until he heard his “kohl-ing” and sold the team so he could run the family owned Khol’s department stores.
A fan contest was held to name the new team. The most votes went to the name “Robins” after Wisconsin’s state bird, not Batman’s side-kick who always seems to get his ass kicked by villains. Good thing they went with the second most popular choice, “Bucks”. One fan came up with some flimsy justification that the team would be “spirited, good jumpers and agile” like the white-tailed deer they were name for. That reasoning won him a new car.
For some reason, the new franchise based their uniforms on the Boston Celtics uniforms, featuring similar colors with block lettering and numbers. They did add a nice red trim to make it look like they weren’t ripping off the leprechaun lovers. We all know how those Southies can be irrational and vengeful about getting ripped off.
The Bucks originally played at the Milwaukee Arena, which went by the name of “MECCA Arena” from 1974-1988. There is a great ESPN “30 for 30” about how the hard scrabble, rust-belt city used public funds to commission an openly gay artist to paint the iconic basketball floor at MECCA Arena. When the team moved to the Bradley Center in 1988, that floor went into storage, then was listed as “scrap for sale”. A couple of Bucks fans saved it and then refurbished it, which led to the redesigned MECCA floor in 2013. Those guys should have won cars for that save.
The Bucks reached the promised land just three years later in 1971 when the then Lew Alcindor teamed with the “Big O”, Oscar Robertson, to win the team’s only NBA championship over the then Washington Bullets, becoming the fastest North American franchise to win a championship.
Alcindor by 1972 was Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and by 1974 he led the team back to the NBA finals, where they lost in seven to some team with green uniforms. Consider that Alcindor/Jabbar won three NCAA championships with UCLA in ’67, ’68 and ’69 and then an NBA title in ’71 and made a trip to the NBA finals in ’74. Legendary run. Then add in his run with the “Showtime” Lakers and those five titles in the 80’s and the fact that he is the leading scorer in the history of the NBA. It is criminal that he is not in every conversation as the greatest basketball player of all time.
No discussion of the Bucks is complete without talking about their mascot “Bango”. “Bango” was named after the teams legendary play-by-play announcer Eddie Douchette’s call of long range made baskets. “Jon McGlocklin with a jumper from way outside, BANGO!” Wonder if Douchette got a car for that?
Bango has been the Bucks official mascot since the opening game of the 1977-78 season. That game happened to be the night Kareem Abdul-Jabbar returned with his new team, the one that was wearing “forum blue and gold”.
It would be 21 years later that Bango would really make a name for himself. Bango was among a few chosen mascots to participate in the 2009 NBA All-Star Weekend in Phoenix. Performing during a skit, Bango was standing one of the basket’s rim when tragedy struck. First, a basketball hit him in his own private basket of balls. Then, his right leg slipped through the hoop and he fell on the rim, further traumatizing the basket area.
This was not part of the show! Poor Bango then slipped further and fell through the basket entirely. If you don’t think that is physically possible, then you don’t know Bango.
If you have the stomach for watching a grown man dressed as a white-tailed deer nearly destroyed, here is the YouTube link:
https://awfulannouncing.com/2009-articles/mascot-fail.html
Bango would miss the rest of the season on the MIL (Mascot Injured List). He would, however, make appearances at Milwaukee Bucks’ games in a wheelchair. Unlike the Celtic faker Paul Pierce in the 2008 NBA Finals, Bango was not using the wheelchair to hide the fact that he had pooped his pants. Bango had torn his ACL and was out for the season.
Bango did return and inspired the Bucks franchise to persevere and move forward. 12 years later, the franchise is one series win away from a third NBA Finals appearance.
Denny Lennon is the host of the Video Podcast, “Sports Stories with Denny Lennon” and the “Preps To Olympians” Live Show, available on YouTube and LA36 CableTV in Los Angeles County.
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