Trying to get back up that mountain
We're still sizing up just how this Milwaukee Bucks season has ended so soon
April 30, 1971 will always stand as a day to remember in Milwaukee Bucks history. Today, 52 years ago, the Bucks won their first championship in franchise history by sweeping the Baltimore Bullets in Game 4 of that year’s NBA Finals, winning 118-106.
That game and that performance was the culmination of the most amazing origin story ever witnessed in professional sports, going from an expansion team in 1968 to exploding into a title contender a year later with a literal flip of a coin. With such determination and focus, the Bucks built a championship-caliber team by making an all-in move for Oscar Robertson on April 20, 1970 and just a little more than a year later, they were popping champagne bottles in the cozy confines of the Baltimore Civic Center.
That day wasn’t just viewed as a culmination, however. It was viewed as a look into the future, one run by the Bucks. It was thought, at that time, that the Bucks would always be the team to beat, that they were the next dynasty to emerge in the NBA. And why wouldn’t anyone think otherwise? They had the talent, the stars in Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Robertson and most of all, they were young and still ascending.
Those predictions of a future dynasty, as it would have it, didn’t take shape (as will be shared plenty in the future, I promise). At least not in the way it was thought it would be.
50 years later, the Bucks stand in a similar point once again. The fallout from the Bucks’ epic first round collapse at the hands of the Miami Heat is still being processed by fans, players, coaches and the organization alike. A 58-win Bucks team, the 1-seed in the East and the holders of the best record in all of the NBA this season, didn’t even make it to May in their season.
The parallels between the two-title winning teams in the franchise’s history are strikingly there, at least in a big picture sense. Yes, these Bucks didn’t dominate the league on their way to the top in 2021, but after battling through plenty of adversity, they gave us all the power of belief. The belief that these Bucks teams, year in and year out, would have enough to at least make it out of the East in hopes of vying for a title. This year, they weren’t even in the final four teams in the conference duking it out for that honor.
This swift collapse has brought on a tidal wave of uncertainty that permeates an organization that has prided itself on doing things their own way. The talk of being a family, playing and sacrificing for one another all in the name of success wasn’t just that. The Bucks had shown that time and again, especially in a season where they had so much continuity year over year (at least pre-Jae Crowder trade).
Reflecting on such a trying time for the team has only gotten harder with the news that head coach Mike Budenholzer was dealing with a personal tragedy after shockingly losing one of his brothers following a car accident during the series. There’s nothing that can prepare anyone for such a loss like that with a family member and a sibling and having that happen during one of the greatest challenges in his professional career as is the case for Bud, one can only send their best wishes and thoughts to the man who has been so key to this era of Bucks basketball. And it only reinforces how small basketball is in the grand scheme of things.
Yet, basketball is still being played, and whether or not you feel this way at this moment, the Bucks have been a model for team building and doing things the “right way.” There are, in the words of famous Greek philosopher who moonlights as a superstar and two-time MVP, steps towards success. The Bucks have taken those, and fought hard for one of the more unlikeliest titles achieved in recent NBA history.
Both of their post-title runs have been marked by injuries to their stars (Khris Middleton in 2022, Giannis Antetokounmpo this year), and while they were undone by their shooting and ability to generate offense beyond Giannis and Jrue Holiday last year, Jimmy Butler was primarily responsible for poking holes through the Bucks’ lockdown defense this year. It didn’t matter that Jrue was on him for much of the series or that Brook Lopez, the runner-up in Defensive Player of the Year voting, was there to patrol the back line and the basket. The Bucks’ defense was obliterated all throughout the series, even as their fourth quarter offense sputtered down to empty for Games 4 and 5. Yes, adjustments should have been made, but the Bucks’ best this series was nowhere good enough to Butler’s singular brilliance.
For everything that has been credited to the Bucks for how they have gone about building their team, for always relying on their tentpoles for success and for the culture they have built, there’s never been a time where all of that has come under fire more than this moment. Their playoff loss to the Heat in the bubble doesn’t really come all that close, given the 4-plus month season shutdown that preceded all of that.
This stands as the greatest test to everything the Bucks have built and this offseason will only continue that. There’s only so much the team itself can control. The uncertainty of what Lopez and Middleton do this summer threatens what the very core of this roster looks like. They paid an astonishing $83 million in luxury tax dollars alone for this year’s roster, Per HoopsHype, on top of their salary commitments to the roster. The new CBA will only limit what the Bucks can do in free agency and in trades to improve their core and/or depth, even as we continue to learn more about the new agreement. They only have so many more draft picks they can ship out and the earliest first rounder they can offload is their 2029 first round pick.
As incredibly insensitive as it is to do so right now, the biggest harbinger of just how far the Bucks’ newly reformed ownership will go towards investing in their team will be what they do with Budenholzer. With two years and $16 million on his contract after being extended following the Bucks’ title, Bud’s contract ran in line with Antetokounmpo, who has an opt-out in his supermax for 2025, and Holiday. What’s not known is just how long does Jon Horst’s contract run until, which was also extended post-title.
Just how deep the Bucks’ pocketbooks will continue to run as the tax bills grow larger and larger and the tools to improve their team grow fewer and fewer is the biggest question any Bucks fan will have this offseason and beyond. Sooner or later, the piper will be paid.
All of it makes the climb back up to the top of the mountain that much harder for a team like the Bucks. They certainly can do so and how they come back from experiencing such a loss and disappointment will be answered both in the offseason and on the court starting in the fall. They have done it before. But knowing that there might be only so many more seasons of high expectations and championship hopes left, it makes the last few days a tougher pill to swallow.