Bucks Improbable Season

I have been a Milwaukee Bucks fan for as long as I can remember. Growing up, us fans were treated to some incredibly good seasons in the 1980s. Sidney Moncrief, Junior Bridgeman and Marques Johnson were follwed by Jack Sikma, Ricky Pierce and Paul Pressey. Year after year the Bucks won the division or finished behind the “Bad Boy” Pistons and competed hard in the playoffs. There was nothing quite like going to the Arena to watch this team play in such an exciting atmosphere.

Then came the lean years which were interrupted briefly in the late 90s and early 00s by the George Karl era which featured Ray Allen, Glenn Robinson and Sam Cassell and a wonderful run to the Eastern Conference Finals in 2001. But the team was inexplicably broken apart and the past few years have once again been frustratingly bad.

This season was not only supposed to be bad again but maybe once of the worst teams yet. I can’t remember looking at one preseason outlook that did not have the Bucks destined for last place in the Eastern Conference. I remember watching the first game of the season against Philadelphia and seeing some very bad moments. And then I watched the first half of the second game against Detroit. The Bucks were definitely living down to their expectations. Then in the second half of that Piston game, the first glimpse of what we were in for this season appeared. Young Brandon Jennings, our first round draft pick, went off. He scored from everywhere. He dished the ball to his teammates. He played defense and rebounded. He made free throws. “Who was this guy?” I thought. The Bucks came back and won.

A few nights later, Brandon Jennings had his memorable 55-point performance against Golden State and the now the entire world knew about Brandon Jennings. And it appeared that this Bucks team was not the worst team in the East (especially with the New Jersey Nets going well into December without a win). Coach Scott Skiles was also getting the other players on this team to play defense and to move around on offense and play solid team-ball, a concept missing in Milwaukee for quite some time.

The first half of the season had its ups and downs. There was the traditional loss of Michael Redd to injury, and also the inconsistent play of Jennings which was expected of a rookie. The team was slipping further and further under .500 but yet showed that they were better than what we all thought. Right around the all-star break, another sign of positivity was making itself known. Andrew Bogut was having a breakout season. He was finally becoming the force inside on the offensive end that the Bucks had hoped they were getting when he was drafted #1 overall in 2005.

A couple weeks later, the Bucks traded for John Salmons which became the lightning strike this team needed to take yet another step toward improvement. The Bucks began winning games in bunches and found themselves in a playoff race in February for the first time since Bogut’s rookie year. They quickly went from battling for an 8-seed to putting themselves firmly in the playoff picture. With a month to play, the Bucks surprisingly were considered a near-lock for the playoffs. It was amazing that in a five-month period, this team went from being considered the worst in the conference to a team that was a darling pick to knock off Boston or Atlanta in the first round of the playoffs.

Then came the devastating injury to Andrew Bogut. The air went out of the balloon as the Bucks lost two home games to their potential first-round opponents Boston and Atlanta. But this team still had a little more life in them. They have taken the Atlanta Hawks to a seventh game in their opening round series, a series that most predicted would be over in four or five games without Bogut.

In all my years of being a Bucks fan, this has been one of the most enjoyable seasons ever. It sure gives me hope for the future as well. Hopefully the Bucks resign Salmons and can watch Bogut and Jennings continue to grow into superstars in 2010-11. It will be interesting to see where this team goes now that there are expectations.

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