It was a fantastic night to be a Milwaukeean on Tuesday. The Bucks' NBA Championship victory was the first time a Milwaukee club had won the title while playing in the city.
This epic run was unthinkable only a few years ago. Milwaukee was on the verge of losing the franchise to another city, and as writer Dan Simmons reveals, we can credit someone behind the scenes for this great victory.
A little old man in a blazer, trousers, and a green Milwaukee Bucks hat approached my kindergarten daughter as we sat in a cafe in downtown Milwaukee. He admired her red hair and blue eyes and then asked if she wanted to hear about his friend Giannis. She did, after all. We had spent the previous year perfecting our pronunciation of Giannis Antetokounmpo. It was meant to be a first-grade project to learn how to spell.
I imagine that pre-pandemic encounter in 2020, when the Milwaukee Bucks are NBA Champions and the entire basketball-watching globe is at ease pronouncing the Bucks superhero's seven-syllable Greek moniker. That nice old man in the cap, by the way, has likely had more to do with the Bucks' extraordinary journey to a championship than anybody else. Children in Las Vegas or Seattle would have been discovering the tale of Giannis — one syllable at a time — if it hadn't been for Herb Kohl, a billionaire businessman, four-term Democratic U.S. Senator, and longtime Bucks owner.
When the club needed a new stadium in 2014 and it appeared that relocation would be more likely than staying, Kohl sold the team and donated $100 million from his money as a parting present to ensure that a deal could be worked out to keep them here. His contribution was a significant part of a larger funding package. It provided the community with a spanking new Bucks arena while also preventing the franchise from moving. “When it came to preserving the Bucks Kohl is the GOAT” – best of all time, according to Republican Gov. Scott Walker, who helped cement the deal.
The Bucks went from being an afterthought to an elite team after Antetokounmpo evolved into a two-time MVP and the franchise surrounded him with a culture and teammates that raised the Bucks from afterthought to elite. Last year, the league's most famous player agreed to a five-year contract deal with the team from the league's fourth-smallest market. He chose Schlitz over glam, as someone put it.
Herb Kohl is known to eat at the same cafe numerous times a day, which is connected to the historic Pfister Hotel. He generally travels alone because he is a bachelor, but he instantly makes friends with every kid. He walks from table to table, collecting information such as each child's name, school, and favourite Bucks player. It's endearing. It's also very Milwaukee.
The city was affected harder than most in the previous year. Early on in the epidemic, the influenza raced through Milwaukee's impoverished and minority areas, exposing the stark differences in wealth and ethnicity. Murders and nonfatal gunshots have reached record highs. Fiserv Forum, which employs a large number of city inhabitants, stood vacant for a season, taking all of those jobs with it. And, to add salt to injury, the city was awarded the privilege to host the Democratic National Convention, a rare coup for a town of this size, only to have it cancelled due to the pandemic. A 50,000-person event that was supposed to take place here instead took place in a Delaware parking lot.
As a result, we're not going to apologise for our happiness. Take that, DNC, with a gathering of up to 65,000 expected on the streets of downtown Tuesday night. It may appear extravagant, but it has been earned. We've gone through a lot together. The team we're rooting for last won a championship in 1971, before Kareem was even born. And we owe a debt of gratitude to the old man in the blazer and his companion, Giannis, for taking us on this beautiful journey.
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