I don't write much about sports anymore--too many far more important things--but when something happens that hasn't in fifty years, well, it's time to pull off the road and celebrate it.
Like: The Milwaukee Bucks are still here. Here, in Milwaukee. A franchise in a major professional sport, in what has become a very small market, never moved. It went through some very good times and very bad, yes. But it's here and its following is quite remarkable.
Last night, 65,000 people gathered outside to see an inside sport. Someone put up a huge TV screen, it didn't rain, so they drank (a lot) while trying to watch, except if you were in the back of that throng you probably didn't see much. Not that it mattered.
Because the Milwaukee Bucks won another NBA championship last night, somehow outlasting the Phoenix Suns, who won more games than any other team in the league did during this pandemic-stricken season, 105-98. They won it like they did the last time they won it, fifty years ago: With the very vital assistance of a very large person so talented it boggles the mind.
in 1971, that person was Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. People were still making a big deal out of that name because it was a Muslim substitute for Lew Alcindor. It even made people angry, even though it was in fact a religious act that, said its owner, brought him closer to God. Thirty years later, someone else with an unusual Muslim name would cause us to put that into better perspective.
In the meantime, though, we just called him Kareem. His skyhook was fun to watch and nearly impossible to stop. It was graceful and arching and devastating to opponents. He did more, though: He rebounded and blocked shots and figured out how people created holes in their defenses when they tried to stop him, so he passed to open teammates so they could have easier shots. People forget how good of a passer he was.
And luck intervened. One of the teams who could have stopped the Bucks were riddled with injuries. They were from New York, and they were the defending champs. They never got to the finals. But that's how it is in sports: It is as often survival as it is a victory of skill, because at that level, the skills are so similarly matched that you could flip a coin to make a prediction on any one night.
Fifty years later, so much has been repeated. The team that could have stopped the Bucks were from New York and riddled with injuries. This time they actually faced the Bucks in the playoffs, and for one inch of a misstep on what should have been a 3-point basket delivered at a devastating time, they would have succeeded anyhow. But it didn't happen, so the game fell into overtime. The Bucks somehow won that seventh game and moved on.
They managed to force their way through into the Finals by the efforts of an absurdly talented, enormous person who they took a chance on eight years ago, a chance that was dismissed by so many. It has been great fun to see him grow, quite literally, into perhaps the single most feared player in the league, another person with an unusual name, Giannis Antetokoumpo. People still don't say his name right, they sure can't spell it, so they settle for his first name, pronounced Yan-nis. You just say it, and people shake their heads.
They shake their heads because he, too, has become unstoppable. This was the one series the Bucks needed to have him succeed in the display of all of his incredible skills. He did so at exactly the time he was needed, and did it while injured. There are plenty of players in the league who simply amaze you, but don't come through when it's all on the table. Giannis did so and relished the opportunity.
This is how good he has become: Most Improved Player. Most Valuable Player, two straight years. Best Defensive Player. Leading scorer. And now, Most Valuable Player in the Finals.
Beyond that, he, too, has figured out the schemes teams have employed to stop him, and has now become a good passer. At one vital time in the fifth game of the Finals, he rebounded a badly missed free throw by tipping it backwards towards a teammate who he knew could would be fouled and would probably make the one free throw that was needed to seal the victory. That awareness impressed. He knew just what to do after hustling downcourt with those gaspingly enormous strides, getting a high lob pass from Jrue Holiday (after a great steal) to create a full-speed slam-dunk, which gave his team a three-point lead with a few seconds left. They needed one more point, though, and they got it from Khris Middleton, someone everyone knew would make at least one.
That Giannis was fouled was an afterthought. It used to be the one chink in his armor: Of course you foul him. Free throws have been an adventure. He had the form--he practices it before each free throw, in fact--but the ball always seemed to come off his hand differently. It isn't that rare; other very large people who have played this game have struggled with it. But some, like Wilt Chamberlain, stayed with it and became much better.
So has Giannis. He did miss two free throws last night, but made 17--an output the best shooters in the league, in the world, would have gladly accepted. In fact, after a while, the Phoenix Suns kept fouling him because they had reason to believe that sooner or later, he'd start missing, and the free throws would become like turnovers, free opportunities to take the lead. But while it might have seemed self-sustaining, it became self-destructive.
Because they learned, too, that Giannis knows himself, knows his weaknesses and his determination to do it all--drive right past opponents who are braced to stop him with those very long strides and a wingspan that astonishes so he can get to the rim regardless; pass to open teammates; block shots and rebound like a vacuum cleaner; whatever needs to be done whenever it's needed--will take a little time but he'll get there.
What observers have marveled at, too, is his intensity, rare for a professional player. None of them are lazy, but with the long, grueling season, some have been known to cruise at about 80 percent of their speed and effort, to let someone else handle some plays. Not Giannis: You can tell, too. If there's a game still on the line, you'll hear from him, one way or another.
If he's behind twenty points, you'll still hear from him. You'll have to deal with every bit of all of him. If you had come from a poor family and a foreign country, unknown and unheralded, with a strange name and few prospects, though, there's no other way for you to consider the world you've parachuted into but to take it on with all you have, every single time.
Opposing fans have given him a very hard time as he prepares to shoot his free throws. It's something that has entered the culture of the NBA, counting off the seconds allowed between being given the ball and actually releasing the shot (ten), although a little fast, to rattle him into missing. And until last night he did miss about half of them, as he usually does. Some sportswriters thought he was being affected. Yes, he was, though not quite the way they thought.
Because he adjusted. He took it on as he always has, as great athletes always do, pivoting on adversity. He made his pre-shot routine a little more streamlined, took just a little less time, and the effect was to improve his concentration and motion and--voila!--the shots started dropping, sometimes even two at a time. He taught himself, through harassment and necessity, the way great shooters have learned to shoot them: with the ball rotating off his fingers front-to-back, sometimes the ball swishing perfectly but other times hitting the front of the rim right in the middle so the ball bounces forward softly against the backboard and drops right in, like a machine. Just when you thought he had nothing more to prove, he proved something else, something his team needed desperately (because only one of them, Bobby Portis, raised his output in the sixth game), something else to carry them over the threshold.
Because that helped raise his point total to a staggering 50, something only one other player has ever done in a deciding game of the Finals--Bob Pettit, of the then St. Louis (formerly Milwaukee in its first attempt for an NBA team, for a bit of trivia; now Atlanta) Hawks, 64 years ago. Yet, he's very quick to praise his coach and teammates, never forgetting how much they need each other.
Because he believes in togetherness. His first goal in being an NBA player was to take care of his family, the one he came from and now the one he has created. Kareem did not care for Milwaukee's rather limited culture: He would go on to win several more titles with the Los Angeles Lakers. But Giannis loves Milwaukee and thinks it's a great place. He's here to stay. He is the Milwaukee Bucks.
There cannot possibly be another, more exemplary American. Rich as the Bucks organization has made him, his first thought was not to disappoint Milwaukee by going elsewhere. Now, who the hell thinks that way anymore? He could have bargained with some team from New York, from Los Angeles, from anywhere that had a more expansive media market. But no: He takes you off guard with his talent and his humility to boot.
He is foreign, he is black, he speaks with a strong accent, he does not seem American. He is more American, though, than America itself, he with the funny, unpronounceable name.
As long as he's here, and beyond, so will the Milwaukee Bucks. Kareem stayed another four years and only got back to the Finals once more, so we'll see if Giannis can do better at that, too. I doubt that that will matter that much, though.
We love this guy and he loves us. He brought us the NBA title. It's fun to be from Milwaukee again.
Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
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