- [Narrator] The 2001 Milwaukee
Bucks came out of nowhere. Milwaukee hadn't seriously
contended in over a decade and they opened that season
looking even worse than usual, hitting a 3-9 record
around Thanksgiving 2000. Coach George Karl shredded
his players privately and in the press. He called them irresponsible,
millionaire cry babies. Soon thereafter things
turned for the better. Why? It wasn't because GM Ernie Grunfeld made some big mid-season move. He'd already invested plenty of owner/Senator/department
store magnate Herb Kohl's money to cement this core. It was just that these guys clicked. They figured it out. The '01 Bucks began with
Glenn "Big Dog" Robinson, the Bucks' number one pick in 1994 weathered some tough seasons in Milwaukee, but led their turnaround season
by scoring more than ever and by meeting Karl's challenge to play a more well-rounded game. Robinson had another rising
All-Star by his side. 25-year-old Ray Allen already ranked among the game's best shooters with potential to become the
next great NBA two guard. Veteran point guard Sam
Cassell set the table for Milwaukee's top scorers and had the championship experience to take his own big shots with confidence. Around their big three, Milwaukee had a sturdy stalwart
center in Ervin Johnson, they had a tantalizing young
sixth man in Tim Thomas, and they had a fan favorite glue guy in Scott Williams, who brought additional
championship experience from his days with the MJ Bulls. This guy will matter later on. This Bucks squad didn't defend much, but as the '01 season progressed they shared the ball and
ripped nets from downtown, scoring more efficiently than even the starriest NBA offenses. The Bucks rode this wave of
torrid, beautiful basketball into a first round win
over the Orlando Magic. They survived a surprisingly
close second round series against the Charlotte Hornets and reached the 2001
Eastern Conference finals against league MVP, Allen Iverson, and his scrappy, battle-worn
Philadelphia 76ers. With Iverson ailing, the
Bucks stole a game in Philly, then pulled ahead two
games to one at home. The Bucks, a franchise that
hadn't won a playoff series since the 1980s, that
could have left Milwaukee if Herb Kohl didn't save them, that made zero meaningful
noise in the nineties, now stood two wins away from facing Kobe and Shaq in the 2001 NBA finals. And then came a collapse, or really a nesting doll
of multiple collapses. (ominous music) The 2001 Eastern Conference finals remain quite controversial. We don't need to re-litigate
every bit of officiating angst, but we can agree that things
fell apart for the Bucks and refs were a part of that story. Milwaukee led two to one against
a wrecked Sixers lineup. Iverson in particular carried an injury on basically every body part. But Philly took games four and five. Iverson was available if not efficient, Dikembe Mutombo overwhelmed
Ervin Johnson down low, and the clutch moments
tipped toward Philly. In game four, it was Iverson
fighting his way to the rim and the free throw line to
hold off a late Bucks rally. At the end of game five,
Philadelphia's Aaron McKie gifted Milwaukee two thick
bricks at the free throw line. And then on defense, he
lost track of Glenn Robinson. But Big Dog whiffed his open game winner and Ray Allen rimmed out
this buzzer beating tip. - [Announcer] And the Sixers
win to take a 3-2 lead! - [Narrator] Three to two, Sixers. Then there's game six. On paper it looks like a decisive momentum
shift back toward the Bucks. Ray Allen went laser mode: nine threes, 41 points and a personal
17-0 run in the first half of a double digit Bucks victory,
but it wasn't so simple. Milwaukee had been simmering about calls all series. Robinson lit into the refs after getting ejected back in game four. Well, in the process of winning game six, the Bucks boiled over. They were mad that the Sixers
nearly came back with a heap of Iverson free throws
in the fourth quarter. They were mad that veteran
forward Scott Williams got ejected for a flagrant foul, which then got him
suspended for game seven. So the Bucks entered their decisive game missing their starting small forward, and also real, real grumpy. Grumpy and loud enough
in public that both Allen and Coach Karl drew fines
for accusing the NBA of conspiring to put the
super popular Iverson in the finals. In any event, without Williams, with Iverson finding an unshakable groove, with Mutombo bullying Johnson down low, and without much scoring
outside their big three, Milwaukee went down
pretty easy in game seven, but don't let that conclusion
eclipse a fantastic, surprising Bucks season. League best offense, rock solid core, and perhaps going forward an
us against the world ethos to ensure coach and stars stayed on task. Well, let me start by saying one new player
shouldn't ruin a good NBA team. It doesn't work that way. If that seems to be the case then the team was probably
fragile to begin with. Okay, so in the summer of 2001, GM Ernie Grunfeld did nothing significant until right before training camp when he suddenly traded
away the beloved Williams and a pick that became Josh Smith, just to clear space for ... Hello! Mere days before the season began Milwaukee signed Anthony
Mason to a multi-year deal. Grunfeld knew the super
tough, super brash forward from his time with the
hellacious 1990s Knicks. The GM knew what Mason brought both as a dynamic player and
for better and worse, a bold locker room presence. Since leaving New York, Mason had dabbled as a prime
offensive option in Charlotte and played one surprise
All-Star season in Miami. And now here he was in
Milwaukee turning 35, exhibiting the fitness level of, well, someone who had
waited until late October to sign with a team. Mase played a healthy,
statistically decent '01-'02 season in Milwaukee, but swapping him
in for Scott Williams shook that harmonious offense of the prior year. Coach Karl granted Mason team high minutes and an excess of ball
handling responsibility. And as was his tendency,
Mase made some noise. On a team with a
pre-established pecking order, Mase wanted the ball more and
said as much without apology. He criticized the Bucks' practice habits, he was overheard insisting Karl bench one of his quote "jump shooter" teammates, somehow turning the Bucks'
best feature into an epithet. But while Mason's disruption
made him an easy scapegoat there was plenty other shit going on. For one, the Bucks had injuries. Allen had never missed a game before 2001, but battled knee tendonitis all season. Robinson sat 16 games himself, Tim Thomas and Sam Cassell were both
known to be playing hurt. And then there is Coach Karl. To the extent that Karl's
vicious rhetoric motivated the Bucks' 2001 turnaround, it came off a lot worse
while they plunged in '02. The Bucks had a solid enough record as the All-Star break approached, but after a loss to
those Sixers, Karl fumed, labeling his stars stubborn and selfish and proclaiming someone
needed to be traded or fired. Maybe himself. Karl kept snarling
after the break, so much that Ray Allen's mom got concerned and the Bucks kept losing into springtime. A five games slide in early April, including a blowout loss to the
awful Cleveland Cavaliers, dropped the Bucks to a
stunning break-even record. Still Milwaukee just needed one win in game 82 to hold the playoff eight seed. But that night in Detroit they got crushed by the new hot team in
the central division. A year after they almost made
the finals, the Bucks fell from first place in mid-March to out of playoff contention in April. Since the 16 team playoff
format was introduced in 1983, no team had had ever
sunk that deep, that fast. When you make that sort of history, you gotta shake things up. Glenn Robinson was the
longest tenured member of Milwaukee's big three, present through bad times and good, but Big Dog, like several
others had bickered with Coach Karl and his relationship with his co-star Allen
wasn't great either. Robinson also entered
that off-season embroiled in a grim domestic violence scandal. Late in the summer of '02,
Grunfeld traded Robinson to the Atlanta Hawks, returning an older and
inferior player, Toni Kukoc, plus an '03 draft pick. Karl approved of the chance
to remake team chemistry and to dump Robinson's big contract. The Bucks now appeared
to be Ray Allen's team. That went okay on the court. Trading Robinson certainly
didn't make the Bucks better, but Allen proved a capable first option. And then before the deadline
of the '02-'03 season the middling Bucks stunned their fan base. They traded Ray Allen to Seattle. Another member of their
erstwhile big three, a young electric rising
star, was just gone. Why an earth would they do that? The coach. George Karl said
Allen was nothing but trouble. Allen said he grew to despise the coach, although later claimed it
wasn't so much animosity as it was Karl's angst that the star was close
with team owner, Herb Kohl. For what it's worth Kohl did
have to approve the Allen deal, but he came to regret doing so, while Ray enjoyed a long and
brilliant career elsewhere. He admitted as much years later. And even in the moment,
the trade sucked shit. Milwaukee gave up Allen,
some other players and a first round draft pick. From the Supersonics, they received Desmond Mason, who was a young exciting
dunk contest champ, but ultimately not that great and they got Gary Payton,
an established star, albeit a 34-year-old playing
on an expiring contract and maybe still harboring a grudge against Karl from when
he coached the Sonics. Oh, and Payton was a true point guard, just like Sam Cassell. The Bucks traded their best player for a guy who played the same position as their next best player. Very weird. If the trade made any basketball sense, it was right here. Buried on Milwaukee's
old conference final team was a diamond in the rough. Michael Redd had been a second round pick and played only garbage
time as a rookie in 2001. But since then Redd had
refashioned his skillset to become one of the NBA's
best three point shooters. The smooth lefty progressed
from bench scorer to starter to, by 2003, a
legitimate Ray Allen successor. The Bucks next back court star. So fine, onward. A kind of lopsided new core led Milwaukee to basically the same
record as the prior year. The Bucks snuck into the 2003 playoffs and in round one they kind of gave the New Jersey Nets a scare. A critical last second
finish in game three, Rodney Rogers in the clutch,
Payton missing at the buzzer, went New Jersey's way. The Nets pulled it out in six. So, Bucks, you traded away
your two best players to appease the coach. Your performance basically did not change. What do you do now? Step one, trade away the third
guy and Ervin Johnson, too. This was just an awful deal. Upon being traded to the
Minnesota Timberwolves, Sam Cassell immediately
enjoyed an All-Star resurgence. Milwaukee didn't get nearly
enough in return for him, but maybe Ernie Grunfeld had
something else up his sleeve-- Oh. Days later Grunfeld left to take the Washington Wizards job. Okey doke. Long time Bucks employee
Larry Harris, got a promotion and in his first significant act as GM, watched Gary Payton walk away
in free agency for nothing. Payton was the big name Milwaukee acquired for sacrificing Ray Allen and his whole Buck career was 28 games and a playoff defeat. Bummer. But now Harris had a clean slate. It would be his task to
completely reinvent the team for Coach Karl-- Oh, okay. The coach who once insisted Milwaukee either trade the stars or
fire him, got it both ways. After detonating their
big three in a succession of poor trades, Milwaukee
sent Karl packing, too. If all of this seemed like the work of a distracted,
confused franchise, well, that might be because Herb Kohl was in talks to sell the
Bucks to some other guy. The name rings a bell. That deal fell through though. Kohl retained ownership of a team well positioned to zero out and rebuild. But here's the thing about Herb Kohl, the quality that makes
this collapse distinct. The man would not pull the plug. Call it pride, call it stubbornness, and don't forget that the team once did flirt
with leaving Milwaukee, but Kohl's franchise
rejected the incentives to tank for the whole next decade, an era vacillating between mild promise
and mild disappointment. It began in 2003-2004. Just the third season after a
near finals berth went fine. The Bucks got a hot young coach in Terry Porter, Redd fully
broke out as an All-Star, Tim Thomas departed in a sort of lateral trade for Keith Van
Horn and his large outfits. While Milwaukee hadn't lucked into any of the true 2003 draft prizes they did enjoy the talents of
rookie point guard TJ Ford. Ford looked awesome until a horrifying spinal
injury ended his season and cost him all of the next one, too. The shorthanded Bucks
claimed an '04 playoff berth but ran into the eventual champs in the first round. Here began the cycle. Milwaukee felt they had
enough to run it back in '05, but injuries hurt them and Porter got fired. The Bucks sunk to just 30
wins, that stinky gray area between playoff contention
and prime lottery odds. The fate of non-tankers. But Milwaukee got super
lucky that off season. A scant 6% chance of winning the draft lottery paid off. With their unexpected number one pick, the Bucks selected Andrew
Bogut, a very solid center, albeit not one of the
superstar point guards who defined that draft. Milwaukee felt set at
point guard with TJ Ford returning from injury. Bogut, Ford, a re-signed Michael Redd and newly added Bobby
Simmons made a nice core for new coach Terry Stotts. Back to the playoffs, where Milwaukee fell to the Pistons again, but, hey, an uptick. And then a downturn. More moves, more injuries, another coach fired, another losing record and this time some bad lottery luck, Milwaukee missed out
on a tiptop draft pick and one of these guys and since they already employed Bogut, passed on picking Joakim Noah
to instead select Yi Jianlian, a dude who absolutely did not
want to play in Milwaukee, battled injuries and
inconsistency, and then left town after just one year. Yet again, a bad, but not
quite bad enough season. Another missed opportunity
to draft the best of the best in 2008. Another disappointing
lottery pick who didn't last in Milwaukee and in the
middle of that '08-'09 season, Milwaukee lost its only All-Star
caliber player of this era. Michael Redd tore up his
knee in January 2009. Redd would never again be the same player and departed Milwaukee
a couple seasons later. Still the Bucks did not empty out. The next few seasons
sort of blur together. Milwaukee traded young guys for vets. They traded vets for vets. They spent pretty serious
money to plug in one free agent after another, after
another, after another. All the while Milwaukee used a succession of mid-tier lottery picks to
draft players who were fine, but didn't fulfill their
potential as Bucks. In the process, they passed on a couple
future, big time stars. This is a bland featureless
consistently at- or just below- average
era of Bucks basketball. No stars, no home run draft picks, no playoff excitement, except
one little head fake overrun in 2010. At long last, 2013-2014 was rock bottom. Before that season GM John
Hammond used yet another middle of the draft selection
on a mysterious youngster and acquired veterans who
didn't make a difference, plus one kind of nobody
recent second rounder. Fans broadcast their
exhaustion with a billboard. Winning takes balls. You need good lottery odds
to draft the best players and to secure good lottery odds, you need to stop patching holes and allow a tank to run its course. Well, Milwaukee didn't heed
the call to tank on purpose, but the tank came for them just the same. Bad moves and bad luck combined
to deliver the 2014 Bucks a franchise low 15 wins. Around the end of that season, 79-year-old Herb Kohl sold his franchise to some hedge fund private
equity billionaire type guys. And then there were none. The abrupt collapse and demolition of this team gave way to long term rot and at last the sale in 2014. This low point comes with a
couple opposing punchlines. Bottoming out didn't pay off. The Bucks got to pick second in 2014, but selected Jabari Parker, yet another player who
failed to meet his potential and whose career fell short of
players drafted beneath him. But all that muddling in the
middle, somehow did pay off. This 2014 roster, this dismal, accidental,
15-win flop included a future All-Star in Khris Middleton and a future multi MVP winner, finals MVP, and sure thing Hall of
Famer, Giannis Antetokounmpo, two key components of
the 2021 NBA champions. What can we learn from the
collapse of the Milwaukee Bucks? Well, some great teams are volatile and might incinerate at any second. They may burn for longer than fans want, because lottery odds
don't reward an owner's dogged refusal to slash
costs and lose on purpose, but buried in the ashes, you
just might find a diamond or two or a whole ring's
worth of diamonds. I don't know, man. Collapses can be really weird.
George Karl is one of my least favorite ppl in nba history. Fuck that dude
Step 1 draft Giannis
See, all you have to do is draft a Giannis.
I've been waiting for them to make a video about the early 2000's Bucks. They did gloss over two things, however:
The Bucks almost beat the 1 seed Pacers in the first round in 99-2000. They lost game 5 by 1 point and had the lead with less than a minute left...so they didn't really come out of nowhere.
They also beat the Lakers both times they played in 2000-01. They probably don't put up a bigger fight than the Sixers did but it would've at least been interesting to see.
Why you gotta bring up old shit? I'm still scarred from the Allen trade.
Just draft a top 25 player of all time in the middle of the first round
In the NBA of all sports, it’s so weird to me that you would choose a coach over a player especially when Ray Allen’s a great teammate and pro as far as I’m aware.
Not enough was said on how damn good Redd was imo. I watched so many Bucks games in person because of cheap tickets. If Charlotte was in town you could basically go to a game for free. A terrible era of basketball but a pretty fun era of cheap tickets and getting to see an All-Star caliber player do his thing. Glad to have stuck with the Bucks through the down years for these fantastic years to be that much sweeter.
In my opinion, they were robbed by the refs from the 2001 NBA finals due to Iverson's frenzy.
They got a well-deserved championship now, and now it's the Kings' turn after what the refs did to them vs. the Lakers. Well, not now, but hopefully soon.