Celebration time as all the pieces finally fall into place for Milwaukee

Bucks in six. Wow, it really happened!

At long last, the city of Milwaukee finally has a major championship to celebrate thanks to Tuesday’s 105-98 win earned by the Milwaukee Bucks in a Game 6 slugfest with Phoenix that ended the NBA Finals. And celebrate Bucks fans did with thousands upon thousands filling up the Deer District outside Fiserv Forum before, during and after the series- clinching win.

The championship parade today, Thursday, will be another event to behold. Wish I could be there to join the fun and show some Cheesehead pride.

A lot of things had to go right for the 2020-21 Milwaukee Bucks to finish the season raising, hugging and kissing the Larry O’Brien championship trophy Tuesday night. Think about some of the pieces that fell into place just during the two-month playoff run.

Mainly, what would’ve happened if Kevin Durant’s foot was one inch further back when he hit that incredible buzzerbeating shot of Game 7 in the Eastern Conference semifinals? Instead of the game going to overtime, where the Bucks eventually won, Durant’s shot would’ve

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been a 3-pointer, the Brooklyn Nets would’ve won in regulation and probably would’ve been the ones playing Phoenix in the finals.

Brooklyn’s Kyrie Irving stepping on Giannis Antetokounmpo’s foot in game 3 and Atlanta’s Trae Young landing on an official’s foot in game 3 of the Eastern Conference Finals were certainly breaks. Sure, the Bucks were without Donte DiVincenzo for much of their playoff run. He’s a nice player, but he’s not Irving or Young. Playing the Hawks over the top-seeded Philadelphia 76ers in the Eastern Conference Finals may or may not have been a break. I think the Bucks matchup up very well with Philly and would’ve won that series anyway.

Playing second-seeded Phoenix over top-seeded Utah from the Western Conference in the Finals was, I think, a big break. The Jazz have had the Bucks’ number for years and handily swept this year’s two-game regular-season series.

Then, of course, there was Antetokounmpo’s superhuman ability to avoid a serious knee injury during that Game 4 collision in Atlanta.

Good fortune is one thing. But in professional sports the margins between victory and defeat are so thin and the Bucks must be credited for doing things during this playoff run they didn’t do the last two years when they entered the tournament as the overall number-one seed and failed to even reach the Finals.

While they still didn’t shoot the ball as well as they’re capable of –– something you’d think the way the game is currently played would be a necessity –– the Bucks defended well enough to overcome it. Great defensive basketball is always a team effort, but championship defense probably isn’t achieved without trading for Jrue Holiday in the off-season, trading for PJ Tucker before the mid-season deadline and learning from previous playoff failures that fourth-quarter stops have to happen to win 16 post-season games. The Bucks already had Antetokounmpo, the NBA’s 2019-20 Defensive Player of the Year. Brook Lopez is one the league’s top shot blockers. But the on-ball pressure and tenacity of Holiday and Tucker was huge, especially once the Bucks made a few adjustments when the Suns scored at will while winning the first two Finals games in Phoenix.

Chris Paul and Devin Booker were going to get points in this series. But making them work for those points, especially with Paul, turned the tide in the last four games. You wouldn’t be wrong in saying the two biggest plays in the entire series came on the defensive end with Antetokounmpo’s block of a Deandre Ayton dunk in Game 4 and Holiday’s steal in Game 5 that prevented Booker from getting off a potential go-ahead shot in the final seconds.

Mental toughness is always something that’s hard to quantify, but the lessons of the last few post-seasons definitely hardened this year’s team. Down 2-0 to both the Nets and Hawks, the Bucks didn’t flinch, doing what they had to do at home to get back in each series. Down 16 at Phoenix after one quarter in Game 5 and looking terrible doing it might’ve led to a blowout loss in the past. But on Saturday night, it was only a matter of minutes before the Bucks had the lead and went on to earn a huge road win.

Winning on the road was something this team did better than almost anyone in 2020-21, going 20-16 in the regular season (Phoenix was 24-12) and then going a pretty darn good 6-6 in the post-season, clinching series wins in Miami, Brooklyn and Atlanta and tilting the Finals in Game 5.

Again, the shooting wasn’t great overall, but how about the ability of Khris Middleton to get hot when absolutely needed against Atlanta and Phoenix? Or Holiday in Game 5 at Phoenix? Or Bobby Portis and Pat Connaughton on occasion. You need everybody.

Lastly when it comes to good fortune, of course there were no events that changed the course of this franchise more than Herb Kohl selling the team in 2014 to New York billionaires Marc Lasry and Wes Edens and the general manager at the time, John Hammond, drafting Antetokounmpo in 2013.

Lasry and Eden and eventually other investors promised to keep the team in Milwaukee, got Fiserv Forum built and made player investments that built a competitive team.

Hammond drafted that lanky 18-yearold from Greece no one had heard of in 2013 and traded his former first-round pick, Brandon Jennings, to Detroit for Middleton and, while it took eight seasons, here we are celebrating a title. How Hammond found him and had the guts to make him the 15th pick is something we’ll never know. But he’s been quoted as saying on draft day that Antetokounmpo had a chance to be something special someday. I’d say 50 points, 14 rebounds, 17 of 19 free throw shooting and five blocked shots Tuesday night was pretty special.

As a kid growing up an hour away from Milwaukee in Dodge County in the early 1980s, I always thought those were the Bucks teams that were on the edge of glory. The Packers were an afterthought in those days. It was all about the Bucks and Brewers. The 76ers or Celtics just always got in the Bucks’ way in those years.

I can’t say I saw this title coming as the season progressed, but opportunity knocked and the Bucks took advantage. It’s a great week to be a Cheesehead.

Matt Frey is the Sports Editor at The Star News.