The Impressive Early Years of the Milwaukee Bucks

While the Milwaukee Bucks do not seem to be creating much of a stir within the NBA these days, the team was actually a pretty strong contender in its early days. The Milwaukee Bucks were pretty prominent in the early seventies and in the eighties where they won a few of the most coveted titles in the NBA. The Milwaukee Bucks is also the 1971 NBA Champs and the Eastern Conference Champions of 1971 and 1974. Along with these wins are 13 Central Division titles, the latest of which was won in 2001 after a very long hiatus from winning.

The Milwaukee Bucks had one of the best players of the sport in the guise of Lew Alcindor who was drafted to join the Bucks in 1968. This proved to be very fortuitous for the team since Alcindor would later be named rookie of the year in the 1968-1969 NBA season for his contribution to the Bucks that got them as far as the Division Playoffs. Lew Alcindor would later become a huge fixture in the game of basketball and soon became famous after a change in name to Kareem Abdul Jabbar.

The Milwaukee Bucks soon won their first ever Eastern Conference Championship and became the team to beat in the 1971 NBA Finals. They were pitted against the Baltimore Bullets then and proceeded to win their first ever NBA Championship Title in a sweep of 4 games to zero. The second time that the Milwaukee Bucks basketball team was given the chance to prove themselves again in the NBA Finals was in 1974 when they won the conference championships again and was slated to face the formidable Boston Celtics. Luck wasn't on the side of the Bucks this time and they lost the title in an exciting 7 game series.