“Bucks International” is certainly something to examine
The NBA, like pretty much all of the major professional sports, is a truly “international game”. Players are drafted from all over the world. From Wemby to the Joker, the quality of international players is high; especially when compared to the prevalence of international players 20 years ago in the league.
Something that comes up quite a bit is that Giannis is still relatively “new” to basketball. He started playing when he was 13. He was 18 when he made his NBA debut. His past and all the hard work it took for him and his family to simply survive have been well chronicled. For the Bucks, international players have been important.
The league-wide perception is that Giannis never takes off any plays or that he never gives less than 110%. That seems remarkably true. The only thing that seemed to stop him in the first half of the season was his knee soreness and “load management”. His downhill, attack-the-basket playing style might not hold up over a twenty-year career. But that seems like a “future Bucks fan problem”, not something anyone is worried about now.
Another newly minted league-wide thought is that because Giannis is a foreign-born player and was never subjected to the AAU grind of basketball in the US, he is still continuing to learn the game and improve. He is interested in winning, not in creating and picking out the best AAU squad. Now that is a scary thought. Giannis, at his own whim, will simply play for a Greece National team.
Why is it important that Giannis never played AAU? Well, he just plays to win. He’ll play on any team and does not seem to understand the part of an AAU culture where kids work together to pick “super teams”. He is getting better and is only now starting to enter his prime. The Milwaukee Bucks franchise is blessed to have him.
As long as he stays healthy, he gives Milwaukee a chance to win.
Other than Giannis, the Bucks have an interesting and somewhat “turbulent” history with international players.
Let’s look at a group of former Bucks who came to America to hoop.
Andrew Bogut
The 7-footer was selected by the Bucks with the #1 overall pick in the 2005 NBA draft. Bogut hailed from Australia and had a productive, good NBA career. Bogut averaged 12.7 points per game, 9.3 rebounds and 2.3 assists in his career with Milwaukee.
Bogut had some other nice bright spots. He was 6th in voting for the defensive player of the year in the 2010-2011 season for Milwaukee. Bogut was 3rd in the Rookie of the Year voting in his 1st season.
Andrew Bogut is in the Utah University Hall of Fame. However, he is not in the NBA hall of fame.
Nevertheless his impact on the Milwaukee Bucks and the franchise as a whole is almost (it is pretty close) as impactful as the impact Giannis has had on the team.
Ersan Ilyasova
Ersan played nine seasons for the Bucks, spread out over four stints. The second-round pick (36th overall) played from 2005-2007 for Milwaukee. He then played for Barcelona, only to return to Milwaukee in 2009.
Ersan’s last “stint” was from 2018-2020. He played a total of 825 career NBA games. He averaged over 10 points per contest.
Arguably Ersan’s best NBA season was not with the Bucks, however. In the 2016-2017 season with the 76ers, Ersan averaged 14.8 points per game and close to six rebounds, spread out over 27 minutes per game.
Carlos Delfino (Argentina)
Wasn’t it just great to say, “Carlos-Del-three-no!”
I miss that!
“Del-three-no” had a fine professional career. This, of course, is that great reminder that any human being who can reach that level of professional athlete deserves a ton of credit! The Argentinian played in 500+ NBA games, averaging 8 points per game. Most of those points, ironically, were not threes.
Other Team Notes and Stats
The Milwaukee Bucks have been a good team and a good franchise for a very long time. In writing game previews before each game, I like to look at the all-time records vs the opponent that night. In almost every case, the Bucks lead the all-time series. For example, the Utah Jazz lead the all-time series vs Milwaukee 58-48 but the Bucks lead the all-time series vs Houston, Sacramento and Portland. (All Western Conference teams.) The Milwaukee Bucks deserve a better reputation in the NBA as a team and franchise that have been historically very good.
The NBA is a fickle sport in the sense that with such a long season (late September- late June) teams turn it off and on at-will, playing great for stretches and poorly for others. Eighty-two games PLUS a playoff is just a lot of basketball and all NBA teams have some ups and downs. But as the old sports and life cliche goes, “the cream rises to the top”. And the Milwaukee Bucks appear ready for a post all-star break run that will continue to assert that they are a top-three team in the Eastern Conference, along with the rival Miami Heat ,the Boston Celtics and maybe the Cleveland Cavaliers.
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