My Discussion Regarding the Milwaukee Bucks and Their Series Loss to the Indiana Pacers

Folks, I have neglected my blog lately. I am sorry about that. I’ve been running out of hours in the day, and writing, whether it’s blogging or some fiction or whatever else, is taking a big backseat to Life (TM) these days. But as I am a fan of the Milwaukee Bucks, and as they were in the playoffs, I made sure to either listen or watch every single game this past week. (Considering I try to listen or watch every game during the regular season as well, that’s not too surprising.) And I have some thoughts.

Here we go.

I was fortunate enough to watch the Bucks play the Pacers in their last two playoff games (I listened to the others). I was seriously impressed by how hard the Bucks played despite their overall series loss to the Pacers (more on this in a bit). They were brilliant in Milwaukee in Game Five, which they needed to be in order to force Game Six in Indiana. One of their two big stars, Damian Lillard, played in Game Six after having to sit out the two previous playoff games, and did rather well, especially considering he was dealing with a strained Achilles tendon. He led all scorers, in fact…but despite good defense from nearly every Bucks player (including Lillard, and his forte is definitely not defense), the Bucks ran out of gas. They lost, 120-98, and the Pacers now advance to the next round.

Mind you, the game was not quite as lopsided as the score says. The Bucks coach, Doc Rivers, took most of his players — the starters, the main bench people, etc. — out of the game starting at around the four-minute mark. I believe the Bucks were down by sixteen at that point, and while that’s potentially doable if someone like Lillard hit a bunch of three-point shots and the extremely tired and gassed defense was able to get four or five stops in a row, it would’ve been a very long shot. I think Rivers did the right thing in pulling out guys like Lillard, Bobby Portis, Khris Middleton (who had a brilliant series of his own, especially in Games Four and Five), Patrick Beverley (aka “PatBev”), and Brook Lopez. Those guys should all hold their heads up, as they did the best they could all the way around.

Why do I say this? Because the biggest star on the Bucks, Giannis Antetokounmpo, was not able to play at all. He averaged something like forty points a game against Indiana, even though the Bucks as a whole had not done all that well against them. So, if you count him, and you see all these other players doing what they just did in stepping their games way up (or in Middleton’s case, reminding everyone why he was an All-Star a few years ago), I think at minimum the Bucks would’ve forced Game Seven in Milwaukee. At maximum, they would’ve won.

One stat for Game Five tells pretty much the whole story. There had never before been a playoff team, without its top two scorers (in the Bucks case, those were Lillard and Giannis), that had actually won a playoff game before. But the 2023-4 Bucks did just that. Middleton and Bobby Portis (a Sixth Man of the Year candidate; he finished third for the second year in a row) both scored twenty-nine points, and had twelve and ten rebounds, respectively. In addition, PatBev played the point position and passed the ball around — something he usually is not called upon to do — and scored thirteen points with twelve assists. Center Brook Lopez also scored twelve points. The Bucks played outstanding defense, held the Pacers to just 92 points in Game Five, and beat them 115-92.

In other words, without Giannis and Lillard, they were more like the “little team that could” (except for how tall they are, of course). They believed in themselves, and it showed. It was good that they got one more win at home and got to hear the love from the Milwaukee fans, because they really did pour it all out onto the floor.

So, the Bucks should hold their heads high despite losing the series to the Pacers. They did their best. Lillard came back in Game Six, and, while obviously not healthy, scored twenty-eight points and played far better defense than I’d expected. Portis had twenty points and fifteen rebounds. (The Indiana crowd hates Portis, so this was I hope some small amount of solace for Portis going into the offseason.) Lopez played one of his best games of the year, scoring twenty points and pulling down five rebounds. PatBev, while obviously tired and injured — he’d been playing despite an oblique injury for the past several weeks — again pulled down five assists and scored six points. (Remember, he’s not usually called upon to do either one. He was used primarily as a defensive “energy” guy, which makes sense: Beverley has been a member of the NBA All-Defensive Team three separate times.)

I was — am — happy with my favorite team. I wanted them to win Game Six just as much as they did…well, maybe not quite as much, but certainly I wanted them to win.

They didn’t win, no. But they did their level best. I can’t get angry with any of them.

For other sad Bucks fans out there: You need to remember that in any playoff scenario, a good team is going to go home in round one. Maybe several good teams will go home in round one. It doesn’t matter if it’s the NCAA Basketball Tourney, or the major league baseball playoffs, or the wildcard games in football…a good team or two always ends up going home sooner than expected. Oftentimes, it’s because key players were injured and/or were not able to play up to full capacity.

And we both know who wasn’t able to play at all, while several others couldn’t play up to their full capacity (but did their best and came darned close to it).

What I saw from my favorite team, the Bucks, was perseverance, grit, teamwork, and a never-say-die attitude. I hope most of the players will be back next year (I think it’s a lock that Lillard and Giannis aren’t going anywhere, and I’d be stunned if Middleton went anywhere either), as I think if folks like PatBev (a midseason acquisition) had played with everyone all year long, it’s possible this team would’ve forced Game Seven even without Giannis (a former two-time MVP of the NBA, a past multiple winner of the all-defensive team, and, like Lillard, a member of the all-NBA 75th anniversary team).

What I will take away from this loss is this: You can hold head up high when you do your level best. You may not win all the time. You may not be able to meet your own goals (PatBev said right away he wanted to win the NBA Championship just as soon as the Bucks traded for him; he also had some negative history with Damian Lillard, and said he had to “get right with Dame”). But you will still impress people if you give it your best shot, and most especially if you go outside of your comfort zone and do things completely unexpected of you. (That would hold true for the vast majority of the 2023-4 Milwaukee Bucks.)

Watching Sports (Without My Father)

Folks, as most of you know if you’ve been reading this blog for a while, my father died last October at the age of 86. He was a huge sports fan, as am I, and I’ve been reflecting on how different it is to watch, listen, and read about sports without being able to talk with him about it.

Now, you might be wondering why this, in particular, is what I’m ruminating about. There are many things that people miss when someone they care about dies. But for my father and I, who were so different in many ways, talking about sports was our common denominator. We could discuss the various things like Brewers trades (he’d have not been happy about Corbin Burnes being traded to Baltimore recently, that’s for sure, no matter how good the two players are that we got for Burnes), Milwaukee Bucks basketball (Dad remembered watching the Minneapolis Lakers — yes, the LA Lakers were once in Minneapolis, folks — when George Mikan was playing, and after that he never stopped being a fan of pro basketball), the Green Bay Packers successes and failures over the years, and more.

See, Dad was up on current events, yes. But mostly he saw politicians failing to do their jobs. Or not representing the people they claimed to represent with any sort of humility, honesty, or integrity. Or just being huge buttheads for whatever reasons of their own…and none of that impressed him.

(Nor does it impress me. But I digress.)

And while professional sports has many things that are frustrating — the officiating, the huge salaries, the various strategies teams use when they want to move a team (such as the Oakland Raiders moving to Las Vegas a few years ago, and the Oakland A’s wish to leave Oakland now for Las Vegas as well) — there are more hopeful stories there to watch, listen to, and ponder.

For example, in Milwaukee, Dad and I got to watch as Giannis Antetokounmpo was drafted as an all-but-unknown 18-year-old. He was raw, but very talented; we didn’t know it at the time, but he also was one of the bigger human success stories of the past thirty or forty years (at least when it comes to sports). Giannis grew up in poverty, and his family were undocumented immigrants living in Greece. They went there for the reason immigrants have gone to other countries forever: to live in peace, to strive for a better life, and to be able to raise their children in a more peaceful environment, too. But Giannis and his family had many struggles in attempting to become registered “aliens” (that is, known immigrants waiting to become citizens), including some struggles just to be able to leave Greece to be drafted by the Bucks in the first place. Giannis has said, fairly recently, that if he and his family had not been able to get visas, he wouldn’t have lasted a year in the NBA — not because he didn’t have the talent, but because his family means more to him than anything.

Anyway, Giannis has had the experience of playing for several excellent coaches, including Jason Kidd and Mike Budenholzer. Every coach who has dealt with him talks about Giannis’s work ethic, his values, and about how hard he works to master everything aspect. (He still needs work on his free-throw shooting, but he has improved somewhat in the past few years.)

Still. When he was drafted, no one knew much about him. We had no idea if this was just another of the Bucks’ overreaches, or straight-up draft busts…it wasn’t, and isn’t, and instead Giannis has become one of the best players in the NBA over the past ten years. He’s world-famous, and Greece, now, is delighted to claim him as a favorite son and citizen. Giannis has even played for Greece’s national team in international competition…talk about a huge change in circumstances, huh?

But this is only one of the stories the Bucks have had over the years, with the most recent story — happening before Dad died — being the replacement of Coach Budenholzer with rookie head coach Adrian Griffin. (I wrote about this at the time Coach Bud was fired, and felt it was unfair and unjust.) Dad didn’t know how Adrian Griffin was going to do, and he didn’t get a chance to watch or hear the Bucks in regular game-play. (I think he might’ve heard a few pre-season games on the radio, but pre-season can’t tell you very much when you’re dealing with a veteran team rounding into shape.)

Then, if you have followed the NBA at all, you know what else happened after my father passed away. (No, not ’cause of him dying, but still.) The Bucks replaced Coach Griffin, even though he had a sparkling record of something like 30-13, because the Bucks were not playing good defense. To be honest, the Bucks weren’t even playing average defense; they mostly were playing very, very poorly, and while they were still winning most of their games, they had to scrap and claw and fight at the end of the game to win too often for the front office’s liking. That’s why they brought in the next coach, well-traveled veteran coach Doc Rivers.

Now, Rivers played for Marquette, years ago. He was an excellent player, and his number was retired by Marquette (if memory serves). He enjoyed Milwaukee, and he said the only reason he decided to come to Milwaukee mid-season — doing something that’s almost unheard of — is because he really wanted to be here again.

Rivers, BTW, is going to be coaching in the All-Star game this weekend, something even he believes is bizarre and nonsensical. (He’s said so several times, too, mostly on the local broadcasts and in the papers and blogosphere.) He said he’s going because a) the coaching staff deserves it (all those assistant coaches get an additional paycheck, and of course they also get some more notice league-wide), and b) he believes Adrian Griffin deserves a paycheck. (I am guessing Rivers looked into whether he could bow out of this without adversely affecting the Bucks coaching staff, and wasn’t able to do it.) Rivers has said firmly that he does not deserve to be the coach of the All-Star game and I hope he does indeed send the paycheck to Adrian Griffin.

These are all things I wish I could’ve discussed with my father.

Mind you, Dad did not in general feel that the All-Star game was very important. He mostly didn’t want anyone to get hurt in a meaningless game, as he did worry about such things. (Too many Brewers, Bucks, and Packers over the years have been injured in meaningless games, whether in the pre-season or in the All-Star Game/Pro Bowl, for Dad to think otherwise. I agreed with him, too.) But this All-Star game probably would’ve been different, at least regarding Adrian Griffin’s situation.

Finally, one of the biggest sports stories since Dad died in October was when former Brewers manager Craig Counsell decided to become the manager of the Chicago Cubs instead. Counsell was the Brewers manager until the end of the season, and had said he would make up his mind after the season ended. We fans had been led to believe that Counsell would give the Brewers the opportunity to match any salary quoted to him by any other team, but that doesn’t appear to have happened.

Dad didn’t think Counsell would go anywhere. First off, Counsell was a home-grown player who had partly become a manager in the first place because the Brewers had seen his potential during Counsell’s last few playing years (spent with the Brewers). Second, Counsell had an almost unparalleled status in Wisconsin as someone everyone liked — they might not always like his managing, but they liked him. Plus, Dad felt that if Counsell did go elsewhere, he’d pick an American League team that didn’t play the Brewers very much, just out of common courtesy.

None of that happened. Counsell went to the Cubs, a team that’s just down the road; the National League Team closest to the Brewers, rather than a team further away that we’d not see much. Counsell also is getting paid a reported $8M a year to manage, which almost doubles his salary from last year with the Brewers. (Note that the top-paid manager last year was Terry Francona of Cleveland, and he made, I think, $5.5M. No one was even close to Francona; Counsell was probably as close as it got, else.)

Then, as if that wasn’t enough, Counsell made a video for the Cubs — and no, I’m not going to link to it — that says something to the effect about how he was “born a Cub.”

That’s just wrong, you know? That’s wrong. That treats the Brewers fans like we don’t matter, like everything we did wasn’t enough, and it’s astonishing to think that a Wisconsin-grown man can do and say something that’s so tremendously classless.

I’m sure this is how my father would’ve felt about it, too. He’d probably have called Counsell a “Benedict Arnold,” and have been upset that a man who has worked in baseball all his adult life, who’s made an excellent living and has an even better retirement ahead of him no matter what else he does, would choose to spit in the face of the Brewers fans and the state of Wisconsin as a whole just for the sake of $3.5M a year.

Counsell is not a guy who’s going to lose his earning potential anytime soon, either. So this is not a “swing for the fences, this is the only time I’ll even get a chance at making $8M in my life” sort of deal. Instead, this was meant to try to raise the salaries of managers overall — Counsell had said something like this, a few years ago, and it’s been dwelled upon in the Milwaukee radio market somewhat. (It’s also as good a reason as any for Counsell to do this, but I digress.)

I’m all for raising the salaries of managers. They are underpaid, compared to the players. So are the rest of the coaching staff.

But I am not for treating fans as dismissively as has Craig Counsell. Nor was my father.

So, as time goes on, I’ll probably think of more things I want to talk with Dad about. Players will get traded, released, injured (though we never wanted to see that, and I still don’t), all that…new, young players will make impacts (such as Brewers rookie OF Jackson Chourio, one of the most highly-touted Brewers rookies in the last twenty years), too. Coaches and managers will change, as we’ve seen three times in a year with the Milwaukee Bucks, and also with the Brewers when Counsell went to take the job with Chicago. (BTW, the Brewers elevated bench coach Pat Murphy, an extremely sensible choice. Murphy has a sense of humor, too, which will be a nice change from Counsell’s laconic, stoic game summaries.) Other things, stuff I hadn’t ever considered possible, no doubt will happen, too.

Now, my whole family is doing its best to watch the Bucks, Packers, and Brewers’ various situations, as we all know Dad can’t anymore. (I’d do it anyway, at least to a point. Especially when it comes to baseball, my favorite sport.) I think this is our way of saying that Dad mattered to us — or, at least, that it’s my way.

At this point, I just hope my way makes some sense.

Discussing Other, Alternate Timelines

Folks, the last several weeks have been extremely challenging. I am unable to say why, as what’s going on mostly does not pertain to me…let’s just say it’s a family health crisis and be done with it.

Anyway, I knew I should write a blog, but about what?

I could write about sports — the Milwaukee Bucks made a coaching change, mid-season, which is quite unusual — but that didn’t seem right.

I could write about politics — some of what I’m seeing from people like Rep. Elise Stefanik of NY (R) is extremely disquieting. (Rep. Stefanik seems to have the attitude of “Vice President or Bust” and is doing her best to ingratiate herself with former POTUS Donald Trump despite her past voting record, which shows at one point she was a moderate.) But again, that didn’t seem right…though I do admire Nikki Haley’s pluck in refusing to get out of the Republican primary, mind you. (She’s right that only two states have spoken. There are 48 states and a number of US territories, plus the US emigres abroad, that have yet to vote and thus indicate a preference.) While Haley is almost certainly not going to win the Republican nomination, any more than Bernie Sanders was going to win the Democratic nomination in 2016, Haley can highlight important issues to voters and ultimately make a positive policy difference (if nothing else).

And while that was a long digression about politics, that’s not what I want to talk about today. I am a SF&F writer, no matter how little-known, and thus I think about a lot of stuff most other folks don’t. I’ve done this for a long time, mind you; my Elfy books, which feature alternate universes (where the Elfs lived — don’t call ’em “Elves” as that’s a swear word to them– and the Elfys were created, among other races), were not the first time I’ve ever thought about alternate universes. I may have thought about them even sooner than age fourteen, which is when I read Philip K. Dick’s classic MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE, which features an alternate universe where the Nazis and the Japanese won World War II.

I’m not the only one to think about this, of course. There are other writers who’ve discussed this in various ways, such as Doris Lessing and the more recent book THE FUTURE OF ANOTHER TIMELINE by Annalee Newitz. But my own ruminations lead me to how my own, personal timeline could’ve been changed by the following events:

2004: Instead of dying after four heart attacks, Michael has one heart attack and survives with brain and body intact. He does cardiac rehab, which I fully support him doing, and we get another ten-twenty years together rather than two. More books of different types result, and at least some of Michael’s artwork survives. (In this timeline, I have one piece of Michael’s artwork. That’s it. It was a brief drawing of what the uniforms looked like in his Atlantean Union universe.)

But even if Michael had still died in 2004, I had another possible better timeline with which to work, as follows:

2011: Instead of dying of a massive stroke, my good friend Jeff Wilson lives despite the heart virus that nearly killed him. He does cardiac rehab and anything else they suggest; after six or eight months of treatment, he’s allowed to leave the rehab hospital (really a nursing home). During this time, we start to date, long-distance…maybe I even manage to visit him in Fort Collins while he’s in the hospital, as it’s under the threshold of altitude that I can tolerate. (Jeff knew I get high-altitude sickness at about 7000 feet and it gets worse the higher up I go.) Books and stories follow, and whether we ever progressed beyond a very solid friendship or not, things would’ve been much better all the way around for both of us.

And even if Jeff had still died in 2011, I had yet another possible, better timeline to work with, as follows:

2014: A good friend, someone I had no idea that was interested in me, makes a play and I respond. (This happened in real life, though not in 2014.) Things progress. Books and stories follow. The relationship is serious enough to perhaps lead to marriage, and despite some major difficulties, we manage to overcome them and forge a life together.

Of course, that timeline didn’t happen either. So how about this one?

2020: Covid-19 does not happen. Millions of people do not die. (If this was lab-grown in China or anywhere else, it does not escape the lab.) People are not shut in for weeks, months, or years; there is no such thing as public-shaming over mask-wearing (I believe masks can help, especially if you, yourself, are ill and don’t know it; you won’t give it to someone else that way. But shaming people is wrong.) There’s no such thing as kicking people off public trails because of fears that they might get Covid…one of the dumbest things I ever heard, yet it happened to a good friend of mine in 2020. (I wish that hadn’t happened to him, too. As we found out later, Covid is not likely to spread outside with the same frequency as it’s going to spread inside with the greater density of people to work with.)

And as we all know, unfortunately that timeline didn’t happen either.

I’ve avoided some of the obvious ones, mind you. (Some folks may be asking, “Why not go back to 2000 and have Gore win instead of W.? Why not go back to 2016 and have your choice, Hillary Clinton, win instead of Trump?” Or even this: “Why didn’t you eliminate the war in Ukraine?”) I think many others have gone over those possibilities, and I wanted to make you think more about smaller, more personal decisions rather than stuff like that. (Well, with the exception of Covid, of course, though Covid caused more small-scale upheaval than just about anything in the past fifty years in my own not-so-humble opinion.)

So, what other timelines could you have had? What other timelines do you wish you would’ve had? (I know I wish Michael would’ve lived. Everyone who’s ever read this blog or known me in any way whatsoever should know that’s been my most fervent wish.) And is it still possible to create a better timeline in the future than the one we fear may happen? (I hope so, otherwise I’d not do anything, much less write this blog.)

Dad Died Yesterday, Aged 86

Folks, this is a very tough blog to write. But I think I should. So here we are.

My father Roger was 86 and a bit — he would’ve been 87 in November on his next birthday — and was a huge sports fan his entire life. He loved the Milwaukee Brewers, the Milwaukee Bucks, and the Green Bay Packers, and going to the 1982 World Series with us kids between the Brewers and the St. Louis Cardinals at old Milwaukee County Stadium was a highlight he’d talked about for years. (One kid would go with one parent for each home game, so all three of us got to see a World Series game in person when we were young. I think Mom went to two home games and Dad one; it was a long time ago, but Dad insisted he’d gone and he usually was right about such things.)

I had to start off with that, because unless you understood at least some of my father’s passions, you didn’t know him at all.

Dad also played the drums. He did not consider himself a percussionist because he didn’t read music so much as read rhythms. He did play cymbals, bass drum, snare drum, field drum, castanets, maracas, and anything that was needed when he was a member of the Racine Concert Band. (Yes, my family has had a strong interest in the RCB for a very long time, and Dad was a member for over ten years in the percussion section.) He loved music of all sorts, but was most partial to musicals, Doris Day, Kristen Chenoweth, big band jazz from the 1930s, 1940s, and a bit into the 1950s (bebop was taking over from the older big band style; think the difference between Benny Goodman and his orchestra and/or Duke Ellington and his orchestra versus Charlie Parker and/or Dizzy Gillespie.)

Another of Dad’s passions was old movies. His favorite movie of all time was “Mr. Deeds Goes to Town,” a story about an unlikely man who inherits a fortune, the newspaperwoman who writes about him (incognito), and about the efforts to strip his fortune by unscrupulous members of his family. Why did they try? Well, Mr. Deeds was an eccentric. He played the tuba, he liked to dance down the street and sing a bit (Mr. Deeds didn’t have much of a voice, I’m afraid; his tuba, however, did), and he was a nonconformist for the times. That was enough to get a hearing before a judge, to prove competency or the lack of it.

Anyway, Dad loved that movie, and I know I watched with him several times over the last few years because it’s a highly entertaining movie (what with the tuba playing and all). Jean Arthur was the female lead, and Dad admired her for Arthur’s beauty and brains and grace under pressure, as he saw Arthur in several other movies (including one of Dad’s other favorite movies, “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington”). He loved comedies like “Easter Parade” and “Calamity Jane” and “State Fair,” and of course he knew all the words to favorite musicals such as “The Music Man” and “The Sound of Music.”

Dad also was a man of principle. One of his favorite sayings was that government doesn’t work if the able don’t serve. He also pointed out what Samuel Gompers said, about how it’s better to be party to a principle rather than a principal to a party, though the actual quote is more like this according to a quick Google search: “It is not the party for whom we vote that counts, but our loyalty to the principles for which that party stands.”

Anyway, my father lived a good long life. He believed in family and cared about others, but couldn’t always show it as he was a guy from a time where men were admired if they were the strong, silent type. (Dad would admit he wasn’t that type, sometimes, but the Stoic nature of it all certainly was something he admired.) Dad was a member of the Lutheran Church, believed firmly in Heaven and in God (to him, God was most definitely male, though he’d not had a problem with me seeing the Deity in other ways as far as I could tell), and was mentally alert pretty much until the hour of his death.

In our last conversation, which was mostly about sports, Dad told me he didn’t think Jordan Love is the answer for the Green Bay Packers and that he wished Aaron Rodgers had stayed in Green Bay as Rodgers probably wouldn’t have been injured here (as the Achilles’ tear Rodgers suffered was worse due to happening on artificial turf). He was looking forward to the Milwaukee Bucks basketball season (starting tonight), though he didn’t like the trade of Jrue Holliday for Damian Lillard; he liked Lillard, but he’d rather have had Holliday and Lillard, and if he could only have one, he’d have kept Holliday. (That this apparently caused Giannis Antetokounmpo to sign a maximum-amount three-year extension didn’t really please my father. He liked to say that the Bucks needed five people on the team, not just one guy, and that compared to Wilt Chamberlain or even Michael Jordan, two guys who could and did win games practically single-handedly, Giannis wasn’t in that league. Of course, he also admitted that Giannis had come a long way and would certainly make the basketball hall of fame some day, too.) And he worried that the Milwaukee Brewers would trade their ace, Corbin Burnes, over the winter; while he didn’t think Burnes was as good this year as last (or the Cy Young year before that), he still felt Burnes was an ace-level pitcher and was needed, desperately, for the Brewers to be a competitive team next year.

So, on Sunday night, we had that good conversation. I didn’t see him Monday except once; he was not well, and I asked him if he wanted to be taken to the ER or if he wanted me to call the rescue squad. He said he didn’t want that. I abided by his wishes, went to bed, got up on Tuesday to go to a doctor appointment, and when I got back home, Dad had passed away.

Dad always wanted to die at home. I know that. But I still feel terrible about it anyway.

I also have to say this: Dad wanted everyone to know that he wasn’t a saint, just a man; he hated the idea of everyone being lauded as the most wonderful person who’d ever lived after they died (if you already thought that before the person’s death, that was another story entirely), and would rather that we remember his humanity along with the good times, the bad times, and the in-between times.

At any rate, I thought that I’d be prepared for this day, when it came, and I’m not.

Funeral arrangements are pending.

What Do You Deserve from Your Employer, Or, Meditations on Mike Budenholzer’s Firing from the Milwaukee Bucks

This past week, the Milwaukee Bucks parted ways with their head coach, Mike Budenholzer. The Bucks had the best record in the NBA this past season at 58-24, and had the #1 seed throughout the playoffs. However, this only lasted for one series, as the Bucks were eliminated by the #8 seed, the Miami Heat. It’s because of this disastrous (for pro sports) outcome that Budenholzer was fired.

“Ah, but Barb,” you say. “Your blog’s title is ‘What do you deserve from your employer.’ What does that have to do with the Bucks/Budenholzer situation?'”

My answer: Plenty.

You see, for the second year in a row, the Bucks went out early in the playoffs, though last year the Bucks at least got through the first round and past the #8 seed. (Early, in this context is, “Did not ascend to the NBA Finals.”) The Bucks feature possibly the best player in the NBA, Giannis Antetokounmpo. He’s in his prime right now at age 28, and the Bucks have been built around him for five-plus years now.

I say “five-plus” because Budenholzer was the coach for the past five years. Budenholzer’s record in the regular season was stellar at 271-120, which means the Bucks won almost seventy percent of their games.

Yep. No misprint. That’s how many wins Budenholzer had as the head coach of the Bucks: 271.

Not only that, Budenholzer coached the Bucks to the 2021 NBA Championship. The Bucks hadn’t won a championship in the NBA in fifty years, but they won with “Coach Bud.”

“Barb, you still haven’t gotten to the bit about what the coach deserves from his employer. I assume that’s where you’re going with this?”

Why, yes, dear reader. That is exactly — exactly — what I’m going for, and I’ll tell you why, too.

First, though, I want to explain something else to y’all, some of you who probably don’t know much about professional basketball. When you have the best team in the league, you are expected to win all the time, no matter what.

Including when one of your brothers dies in a car accident, which no one knew about until after the Bucks had lost in five games to the Heat.

See, Coach Bud didn’t want to make the playoffs about him, so he said nothing. But he was grieving. He found out just before game four that his brother had died. And it was in games four and five that some of the coach’s decisions seemed rather odd. But he is the youngest of seven kids. One of his elder brothers died, Budenholzer was being private as is his right about his brother’s passing, but I don’t think the coach understood just how strange grief can be when it comes to anything else. Most particularly the time sense, as when you grieve for someone you loved, nothing seems real for a while. And certainly time seems sometimes like it’s running away, and other times, it seems like it’s stopped.

I don’t know about you, but I think if someone who’s very good at their job, like Coach Bud, has a bad series or makes questionable decisions after his brother dies, I think you should give him a pass. He’s grieving, dammit! His brother’s life was more important than basketball, and yet because he is a professional, and because he’d been with his team all year, he stayed to do his best and coach his team.

I admire that impulse, but it may not have the right one.

That said, the Bucks did way wrong here. They should not have fired Coach Bud, not under these circumstances. Instead, they should’ve hired a top-flight assistant head coach perhaps to work on the defense (as the Bucks’ defense got torched by Heat superstar Jimmy “Buckets” Butler and were completely unable to stop him) and let the coach grieve his brother.

Why? Well, look again at the coach’s record. Think about the fact that two years ago, the Bucks won the NBA Championship for the first time in 50 years with this coach at the helm.

In most cases, employers realize if they have a great employee — and in any case, Coach Bud was just that — but the employee is a bit off due to grief or grieving, even if the employee maybe doesn’t even realize it (it’s possible the coach didn’t), you are supposed to let your employee take time off to deal with his grief.

In other words, you don’t fire the best coach in the NBA because he was off a bit for two games after his brother died. That’s dumb, to put it mildly, and more to the point, it’s an overreaction.

So, what does your employer owe you when you have something awful happen like a death in the family? They owe you time to grieve. They should give you time off from work, with pay, to go bury your sibling in a case like this.

You don’t deserve to be fired.

I don’t know Coach Budenholzer at all. But I do know this. What the Bucks did was classless, not to mention truly horrible behavior under the circumstances. They should not have done this. And as a Bucks fan, I am incensed.

Congrats to the NBA Champion Milwaukee Bucks!

Folks, last night I watched the Milwaukee Bucks play game six in the National Basketball Association’s (NBA’s) finals against the Phoenix Suns. Bucks stars Giannis Antetokounmpo (there’s a reason Bucks announcer Ted Davis calls Giannis “the Alphabet,” folks), Khris Middleton, and Jrue Holiday, along with many other excellent players like P.J. Tucker, Thanasis Antetokounmpo (yes, Giannis’s elder brother), Pat Connaughton, and fan favorite Bobby Portis, helped the team win the first NBA championship for the city of Milwaukee (and for the Bucks franchise) in fifty years.

All I can say is what I’ve said in the title: “Congratulations!”

The Bucks as a team are excellent, but the people who make up the team are even better. Giannis is a good person, known for his philanthropy and down-to-Earth attitude. (Giannis also overcame a huge injury, that of a hyperextended knee, in order to play exceptionally well in the NBA Finals, finishing game six with fifty points. Yes, fifty points on a bad knee! But I digress.) Middleton is a hard-working sharpshooter and a devoted family man. Holiday is married to an Olympic athlete, is planning to play on the US Olympic team this year (along with Middleton), and was quick to integrate himself into the team and helped a great deal with his unselfish attitude and play.

Of course, there’s also coach Mike Budenholzer to thank, as he worked tirelessly to put together a game plan that would give Giannis, Khris Middleton, and Jrue Holiday the ability for each of them to do what they do best. Plus, he’s been great at working the bench players into games, and seems to have a sixth sense as to when someone needs a rest.

For that matter, I’d like to thank Bucks General Manager (GM) Jon Horst, as no team succeeds without a great GM.

So, while the state of Wisconsin and the city of Milwaukee continue to celebrate, and rightfully so, I wanted to say thank you to the entirety of the Bucks organization. Everyone — from the ticket sellers to the beer vendors to all of the assistant coaches and trainers plus the Bucks announcers on TV and radio — played a role in this championship. And every one of them deserves to be proud, not just of the Bucks, but of their own hard work on the Bucks’ organization’s behalf.

Narrative Framing, the Milwaukee Bucks, and You

Folks, over the past week or so as I’ve battled an illness, I’ve been thinking about how we shape our own narratives. (Again, as this is one of my besetting sins as a novelist.) And that led me to ponder the Milwaukee Bucks, which have had one of the best years in their team’s history and have made it all the way to the Eastern Conference Finals…which you’d think would be good enough for anyone.

But as the Bucks were expected throughout to go to the NBA Finals, people have been up in arms (including yours truly) when they lost game 5 to the Toronto Raptors at home to put them down three games to two. They now face elimination in game 6.

The thing is, if you think about it, just getting to the Eastern Conference Finals is wonderful. The Bucks were “one and done” last year. And, I believe, the year before that.

But this year, they swept their initial playoff series, against the Detroit Pistons. And then they won easily over the Boston Celtics in the second round.

This, mainly, along with a stellar regular season, is why Bucks fans have taken a doom-and-gloom attitude.

And that led me to consider how else we tend to frame our own narrative in our lives. Do we think of the bright side? (Should we is another question, but that’s for another day.) Or do we think of what’s not working rather than what is, and concentrate on our failings rather than our successes?

I don’t know about you, but I tend to think about the failures, myself. I think about how I could’ve done this, that, or the other better. Sometimes, in the moment, it’s almost like I see myself from above and wonder, “Why can’t I do better than this? Why is it that I can barely explain myself? Why is it that I can’t make better decisions? Why do I run out of time?” and so on.

I wonder if that’s where the Bucks are at, right now. But I strongly suspect, as their season is not over, that they aren’t.

Are they happy to be down 3-2 and facing elimination? Of course not. (Who would be?)

But they have things they can still do. And I believe they’re most likely concentrating on them, and how they need to just do a few more things to get a win (in sports parlance, a W)…they may even be focusing on past success against the Raptors, and be looking at what they’ve done differently (and worse) in this series that hasn’t been working.

Forward, they are probably looking. Not back.

Now, does this make any difference in what happens in Game 6? You better believe it does. They can go in there and do their level best, knowing their season will be over if they don’t give it everything they possibly have.

And of course they could still lose. But if they do, they’ll know — providing they gave it their all, and tried their best, and focused their minds and bodies properly — it wasn’t their time to shine after all.

That can be a bitter lesson, sometimes. Because we try our best, and we want to shine all the time.

But no one — not Michael Jordan, not LeBron James, not Wilt Chamberlain, not George Mikan, nor any other basketball superstar over the years — has ever shined all the time. Because it’s not humanly possible.

So, let’s take a step back, and frame this differently, OK?

The fact is, the Bucks’ Giannis Antetokounmpo is a great player. He may well win the NBA Most Valuable Player award this year, and if so, it’ll be richly deserved.  And he’s  led the Bucks to an excellent season.

These pluses are not negated, nor should they be, if the Raptors do succeed in beating the Bucks.**

How does that relate to your own, personal situation, though?

In essence, you need to learn how to frame your own narrative. Stop beating yourself up because you can’t seem to get ahead no matter how hard you try. Think about your successes once in a while, rather than always and only your failures. And do what you can to remember that you are a vital person with a role to play whether it seems like it or not.

That’s how you can learn from the doom and gloom over the Milwaukee Bucks and their current situation.

What do you think about this blog? Tell me about it in the comments!

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**As a fan, I will admit that if the Bucks can’t win game 6 and force a game 7, for a few days I will go around with a bad taste in my mouth. (That comes with the territory.)

Bucks Beat Pistons, Break 9-Game Losing Streak

The 2013-2014 Milwaukee Bucks have not been a good team, to put it mildly. Going into tonight’s game against the Detroit Pistons, they were by far the worst team in the league with a record of 7-33, and had lost nine games in a row.

Because the Bucks hadn’t won any games in 2014, the team has been in an ugly mood.

So have the fans, who’ve taken to booing home players after they’ve missed free throws. Which is very bad behavior on the part of the fans, of course, but can you blame them? It’s no fun to go cheer on your favorite team, only to watch them creatively find yet another way to lose.

The Bucks, in short, have been pathetic.

But tonight’s game against the Pistons was a bit different from the start. The Bucks actually made their first basket, a nice change. They were competitive at halftime, losing by only six points, 56-50. And they were actually ahead for much of the fourth quarter, where they outscored Detroit, 23-16.

Even with all that, the Bucks barely squeaked out a win against the Pistons, 104-101. The game was in doubt until the final 1.4 seconds of the game, though to be fair to the Bucks, there were some extremely debatable calls by the referees — the worst of the lot being a no-call after Brandon Knight was actually thrown out of bounds by a Piston player, yet the ball somehow went back to Detroit. Had those calls been more understandable, the Bucks would’ve taken a comfortable five-point lead with thirty seconds to play . . . instead, there were multiple opportunities for the Pistons to win.

Instead, the Pistons fell to 17-25. (Check out the Bucks’ Tumblr page if you don’t believe me.)

This was an interesting game for many reasons besides the odd decisions from the referees. First, it was Caron Butler bobble head night — as Butler is a native of Racine, and as this is his first season with the Bucks, he had many friends and family in the stands to cheer him on. This may have been one reason why Butler played exceptionally well this evening with 30 points, seven rebounds and a season-high five assists.

Second, Milwaukee’s PG Knight used to play for the Pistons, while PG Brandon Jennings, of course, used to play for the Bucks. So there was a lot of hard-fought action on both sides from those two men, because they were playing for pride. Jennings finished with 30 points, four rebounds and four assists, while Knight countered with 16 points, seven rebounds and nine assists.

Third, there were two Bucks players out with illness, C Larry Sanders and SG O.J. Mayo — both are normally in the starting lineup — while a third ill player, PG Luke Ridnour, did well off the bench, hitting two of his four three-point attempts and finishing with eight points in 19 minutes.

Any way you slice it, the 2013-2014 Milwaukee Bucks have been dreadful. But it’s nice to see them scratch and claw their way to an unexpected win for a change, rather than lose, fight with each other in the locker room, lose some more, fight in bars and get injured, and, of course, lose.

It’s hard to know what to expect on Friday, when the Bucks will take on the Cavaliers (15-27) in Cleveland. Will Milwaukee show some moxie again, as they did this evening? Or will they go out and lose yet again?

The smart money is probably going to be on the Bucks losing as many games as they can, as they seem more interested in getting a high draft choice than showing their fans that they actually care about winning games. But I have a funny feeling that the Bucks might actually beat Cleveland, just to be contrary.

If they do, I’ll be glad to write about them again on Friday . . . because if the Bucks can win two games in a row, that’ll be a verifiable hot streak, thus a story, thus something I can blog about without wanting to fall asleep.