The NBA Championship windows open and close in the matter of a single season. However, over 50 years after Oscar Robertson won a championship with the Bucks, the moves the front office made afterward still confuse him. Robertson joined the ‘All the Smoke’ podcast and discussed the past and current state of the NBA.
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He highlighted that some aspects that are unfortunately glorified in today’s NBA, were prevalent when he was a player. He said,
“… Hate to bring this up, but we win a championship. Did you know the next year they traded six of the guys? I went to the Bucks and I said, ‘Who did this?’ He said ‘What do you mean? Well, we had to’. I said, ‘Man you’re killing us. We win a championship let’s go with the same guys…'”
Milwaukee assembled a great team in the 1970-71 season. A team that was so great they captured the franchise’s first championship. However, the organization decided on a mass overhaul of their roster following their 1971 NBA championship. They traded away Bob Boozer, Dick Cunningham, Gary Freeman, Bob Greacen, Mary Winkler, and Bill Zopf.
The trades following resulted in the team going 50 years before they won another title. None of the players that the Bucks traded away averaged over 10 points per game during the championship season. Despite this, Robertson pleaded regarding the importance of players that contribute to team cohesion. He said,
“The difficulty in basketball today is that it’s hard to find guys that know how to play together.”
Although the Bucks went on to finish with a 63-19 record in the 1971-72 season, their team wasn’t the same. As a result, Milwaukee lost to the Lakers in the Western Conference Finals. In 1974, Milwaukee returned to the NBA Finals but lost to the Celtics in a hard-fought seven-game series.
The Bucks’ impromptu decision to trade key figures of their team proved to be costly for the franchise. It wasn’t until Giannis Antetokounmpo in 2021 washed away the wrongs.
