The Shame of Milwaukee... a non-Mav rant
By: Gary Adornato
4/18/02


123-89.

Their last, feeble chance to make amends for a season tossed in the trash
can, and they couldn't even make it a game.

Over long before halftime (actually, over before the tip-off) Milwaukee 
fell behind by nine after one, twenty after two, thirty-four after three...
and into oblivion.

For Senator Herb Kohl, by every account a decent man that sponsored the 
fifth-highest payroll in a relatively minor market, it had to be insulting.
The post-game comments were brutal:

Detroit's Jon Barry, on the surprising lack of competition: "When you are 
playing a team that has to win the game to make the playoffs, you expect a 
48-minute dogfight, but that never happened. We hit a lot of shots early
and they never had an answer."

George Karl, whose criminal theft of his huge paycheck should be punishable
under law, offered this oddness: "Our demons, in a very basic way, 
self-destructed inside. It's very disappointing."

Ray Allen, whose non-existent leadership and invisible effort on anything 
that didn't produce a statistic was a constant void, offered: "We know we 
are better than this.  We've got a lot of things to work on this summer."

Sam Cassell, whose "guarantee" and subsequent crow-eating proved again that
this team sees him as a distraction, not a leader: "Why shouldn't I 
(guarantee it)? I said (we'd win) if we play with the intensity we're 
supposed to, but we didn't bring the intensity to win."

Karl again: "It's a disappointment that was created by ourselves with our 
lack of urgency, our lack of commitment. We had a lot of opportunities, but
we never made a commitment to the total package.  Maybe we have excuses. 
Maybe we have reasons, but we have nobody to blame but ourselves." Start
with yourself, big man, and hang out there for a while. 

I covered this team for bskball.com for much of the season.  Read the local
scribes, followed the games, collected images and impressions. I called this
moment a couple of months ago, but I rooted against it... I thought that 
eventually, someone on the team would rise up and grab the reigns, someone
would say "whoa... this is unacceptable." I was wrong.

Karl quit, and never apologized for his disgrace.

Allen stayed pretty, saying nice things but never taking the leadership 
role that the team begged him to.

Cassell proved irrelevant, never gaining the ear of anyone important.

Mason tried to lead, and got laughed at, payback for a career of thuggery.

Robinson remained the selfish, self-absorbed player that he's been all 
along.

Thomas said thanks for the big paychecks, and don't bother to play me if 
you don't want to.

The media in Milwaukee, what little there is of it, continued to offer 
excuses and pablum, allowing the team to write its own stories and never,
ever looking deeper than the press releases.

This season by the Bucks should rank as one of the most embarrassing 
displays of gutlessness by an organization outside of Golden State. The 
only justice will come when someone has to sit in one of those silly 
lottery boxes, and show the world that this team is a loser, sitting among
losers, hoping for a miracle.

Pathetic.