In case you’ve been in outer space recently or you’re one of those annoying “yay sportsball” people who have gone to painstaking lengths to ignore what’s happening right now, the Milwaukee Bucks are currently one win away from sports immortality. With a 3-2 series lead and as winners of three straight against a faltering Suns team, the red-hot Bucks seem to be on their way to the franchise’s first title in 50 years as they prepare to host Phoenix tonight.

Of course, the Finals aren’t a done deal yet. Yes, the Suns could steal a game on the road and force a Game 7 in Phoenix where, well, anything could happen. While the scales are tipped decidedly in Milwaukee’s favor at the moment, fortunes could reverse, an unlikely and unwelcome chain of events could occur, and the city’s hardened heart could once again be broken. Sure, all of that could happen between now and Thursday night. But hear me out on this, dear reader: what if…it didn’t?

What if a city that lost its opportunity to host the DNC on account of a pandemic, a city who still celebrates the time it lost the World Series nearly 40 years earlier, a city who is misunderstood and maligned on a national level and despised by much of the very state it supports, a city that’s conditioned to wait for the other shoe to drop and to brace for the absolute worst case scenario finally got its moment of glory? What if the Milwaukee Bucks—be it tonight or on Thursday—took the court and just won the whole goddamn thing?

After a roller coaster ride of a postseason that brought Milwaukee literally an inch from elimination in Brooklyn, saw both its present hopes and long-term future thrown into question as Giannis clutched his knee on the baseline in Atlanta, and found the familiar “close but no cigar” Wisconsin sports storyline resurfacing when they were down 0-2 in Phoenix, the Bucks are still standing. In fact, they’re thriving.

Antetokounmpo didn’t just return in time for the Finals, he’s also playing historically good basketball. Khris Middleton is earning some well-deserved and long-overdue national acclaim while quieting even the most critical Bucks fans with otherworldly playoff performances. Every new win is offering at least one unforgettable, franchise-defining play. Veterans like Bobby Portis and P.J. Tucker have stepped up to become unlikely folk heroes. All of a sudden, a team that was teetering on the edge of relocation somewhat recently and its small market home city are the center of the sports universe.

Both the Bucks organization and the city of Milwaukee have come a long way in recent years. Whether you’ve suffered through countless seasons of bad basketball and directionless “leadership” or you’re brand new to the Bucks bandwagon, you deserve to be experiencing this right now. Milwaukee deserves this. Let people with no connection to broadcast television whine about low ratings. Let them talk about the lack of star power in the Finals as a once-in-a-lifetime athlete continues to do the unimaginable. Let the silence of sports pundits reach a deafening crescendo as this Bucks team proves the rest of the world wrong.

Let them talk, speculate, generalize, and hate. We’ll just be in our Terrible City enjoying the ride.

About The Author

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Co-Founder and Editor

Before co-founding Milwaukee Record, Tyler Maas wrote for virtually every Milwaukee publication (except Wassup! Magazine). He lives in Bay View and enjoys both stuff and things.