Cheer the Deer!

In honor of the Milwaukee Bucks clinching the national championship 50 years after Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Oscar Robinson, John McGlocklin and Bob Dandridge brought home the title, I've decided to dig up some of the Bucks-related cartoons I drew for the Business Journal of Greater Milwaukee back when I was their editorial cartoonist.

in Business Journal of Greater Milwaukee, January 15, 1999

The Beej, of course, didn't ask me for cartoons about the team per se; this cartoon drawn to accompany an editorial celebrating the end of the 1998-99 NBA lock-out is as close as we'll come today to a cartoon about the game itself.

in Business Journal oGM, Nov. 30, 2001

Most of these cartoons concern negotiations to merge the Bradley Center, the Bucks' home since 1988, with the Wisconsin Center, two blocks to its south.

in Business Journal, March 22, 2002

This one accompanied an editorial congratulating UHF Channel 41 for winning the rights to televise Bucks games for the 2002-03 season. Then using the call letters WMLW-LP (now WBME-CD), Channel 41 is a low-powered station whose broadcast signal has never extended far from Milwaukee County; local cable monopoly Time Warner only grudgingly added it to its line-up in 2003.

Channel 41 didn't retain the rights to Bucks games for long, however. It now runs TV reruns from the 1950's to '70's as part of the MeTV brand.

in Business Journal, Feb. 14, 2003

Now, this one was probably about the Bradley Center-Wisconsin Center merger, unless it was about the above-mentioned renovation plans, or something else entirely. I'm afraid I don't remember. Obviously, the Beej had some trepidations about whatever it was. What I really liked about this cartoon was that it didn't take very long to draw it.

I wish I could take credit for the composition of the cartoon, but credit is rightly due to the great Pat Oliphant. A basketball-themed cartoon of his years earlier demonstrated how to exaggerate height in a horizontally oriented cartoon, and I followed his example quite closely.

The bowling ball, however, was my idea.

in Business Journal, Dec. 19, 2003

Principals in the merger negotiations were Bradley Center Chair Ulice Payne, Jr. and Frank Gimbel, Chair of the Wisconsin Center District Board, so you'll be seeing them again in subsequent cartoons.

May 21, 2004

A proposal to rent out space at the Bradley Center was, of course, aimed at commercial development, but it was fun to imagine the Center opening up to residential occupancy instead. Of the cartoons in today's post, this is probably my favorite.

in Business Journal, Dec. 17, 2004

Editorially, the Business Journal was eager to see the Bradley Center-Wisconsin Center merger come through, and frustrated that negotiations were not getting anywhere.

in Business Journal, March 11, 2005

As negotiations dragged on, the Bucks' lease at the Bradley Center came due. Team management viewed the 17-year-old arena as out-of-date, and there was talk of the team considering pulling up stakes to find a more modern facility elsewhere.

in Business Journal, Oct. 14, 2005

The Business Journal decided to drop editorial cartoons at the end of 2005, before this merger business ever got settled. Once Wisconsin state government approved replacing the Bradley Center with Fiserve Forum in 2015, the merger was made moot. 

(If the merger ever happened, I've been unable to find a report of it. An on-line timeline from the Wisconsin Center District mentions the talks in the early '00's. It doesn't mention the Bradley Center again until July, 2015, when the Wisconsin State Senate's financing package for the Fiserv Forum included a provision for the WCD Board to oversee the Bradley Center. The Bradley Center was demolished in 2019, leaving plenty of room for the 65,000 fans massing outside Fiserv Forum on Tuesday.)

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I can't end today's post without adding a much earlier cartoon of then-owner of the Bucks, Herb Kohl, when he was running to succeed U.S. Senator Bill Proxmire (D-WI). Kohl won the September primary against former Governor Tony Earl, former Senate candidate Steve Garvey, Wisconsin Secretary of State Doug LaFollette, and perennial also-ran Edmond Hou-Seye; Republican nominee Susan Engeleiter was a State Senator from Brookfield who had won her nomination over state party Chair Steve King.

in UW-M Post, Milwaukee, Wis., Sept. 20, 1988

Kohl's deep pockets helped him to a decisive victory over Engeleiter; that he had brought the Bucks to Milwaukee didn't hurt, either. Kohl sold the Bucks in 2014, and a son of new co-owner Marc Lasry is one of a swarm of Democratic candidates vying for the nomination to challenge Senator Ron Johnson next year. Alex Lasry sponsors posts that show up in my Facebook feed every day.

Time — and there is plenty of it between now and August, 2022 — will tell whether the Bucks' championship is enough to propel Lasry to the front of the pack.