Forty years ago, another rookie set Milwaukee on fire

Brandon Jennings has made the Milwaukee Bucks relevant again, an electrifying rookie getting the city excited, the team rising and the league talking. Which is pretty much how it was 40 years ago, only writ large.

Writ taller, too, as in 7-foot-2.

Jennings, who scored an eye-popping 55 points last weekend against Golden State to stir memories of Milwaukee's best-ever rookie, couldn't be more different from the other guy. Jennings is a slight point guard, selected after nine other prospects in the June draft, a youngster just one year out of high school who took one of the most untraditional detours ever to the NBA, turning pro for one season in Italy.

The other guy was an imposing center minted by America's most storied college basketball power at the time (UCLA) and snatched with the No. 1 pick by a franchise that had him in mind before it ever existed. The Bucks, when they joined the league via its 1968 expansion, knew that they might play themselves into the then-annual coin flip with the other conference's doormat. At 27-55 in 1968-69, that's exactly what they did.

So the Phoenix Suns called "heads,'' the coin came up "tails'' and, a couple of months before Neil Armstrong's walk made history worldwide, the name "Neal Walk'' entered NBA annals.

He was the guy the Suns picked at No. 2, right after Milwaukee grabbed the young man from UCLA, Lew Alcindor. Soon he would become Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Eventually, he would become the league's all-time leading scorer, a six-time Most Valuable Player, a six-time NBA champion, a Hall of Famer and one of the eight or 10 best basketball players ever.

In that 1969-70 season, Abdul-Jabbar was a rookie of immediate and jaw-dropping impact.

"When you put the combination of great, great skills as an athlete with the intellectual part --- Kareem would learn from facing guys the first time, the second time, and make adjusts --- he's the best I've ever seen at that,'' said Jon McGlocklin, a teammate of Abdul-Jabbar back then, a Bucks broadcaster tracking Jennings' learning curve now. "But this rookie we have now is doing it, too. It's kind of amazing.''

Jennings has whiplash quickness and a knack for imposing his pocket-rocket will on games. Abdul-Jabbar had the size, the will, the smarts and what The Joker in an earlier Batman movie would have called that "wonderful toy'' --- the devasting, un-rivaled before-or-since hook shot. Released at the apex of the young center's elevation, his long arm stretched improbably high, with a quick flick of his wrist and an elegant release from his fingertips, Abdul-Jabbar's trademark shot sent the ball, most of the time, downward through the rim. He could nail it from 15, 16 feet out. Most defenders couldn't even dream of blocking it. It was the regal sky hook, the most effective non-dunk weapon in any offensive player's arsenal. Ever.

"Well, I can tell you that they only called it the 'sky hook' because [colorful Bucks broadcaster] Eddie Doucette labeled it that and because he was so much taller than the rest of us,'' Wayne Embry said. "But I had a pretty good hook shot, too. And I shot it the very same way as Kareem. Jerry Lucas had a good hook shot, Johnny Kerr --- we all had hook shots.''

Embry --- an NBA workhorse center who had retired after the 1968-69 season, same as Bill Russell --- might be right. Memory can play tricks that way. The Abdul-Jabbar we remember best is the late-vintage version, the aging but still formidable Captain, his hair going or gone but still the centerpiece of the Lakers' Showtime attack near the end of his 20 NBA seasons. It is true that he did not win in Los Angeles until Magic Johnson got there, but it is equally true that Johnson and the rest didn't win again once Abdul-Jabbar left.

The fellow who showed up with the Bucks in the fall of 1969 was, in a way, the Magic Johnson of Milwaukee. Not in personality, obviously, or in game but absolutely in impact. He had the big hair then and a purpose, sometimes a scowl, not yet obscured by goggles. The crew he joined had been assembled from the parts bin of expansion just a year earlier. Yet the boost he brought to the Bucks --- they improved by 29 wins, going 56-26 --- was as dramatic as the dark cloud he cast over opponents.

A kid following the Bulls while growing up in the Chicago suburbs then, I caught an early-season TV game between the teams, watched Abdul-Jabbar throw down a few hooks over Chicago's helpless defense and distinctly recall thinking, "How are the Bulls going to beat that --- with Tom Boerwinkle as their center?''

Said Embry in a telephone chat last week: "You weren't alone. [Bulls coach] Dick Motta felt the same way.''

The Bulls didn't fare that badly -- they were 3-2 against Milwaukee in Abdul-Jabbar's rookie season. But Chicago went 39-43 and, within a year, it was the team 90 miles up I-294 that was celebrating an NBA title. In 1969-70, the entire league was resigning itself to the ways it would have to cope with this big man.

"Push him. Hold him,'' said the legendary Oscar Robertson, who would team with Abdul-Jabbar the next season. "You couldn't defend Kareem.''

In Abdul-Jabbar's first NBA game facing Wilt Chamberlain, the 33-year-old Lakers star outscored the kid 25-23 in an L.A. victory. But in their next meeting, Chamberlain didn't play while Abdul-Jabbar scored 29 and the Bucks won easily. The third time Abdul-Jabbar played the Lakers, the rookie dropped 46 on them.

And so it went. In a stretch of 10 games in November and December, Abdul-Jabbar led Milwaukee in scoring nine times. Then, starting with a victory over the Warriors, the Bucks won 20 of their next 23 games as the training wheels came off for good. Foes felt the futility, the frustration of facing Abdul-Jabbar.

Listen to some witnesses to that Bucks newcomer:

Embry, who would become the NBA's first black front-office executive and Abdul-Jabbar's general manager in Milwaukee: "Dominance. No question. Wilt was huge but Kareem dominated everybody else. We're talking about Willis Reed, Wes Unseld --- how many Hall of Famers did he play against back then? It seemed like they were all Hall of Famers. It's not like the centers today. And you had to go against them all the time, not just twice a year or four times in your conference.

"He was a terrific person, Some remember him as being quiet, which he is. Shy, in a lot of ways. But there's nothing wrong with that. Very intelligent, as we've seen.''

Robertson, who played for Cincinnati in 1969-70: "Playing against Kareem, he was real long, tall and lean. But he didn't have the type of body he really needed to compete on an everyday basis. No one person is going to beat five guys. It even took Kareem time to build up his body, really learn the pro game and get better people around him.

"He became a much, much better basketball player. He perfected the hook shot, and I must say this: Kareem learned to pass the ball. He was one of the better passing big man in the history of the game.''

Houston coach Rick Adelman, who was a Rockets guard in 1969-70, then coached Portland against him in Abdul-Jabbar's final season: "I grew up in Los Angeles when he was at UCLA, so I knew. He went to Milwaukee and they immediately won. You knew that was going to happen. He just had an unstoppable shot. He was such a skilled player and was so big, and was intimidating at the defensive end, too, because he could block shots. The amount of years he played, he was still effective right up to the end. That speaks volumes about the type of player he was.''

Utah coach Jerry Sloan, a Bulls guard then: "I saw him play in college against Houston, when they had the no-dunk rule, and he'd shoot layups from about 2 1/2 feet above the rim. You couldn't stop the guy. We didn't have anybody who could even get close to [his hook]. You just prayed. You tried to make him work, but he got better and better the longer he was there.''

McGlocklin: "Since I was our leading scorer and AN All-Star the year before, I don't think he made any difference. [Laughs] No, Kareem changed everything, our defense, our offense. [Coach] Larry Costello did a great job in changing everything around from a guard-oriented offense the year before to running everything through him. And he was great immediately. Most guys go around the league a year or two before they get it but not Kareem.''

McGlocklin couldn't recall any rough patches for the rookie, either. "His hardest knocks came from his migraines,'' the longtime Bucks figure said. "And in the early years, his adjustment to life in a smaller glass bowl as opposed to L.A. and New York. His basketball adjustments were fairly smooth.''

Robertson famously was traded to Milwaukee the next offseason, giving the Bucks that inside-outside teaming of great center and great guard -- undeniable young talent and invaluable veteran wiles, a mirror image of what the Lakers would put together beginning in 1979-80 --- that triggered an NBA championship in only the franchise's third season. The Bucks kept winning division titles until Robertson retired after the 1973-74 season. Abdul-Jabbar asked out of the smallish Wisconsin market and got his wish a year later.

But for six seasons, Abdul-Jabbar dominated the NBA, doing so right from the start as a rookie. To think, it all came down to Phoenix --- which never has had the Draft's No. 1 pick --- calling heads.

"Fans don't take this into consideration enough,'' McGlocklin said. "If you want to be successful in pro sports, you've got to be good, you've got to do your work, you've got to have a coach and a general manager with intelligence. But then, on top of that, you've got to be lucky.''

In Abdul-Jabbar's case, not just lucky and good. Lucky and awesome.

Steve Aschburner has written about the NBA for 25 years. You can e-mail him here.

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