The Players Who Wore Retired Numbers Before They Were Retired

Robert L. Dandridge will be the eighth Bucks player to have his jersey retired by the team, which means that at this rate of eight jersey retirements every 47 years, the team will run out of (single-digit and double-digit) numbers in the year 2561 or so.

More importantly and less preposterously, Dandridge was one of the three best players on the best team in franchise history, the 1970-71 title-winning team that is probably one of the 10 greatest NBA teams ever. His top “Similarity Scores” (players with careers of similar quality and shape) on basketball-reference.com include names like James Worthy, Carmelo Anthony, Jamaal Wilkes and Terry Cummings. Dandridge is one of the greatest players in franchise history.

Dandridge joins Oscar Robertson (#1), Junior Bridgeman (#2), Sidney Moncrief (#4), Jon McGlocklin (#14), Bob Lanier (#16), Brian Winters (#32) and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (#33) in the rafters. No one else in franchise history ever wore #1, #14, #32 or #33.

Here are the players who wore jerseys before they were retired.

Greg Smith
Norm Van Lier

Greg Smith and Norm Van Lier suited up in #4 prior to Moncrief. Smith played all 82 games in the 1970-71 championship season, when he finished third on the team in rebounding (7.2 per game) and field goal percentage (.512). Van Lier wore #4 for Milwaukee in 1978-79 in his only season with the team and final season in the NBA, the year just before Moncrief arrived.

Bob Warlick
Mike Dunleavy
Rory White
Mike Glenn
John Lucas
Gerald Henderson
Danny Schayes
Todd Day
Armen Gilliam
Sam Cassell
Keith Bogans
Tyronn Lue
Carlos Delfino
Joel Przybilla

Quite a crew. Three of these guys are particularly impressive name-drops for the next time you and your friends are going back and forth listing obscure Bucks players, which is sort of an odd and fun thing to do: Bob Warlick made one shot (out of eight) in 22 minutes in the inaugural Bucks season, Rory White played eight games for the Bucks in 1983-84, and Mike Glenn played 44 games for the Bucks to finish his career in 1986-87. Then we have three players whose sons by the same name also went on to suit up in the NBA, in Mike Dunleavy, John Lucas and Gerald Henderson. The Danny Schayes-Todd Day-Armen Gilliam trio is near-maximum 1990s. Gilliam was sporting #10 when Sam Cassell arrived in Milwaukee, so Cassell wore #20 in his first season with the Bucks before switching (also: Cassell was very, very good). Keith Bogans played for nine different NBA teams and Tyronn Lue played for seven different NBA teams (each of them played one season with the Bucks). Delfino had some nice moments wearing the number during Fear The Deer. Przybilla will go down as the last Bucks player to wear the number. He shot 1-4 from the field in 12 games in 2012-13.

Zaid Abdul-Aziz
Freddie Crawford

These two both wore the number a good decade before Lanier arrived. They both wore a lot of different jersey numbers. In addition to #16, Zaid Abdul-Aziz wore #21, #35, #6, #54 and #27, while Freddie Crawford gave #4, #12, #15 and #11 a try.