I guess I wasn't that shocked when Grayson Allen body slammed Alex Caruso back in January because I'd seen plenty of Bulls/Bucks, which for a long time was perhaps the most ferocious and fight marred rivalry in the NBA.
Yes, Chicago and Milwaukee both with picturesque lake views, really.
It's doubtful we'll see anything like that when the teams reconvene in the playoffs Sunday in Milwaukee for the first time since 2015, which by the way had an ugly, fight-marred finish and Giannis Antetokounmpo ending his second NBA season being ejected.
But for the longest time in the NBA a Bulls/Bucks series meant other forms of alliteration, bodies, banging and brawls.
Giannis Antetokounmpo has plenty of experience when it comes to physical postseason battles vs. Chicago.
"The rivalry was at a high point in the league," then Bucks general manager Wayne Embry once told me about the 70s Bulls and Bucks. "During the season those games were like wars." Even the coaches went at it. Bulls coach Dick Motta used to taunt Bucks coach Larry Costello, who eventually succeeded Motta in Chicago, that if he had Kareem Abdul-Jabbar he'd go 82-0 every season. Embry said Costello was so obsessed with the Bulls and Motta he'd drive down to Chicago whenever the Bucks weren't playing to scout the Bulls.
"Larry hated to lose to Dick," Embry recalled.
The Bulls/Detroit Pistons games of the late 1980s into the 1990s got the attention because of the championship handoffs going on between the teams. But Bulls/Bucks endured in intensity perhaps because of the geographical proximity, the big city disdain the Chicago franchise held for even what Abdul-Jabbar called "factory town" Milwaukee, and then the sophisticate's resentment of the expansion Bucks lucking into drafting Abdul-Jabbar after their first season in 1968-69, just two years after the Bulls entered the league.
The Bulls draft history of the era was a sequence of disastrous decisions, passing on Walt Frazier for Clem Haskins because they feared they couldn't pay Frazier, passing on JoJo White because he was going into the military. So Boston got him in the National Guard. Passing on Nate Archibald for Jimmy Collins when then scout Jerry Krause pushed for Collins, the owners committee outvoting team president Dick Klein and demanding he take Howard Porter over George McGinnis, low balling Maurice Lucas into an ABA offer instead.
The Bucks and Kareem won the NBA championship in the franchise's third season, Kareem's second.
The Bulls did build themselves a contender through wily moves, acquiring Chet Walker and reacquiring Norm Van Lier to partner with Jerry Sloan from the 1966 expansion draft to produce the toughest, meanest, hardest playing team in the league and a 50-win average over five seasons. The Bulls never-ending frustration became their inability to match centers, losing in their Western Conference playoffs to either Kareem or the Lakers' Wilt Chamberlain. Their kingdom for a center.
Hall of Famer Wayne Embry said the Bulls-Bucks rivalry was "at a high point in the league" in the 70s, when Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (pictured right) dominated the league in his first taste of NBA action.
The expansion Bulls remain the only NBA team ever to make the playoffs. But it wasn't until 1973-74 when the Bulls finally won a playoff series, a two-point seventh game victory over the Pistons with Jerry Sloan out for Game 7 with a torn planter fascia. Which meant doom going into Milwaukee to open the conference finals.
But even with the predictions against them, as the Bulls will have in this upcoming series with the Bucks, the officials and league were on notice from a regular season game a month before when Bulls center Dennis Awtrey after a scrum under the basket with Kareem turned and punched Abdul-Jabbar in the face.
"I thought he wanted to fight," Awtrey at the time told Bulls beat writer Bob Logan. "I went after him, grabbed his shirt to spin him around and propped him a good one."
The officials were watching Awtrey on league office orders, so in Game 3 in Milwaukee Motta took off on the officials after a foul call on Walker against Kareem, whom the Bulls claimed was tripping their players in retaliation. Sloan and Benny the Bull from the sidelines were ejected along with Motta. The Bucks finished the four-game sweep two nights later with Rick Adelman and Bobby Weiss playing the series for Sloan.
The Bulls went into a fallow period after that great Sloan/Van Lier team broke down after losing in the 1975 conference finals.
The strong Bulls teams of the 70s fell apart following their defeat in the 1975 conference finals.
Kareem forced a trade to the Lakers, but the Bucks remained competitive with clever drafting and the coaching of Don Nelson into the early 1980s. They then became the doughnut team with no middle to play against the centers of Boston and Philadelphia.
The Bulls finally hit in the draft in 1984 with Michael Jordan. And coming down the stretch of his rookie season the Bulls despite a losing record were headed to the playoffs against either the champion 76ers, against whom they were winless, or the Bucks, with whom they'd split the six regular games.
Though Bulls coach Kevin Loughery denied it, it seemed so obvious Loughery was manipulating the game to produce a loss and matchup with the Bucks, the Chicago Stadium fans began chanting, "Tulane Bulls, Tulane Bulls."
It was a reference to the then Tulane collegiate point shaving scandal. It sealed Loughery's fate with the new ownership group that took over a few months earlier.
The Bulls without a top center did get the Bucks matchup they wanted and were ready for a fight. Late in the regular season, the Bulls came back from 22 points down for a 119-117 overtime win against the Bucks in a game that had Paul Pressey carried from the court on a stretcher after being elbowed by Bulls center Steve Johnson. Earlier in that game, Bulls guard Wes Matthews punched Bucks center Paul Mokeski and was ejected, refused to leave the court and had to be restrained by teammate Orlando Woolridge. "The referees let this one get out of hand," complained Nelson.
The Bulls-Bucks rivalry of the 70s was re-ignited in the 80s once the Bulls acquired Michael Jordan in the 1984 draft.
The Bucks won that opening round playoff series 3-1 over the Bulls, and the series had its moments. Woolridge and Sidney Moncrief squared off in Game 2, though both were more hold-me-back guys. Loughery got a technical as the Bucks went up 2-0. The Bulls won a raucous Game 3 in Chicago by a basket, but lost Game 4 at home to end the series.
It was then Cleveland and Detroit which occupied the Bulls playoff intentions until the opening round series with the Bucks in 1990, which became one of the dirtiest and most physical in the NBA. It became so ugly in the wake of the Pistons' Bad Boys antics that the league finally began discussing a crackdown on physical play. It would take a few more years and some Knicks teams.
The Bulls finally dominant over the Bucks, who were about to embark upon their decade in the NBA's lottery wilderness, won that 1990 opening round series 3-1 with a Game 4 blowout win in which the Bulls sent out Will Perdue to be the enforcer.
And he succeeded in that rare role for him.
It was Perdue to the battle after rugged Greg "Cadillac" Anderson was ejected for an elbow to the head of Ed Nealy in Game 4. Anderson was the Bucks' bumper car in that series, body slamming Jordan to the floor in Game 2 and an elbow to the face of John Paxson in Game 3. They'd apparently heard enough brat and cheese jokes.
Both benches emptied as Jordan went after Anderson as Horace Grant went after Alvin Robertson in Game 4.
"The game was out of hand, so I just thought it was something to do," Anderson said about his assault on Nealy.
Perdue hadn't played in the first three games, and like a good hockey enforcer who would have made Bob Probert proud, Perdue came into the game and immediately leveled Robertson.
"Will ignited everything with his key baskets and his feistiness," Jordan commented afterward.
"He had fresh legs," quipped Bulls coach Phil Jackson. The NBA didn't much like Jackson calling the series "trench warfare."
Perdue finished with 15 points.
The Bulls' closeout Game 4 win of 24-points produced a half-dozen technical fouls, 68 personal fouls and 96 free throws.
Will Perdue set the tone with his physical play in the 1990 Bulls-Bucks playoff series.
The Bucks finally got back to the playoffs after the Bulls' Last Dance season with both franchises making sporadic appearances until meeting again in the opening round in 2015.
The Bucks were just beginning their ascent to the 2021 NBA championship in Antetokounmpo's second season with the Bulls in a last run with Derrick Rose and head coach Tom Thibodeau.
The Bulls took a 3-0 lead with the remnants of that last Big Three with Rose, Jimmy Butler and Pau Gasol. But a Game 4 slip-up allowed Jerryd Bayless to surprise the Bulls with a game-winning layup.
Earlier in that Game 4, Mike Dunleavy Jr. and Antetokounmpo presaged their Game 6 flareup, colliding and falling after a rebounding battle and both refusing to unlock their arms. They were forcibly separated by teammates with Dunleavy shouting at Bucks guard Michael Carter-Williams. Bulls guard Aaron Brooks later got a flagrant foul for a forearm shiver to Bayless.
The Bucks made it 3-2 before a 54-point Game 6 Bulls rout in Milwaukee in which Dunleavy was the lead scorer for the Bulls after an incident with Carter-Williams and Giannis being thrown down by Dunleavy. With Dunleavy attempting a 3-pointer in the second quarter with the Bulls leading by 30, Giannis jumped back up and ran for Dunleavy. Giannis smashed into Dunleavy, sending him tumbling into the stands.
Antetokounmpo was assessed a flagrant-2 and ejected in a series that had 15 technical fouls called. Carter-Williams said Dunleavy knocked out a tooth. "(The Bulls and) Dunleavy playing cheap and you can't control that," Carter-Williams claimed.
Mike Dunleavy and Giannis Antetokounmpo had several altercations during a physical postseason series in which the Bulls dominated en route to a 120-66 Game 6 win.
No one is getting ready to rumble in this era's NBA. But Bulls/Bucks has a knockout of a history. And now starting Sunday there is a champion to face a challenger. And let's say for the Bulls, at least figuratively, a puncher's chance.