It's the post-holiday January blues, and the Milwaukee Bucks keep getting demolished by the Indiana Pacers ... so let's give ourselves a pleasant break and take a moment to quick fondly look back at that time the Bucks destroyed the Soviet Union. (At basketball, that is.)
Yes, thanks to Americana Pipedream on Instagram, we were reminded that, while there were 50 years between their NBA championships in 1971 and 2021, they arguably had an even bigger victory in between the two: smashing the Soviet Union and teaching them to Fear the Deer right here in Milwaukee in 1987.
The late Cold War clash was the championship game of the inaugural McDonald's Open, a globe-spanning round-robin tournament held in late October 1987 between the Russian national team, the European champions Tracer Milano from Italy and the Milwaukee Bucks ... for some odd reason. Sure, the Bucks were still pretty good, regularly making the playoffs – but they were now far from their '71 championship squad prime, failing to win their division for the first time in almost a decade with Junior Bridgeman newly retired, coach Don Nelson bailing due to problems with the late great then-Bucks owner Herb Kohl and an aging Sidney Moncrief nearing at the end of his Milwaukee tenure. And also: They're the Milwaukee Bucks. We love them, but they're not typically considered one of the signature blue-ribbon brands of the NBA.
But there Milwaukee and the Bucks were, hosting this first-ever global basketball bout at the MECCA. Both the Bucks – even without Moncrief, Sixth Man of the Year winner Ricky Pierce, Craig Hodges and John Lucas – and the USSR beat tournament top-scorer Bob McAdoo and Tracer Milano, setting up a climactic championship geopolitical grudge match between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, the first time the USSR would take on an NBA squad.
"Just what if the two greatest powers could find the answer to peace?" asks the championship game's optimistic intro voiceover. "Imagine all that the people of the Soviet Union and the people of the United States could share with each other."
Well, on Oct. 25, 1987, they at least shared a basketball court – but there was no peace to be found, at least for the Russian side, as the Bucks stomped the USSR, 127-100, at the MECCA. And it wasn't really even that close; according to the Washington Post's write-up from the historic game, the USSR fell behind by as many as 48 points during the basketball bout and only scored 36 points at the half compared to Milwaukee's 67. Consider it revenge for the 1972 Summer Olympic men's basketball gold-medal final, Russia.
Check out Americana Pipedream's video for some of the highlights from the smackdown (as well as Dick Vitale taking the LONG way to a Bruce Willis joke).
The Soviet Union would begin officially crumbling apart the following year – and while there's no proven correlation to this basketball game, the Bucks should definitely hang a "Cold War champions" banner from the rafters. Not that things went all that much better for the Bucks after the game either, as Milwaukee would shortly enter a sustained period of mediocrity, only escaping the first round of the playoffs one more time between 1987 and the end of the millennium while recording some of the franchise's worst seasons during that stretch.
As for the McDonald's Open, the global tournament would continue matching up international squads against NBA talent like the Lakers, Knicks, Celtics and Nuggets every year through 1991. After that, the competition moved to every other year until its final installment in 1999. The NBA representative never lost, winning all nine championships.
To watch the entire 1987 McDonald's Open championship game broadcast, click here. And as for how today's Bucks are faring, Milwaukee currently stands in second in the East at 25-10 – with no plans for a Russian rematch anytime soon on the schedule. Stay tuned to OnMilwaukee for more updates, though.
As much as it is a gigantic cliché to say that one has always had a passion for film, Matt Mueller has always had a passion for film. Whether it was bringing in the latest movie reviews for his first grade show-and-tell or writing film reviews for the St. Norbert College Times as a high school student, Matt is way too obsessed with movies for his own good.
When he's not writing about the latest blockbuster or talking much too glowingly about "Piranha 3D," Matt can probably be found watching literally any sport (minus cricket) or working at - get this - a local movie theater. Or watching a movie. Yeah, he's probably watching a movie.
