The Milwaukee Bucks want the Orlando Magic as a rival
The Milwaukee Bucks staff thought about who should be their rival. They immediately centered on the revenge factor that might be with the Orlando Magic.
Every team likes a good rivalry. It adds juice to games, even regular season ones. It gets fans excited. It lights up twitter. It makes things much more intense.
In this time of the year, everyone is mostly focused on themselves. Analysts are starting to look at the season ahead and break things down and make predictions. That is the fun of this point of the year. There is just endless possibility and optimism going on.
With the schedule coming out earlier this month, there are already games we are looking forward to. Most of those have to do with either big names coming to town, critical stretches or long homestands.
There are also the rivalries.
The Magic, being a team that has won just 68 games in the past three years, do not have any natural rivals right now. Just the same usual divisional, intrastate rival with the Heat. You can tell for the Magic, at least, they want to beat the Heat bad. When they defeated them in December, it was clear after the game how much that win meant to the young players (their first over that team down south).
The NBA is not a league full of natural rivalries anymore. Ask the old guard, and they would say players on opposing teams are too friendly. But rivalries do exist — just watch the Clippers and Warriors play each other.
So who wants to be the Magic’s rivals?
The Bucks do, for one. Apparently.
Alex Boeder of Bucks.com went out seeking five new rivals for the Bucks, aside from their I-94 foes from Chicago. He picked the Magic as one team the Bucks could pick a fight with:
"If you did not know (or also if you did know): Scott Skiles is back. He coaches the Magic now. He used to coach the Bucks. (And play for the Bucks. Though not at the same time.)Tobias Harris presumably has a favorite basketball team which is not the Bucks. He used to play for the Bucks under Skiles, and he was the second-leading scorer on the Magic last season. Like the Bucks, the best players on the Magic are in their early 20s (Harris, Victor Oladipo, Nikola Vucevic, Elfrid Payton, Aaron Gordon, Evan Fournier, Mario Hezonja etc.). Things could align."
There is definitely a fair amount of revenge factor going between the Magic and Bucks.
For all we know, Skiles holds no ill will toward the Bucks. And Harris seems to be cool with Skiles, the reported major rift between Harris and the Bucks.
Still, there is no denying Harris loves playing against the Bucks. In nine games, he has averaged 18.0 points per game and 8.7 rebounds per game against the Bucks. In the first game after he was traded from Milwaukee, he scored 14 points and grabbed six rebounds in Milwaukee before a breakout performance later on in Orlando where he scored 30 points and grabbed 19 rebounds.
For a while, it seemed any time Harris did anything good it would send Bucks fans into a mad frenzy of complaining about their franchise giving away a player of his caliber without giving him a ton of chances.
Milwaukee seems fine now after a Playoffs appearance and the appearance, at least, of a solid young core.
The Magic and Bucks do have a bit of history too.
In the 2000s, George Karl publicly made comments singling out Doc Rivers after the Magic hired him. Karl believed more experienced assistants should get an opportunity to be a head coach. Rivers was fresh out of the broadcast booth when he took the Magic job with zero coaching experience.
It created some heated atmospheres between the Magic and Bucks.
It also did not help the Bucks won 11 of 12 regular season matchups from 1999-2002. Karl entered the TD Waterhouse Centre to the Imperial March from Empire Strikes Back and a chorus of boos for several games. Rivers though refused to call it a rivalry until the Magic actually defeated the Bucks for a change.
Kudos to him.
Orlando and Milwaukee did meet in the 2001 Playoffs. Tracy McGrady put in a stellar performance in his first Playoff appearance in a Magic uniform and they took Game Three in overtime, exorcising some demons before they bowed out to that great Bucks team.
Could the Magic and Bucks rekindle a rivalry?
Right now, there does not seem to be much emotional attachment. But maybe these two young cores will be rivals some day.