Milwaukee Bucks: 15 greatest draft steals in franchise history

When teams trade a true franchise player, they often enter a period of rebuilding. That is true of the mid-1970s Bucks, who had to spend over a decade watching Kareem Abdul-Jabbar win titles for the Los Angeles Lakers and not Milwaukee.

What is fortunate about those Bucks is that they took the pieces acquired the day of that fateful trade with Los Angeles and used them to build something great. The core of the Milwaukee teams that would make the playoffs for 12 straight seasons began with Junior Bridgeman, the centerpiece of the draft-day trade.

The 6-foot-5 wing played college basketball at the University of Louisville before entering the 1975 NBA Draft, where he was flipped to the Bucks on draft night. He would play the next nine seasons in Milwaukee, weathering the early storm of rebuilding and retooling, figuring prominently into their run of relevance throughout the late 1970s and 1980s.

Bridgeman would have been miscast as the star for a contending team, but he fit in perfectly as a talented supporting player. He averaged double-digit scoring for eight straight seasons with Milwaukee, a steady rock for the franchise. He appeared in 485 of a possible 492 games during his first six seasons in the league. His 711 games played are a franchise record.

The Bucks needed loyalty after the Abdul-Jabbar trade, and Bridgeman gave it to them. He is one of nine Bucks with retired numbers, and the only one of the nine never to make an NBA All-Star team. He was the quintessential support player and one of the Bucks’ most stalwart players, a much-needed return from the Abdul-Jabbar trade with the Lakers.