National Basketball Association rivalries certainly aren’t what they used to be.
It has been said that familiarity breeds contempt, and that adage held true during the early stages of the Milwaukee Bucks’ NBA history.
When the Bucks entered the league as an expansion team in 1968, there were only 14 teams in the league as opposed to today’s 30. There were no conferences, just two divisions. Milwaukee played each opponent on its schedule – not just its Eastern Division counterparts – six times during the regular season, so when bad blood developed between two teams it had plenty of opportunities to boil.