Sports Nut

With their first major decision as owners of the Milwaukee Bucks, Marc Lasry and Wesley Edens made Jabari Parker the second overall pick in the 2014 NBA Draft. This was the most likely outcome for the Bucks’ draft night, and the pick was met with a wave of positive reaction both here in Milwaukee and throughout the NBA universe. And that excitement – perhaps most importantly – has been matched by Parker himself.  Jabari Parker exchanging fist bumps with people at his table. This was what he wanted all along. — Chris Mannix (@ChrisMannixSI) June 26, 2014 It’s clear now…

Photo courtesy of Bucks.com If this works as well as everyone thinks it will, if Jabari Parker is the player and person everyone thinks he is, if he follows through on the old-school one-team loyalty goal he says he desires, then you can almost picture the future memories. You can conjure up a cold March Friday night in 2019, a moment after Parker has just scored his 40th point. He looks to the courtside seats, where father Sonny sits, because the train ride from Chicago is an easy commute. He looks further up into the stands, and sees precious few empty…

#480076367 / gettyimages.com “When you come to a fork in the road, take it,” said Herb Kohl, quoting the great Yogi Berra when announcing the sale of the Bucks to Marc Lasry and Wesley Edens in April. Less than three months later, Lasry and Edens now stand at their first fork in the road as new owners: the NBA Draft, where the new owners and GM John Hammond will soon be on the clock with the second overall pick. The Bucks’ next path is still unknown, but here’s what we do know: It’s going to be some time before the…

The World Cup soccer parties are everywhere, which could be a report from Brazil or England or even Kathmandu, but is quite true in the good ol’ US of A, too. Whenever ESPN shows highlights of Team USA, they are spliced with scenes from massive viewing venues in Chicago and Kansas City and New York. But ESPN could just as easily turn its cameras on Milwaukee and see much the same thing. On Brady Street, Sunday’s U.S. vs. Portugal viewing party was supposed to be at the Nomad, but it ended up encompassing a massive swath of the street. So…

#450446866 / gettyimages.com Jurgen Klinsmann was wrong, of course, but maybe it’s because he’s right. A little while back, Team USA’s manager told the New York Times magazine that the United States “cannot win this World Cup.” Which is silly. Anybody can win this World Cup, from Algeria to Uruguay and all the letters in between. Now you might be far safer putting your money on Argentina and Brazil than Iran, or on Germany and Spain instead of Costa Rica. But the only countries who “cannot win this World Cup” are the teams who are not in this World Cup.…

#477699969 / gettyimages.com Paging through some old posts this morning, I spotted a pretty significant anniversary: 29 years ago today, Major League Baseball held the 1985 amateur draft. With the first overall pick, your Milwaukee Brewers selected University of North Carolina shortstop (!) B.J. Surhoff. Surhoff didn’t play much shortstop in the majors but, as No. 1 overall picks go, he wasn’t a bad choice. He played his first nine MLB seasons in Milwaukee, primarily as a catcher, and hit .274/.323/.380 (batting average/on-base percentage/slugging) in 1,102 games. His 704 career games behind the plate are the second-most in franchise history,…

Just before new Milwaukee Bucks owners Marc Lasry and Wes Edens spent Thursday night hanging out and drinking beer with fans, word came down that someone was buying the Los Angeles Clippers for $2 billion. That’s nearly four times what it cost to buy the Bucks. But there’s another connection between the Clippers and Bucks sales. The man who’ll write that $2 billion check for the Clippers is former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. But before he offered to write that check, as this ESPN story explains, he and partner Chris Hansen offered to write another one for the Bucks. And it…

It is, for now, nothing but a number, and a rather small one at that. Which hasn’t stopped it from being quite the big deal. And the Milwaukee Bucks are counting on it becoming even bigger. “Pick #2” is the latest Bucks catchphrase, splashed around their redesigned website and celebrated in emails sent out to “Bucks Stakeholders.” It is their prize from Tuesday night’s NBA Draft Lottery, which was their prize for suffering through the worst season in franchise history. It is a symbol of hope that things will get better, and a symbol of how far away they may…

The 22-year-old’s name is Wei-Chung Wang. He hails from Taiwan, throws lefty in the mid-90s, has a spot in Milwaukee’s vaunted bullpen, and would, under normal circumstances, be quite familiar with life on a minor-league bus. But these days, life is anything but normal with anything involving the Milwaukee Brewers. They’re the best team in baseball, having just notched their 20th win, and own a divisional league big enough to drive one of those buses through. They struck heartfelt marketing gold with Hank the Dog. And now, they are singlehandedly reintroducing Milwaukee to the wonders of 80s new wave music.…