{"id":554381,"date":"2026-01-23T01:05:14","date_gmt":"2026-01-23T01:05:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/554381\/"},"modified":"2026-01-23T01:05:14","modified_gmt":"2026-01-23T01:05:14","slug":"january-22-1968-nba-awards-a-franchise-to-milwaukee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/554381\/","title":{"rendered":"January 22, 1968- NBA awards a franchise to Milwaukee"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"text | article-text\">MADISON, Wis. (WMTV) &#8211; On this day, Jan. 22, 1968, the National Basketball Association awarded a franchise to Milwaukee. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Although it took a few months to pick out a name, that franchise would eventually become the Milwaukee Bucks. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">The NBA awarded the franchise to Milwaukee Professional Sports and Services, Inc., which was a group of Milwaukee-based investors. The group was headed by Wesley Pavalon and Marvin Fishman. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">That franchise was officially incorporated a few weeks later on Feb. 5, but it took longer to figure out what the team should be called. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">It wasn\u2019t until May 22 of that year that the name Milwaukee Bucks was officially decided on. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">The name was suggested by 45 people in a contest where more than 14,000 fans submitted name suggestions. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Whitefish Bay man RD Trebilcox won a new car for his suggested name of the Bucks. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">While Milwaukee Bucks struggled in their first year, they would go on to win the NBA Championship just three years after their founding. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Milwaukee Professional Sports and Services owned the team until 1985, when the franchise was sold to Herb Kohl. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | text-start article-text\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nbc15.com\/page\/find-nbc15-news-wherever-you-are\/\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Click here<\/a> to download the WMTV15 News app or our WMTV15 First Alert weather app.<\/p>\n<p class=\"copyright |\">Copyright 2026 WMTV. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MADISON, Wis. (WMTV) &#8211; On this day, Jan. 22, 1968, the National Basketball Association awarded a franchise to&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":554382,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3775],"tags":[7,103,75907,1628,102,121,3871,6,66,1980],"class_list":["post-554381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-milwaukee-bucks","tag-basketball","tag-bucks","tag-herb-kohl","tag-madison","tag-milwaukee","tag-milwaukee-bucks","tag-milwaukeebucks","tag-nba","tag-sports","tag-wisconsin"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/115941731522617864","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=554381"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554381\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/554382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=554381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=554381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=554381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}