Roundball making year-round news at pro, college, high school levels

Fireworks shows are a week or so in the rearview mirror already as the summer of 2025 blows by at record speed. Not sure if it’s the poor weather that’s made it feel like summer hasn’t really arrived yet or the lateness of the school calendar this year taking post-seasons into mid-June, but July 10 feels like it got here way too fast.

Summer represents an always-welcome slowdown in the local sports reporting scene. Baseball is going at full strength at all levels and is just heating up at the Major League level with the All-Star break next week. For most of the other highcoverage sports, early July can be a dead zone.

But there are always plenty of reminders that the dead period is only temporary.

Take basketball for instance. It’s the winter sport that can remain in the spotlight pretty much all year long.

The confetti was barely swept off the floor in Oklahoma City following Game 7 of the NBA Finals when the NBA Draft was held and free agency began. The Milwaukee Bucks made headlines with the $107 million signing of 10-year Indiana Pacer Myles Turner and the waiving of superstar Damian Lillard, forcing the team to eat the $103 million left on his contract extension over the next five years.

There is criticism for how the Bucks handled Lillard’s departure, who will miss much of next season due to an achilles tendon tear. Certainly, it stinks to just waive one of the NBA’s all-time greats. The timing couldn’t have been worse. An injury of that magnitude sucks for any player. To get waived because of it adds insult to injury.

My hunch was Lillard wasn’t going to be a Buck next season anyway. My guess is he was going to be traded in an attempt to bring some youth to the roster or some draft picks which the team sorely lacks for the next half-dozen years. But his trade value now obviously plummeted.

The 2024-25 Bucks were clearly an aging team with a championship window around Giannis Antetokounmpo that was closing fast. It was going to be 37-year-old Brook Lopez’s last year with the team. You knew Pat Connaughton wasn’t going to be back. You weren’t sure about Bobby Portis, who will be back after signing a new three-year deal. He’ll be old by the end of that deal.

Re-signing Kevin Porter Jr. and Gary Trent Jr. seem like decent moves. Turner, though, is the key addition, bringing shotblocking and outside shooting, much like Lopez, but eight years younger. Does it make the Bucks any more of a title threat? I’m not convinced. But you have to admire the team’s effort in keeping Antetokounmpo believing they’re trying to win another title and trying to shut up the national media loudmouths who are dying to be the first one with the scoop regarding his departure to a more exciting market.

At the college level, a lingering story should be resolved this week. The NCAA Division I men’s basketball committee is set to vote regarding expansion to its postseason tournament. It feels like no one wants more teams in March Madness except for the power conferences who feel they need to get another slightly aboveaverage 18-14 team into what is now a 68team tournament.

Common sense says there is absolutely no reason for the tournament to go to 72 or 76 teams. But with the state of D-I college sports in the year 2025, there is very little that makes sense anymore. My worthless vote is to keep the tournament as is. Heck, my vote would be to cut the field back down to 64.

Even at the high school level, basketball made summer news in Wisconsin with items that didn’t happen. You may have read about them last week.

The push for a 35-second shot clock is almost a decade old now and the WIAA’s Advisory Council decided on June 24 the debate will go on for at least another year, shooting down the item before it even got to the Board of Control for a vote.

I’ve said it before a couple of times in this space and I’ll stick to it. I’m not of the belief that high school basketball should be about shot clocks and trying to force faster paces. I already see more than enough games each winter that have too many turnovers. I enjoy seeing different styles and strategies and watching coaches try to make the best of what they have on their rosters.

But I also realize a shot clock in Wisconsin is inevitable and who am I to stand in the way if that’s what the majority want. It sounds like the cost of installing them in virtually every gym in the state remains the key sticking point, especially in smaller districts.

The other item shot down by the Advisory Council before it could even get to the Board of Control was expanded state tournaments, creating a four-day event bringing eight teams in each of the five divisions to the Green Bay area for the girls tournament and to the Madison area for the boys tournament. This plan emerged a few months ago and quickly made its way up the WIAA chain, before falling one step short of a final vote, even though it’s been reported that about 90% of the state’s head coaches supported it in a survey this spring.

This rejection did not surprise me at all. Not that there isn’t merit to the proposal and I’m sure it will come back for more consideration. I hope it does. But, understandably, there are logistics in such a major expansion that need to be thought through before this is passed.

I like the idea of getting Division 1 back to eight state teams. I think general public interest in the state tournaments has suffered since the WIAA went to five divisions and cut D-1 fields in half. The tournaments need more big schools to showcase more of the state’s best of the best. Conversely, I’ve never been crazy about having six state champions each year –– three girls teams and three boys teams –– from programs with enrollments under 600. I still reject the idea of 600 to 1,200 being a fair enrollment range for Division 2, but that’s another argument for another day.

In case you didn’t see the details, the proposed new state tournament format calls for a very busy opening Wednesday, where three sites would be needed to help complete the quarterfinal rounds, which wouldn’t actually finish until Thursday morning. Six games would be played simultaneously in three sessions at each of the three quarterfinal sites for an 18-game Wednesday onslaught.

For a tournament steeped in a tradition of the spotlight –– especially a statewide audience on local TV networks –– being on one game at a time, the proposed Wednesday setup I’m sure is a hang-up for the WIAA’s executive staff and bean counters. For the teams and fans, there are two issues here. One, if you’re not playing at the Kohl Center or Resch Center and, two, if you’re not playing on TV, is it really the state tournament?

Venue concerns were a factor in this spring’s lengthening of the WIAA baseball and softball tournaments to four days for the first time. Bad weather in the past has forced state games to be played on high school diamonds. Those that got forced to play at those sites felt slighted they didn’t get to play on the big stage.

Would basketball teams feel slighted when playing at St. Norbert College, Madison College or the outdated Alliant Energy Center? A likely way to address the broadcast issue is through some kind of streaming plan where viewers would have to choose their games on Wednesday. Streaming has become commonplace for many, but not all Wisconsin television watchers.

It will be interesting to see where this goes in the next year or two.

Speaking of winter overhauls, you may have seen the story last week about the big changes coming to the WIAA boys wrestling post-season in 2025-26. Regional weekend is gone as are the Tuesday night team sectionals. They are