All-time top 10 Milwaukee area players

[ghostofdylan]

Marques Johnson gave his list of the greatest area products of all time "based on people he talks to." It didn't seem accurate or complete to me. I'd love to see what you guys have to say.

[Cactus Panther]

Mickey Crowe. 

www.amazon.com/Over-Back-Troubled-Wisconsin-Basketball/dp/1940056047

Far from the best. However, the buzz he generated as a high school player was unprecedented and has not been matched. He had a unique style, look and flair that literally drew thousands of extra fans to his games throughout his high school career, myself included. An example of this includes the WISAA state championships during his senior year in what now is Panther Arena. 

Keep in mind that "greatest" is not the same as "best," which is a long debated issue especially regarding Mohammed Ali in the boxing realm. That is why I put Crowe on this list. And while he may have played for a high school team 80 miles north of Milwaukee, the buzz he generated in the area was unlike anyone else I can think of. His notoriety at the time extended beyond the state to a national level.

Here is what Gary D'Amato wrote in the Journal Sentinel about Crowe in his list of candidates for greatest seasons in the state. archive.jsonline.com/sports/the-best-is-yet-to-come-5e46ndp-139409818.html  The only other two Milwaukee area basketball players are Terry Porter and Latrell Sprewell. I don't know if this archived article is behind a paywall, so I will paste the excerpt about Crowe in the next post.

[Cactus Panther]

Here is what D'Amato wrote:

Long before the Internet age and the three-point shot, Mickey Crowe’s exploits as a 6-foot-5 Pete Maravich lookalike at tiny St. Nazianz JFK Prep in Manitowoc County made him perhaps the most widely known prep athlete in the history of interscholastic sports in Wisconsin. Crowe led the nation in scoring his senior year with a 41.8 average and finished his prep career in 1975 with a then-state record 2,724 points. Despite facing double-team and box-and-one defenses every night, he scored 1,001 points in 1974-’75, still the third-highest single-season total in Wisconsin prep history. He scored 45 points in a 72-58 loss to Racine Lutheran in the 1975 WISAA Class B state championship game. That game drew one of the largest crowds in the history of the now-defunct private schools tournament. Crowe was The Show, a must-see talent who often took 40 shots in a game, many of them from beyond 30 feet. He scored 72 points in a game and also scored 64 and 61. He once estimated that he took 60% of his shots from what would today be behind the three-point line. In 1999, Sports Illustrated ranked Crowe No. 34 on a list of the greatest 20th century Wisconsin athletes. “I’ve never seen any player in the state capture the imagination of people in terms of wanting to see him play like Mickey Crowe,” said Mark Miller, editor of the Wisconsin Men’s Basketball Yearbook. “There certainly have been many better players. But in terms of high school hoopla and being able to garner the attention of an entire state and have people want to see him play, I don’t know if anyone was any better than Mickey.”

[ghostofdylan]

I'll throw out a few more names ...

Don Kojis
Freddie Brown
Johnny Johnson
Jim Chones
Nick Van Exel
Caron Butler
Tony Smith
Devin Harris
Latrell Sprewell