JR Radcliffe

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

The 2018 Milwaukee Bucks opened the season 6-0 and already have recorded the franchise's best start since 1971-'72, when Milwaukee opened the season 7-0 and 17-1.

That team, coming off the 1971 NBA championship, fell in the Western finals to the Los Angeles Lakers, 4-2, and thus didn't get a chance to play for a repeat. But the Bucks did finish 63-19 that season and certainly looked the part of a budding NBA dynasty.

Some things to remember from that season:

It was the first year everyone used the name Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

The 7-foot-2 NBA superstar had received the name Kareem Abdul-Jabbar when he converted to Islam three years earlier, but in the summer after the end of the 1970-'71 season, he legally changed his name from Ferdinand Lewis "Lew" Alcindor to Kareem. He was named the league's MVP in both 1971 and 1972 (as well as 1974, for that matter), the last and only Bucks player to win the award. Kareem also had signed a four-year contract with the Bucks (plus a club option year) in August 1972.

The season ended in disappointment

The Bucks were hampered by Oscar Robertson's injury late in the season, and though he did play in the playoffs, the mighty Lakers were able to dispatch the Bucks in the conference finals, including a 104-100 win over Milwaukee in the clincher. The Bucks defeated the Golden State Warriors, 4-1, in the preceding playoff series.

It featured one of the biggest regular-season clashes in NBA history

On Jan. 9, 1972, the Bucks squared off with the Lakers in an epic battle that ended with Milwaukee victorious, 120-104. The Bucks improved to 36-8 and the Lakers fell to 39-4 -- with a 33-game winning streak snapped. It's by far the longest streak in NBA history. Abdul-Jabbar -- a future Laker -- scored 39 points with 20 rebounds in the win. All five of the Lakers' starters -- Wilt Chamberlain, Jerry West, Gail Goodrich, Happy Hairston and Jim McMillian -- finished in double-figure scoring.

Milwaukee was also the final destination of the second-longest streak in NBA history, when the Warriors opened the year with 24 straight victories in 2015-'16 before falling at the hands of the Bucks, 108-95. Coupled with four wins to close the 2014-'15 season, it was a stretch of 28 straight games. Among single-season streaks, the 2012-'13 Miami Heat rattled off 27 in a row for the second-longest streak.

Milwaukee won 20 straight games in 1970-'71 to set the record that lasted all of one year.

The team's second best player? Probably Bob Dandridge

Kareem and Big O were the headliners everyone remembers, but Dandridge scored 18.4 points per game with 7.6 rebounds and 3.0 assists while shooting just south of 50 percent from the field. Today, Dandridge is the franchise leader in minutes played, second in field goals, second in rebounds and fifth in points. It's hard to match that college draft in 1969, when the Bucks selected Abdul-Jabbar first and Dandridge in the fourth round.

Head coach Larry Costello was just 40 years old when the season began

Larry Costello turned 40 in the summer of 1971 and was just 37 when his tenure as head coach with the Bucks began. He was an NBA champion and would lead the Bucks to the conference finals each of the next three seasons, with a loss in the NBA Finals in 1974. He stayed in Milwaukee until a 3-15 start to 1976-'77, and then only briefly coached in the NBA again with the Chicago Bulls. He coached the Milwaukee Does of the Women's Professional Basketball League in the 1979-'80 season, then at Utica College before retiring. He died of cancer in 2001.

The Bucks played five games in Madison

The Bucks played the majority of their games at the Milwaukee Arena in 1971-'72 but did play five games during the year at Dane County Coliseum in Madison (today known as the Alliant Energy Center). The Bucks averaged 10,346 fans at their home venue and 8,163 at their home-away-from-home. Twenty-two of their 36 games in Milwaukee were sellouts.

They weren't particularly tested in their first seven games

Milwaukee's 98-91 win over Seattle in the second game of the season was the closest call in the first seven wins. The team's first loss came Oct. 29 in Boston (125-114), and the Bucks then won 10 straight before dropping back-to-back games against the Warriors and Lakers shortly before Thanksgiving.