Junior Bridgeman

From Hoopedia

Ulysses Lee "Junior" Bridgeman was born September 17, 1953 in East Chicago, Indiana.

Bridgeman was a member of the 1971 East Chicago Washington High School Senators basketball team, which went undefeated (29-0) and won the Indiana state high school basketball championship. Among his teammates were Pete Trgovich (who played at UCLA) and Tim Stoddard (N.C. State), who would go on to have success as a Major League Baseball pitcher.

A 6'5" guard/forward from the University of Louisville, Bridgeman was drafted by the Los Angeles Lakers in 1975 and immediately traded to the Milwaukee Bucks.

When Junior Bridgeman joined the Bucks, Milwaukee was coming off of a 38-44 season in which they failed to make the playoffs. When he left nine seasons later, the Bucks were Eastern Conference Finalists with four straight divisional championships to their credit.

Bridgeman, acquired from the Lakers with Brian Winters in the trade that sent Kareem Abdul-Jabbar to Los Angeles, easily found his niche as the Bucks "Super Sub." He started only 105 of the 711 games he played in a Bucks uniform, but Bridgeman scored in double figures for eight straight seasons, consistently appearing atop the list of the league’s highest scoring non-starters.

He was the league’s top scoring sixth man in 1978-79, averaging 15.5 ppg, but he was just warming up. He averaged 17.6 ppg in the 1979-80 season, and 16.8 ppg the following year as the Bucks reached the 60-win plateau for the fourth time in their history. In nine seasons, he hit double figures eight times.

His tenure with the Bucks appeared to be over when he was traded (with Marques Johnson and Harvey Catchings) to the Los Angeles Clippers for Terry Cummings, Ricky Pierce and Craig Hodges on September 29, 1984. In 1987, after two seasons with the Clippers, Bridgeman re-signed with the Bucks in January of 1987, assisting the Bucks on their way to a seventh consecutive 50-win season.

When all was said and done, Bridgeman had played more games than any player in Bucks history (711), a record he still holds. In addition, he is among the Bucks all-time leaders in scoring (6th, 9,892) and minutes (7th, 18,044), and also among the Bucks all-time leaders in steals (T-9th, 607), field goals made (5th, 4,142) and attempted (4th, 8,658), and free throws made (10th, 1,588), attempted (10th, 1,891) and percentage (10th, .840).

His #2 was retired on January 17, 1988