Doc Rivers remembered the wind, those stiff, biting gusts that swept across Lake Michigan and through the sweatshirts of a group of teenagers running Hank Raymonds’s late-fall conditioning drills.
More than 40 years have passed since Rivers last lived in Milwaukee, since his three seasons at Marquette, since he banked in one of the most famous shots in Golden Eagles history, a 35-footer that beat fifth-ranked Notre Dame in 1981. A lot has changed since then. The seafood restaurant he frequented is gone. His favorite barbecue joint, too. Benji’s Deli, where former Bucks owner Herb Kohl, then a prominent Wisconsin businessman, would take Rivers to lunch every couple of weeks, is still there, still slinging Reuben sandwiches and beer-battered cod. But it’s the wind, though, that Rivers felt again in mid-February, as a realtor walked him through a waterfront condo, that brings the memories flooding back.
Greg Nelson/Sports Illustrated
