A funny thing happened as the state sports scene segued into spring. Two of our national professional teams, both from Milwaukee, switched positions in terms of the impalpable “buzz.” Switched-up: the Bucks. Switched-down: the Brewers. The potential exists that no switching the opposite way may occur for quite some time.

A running theme of this column over the years is the lack of outstate interest in Wisconsin’s NBA franchise. The examples are plenty: My anecdote from the 2001 season when I could barely find any Eau Clairians following along as the Bucks came one game and a multitude of questionable referee calls from seeing the Lakers in the Finals; the “Save The Bucks” guy who’d heard of a bar in northern Wisconsin that turned one of its televisions to a Bucks game only to have angry customers demand the channel immediately get changed.

The Bucks were challenging the behemoth NFL Draft as the lead state sports media story in the days before the Packers made their picks. You do not reach the first segment without buzz.

I continue to argue that the NBA is the fastest-rising league in terms of value and popularity; the NFL is obviously the strongest by the metric of sheer dominance in all categories. Yes, I understand western Wisconsin is more of a “baseball region” than a basketball one, but one would expect some palpable rooting interest in one of the league’s teams that actually plays within our borders, and has done so since the 1960s. A confluence of factors like inadequate marketing, continual mediocrity, and even the time of year of the games – a 3.5 hour drive to Milwaukee is more of a challenge to see the Bucks in January than the Brewers in July – have led to a dispassionate professional basketball audience in the Chippewa Valley.

Ownership was the only realistic method for revitalizing – or simply vitalizing – Bucks fandom around Eau Claire. Sen. Herb Kohl had his name on many stores, and he kept the franchise from moving, but vibrancy was lacking. Since new owners Wes Edens and Marc Lasry got the team a year ago, vibrancy has been their currency. In that time, we saw a high-profile – and somewhat controversial – coaching hiring in Jason Kidd, a No. 1 draft pick in Jabari Parker, an exciting flow of on-court play, the unveiling of new logos and colors and uniforms, and a playoff spot even after Parker’s season-ending surgery and a mid-season trade that proved a short-term setback for the team.

Then came the Bulls playoff series, with the Bucks taking a Chicago team expected to legitimately contend for the Eastern Conference title – and one that should be an arch-rival based on proximity – to a sixth game. As the series progressed, so did the performance of the Bucks, losing a close-ish one, losing in overtime, winning a close one, winning by a little more. Then they lost by a record-setting margin to finally be eliminated, but the two weeks of this ascension led to a phenomenon I would not have seriously considered: The Bucks were challenging the behemoth NFL Draft as the lead state sports media story in the days before the Packers made their picks. You do not reach the first segment without buzz.

Buzz, something the Brewers finally achieved outside the Milwaukee-Madison area once their ownership changed about a decade ago and young players brought long-missing success. The last several years have seen a great increase in Brewers paraphernalia at Express games, on campus, and in Oakwood Mall, as that team became worthy of talk and promoted themselves to be the subject of talk. They did what the Bucks now do.

The particularly poor play of the Brew Crew late last season and at the start of this one has sputtered that buzz. A few months of a losing record will not bring back the Garner and Selig-Prieb Era doldrums, but the team would be wise to be cognizant that cachet can be transient and bandwagons have only so much room – and a permanent majority of the seating is taken up by the Packers and Badgers. A tangible sign of a changing bandwagon congregation would be brand new green-and-cream Greek Freak jerseys soon seen on Water Street.

The Bucks keep saying that they #OwnTheFuture. That buzz is the sound of the team buying up bits of sports fan real estate in our neck of the woods. Fear the deer, indeed.