The Milwaukee Bucks may not enter the NBA D-League as early as previously anticipated, according to Racine mayor John Dickert.
Dickert has been a vocal support of an arena plan in downtown Racine. The proposal calls for the construction of an arena and an adjacent hotel, with the venue serving as home to a Bucks’ D-League team and potentially a minor league hockey squad in the USHL.
One of the main issues in Racine has been funding, as Dickert is still working to close the gaps on the cost of the project, which is expected to cost $46 million. The Bucks had been believed to be eyeing entry to the D-League for the 2017-18 season.
However, as he tries to pull together funding for the project, Dickert says he has not heard from the Bucks, and wonders if their timetable for joining the league has changed. More from The Journal Times:
“It holds it up only in the sense that we have to know whether it’s that piece or another team or we go to the third resource, which is additional events,” he said. “We just would like to get an idea of which ones fit into that.”
Dickert said he hasn’t heard from the Bucks in a few weeks and doesn’t have any concrete sense of their decision timeline, although he speculated they are no longer targeting playing in the 2017-18 season, which gives them more time to make a decision.
The mayor also said that the hotel and convention center part of the project are his main priorities, with the arena and possible sports tenants ranking third.
On November 23, The Journal Times reported that the Bucks were holding off on announcing final plans for the D-League. At the time, it was believed that time constraints could limit the Bucks’ chances of joining the D-League by November 2017, when the 2017-18 season will begin.
In addition to Racine, the Bucks have been considering Sheboygan and Oshkosh as possible host cities for the team.
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