Steinmiller has seen it all in 50 seasons with Bucks
This is a sports story from another time.
It’s September 1970, and a Marquette University senior named John Steinmiller is sitting with some fraternity friends over lunch. He hears that the Milwaukee Bucks are looking for a fourhour-a-week part-timer to change the marquee above the team’s downtown office.
Steinmiller finishes lunch and runs about seven blocks down West Wisconsin Avenue to the team’s office, which is wedged into a store where bowling equipment was once sold. He meets with the ticket manager, learns where the ladder is and how to arrange the letters, and is hired on the spot.
And he never leaves. Steinmiller is now beginning his 50th season with the Milwaukee Bucks.
From administrative assistant who ran errands, worked in the ticket office and helped oversee the team’s summer camps to executive vice president of operations at Fiserv Forum, Steinmiller is a living link to almost every bit of Bucks history.
He’s been there from Kareem to Giannis, through good seasons and bad.
And the ties that bind him to the team are simple. “It’s one love, next to my wife and family,” he said. “It’s love. I love the culture that’s been built. I love the people that I’ve come across. I love the people that support the Bucks. It’s hard to describe.”
Just rattling off what Steinmiller has seen and done with the team is extraordinary.
Steinmiller ran the one-man publicity department for five years in the 1970s, oversaw business operations for three decades and handled community affairs and social responsibility in a key period when the Bucks sought public support for a new arena.
Once he started full time, he never missed a game at home. He has witnessed and worked at 2,107 Bucks home, regular season and playoff games, and hundreds more on the road.
He has worked with every Bucks head coach and more than 60 assistants.
And Steinmiller’s tenure encompasses the four eras of Bucks ownership.
“John has forgotten more than I will ever know on the gold standard and best practice of running a franchise in Milwaukee,” said Bucks President Peter Feigin. “The ability to have a John Steinmiller is priceless.”
Feigin said after he first got here with the Bucks current owners, he made sure to consult with Steinmiller “on every little nuance, whether it was on how important the milk stand was at the State Fair to understanding and getting to know thousands of our season ticket holders in a real direct way.”
Asked how long Steinmiller will be with the organization, Feigin said: “He can do it for as long as he wants to as long as he has passion for it and as long as he is having fun. He will never appreciate how valuable he is to the organization. To me personally, I don’t want to think about the Bucks without John Steinmiller.”
Steinmiller’s institutional knowledge is also valuable to general manager Jon Horst, who was born 13 years after Steinmiller joined the Bucks.
When the team needed to find authentic gameworn jerseys from the Bucks early years, Horst said it was Steinmiller who dug them out of storage.
“Just watching him over the years, you learn a lot,” said Horst. “He is the most humble person I have ever been around. His willingness to serve and do anything with the organization — he was the guy who would be loading and unloading trucks, picking up trash around the arena.”
During his years owning the Bucks, Herb Kohl said he relied on Steinmiller for guidance.
“He knows where all the bodies are buried,” Kohl said with a smile. “And he has the total respect of everybody in the organization.”
Kohl said that when Steinmiller speaks, everyone listens.
“I found him to be a great source of information, tradition, culture. He embodies that. In many ways, he is what the Bucks have been,” Kohl said.
Steinmiller, 70, can usually be found during games and concerts walking the concourses at Fiserv Forum, making sure everything is in order and meeting with fans.
Behind the scenes, he’s relaxed and accessible. He and his wife, Corinne, were married on a Saturday night in March 1979. The next day, Steinmiller worked a nationally televised afternoon home Bucks game.
The Steinmillers then went on their honeymoon but were back in time for the next Bucks home game.
They have two children, John Henry, who directs media relations for the Chicago Blackhawks, and Mary Kate, a fashion stylist in New York.
Steinmiller has seen the NBA on its long trajectory from being a national league to an international brand.
When Steinmiller first started with the Bucks, he said there were 10 full-timers in the front office and every ticket had to be handled by hand.
The secret to his longevity with the Bucks? “You have to make yourself needed,” Steinmiller said. “And I still do that. I’m trying in every way I can to plug in.”
Over the years he established personal relationships with players, especially in his younger days. He keeps in touch with many of the old Bucks, including Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Junior Bridgeman, Bob Dandridge and Bob Lanier.
But he also learned early on that even players you like can get traded.
“It’s part of the deal,” he said.
Jon McGlocklin, former Bucks player and broadcaster, first remembers coming across Steinmiller through the summer camps that the Bucks held across the Midwest. It was Steinmiller who took the registrations from all the campers and traveled to the camps.
They really got to know each other when Steinmiller was the PR director and traveled with the team. Later, they worked together on the 1977 NBA All-Star Game in Milwaukee.
“I saw John’s intellect and capability,” McGlocklin said. “He is a really unique guy in terms of his knowledge, his intelligence, his commitment, his loyalty.”
Steinmiller was also close to coaches. He was there when Don Nelson replaced Larry Costello. He recalled how Nelson had said he didn’t ask for the job.
“But you know what, pretty quickly he learned it,” Steinmiller said. “And you know, we had a couple of rough years, but in the third year we were ready to go.”
He remembered how Kohl bought the Bucks in 1985 and flew out to meet the players in Denver, telling the team: “I want you to be my family.”
“And the players responded very well to that,” Steinmiller said.
Steinmiller has his fond memories of the old days, of course. But he is enthusiastic about the present and the future, watching the Bucks build to what he hopes is another championship, and helping the team thrive on the business side.
In his office, there’s a picture of the marquee as it looked the day after the Bucks won the 1971 title against the Baltimore Bullets. The college kid had come in early to change the letters of the marquee to make sure everyone knew the Bucks were champs.
“It reminds me where I came from,” he said.