Every year it's the same thing for me. The boredom of the Pro Bowl signals the end of football and my attention turns to the Milwaukee Bucks and the NBA season.

The thousands and thousands of fans of the Green Bay Packers have just suffered through a disastrous season, watched the playoffs with envy, loved the Super Bowl because Mike Holmgren lost, and now wait for Brett Favre.

The timing is perfect. The NBA season is about at the halfway point and, even the non-fans, have an idea of how good the Bucks are going to be.

But this time of year also raises an inevitable question for me.

How do you turn all of those fans of the Packers into fans of the Milwaukee Bucks?

Take a look at the Bucks. They are a good, exciting, young team this year. They win more than they lose, which is a big deal and are likely to land a spot in the NBA playoffs.

The team works very hard to sell tickets. Maybe harder than any other team in the league. Every year the price of some tickets goes up and some tickets go down. They have tons of advertising. They have deals and promotions. They do more community appearances at schools and hospitals than any other team, by far.

The Bradley Center is a fine place to watch a game. It's clean, centrally located. You can park. The food would never be compared to gourmet fare, but it's not bad. The people who man the concession stands are slow, at times, but not killingly slow.

The ambience isn't bad, either. In fact, it's electric, at times. Kind of a crew cut, as opposed to slicked back hair. Kids love it. You can buy merchandise. The blimp is cool and Bango, Hoop Troop and the break-dancers are great. They've got a wonderful house band, Streetlife, even though they don't play enough and when they do, the sound system seems to muffle them to those perched in the upper deck. The cheerleaders are cute and enthusiastic (and are dressing better this season, too), but one still has to question the team's musical choices. This is the NBA, ladies, not a sock hop. Anyway.

Yet, despite the fun atmosphere, there is some disconnect between the Bucks and the sports fans of this area. We have one the top scorers in the league, Michael Redd, one of the quickest point guards around, T. J. Ford, and the top pick in the whole draft, Andrew Bogut, yet there are still too many empty seats. In an arena that seats about 18,000 people, there are about 1,500 empty seats each night. They are playing to 89.5 percent of capacity, better than last year, but still 14th of 30 NBA teams.

A couple of nights ago, I ran into Herb Kohl, the owner of the team, having dinner at Ma Fischer's. He was in a booth, all alone. Kohl and I have been friends since he bought the team and we talked easily. Was he working on the federal budget or some new legislative initiative? No, he had his plate of food in front of him and was pouring over the latest pages of NBA statistics. This is a man who cares about his team. Some might say he's obsessed with finding a way to field a champion. He's put up millions and millions of his own dollars to make the team a success, both on the court and off the court.

But, there is just this kind of disconnect that prevents the kind of slavish love that exists for other sports team. The Packers get it, because they are the Packers. The Brewers have it because it's baseball. But not the Milwaukee Bucks, a team that quickly won a world championship and has consistently been a winner.

Ask the guys who do the sports radio talk shows, something I've done. Talk Packers and the phones ring off the hook. Talk Brewers and the hot stove league is boiling. But bring up the Bucks and you run the risk of having a bank of silent telephones.

The plain fact is that not enough people love - really LOVE - the Bucks. They like them, they follow them, but they don't live and die with them. Some do, but that number is too small.

And because there is not that huge critical mass of diehard fans, the casual fan, the one who might buy a ticket or two once or twice a year, isn't compelled to pay up to see some of the best athletes in the world. The Bucks, you see, just aren't water cooler talk.

I love the Bucks, probably more than any other team in the state. I think basketball combines speed, power and grace like no other sport. And I've been close to the team for 30 years.

But I don't know anymore. The team is over 30 years old and I don't have an answer to many of the questions that the team's sales staff must have. Is it a gimmick they need? Is it only a championship team? I've heard people say that it's race. That the league's stars are mostly African-American and that Milwaukee won't buy completely into that. I don't think that's it. A Bucks game is about the only sporting event in town where you can see a truly diverse crowd. But, it does, sadly, make one wonder.

What's their product? Is it a basketball team? Is it a full-blown entertainment experience? Do they carry the pride of a city on their shoulders and should you go to games out of a sense of civic duty? The same civic duty that built Miller Park for the Brewers, I might add.

I don't know what else they can do that will give them the boost they need to move into the daily consciousness of Wisconsin sports fans, the way the Packers do. But, I want to know. I want to tell the Bucks what people think and what's missing from their repertoire and what they need to do to truly become OUR TEAM in OUR TOWN.