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Bucks' championship rings feature 360 diamonds and a QR code, can turn into necklace

Jack Baer
·Staff writer
·3-min read

The Milwaukee Bucks' first championship ring in 50 years features the usual gaudy amount of jewels and some unusual functionality.

The team revealed its ring ahead of its season opener against the Brooklyn Nets on Tuesday, airing a video that showed, well, how the ring works. Because no championship ring can be just a ring these days.

In the Bucks' case, their ring features not just a removable top, which is pretty much commonplace in championship rings these days, but also a special loop that can turn the ring top into a necklace and a QR code that leads to a highlight video from Milwaukee's run.

As far as we can tell, both are firsts in the fast-moving world of championship rings:

The Bucks and ring-maker Jason of Beverly Hills went into further detail on the ring with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, explaining the decision to introduce a necklace function was born out of the realization that championship rings these days are just too darn big to wear as rings:

"A lot of players were not able to wear their rings; they weren't practical. You might take it out on Christmas Eve to show the family, but other than that, they can't wear it. I wanted to create a ring that had more versatility, where a player could wear it and let it be comfortable. This one is just as big as these massive rings, but we developed a technology that allows the ring top to be taken off with a push button system, and the ring top can be converted into a pendant."

And you better believe there is the usual amount of nonsensical championship ring math baked into this piece of jewelry.

The writing on the ring is pretty self-explanatory, featuring "Fear the Deer," the meme-turned-prophecy "Bucks in Six" and the scores of each of the team's playoff series wins, but the Bucks pulled out all the stops to explain why they picked certain numbers of jewels for the ring.

Here's what they told the Journal Sentinel:

The 360 diamonds on the ring's top represent the number of victories since the current ownership group took over.

The 16 emerald-shaped diamonds on one side represent the number of playoff wins, while the 16 on the other side to represent the franchise's total of division titles.

The 4.14 karat of emeralds represent the 414 area code of Milwaukee.

The 50 round stones on the "inner bezel" represent 50 years since the team's last championship (no, not the number of points Giannis scored in the clincher or the number of Chick-fil-A chicken minis he famously ordered the next morning, but nobody gets karats with Chick-fil-A anyway).

Part of the ring's design along the sides is meant to mimic the portion of Fiserv Forum facing the plaza that became the initial home base of the "Deer District."

Two trophies on the inside shank represent the franchise's two titles.

The Larry O'Brien Trophy on the face of the ring includes yellow gold at 65.3% purity — mirroring the season's winning percentage (including playoffs).

The approximate three karats of stone on the shank represent the franchise's three conference crowns.

The approximate 0.53 karats on the "World Champions" wording on the ring represents the total number of years the Bucks have been in existence.

There's nothing on the level of the Washington Nationals' bizarre arithmetic and "nod to the duality of the franchise," but yeah, we can guess some of those numbers were reverse engineered. Or maybe the Bucks' ownership group really does believe the number of wins they've overseen is that important.