The Bratwurst – Milwaukee Bucks Blog

Last week I posted that the Bucks should obtain Dee Brown.  Well, they sort of took my advice, signing a player who is originally from Chicago, went to a High School with “Proviso” in the name and attended the University of Illinois.

However, instead of Brown, they signed Awvee Storey.

I remember my first experience with Storey, in his one season at U of I before transferring to Arizona State, thinking that there was no way he could get minutes on a team with final 4 aspirations, and it was odd that he bailed on a team which had all 5 starters graduate from it.  Well, apparently he has a little more game than I thought.

I like how the Bucks’ press release describes Storey’s 06-07 season:

During the 2006-07 season, Storey saw action in 16 games for Braunschweig of the German League and averaged 10.8 points, 4.6 rebounds and 1.1 assists per game. Before signing with Braunschweig in early 2007, Storey played in three games for the Dakota Wizards of the D-League. As a Wizard, he averaged 9.3 points and 6.0 rebounds per game.

No mention of the sucker punch of teammate Martynas Andriuskevicius in practice that got him booted from the NBDL.

On the flipside, Storey is a guy who has pulled himself up from a difficult upbringing to college graduate. 

Storey managed to finagle a multi year deal out of the Bucks (I assume for only two years at the minimum).  How does he fit in?

Storey is a 6’6″ guard/forward who played limited minutes in one season with Washington.  Despite finishing college in 2002, he is already 30 years old.  He played a lot of power forward in college and his scoring stats were rather pedestrian with only one season registering in double figures.  However he did distinguish himself as a rebounder, leading the Pac 10 in boards in 00-01 (just ahead of Dan Gadzuric).  Storey has made the adjustment to small forward/shooting guard by improving his shooting dramatically.  Only 2-9 on 3 pointers in college, he shot 42% on them in 05-06.

Is he better than David Noel … Uh, I doubt it.  Maybe he can back up Michael Redd a little better than Noel could, but Storey played almost exclusively small forward with Washington.  Noel’s 06-07 numbers are almost identical to Storey’s 05-06 numbers and Noel is only 24.  Also, while Storey shot the ball a little better than Noel, David is the much better free throw shooter (80% vs. 55%) which tells me that there is room for improvement from Noel.  There is a decent chance that Noel will get a little better, while Storey is pretty much guaranteed to stay about the same.  Quite honestly, I don’t see much value coming out of this signing.

If you are going to take a flyer on someone that nobody else wants, how about Michael Sweetney instead?  At least he fills a need — #3 power forward, rather than #4 small forward.  He’s such a risk to eat himself out of the league that nobody else will throw more than the minimum at him, but while playing at any weight between 270-350 lbs he has always rebounded well.  Besides, you never know — maybe “the light will go on” and he would capture some of the potential that made him the #9 pick.  Seems like he would be worth a minimum investment more so than Storey.