The Bratwurst – Milwaukee Bucks Blog

Well, while I was writing that headline I realized that I already used that “The Jerk” reference before this summer, but I don’t care — I love that movie. And I will use that reference until cat juggling is eradicated forever.

ESPN’s John Hollinger has published his team forecasts for the upcoming season, and they are always very interesting reads. He’s not too positive about the Bucks, but he is realistic.

If you are not familiar with Hollinger, he is a statistics-centric writer who developed PER as a player measurement tool. He is often criticized for being too stats-centric, but that is an unfair assessment — he gets a bad rap because he is prone to (1) making strong comments that look kind of idiotic when he is wrong (after Eddy Curry was traded to the Knicks he claimed that Michael Sweetney was a better player) and (2) using so many numbers that editing mistakes show up way too often (in his Curry vs. Sweetney argument he was pointing out that Sweetney had a higher FG% than Curry the season before, but the accompanying graphic said otherwise). But Hollinger actually has a very strong basketball mind, uses his statistics to back up his observations (rather than the other way around, as is sometimes claimed), and is a very engaging writer.

He is already on record as not being very enthused with Yi’s prospects (he is convinced that he is older than advertised, too soft to become a solid player, and simply ran up good stats in a vastly weak Chinese league), so that is one thing that tempers his enthusiasm for the Bucks’ prospects this season. He also bases most of his analysis, though, on last seasons’ incredibly weak performance while forgetting that much of the statistical collapse was attributable to the injuries and the fact that the Bucks weren’t trying very hard at the end of the season.

He has plenty of interesting things to say about the Bucks’ rebounding difficulties, and while his overall analysis is not terribly upbeat, he makes some very valid points about the team.

If you want to check his previews out, you had better do so soon — most of his writing falls under the ESPN Insider banner, and I believe these previews are only available to everyone for a limited time.