The Bratwurst – Milwaukee Bucks Blog

I knew something was seriously wrong with this game tonight when I saw that Vegas had the Knicks as 2 to 3 point favorites.

Think about it — there was absolutely no reason to bet on the Knicks. They were playing the second of a back-to-back. They suffered a 45 point loss the night before. They would be playing in front of a hostile home crowd. The Bucks had a night off and were in town a day ahead of the home team. There was simply no reason for bettors to take New York in this game. And yet the Knicks were favored going in.

Vegas was just begging people to take the Bucks.

And when that happens it always means that you have to go the other way. And think of a reason why Vegas felt that New York was going to take this one.

It turned out that Yi/Villanueva vs. Randolph was the problem tonight. It’s funny, looking at the box score this was a very even game. Both teams made the same number of baskets, had the same number of rebounds and same number of turnovers. Redd’s production was equaled by Crawford while Williams and Marbury had identical games. Curry was awful and Bogut was moderately better. Mason was a little better than Richardson, but Simmons was pretty lousy.

The problem was Zach Randolph having his way with Yi and Charlie V.

Randolph went for 25/8 on 10-16 shooting while Yi and Villanueva combined for 15 and only 6 rebounds on 5-12 shooting. I know there will be growing pains with Yi, but it’s frustrating to see him start so well and then really struggle.

The funny thing is that it seems like Yi plays much better against better competition, which might not be all that surprising.

We all know that Yi’s goal has been to make the NBA for a long time, but while living in China he probably didn’t see all that much NBA basketball except for the dominant teams. So I bet he’s spent plenty of time thinking about how he would handle a matchup against Dirk Nowitzki, but probably has no clue about Zach Randolph’s game or has even heard of Reggie Evans or Al Horford. So maybe his inconsistency against bad teams is to be expected.

But it still bugs me. I want to see him get more touches, demand the ball in the post, put it on the floor more and draw more fouls. Remember, we have to assume that this guy is 24 years old, not 20, and we can’t wait around very long for him to get more assertive if he is going to fulfill his potential.

I’m watching the Miami Heat play the Boston Celtics right now on ESPN and two minutes into the first quarter there are more empty seats in each of the visible rows than full seats.

With Boston being the hottest team in the league right now and the shiny, new attraction that is drawing the fans in, it’s hard to believe that this game isn’t sold out. Why don’t Heat fans feel it necessary to show up on time?

When the Celtics roll into Milwaukee on March 15th you have to believe that nearly every seat will be full before the first point is scored.

Last night the Knicks tried their hardest to set basketball back a few years. The team has clearly pretty much given up on themselves and their coach, and needed a last-second, 37 foot 3 pointer to reach 59 points and avoid setting a team records for the lowest scoring output in a game. It was so bad that Boston had pulled Garnett, Pierce and Allen by the beginning of the 4th quarter, and the Knicks still got ouscored in the 4th by an 22-18 margin.

They didin’t play any offense, shooting 30%; or defense considering they forced a whopping six Celtic turnovers. At one point the Celtics had 20 assists and zero turnovers.

So after that display, what do the Bucks have to worry about?

I’m really afraid of a sort of “a wounded dog comes out fighting” thing tonight.

The problem is that the Knicks’ collection of talent dovetails right into the Bucks’ weaknesses. Specifically, Zach Randolph and David Lee are the sort of power forwards that give the Bucks fits. While Randolph will probably be gunning for his own stats, you never know when he will gun his way to a 35 point night. David Lee does all the “dirty work” plays that keeps teams in games. Both of these guys will be tough covers for Yi.

The other key is that Andrew Bogut has to stay out of foul trouble. If Eddy Curry gets that ball in the post, then let him score. For all their weaknesses, the Knicks are actually a pretty good rebounding team and in order to keep guys like Lee and Balkman from cleaning up on the glass, the Bucks need to have Bogut in there.

The other matchups tonight:

Mo Williams vs. Stephon Marbury: Marbury’s game — and possibly his sanity — have seriously slipped in the last couple or years. He has lost a step and some of his court vision, and with his personal conflict with Isiah Thomas at the forefront he a pretty much given up on running their offense as well. He has also stopped trying on defense. All Mo needs to do to stop Marbury is sag off of him and keep him out of the lane.

Michael Redd vs. Jamal Crawford: I think the “Craford as budding superstar” can finally stop now. He hasn’t improved at all in 6 years now, and has settled into a reputation as an incredibly streaky player who either looks like a hall-of-famer or 12th man. It all averages out to an incredibly average player, albeit one who is way too thin to do anything against the new, well-rounded Redd. When matched up against Crawford, Redd should be able to get into the lane and to the foul line whenever he wants.

Desmond Mason/Bobby Simmons vs. Quentin Richardson: Knicks fans are blaming Richardson for the Boston loss, something about Richardson making some remarks about the Celtics not being very good beyond their big 3. Blaming a 45 point loss on one guy? Talk about struggling to find a scapegoat. Simmons vs. Richardson matchups are always fun, since they were high school friends and teammates at DePaul and with the Clippers. Richardson has chronic back problems and was never that great an athlete to begin with, so he’s become little more than a 3-point gunner and a pretty good, instinctive rebounder. Keep him off the boards and he’s nothing to worry about.

Andrew Bogut vs. Eddy Curry: A solid all-around game vs. one dominant skill. Curry is lazy, overweight, slow, and a beast within 2 feet of the basket. Bogut has to stay out of foul trouble against him, because other than scoring Curry offers so little that the Bucks are probably better off without him. I just love how Curry is too slow to get back on defense and yet routinely beats his man downcourt on offense. I don’t care how many points Curry scores, he still doesn’t scare me at all.

Yi Jianlian vs. Zach Randolph: Randolph is way too physical for Yi to stop him offensively, and way too lazy to chase Yi around the perimeter. It’s no surprise to me at all that the Curry/Randolph frontcourt hasn’t worked out and that both of their numbers are down. This matchup concerns me the most of all, because if Randolph is on his game — hitting jumers and throwing his body around — and Yi can’t handle him, Charlie V doesn’t really offer a much different look to try and stop him. The good thing, though, is that if Randolph is playing well then it keeps the Knicks best player — the pesky David Lee — off of the floor.

The bottom line: the Bucks really should win this game handily, and send Isiah Thomas off the home floor to yet another chorus of boos. The Knicks have quit on their coach, so the only thing that can win this game for them is a bunch of great individual efforts.

So this game is right there for the Bucks to take. Hopefully they grab the opportunity and get their second blowout win of the year.

Several years ago, I was on a co-ed rec league flag football team. As many of you have probably experienced, most good football players wont play in a co-ed league, so the key to a good team is (1) organization and (2) having at least one really good female player, since typically the rules state that a girl has to touch the ball once every four downs. Our team was pretty much lacking in female talent (except for one who was deceptively quick but had awful hands. She was a great edge rusher. Sort of a female Lawrence Taylor without the coke habit), but we were really well organized.

So after getting smoked in the first two games we came out in a zone. It worked great for the entire regular season, as no other team seemed to know what hit them. Next thing you know we were picking off passes left and right, winning games we had no business winning, and even won one game on forefit when the opposing QB — frustrated because we were in the process of returning his fifth interception for our third defensive touchdown — tackled the returner, touching off a brawl.

It worked great until the second round of the playoffs, when we ran into a team with a good quarterback.

It took him two posessions to figure us out. Because we had to use guys at the safety positions and middle linebacker, at least one of our edge players had to be female (and there was usually a second gap, because LT pretty much did nothing but count to five and rush the QB). Soon enough they were running quick outs one after another, flooding whichever zone a weaker girl was covering. We couldn’t cover the holes fast enough. 30-0, season over.

And that, dear reader, is why the Bucks should never, ever play zone.

I remember years ago, when zones weren’t allowed in the NBA, commentators saying that nobody would ever use them because NBA players shoot too well and would just bomb away over them. Well, the Bucks have certainly been proving that one true over the last couple of games.

It’s one thing if you have Kevin Garnett covering the baseline. It’s another if you have big, physical perimeter defenders who can sag inside to cover their zones and then close out fast enough to reach the shooters and contest outside shots. But the Bucks don’t have anybody like that. Bogut may have blocked some shots recently but he’s not an eraser or even exceptionally quick. Redd has spent seven years proving that he’s not much of a defender — he doesn’t have enough lift to deny an open shooter in a zone. What is Mo or Bell going to do in that situation? How are they going to close out on guys who are consistently 4-6 inches taller than them?

But despite having completely the wrong personnel for a zone that hasn’t stopped Krystkowiak from whipping it out over the last two games. And, what do you know, the Bucks zone defense has gotten shredded by the likes of Joe Johnson, Tyronn Lue, Kyle Korver and even Andre Iguodala.

It’s one thing to look at the box scores and say, “well, they just had a hot shooting night.” It’s another to watch open shot after open shot after open shot. If you never contest a shot then any NBA players’ shooting percentage is going to go up by 20%. And when the Bucks play zone, the opponents should always be able to get an uncontested shot. And that will turn plenty of 6 point deficits into 15 in a hurry, just like it has the last two nights.

That sure was a strange drubbing the Bucks took at the hands of the Sixers last night, and it makes one wonder how the team will respond tonight in Atlanta.

It seemed like the Bucks defense just fell apart against Philly, with slow rotations allowing open shot after open shot. That’s going to happen some nights since Redd and Williams are going to have horrible defensive nights, but it really highlights the big problem with this Bucks team:

They can’t blow anybody out unless they have a ridiculously good night shooting the ball, but if their perimeter defense slacks off a little then they can get blown out at any time.

That’s a real problem because blowout victories are what separates good teams from bad in all sports. People love to say that the good teams win the close ones, but that’s not true — over time, close wins and losses even themselves out because when a win or loss is determined by a couple of bounces of the ball then luck plays a huge factor. But the best teams get dominant wins with regularity. For the Bucks, however, that isn’t the case.

They now have one blowout win (Toronto) against four 15+ point losses. In the 5 game win streak, the victory margins were 9 (Atlanta), 7 (Lakers), 4 (Cleveland), 3 (Memphis) and 2 (Dallas). Most disconcerting is the Memphis win — you really should hammer a team like that at home. These margins of victory underscore the truth about this Bucks team: they are pretty good, but since you can’t count on winning 5-point games with regularity, until they start winning blowouts then they aren’t much more than a .500 team at best.

Which brings us to tonights Atlanta game. One would think that this will be a run-and-gun affair, with the Bucks all offense/no defense reputation and all of the high-flying athletes the Hawks have collected. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Atlanta is actually playing at the slowest pace in the league this year and the Bucks are the 8th slowest paced team. As bad a game as the Bucks played last night, the Hawks are actually coming off of an even more pathetic effort, a 90-78 loss at Chicago in which they were outrebounded by 23 and only managed 30 points in the first half.

But the funny thing is that the teams that play at slow paces are usually the good defensive teams. Neither of these teams defend well, with the Bucks ranking #21 and the Hawks #27 by IPM.

So it appears that the victor tonight will be the one that can push the pace a little and overwhelm the opposition’s defensive weaknesses. Here is where the Bucks need a big rebounding game from Andrew Bogut. Control the boards against the Hawks and Atlanta has problems.

Tonight is a big game for the Bucks to see how they handle the disapointment of the Sixers loss. Hopefully one bad loss doesn’t snowball into a bad slide.

Jeebus, has Ramon Sessions gotten off to a hot start for Tulsa.

In his first game he flirted with a triple-double, registering 27 points, 9 rebounds and 8 turnovers while on Saturday he dropped 34/6/6 on Sioux Falls while cutting the turnovers to 4.

He’s shot 18-32 from the field (not bad considering the knock on him coming out of college was that he couldn’t shoot) but most impressively has gone 23-27 from the foul line. Seems like he can get to the rim and draw contact just fine.

I’m not too worried about the turnovers, since NBDL games look like glorified pickup games. Lots of guys out for their own stats.

Maybe we’ll be seeing this guy in Milwaukee sooner rather than later.

I have put the latest IPM player stats and NBA Power Rankings online, available through the links on the right side of the webpage. Buoyed by their fantastic 3-0 week, the Bucks moved up a couple of spots, and they now rate as the fifth best team in the East (#13 overall). I show them as the 8th best offense in the league, but only the #21 defense. Well, I guess that committment to defense thing still needs some work.

A few comments about the players:

Michael Redd (1.03 IPM, #21 overall, #12 guard): Still rebounding and getting assists at an unprecedented rate for him, the shots finally started falling for him this week. This just may have been the finest 3 game stretch of Redd’s career. He played LeBron James even (34/7/6 to LeBron’s 34/7/7) and — in what was unquestionably a first for Redd — outplayed Kobe Bryant. He then sealed the win against the Mavs on Saturday from the free throw line. Redd is up to 46% shooting for the season, and is off to his best start ever.

Andrew Bogut (0.899 IPM, #49 overall, #8 center): Boy, what a difference when you don’t have to face Howard, Okafor, Yao or Duncan every night. I hate to look at a 5 game stretch and say that a guy has turned the corner on his career, but Bogut just may …. be rounding into a much more solid player. He has been defending the rim agressively over the past 5 games, racking up 16 blocked shots, and has gotten his FG% back up to 50%. It appears that Bogut is rounding into a solid “fill in the gaps” type of player — not an everyday 20-10 type of guy, but a player who can give you what you need when you need it. Whether this level of production can continue is a good question, but I think he can solidly stay in this area as one of the “best-of-the-rest, not quite an all-star” centers. Raising that free throw percentage would be a nice plus, though.

Mo Williams (0.807 IPM, #79 overall, #37 guard): Good to have you back. Mo’s production has taken a major leap in the last week, and he’s suddenly averaging 8.3 assists per 40 minutes. 50 assists to 18 turnovers in the last 5 games is closer to what the Bucks need from him, and his shooting has remained pretty strong. And he’s even getting to the line a little! After a seriously slow start, Mo has gotten his production back in line with what it was last year.

Yi Jianlian (0.716 IPM, #138 overall, #61 forward): A little early to hit the rookie wall, isn’t it? Yi kind of disappeared for a while, seemingly taking several games off before showing up for some defense and rebounding against Dirk Nowitzki. His shooting is down to 42% and it appears that he’s gotten a little passive. I suppose that some inconsistency is to be expected from a rookie, hopefully the team’s hot streak continues and nobody notices the missing 7-footer.

Charlie Villanueva (0.678 IPM, #171 overall, #75 forward): Fortunately, Charlie V picked up the slack for Yi, posting 4 very strong games in the winning streak and playing well against Dallas as well. Seemed like he got his hands on a lot of balls against Dallas, and I was shocked to see that he finished with one point and 3 rebounds. Maybe he can motivate himself to 25 minutes a game behind Yi.

Desmond Mason (0.626 IPM, #216 overall, #92 forward): Alright, I admit it — I’m becoming somewhat enamored with Mason’s above-the-rim style. But his shooting has cooled off — 5-18 in the last 3 games — and he only managed 7 rebounds and 3 assists for the week. It seems like he manages to make a lot of positive stuff happen on the court — things that don’t show up in the box score, and his on court/off court differential is something else. But I still can’t shake the feeling that Mason is playing over his head, and at some point the Bucks will be better off giving more time to Simmons.

Great game at the BC on Saturday night. I’ll talk more about this win streak later, but there’s only one thing to say right now: This team is worth the price of admission.

There really isn’t anything negative to say about tonight’s effort. When Dallas is staying close because Brandon Bass is making everything he throws up, then there’s really nothing wrong with your defensive effort. Yi did a pretty good job on Nowitzki. Jason Terry burying a bunch of late 3’s is a little annoying, but he’s been doing that all season long.

Excellent game from Mo Williams, who may finally be putting that “he’s a shoot-first player” stuff to bed. He has 50 assists in the 5 game win streak and I can only think of one shot that he forced badly. 19 points, 10 assists on 57% shooting and of his 4 turnovers, two of them were passes to him that simply slipped through his hands.

Let’s also not forget Andrew Bogut, who grabbed 13 rebounds and blocked 2 shots; and of course Michael Redd, who sealed the win with 5-6 free throws down the stretch.

All is well for one night.

Good

After enjoying my Saturday afternoon by watching the Bulls and Knicks trip all over each other, I started thinking of a few of the things I’ve noticed in the league so far:

Why is Dallas on fire? Avery Johnson has changed the starting lineup for the Mavs this season, and it is paying dividends already. He’s gone “defense”, starting DeSagna Diop and Brandon Bass along with Devin Harris, Dirk Nowitzki and Josh Howard. The result has been very interesting — by giving significant minutes to two defensive-minded players (Bass is averaging 22 mpg and Diop 28) it has essentially made the offensive workload easier for the other starters by reducing some of the defensive responsibilities they have. It helps that Jason Terry has responded by playing spectacular ball, shooting 53% to start the season. Nowitzki, Howard, Terry and Harris are all posting .95+ IPM’s, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a team with 4 players putting up numbers like that. Lucky the Bucks catch Dallas in the second game of a back-to-back, because that’s how you want to face the best teams.

What’s wrong with the Bulls? They are horrible right now. Just awful. I mean, if you lose to the Knicks then something just isn’t right. I don’t buy into the idea that the Kobe story is bugging the team, but the whole Deng/Gordon contract thing might be. More importantly, though, is that the Bulls frontcourt isn’t pulling its weight. Maybe it’s the ankle injury from the preseason, but Ben Wallace isn’t staying on the court long enough (down to 28 mpg) or rebounding well at all (#81 in the league, down from #26). But I think the real problem is that the miss PJ Brown more than people realize. Tyrus Thomas is a nice enough player, but he isn’t offensively skilled enough that you can run an offense through him. Since they don’t have any penetrators, they simply can’t draw any fouls, and their offense has regressed into a helter-skelter “fire it around the perimeter and throw up the first uncontested shot” instead of a patient series of entry passes and kick-outs. At least Brown could take a shot in the paint once in a while and keep defenders somewhat honest. The Bulls have started slowly each of the last 3 seasons, but this season looks like a real problem — you can’t shoot better as a team if there aren’t any good shots to take.

Is Seattle mis-handling Kevin Durant? I don’t really understand the logic of using Durant at shooting guard. I get it that he isn’t physically ready to guard 260-pound power forwards, but why would the Sonics expect him to be able to stay in front of other shooting guards on the defensive end? Using him at the “2″ pulls him away from the basket, and has just turned him into a high-volume, low-percentage jump shooter. His rebounding numbers are awful, and he’s not getting to the basket at all. Wouldn’t the learning experince of this season be better if he is actually playing the same position that he will in the future> Maybe his numbers this season would be a little worse if he was playing small forward, but in the long term, I think that playing him at shooting guard right now is a waste.

Oh, and I’d say it’s pretty clear that the Sonics are planning on leaving town, since they didn’t take Yi over Jeff Green at #5. It’s not like Ichiro hasn’t worked out okay for the Mariners.

Now let’s see what the Bucks can do against the Mavs!

Come one come all to comment on the game tonight between the Milwaukee Bucks and Dallas Mavericks. The Bucks come into the game as second place in the Central Division behind Detroit, and still undefeated at home. The Mavericks will give their Bucks their toughest test at home to date featuring Dirk Notwitzki and Devin Harris. Yi and Charlie V will handle the bulk of the minutes matching up against Dirk.

Charlie V has been playing great during the Bucks four game winning streak (15.3 ppg, 6.5 rpg), but Yi has been hitting the rookie wall. Hopefully Yi delivers a solid performance tonight against the player he’s so often been compared to.

X-factor in the game tonight? Key play from Andrew Bogut. He has to stay out of foul trouble and help Yi and Charlie V defend Dirk.

Bucks.com Gameday has more information on the game.

On a personal note, I’ll be at the game tonight so I won’t be here to leave my viewpoint, so I’m counting on you.