The Bratwurst - Milwaukee Bucks Blog

First order of business: IPM data has been updated through Saturdays games (links on the lower right side of the page). What a difference a week makes; the Bucks fall all the way from #13 to #19 and their defensive ranking is down to #28. Who is this team?

How could the Bucks go so well one week and get so bad the next? Beat three playoff teams and then get blown out 3 times and lose a 4th to the league’s laughingstock? It’s just mind-boggling that these were actually the same two teams.

I swear, the other night I was watching the Jazz-Lakers game and I started thinking; “You know, maybe I’ll just become a Jazz fan. I went to Illinois, I’ve watched and enjoyed Deron Williams for 6 years now. Just look how easy these guys make it look.” But then I remembered that they lost to the Knicks, too.

Of course, it’s not that easy.

One of the axioms in sports journalism is that it’s easier and much more fun to write about a team that is really good or really bad than it is one that just cruises along around .500. Well thanks, Bucks, for making my job easier.

There. I’ve found the silver lining from this week. Maybe I’ll have more to say.

Well, I don’t know about that. Between the Knicks game not being on TV, the weather turning to crap on Saturday and some other scheduling conflicts I didn’t really watch all that much basketball this week. But I’ve seen enough to know this:

Krystowiak has to tighten up the rotation. Somebody remind this guy that this is the National Basketball Association, not Montana. It’s not the freaking Big Sky Conference. Trying to play entire quarters with 4 or 5 bench players in the game at once does not work consistently. You want Mo Williams to play 40 minutes? Then rest him for the last 4 minutes of the first and third quarters, not the last 5 of the second and first 4 of the 4th! You have 2 small forwards in Mason and Simmons and Bell has been beyond awful this season — don’t play Bell and Ivey together, forcing Redd to small forward! He can’t stop anybody from that position!

Lets see how the rotations worked this week (thanks to the awesome popcornmachine.net):

Game 1, Philadelphia: Okay, so it looks like the Williams/Villanueva/Bell/Gadzuric/Ivey lineup at the beginning of the second quarter worked well, as the Bucks promptly went on a 19-4 run, erasing a 14 point deficit. It did, but this lineup was also a reaction to Philadelphia going small. The problem here was that Mo didn’t get rest at the end of the first quarter, so when Redd came back he replaced Mo. That also coincided with the return of Andre Miller and the ensuing Philly run gave them a lead they would hold the rest of the night.

The same problem happened in the beginning of the 4th quarter, as Mo played the entire 3rd and needed to rest at the beginning of the 4th. That meant that the Bucks started with Ivey/Bell/Redd/Villanueva/Gadzuric and a 9 point deficit quickly became 14. I realize that Philadelphia used 3 bench players at that time, but with Lou Williams, Dalembert and Iguodala in the game they were using their 3 best players. I also understand that Simmons was not available so Redd needed to play some small forward on this night, but they signed Awvee Storey for a reason. He should have gotten a few minutes at the end of the first/beginning of the second, allowing the Bucks to always have either Williams and/or Redd on the floor and not need a Bell-Ivey backcourt.

Game 2, Atlanta: This one doesn’t need so much analysis. After a tied first quarter, Krystkowiak rolled out a Bell/Williams/Simmons/Villanueva/Gadzuric lineup and less than a minute later subbed Ivey in for Williams. Not surprisingly, Atlanta promptly went on a 17-2 run, blowing the game open. The Hawks had 4 bench players in for this run, but what did they do differently than Milwaukee? They rested Josh Smith for the last 4 minutes of the first quarter and then had him — their best player — out there with the bench guys in the second. It took Krystkowiak about 5 minutes to react to all of this, when he finally brought back Redd (who had also played the entire first quarter, as did Williams) and, two minutes later, Yi, Mason and Bogut. Once the starters got back in they cut the deficit from 16 to 10 in the last 4 minutes of the half.

Game 3, New York: Carbon copy of the Atlanta game, only this one shouldn’t have mattered in the end. Once again, Redd and Williams get no rest in the first quarter and the Bucks open up a 29-19 lead. Williams sticks around for 1:30 in the second — enough to push the lead to 16 — and he then leaves, giving the Bucks the good ol’ Ivey/Bell/Simmons/Villanueva/Gadzuric. Bingo, an 11-0 Knicks run as they had all 5 of their starters in at the time. So maybe the team collapsed at the end, but if that 11-0 run had been stemmed earlier, then maybe that 16 point lead becomes 25 and the rest of the game is on cruise control. But instead the Knicks — a team that was down — knew that they had a big run in them. One interesting thing here is that Krystkowiak seems to have suddenly noticed something about this lineup he didn’t like — mid-second quarter Jake Voshkul seems to have vaulted Danny G as the backup center.

Game 4, Detroit: No 2-platoon follies in this game as the Bucks simply got slowly, surgically hammered by a superior team. After Bogut sits with two fouls 4 minutes into the game, Gadzuric plays out the quarter, but then it’s Voshkul playing the second quarter and most of the fourth. This time Redd gets a couple of minutes of rest at the end of the first quarter but he plays the entire second with either Yi or Bogut, and later Williams, on the court with him. The result was that even though the Bucks got smothered in this game (outscored by 6 in the first, 8 in the second, 4 in the third, and 7 in garbage time) they didn’t go to a full-scale all-bench lineup — and didn’t give up any ridiculous runs to Detroit either.

I glanced back at the game flows for the previous week, and I think I found the problem — Krystkowiak didn’t do the all-bench thing in the Cleveland or Lakers wins, but he did in the Dallas game, and that unit (Ivey/Bell/Simmons/Villanueva/Gadzuric) played pretty well for 4 minutes at the beginning of the second quarter. He also did Williams/Bell/Simmons/Villanueva/Gadzuric at the beginning of the 4th quarter and got an 8-0 run. So he seems to think he found a lineup that plays well together and then he goes back to it again and again. But here’s the thing — that lineup caught lightning in a bottle that night. Not only did they happen to play well, but both Josh Howard and Nowitzki opened the second and 4th quarters on the Dallas bench — so that Bucks lineup wasn’t even playing a full-strength Maverick lineup. No wonder it looked good for a few minutes.

Hopefully Krystkowiak is enough of a coach to realize that his rotations aren’t working and they need to be changed. This team is suddenly at a crossroads — they’ve gone from playing like a solid playoff team to acting like a 34 win team, and I hope that the losing doesn’t become an emotional burden for them. They say losing is contagious, and it’s going to take some real work from Krystowiak to make sure that this one bad week doesn’t snowball into a disasterous season.

But first, Krystowiak has to get his own business straight and sort out his substitution patterns.