The Bratwurst - Milwaukee Bucks Blog

I can’t believe I watched the entire Nuggets game. That was painful.

I think that the single most disapointing thing about this Bucks team so far is that they have been blown out by every single good team they have played on the road (unless you count Cleveland and Portland. But it’s debatebale just how “good” Cleveland is and nobody knew Portland was good at the time). Orlando, Houston, San Antonio, Boston, Denver — Those games seem to be over before they start. Why can’t they even stick semi-close to those teams?

In the case of the Denver game, I think the altitude effect cannot be ignored. Since the game was the day after Christmas, you have to assume that the Bucks flew into Denver that day, and so only had a couple of hours to get acclimatized. That’s a significant issue — the Bucks are something like 7-30 all time in Denver for a reason. The altitute and accompanying fatigue is going to affect players in two ways: it kills the big guys’ stamina and the jumpshooters’ lift. It was pretty clear that Redd, Yi and Bogut were all suffering. Redd was missing all of his shots short, Yi was just completely out of sorts, and Bogut was a step slow.

On my honeymoon my wife and I hiked the Inca Trail to Maccu Piccu (I know, how romantic), a trip which spends 3 days between 8000 and 12000 feet. While everyone in our group had varying degrees of trouble from the altitude, one man had it really bad. I woke up one morning to the sound of him vomiting outside of his tent (some honeymoon), one day he trailed the rest of the group by an hour, and he needed supplemental oxygen at one point.

The problem? He was in the best shape of all of us.

Specifically, he was in great shape and very muscular. As I understand it, when you get in shape your lungs become more and more efficient at using a higher percentage of the oxygen you breathe. The more muscle you have, the more oxygen you need. So the people who have a hard time at altitude are those whose lungs are used to converting most of the air they breathe into oxygen — while most of us just need our lungs to work a little harder at altitude, physically fit people actually wont get enough air until their bodies get used to it.

Interestingly enough, the heirarchy of people who have the easiest time handling altitute are: Really skinny, non-muscular endurance athletes (like marathon runners), smokers (because their lungs are aready used to being inefficient), pretty-fit people, unfit people, muscular people. Professional basketball players definitely fit in the final category.

So now that I’ve explained away the loss to Denver, it’s up to the team to forget about it as well. At some point all of the blowout losses to good teams have to start to weigh on a teams’ psyche.

So at least now the Bucks get to play a team with far worse problems than they have.

Wow, was I ever wrong about the Bulls this year. Turns out that all of that depth and energy they had was obscuring that fact that they don’t have any dependable size on their team. The backcourt of Hinrich and Gordon has been exposed as way too small, Deng has been awful compared to the stardom that was being projected for him, Tyrus Thomas has not been ready to handle the job as a starter, and Ben Wallace — the goalie that was supposed to make it all work — has lost his dominance. Joakim Noah has been the Bulls’ best player. Enough said.

As everyone knows, that cost Scott Skiles his job, and now nobody knows what the Bulls will bring to the court on any given night.

The Bucks have actually recovered from the other road blowouts fairly well this year, and now they need to do it again. I’m starting to feel bad for Krystkowiak and his small forward issues, as it’s beginning to look like Bobby Simmons is not ready to contribute much. He was brutal in Denver (with a -0.01 IPM), showing that maybe he really can’t handle more than about 15 minutes. You would much rather have Redd match up against Hinrich or Gordon instead of Deng, so Bell at the “2″ isn’t that great an idea. Maybe it’s time to go for broke — Villanueva at small forward, sink or swim.

The season is probably at a crossroads now — Yi is playing better, injuries are causing a little adversity. How they play the next few games will be an interesting barometer showing if this team can make a run for a playoff spot or will sink deep into the lottery again.