The Bratwurst - Milwaukee Bucks Blog

It’s New Years, it’s time for positive thinking — so no negativity tonight. Besides, there were actually some positive things to be taken from the New Jersey game on Saturday.

First order of business, though: IPM data has been updated, and I’ve added a new wrinkle. The Team Power Rankings will now include two sets of rankings: overall rankings as before, and rankings with only the last two weeks taken into consideration. Hopefully this will give a little insight into who is playing well right now versus who has posted the best results over the whole season. One interesting nugget from the 2-week rankings: the Boston offense is really sputtering right now. They haven’t been one of the top 3 teams since mid-December. Also, a ray of hope for Bucks fans: while it hasn’t shown up in the won/lost column, their offense is getting more efficient.

On to discussing the New Jersey game:

It doesn’t bother me that the Bucks lost. Anytime you play such a close game — the biggest lead all night was 6 points — the outcome is essentially random, and you’d think that the edge has to go to the team with the best point guard. Well, Jason Kidd is about as good as it gets. The Bucks were in the midst of a 4th quarter 9-2 run that looked like it would carry them to victory when Mo Williams fouled out, and that was all she wrote. Oh well. When you lose a 2 point game because Jason Kidd was making 3’s and Malik Allen was banging in jumpers all night … those are the breaks sometimes. They made the shots that your defense wanted them to take.

Normally I would complain about Krystowiak using too much Bell/Ivey together and using Redd at small forward, but that made sense against the Nets. New Jersey basically uses a 3 guard lineup with Kidd/Carter/Jefferson, and that doesn’t change when Bostjan Nachbar comes in.

All things considered it was a good, exciting game and with all that’s gone on with this team in the last week, I’m glad they still have some fight left in them. It bodes well for the New Year (as long as Krystkowiak does something original about the small forward situation).

I have to relate my favorite New Jersey Nets experience:

Several years ago I was visiting friends in New York and we made the trek out to the swampland to Continental Airlines Arena to catch the Nets and Bulls (this was when the Nets were going to the finals and the Bulls had Jalen Rose and Jay Williams running the show. Needless to say, the game wasn’t very competetive).

This was after the first season of American Idol, and to capitalize on the popularity the Nets were running a season-long halftime show called “New Jersey Idol.”

It was an elimination singing competition, where the fans’ cheering would decide the “winner”, who would advance to a later game in the season.

So Joe Piscopo is the host (I couldn’t believe it either! JOE PISCOPO!) and he introduces the 3 contestants for the night. He says that they will each sing for 30 seconds or so, then the fans are supposed to “vote” by cheering for their favorite as he holds his hand above their head.

The first girl is okay, the second isn’t so good, and the third one really sucks.

So Piscopo holds his hand over the first girl’s head to a smattering of applause. The second one gets slightly less, quite indifferent applause. The third girl … gets booed. Seriously, hard core, 10,000 people booing her.

While she is highlighted on the scoreboard, in reaction to the booing, she takes one step forward and starts flipping the entire stadium the bird. She storms off, the camera following her. She rips her access pass off of her neck, throws it aside, and walks off the court, flipping off the whole crowd with both middle fingers. Meanwhile, the entire crowd kept booing her until she dissapeared up the tunnel. And her whole middle finger display was highlighted on the jumbotron the whole time.

I turned to by wife and said, “Well, we just got the New Jersey experience, no doubt about that.”