The Bratwurst - Milwaukee Bucks Blog

While the fact that the Bucks have gotten blown out ten times so far this season has been a neverending source of frustration, if there was ever a night where it is no big deal it was Wednesday night in Philadelphia.

Of course, losing by over 40 is never acceptable, but once the Bucks were down by 19 at the half, there was no telling how bad it would get.

After seven games in nine days, and missing Redd as well, it was no surprise that this game would be a problem. Philly is a lousy matchup for a Bucks team with a thin backcourt, as their best players — Andre Iguodala, Andre Miller, Louis Williams — would be able to stress the Bucks defenders and Samuel Dalembert is a pretty tough matchup for Andrew Bogut. Also, while the Bucks were playing a back-to-back, the Sixers were coming off of a three-day rest.

I do have two questions, though:

Doesn’t it look like Yi needs some rest? Whether it’s hitting the “rookie wall” or just simply being tired from playing constantly since the NBA Draft, Yi Jianlian is playing horribly right now. Less than two weeks after I wrote that the most impressive thing about him has been his consistency, his game has really fallen apart. He has gone through his worst five-game stretch of the season, and he has fallen off in every way. He hasn’t scored in double digits in 8 games, his rebounding has been below average in five of his last six, and his “Curry Ratio” (defined in this post) has been subpar in 7 straight games. He has been awful offensively (IPM of 0.6 or less in 7 straight — below 0.6 is “you are hurting the team more than helping” territory) and his defense has slipped, only blocking two shots in 8 games.

It really seems like the guy is tired, and maybe after the Houston game, Yi should come off of the bench for a couple of games.

With Redd hurt, why wasn’t Sessions called up? The Bucks only have four guards on the roster anyway, but with Redd out and Bell playing some small forward, they only had two full time guards available. Doesn’t it seem like three games in four nights is a little long to go with such a shorthanded backcourt? It’s not as though it was a cost savings move — while in the NBDL, Sessions still gets his NBA paycheck. At the very least, Sessions could have played the fourth quarter against Philadelphia.

The shorthanded backcourt was also a problem against New Jersey as Kidd-Carter-Jefferson gets a big edge over Williams-Ivey-Bell. Not that it’s likely Sessions would have turned one of those losses into wins, but at least he could have helped spell the starters some.

Other than that, I don’t have many other specific complaints about the Philadelphia game. They were screwed from the beginning. The Bucks’ defense was horriffic, but with Yi playing poorly, then Bogut can only do so much to help the guards when they get blown past. Mo has enough trouble guarding point guards his own size, what is he supposed to do against Vince Carter and Andre Iguodala? With Yi doing badly then my master strategy of moving Villanueva to the 3 isn’t an option, and thus his weak interior defense contributes to the problem. I think the only thing I might have done differently would have been to throw in the towel even earlier than Krystkowiak did, and taken Bogut out for good after Philly pushed their third quarter lead to 24.

It’s still an embarrassing loss, and at some point the team isn’t going to keep brushing off the blowouts. Hopefully they get back on track against Houston, a game that is supposed to mark the return of both Michael Redd and Desmond Mason.

Recently a commentor on this blog brought up an interesting point — can you remember a team that has gotten blown out as regularly as this one has? The Bucks have lost nine games this season by 20+ points. In the greater scheme of things, is that a lot?

First I looked at the record of recent Bucks teams.

2007-08 Bucks (18-27): 9 blowouts (on pace for 18)
2006-07 Bucks (28-54): 8
2005-06 Bucks (40-42): 5
2004-05 Bucks (30-52): 5
2003-04 Bucks (41-41): 2
2002-03 Bucks (42-40): 6
2001-02 Bucks (41-41): 7
2000-01 Bucks (52-30): 1

I’m sure it isn’t much of a surprise that the number of 20+ losses correlates pretty closely with how good a team is that season. But how unusual it is for a team to get blown out as often as the Bucks have this season? I tried to think of the worst recent teams I could remember and checked out how often they got blown out:

1992-93 Dallas Mavericks (11-71): 26 times
1986-87 LA Clippers (12-70): 23
1991-91 Denver Nuggets (20-62): 22
1997-98 Denver Nuggets (11-71): 22
2002-03 Cleveland Cavaliers (17-65): 19
1972-73 Philadelphia 76ers (9-73): 18
1995-96 Philadelphia 76ers (18-64: 18
2007-08 Milwaukee Bucks — on pace for 18
1999-00 Chicago Bulls (17-65): 16
1991-92 Minnesota Timberwolves (15-67): 6
2006-07 Memphis Grizzlies (22-60): 5

What do the Bucks have in common with these teams? Absolutely nothing! They are miles better than all of them, have already won more games this season than most of them did, and are still very much alive in the playoff race. But the Bucks get blown out as regularly as they did!

Just to make sure blowouts aren’t an exceptionally common thing this year, here is how often the worst teams in the league this season are getting blown out.

2007-08 Miami Heat: 5
2007-08 Minnesota Timberwolves: 6

I think it is pretty clear: the Bucks are too good to be getting blown out as often as they are. So the next question is: why is it happening?

The most obvious thing to look at is the coaching. The Bucks’ record alone shows that they have more talent than those on the “worst team” list. Take out the nine times the team simply hasn’t shown up and the Bucks are a .500 team. So the talent level isn’t the problem.

I’ve written plenty about how much I haven’t liked Krystkowiak’s rotations and his team philosophy. Maybe in the long run he is right about the defense-first philosophy, but it’s something that will take longer than one season to implement. But I don’t think that’s correct. Since the team gets blown out every time they go on the road against a good team, I think that’s a pretty strong indictment of that rationale. Looking at the number of blowouts in past Bucks seasons it’s clear that run-and-gun keeps the Bucks in games more often than does slowing down the pace.

The rotations are another problem. When things haven’t worked (Gadzuric at backup center, Simmons playing more than 15 minutes) Krystkowiak’s solutions haven’t gone much beyond benching the offending player. He still uses Redd and Bell at small forward and Ivey far too much (although with Redd and Villanueva out against Washington, he had no choice) despite the fact that it consistently doesn’t work. His failure to try and force mismatches (instead of letting bad matchups work against him) has been a part of the reason the team has not been able to stop oppositions from exploiting the Bucks’ weaknesses at times, leading to long runs.

But I thought of another potential cause. What if the problem is Yi Jianlian?

On the WSSP postgame show after the Washington game, host Steve Phifer asked Royal Ivey about the final play of regulation — where Mo pounded the ball until the clock ran down, then couldn’t get anything better than a contested three-pointer at the buzzer. Ivey was asked if that isolation was the play or if the play call had been broken and Mo had to freelance.

Ivey’s response was that it was supposed to be a high screen-roll, but Yi didn’t understand the play (language barrier) and never came out to set the screen.

This actually explains a lot of things. I have long wondered why they don’t pick-and-roll with Yi all the time, or apparently call many plays for him. Could it be that he has a hard time understanding enough English to pick up a play call on the fly? Or that many of the defensive breakdowns that happen could be stopped if Yi could better understand a teammates call for help?

Think of it this way — if Yi makes four such defensive mistakes a game, that would probably result in about two extra baskets per game (figure the oppositions shooting percentage on those posessions goes from 50% to nearly 100%). That four point difference in the long run would result in about 2 or three extra losses, but if Yi has bad games against particularly loud crowds (such as an even harder time hearing his teammates on the road in front of vocal opposing crowds) then his mistakes would probably snowball in those games. And that would most likely happen against good teams that get a lot of crowd support.

That’s an interesting theory that might bear some watching as the season continues. And the good thing is that you can be sure that Yi’s English will only get better with time.

Either way, though, the Bucks simply have to find a way to stop the blowouts. There is a big difference between trailing by 25 with two minutes remaining and trailing by 10. Even though you will almost always lose those games, if you trail by 10 then the door is still open for something strange to happen — like Washington’s 11-0 run on Sunday night where every ball suddenly bounced their way with a minute to go. If you keep it even semi-close then you never know when you might be able to steal a win.

And, in this bizarre season where the Bucks find themselves nine games under .500 and only one game out of a playoff spot, stealing one game might mean the difference between playing in the postseason and staying home.

With a T-Shirt. Seriously.

Through the beauty of the benefits of being a season ticket holder, a friend and I found ourselves sitting on center court, 12 rows up on Sunday night. We were having a great time. Until the Bucks brought in the T-Shirt cannon, the T-Shirt slingshot, the T-Shirt Cheerleaders, and, apparently, Derrick Turnbow.

As shirts were flying about, suddenly I look up and see whizzing toward my face a shirt that must have been a misfire off of a slingshot — it was coming in low, fast, and had me in its sights. I put up my hands too late, and got blasted solidly in the left eye. I yelled, “I’m hit!” and fell backwards into my seat. The shirt ricoched off of my face and hit my friend in the ear hard enough for him to say; “Ow! That hit me in the ear, man! That hurt!” I bounced into my seat, my legs coming up fast enough to catch the offending shirt on the rebound between my knees.

Being the nice guy that I am, I gave the shirt to the little girl next to me, whose brother had already caught another shirt.

Boy, you tell the truth for 30 or 40 negative posts about a team, and this is the treatment you get?

In all seriousness, though, an inch down and to the right and I could have had my nose broken by a flying T-shirt.

The problem was that the shirt was balled up to slightly larger than a baseball, and strapped together with insulated cord that was about as thick as what you would use to wire a house with. Whose bright idea was it to send these things into the stands at 100 mph? Are they going to stick firecrackers in them next? Better train your slingshot operators better, guys. It would have been something else if the person who got hit wasn’t me but was the 5-year-old girl on her mothers’ shoulders who was next to me.

In other issues surrounding the Wizards-Bucks game, there was the matter of the Bucks allowing an 11-0 run to end regulation and let the Wizards get into overtime. This did not bother me at all.

That 11-0 run was a series of fluke plays by the Wizards that just happened despite the best efforts of the Bucks. They allowed two deep 3-pointers by DeShawn Stevenson (who is a 36% 3-point shooter. He should miss one of those.), Had a turnover where Mo tried to get the ball to Bogut down low and it was slapped away (Bad luck. 90% of the time something good would come out of that play), and allowed an offensive rebound off of a missed free throw that turned into a potential 3-point play (Bell sliced in and actually knocked the rebound away from Bogut).

Several plays in a row for the Wizards that can only be attributed to luck. Or to beating the odds 4 times in a row. No big deal.

Actually, I felt it was a great effort by the Bucks tonight. To call the first quarter “sloppy” would understate it, but both teams were clearly thrown off by the 5 pm start time. Even though the Bucks played without Michael Redd and Charlie Villanueva (and Bobby Simmons was up to his old “1-5 shooting, three turnovers” tricks), the backcourt was more than up to the task.

I don’t know if this was actually Krystkowiak’s gameplan, but by letting Caron Butler get his (40/8/5) and clamping down on everyone else, the Bucks were able to get a win.

Of course, we are now going on a month of seemingly playing better without Michael Redd than with him. Which begs the question: are they a better team without him?

No way.

If Redd had been available tonight, then once Simmons got into foul trouble early, Krystkowiak would have shifted Redd onto Butler instead of bringing Bell in to face him. This would have hurt the Bucks in two ways — Redd would have had to expend energy defending him and costing himself offense in the process; and Butler would have had to continute to run his teams’ offense instead of taking the shorter Bell into the post all night.

It worked like a charm.

And it also helped that both Bell and Ivey were teriffic offensively, combining for 39 points, 8 rebounds, 12 assists and 4 steals vs. only 3 turnovers.

Please don’t think this team is better without Redd — it’s better without Redd playing small forward.

Some justification for the Bucks’ 1-3 record to date this week — they lost to 3 of the 6 best teams in the NBA over the last two weeks.

They finally get a little bit of a breather from the schedule maker by taking on the #18 Washington Wizards tonight.

But what jumped out at me most of all: The New York Knicks have had a great two weeks! They’ve had a pretty easy schedule (beating Philadelphia, Miami, New Jersey and Washington, plus one great win over Detroit) with losses to Boston and Washington. But they are playing good defense, ranking #3 in the two week stretch (allowing 65 to Detroit helped).

Just goes to show you that anyone can make a two-week run. Maybe even the Bucks.

Four minutes and 55 seconds. That’s all it took for the Raptors to turn a 6 point game into a 25 point margin.

The Raptors even did it without a single three point shot or three point play.

Toronto shot 6-8 from the floor and 7-8 from the line.

The Bucks only were able to hoist two shots and get a third one blocked in that 5 minutes of action. They also drew one foul (missing both free throws). The Bucks did manage to commit six fouls and four turnovers, though.

Think about that — the Raptors only made two more baskets than you would expect them to make in eight shots and they didn’t make any big (3 point) plays. They went on a 19-0 run without doing anything particularly special!

I suppose I could ream Krystkowiak for some coaching errors, but what is he supposed to do? He calls timeout after three Toronto baskets (about the right amount of time to wait), inserts Ivey and Voskuhl (which I’m not going to complain about — it’s better than not doing anything) and those two immediately commit an offensive foul and a shooting foul. Allowing your opponents to go on a run like that is on the whole team, not just the coach.

It’s easy to start throwing around “heartless” and “gutless” adjectives after events like this, but it’s important to remember that the Bucks were playing their fourth game in five nights. A bad stretch of play isn’t worth insinuating that something is lacking in one’s personality.

But stretches like this — which are becoming increasingly common in the third quarters of games, like this one, and this one from the past week, are a symptom of a greater problem. Coaching is part of it, yes, but flagging effort from players who know that the season is lost is another. But why would that effort be flagging? Tuning out the coaches, maybe?

It doesn’t surprise me that this game wasn’t close. The Bucks have had problems competing on the road against good teams all year, so why would tonight be any different? I wrote in a preview of this game for a Raptors blog that I would have been surprised if the Raptors didn’t win by double digits.

But ask yourself: Is this team really so bad that they should routinely be 20-40 points worse than their opposition?

The answer is: No.

And that is an issue that starts with the coaching strategies. Not tonight, but all season. A series of games with competitive first halves and third quarter collapses? That looks to me like a team that is willing to play hard until they run into a little adversity. That’s a team that has quit on its coach.

And meanwhile, the Timberwolves (with a 7-35 record) lost by one at Boston tonight. Just saying.

I looked up the NBA’s attendance report, and was pleasantly surprised — given the disapointing record of the team, fan support (in terms of buying tickets) has been pretty good.

The Bucks rank 20th in the league in attendance, drawing 15,413 per night (or, selling that many tickets, at least). They are playing to 82.4% capacity, which isn’t all that bad considering that the league average for attendance is 88.8%.

Attendance is down about 700 per game from last season, but that’s actually a league-wide trend. The league average is 17,050 this season, down from 17,700 in 06-07 and 17,500 in 05-06. If the Bucks were averaging league-average attendance of 88.8% they would bring in an additional 1,200 a night, but that would only propel them to the #18 rank in attendance.

Given that this many people will still come out to see a team that has struggled so much is a very good sign about the health of the marketplace. Add to that the financial impact of Yi Jianlian, and it all adds up to a much better chance that the Bucks will stay in Milwaukee after Herb Kohl sells the team.

Last year the injury-riddled Bucks often played with as many as 4 starters sidelined. They fired their coach for underachieving. While having one of the best offenses in the conference (11th best offensive rating in the league — measured as points per 100 posessions) their defense was miserable (29th in defensive rating). They were outscored by 4.4 points per game, the second worst margin in the conference.

How could it get any worse?

They hired a new coach who brought a “defense and intensity” mantra. They got their starters back, having withstood only one major injury through half of the season. However, while their offense is worse (18th offensive rating) their defense has not changed (still 29th). Most damming, they are now being outscored by 6 points per game, still the second worst margin in the conference.

What’s the difference between last year and this year — the “season of defense”? Nothing, except that the Bucks are playing at a slower pace (getting the 19th most posessions per game this season, vs. the 10th most last year). So they are allowing three fewer points per game — because the opposition is getting the ball one and a half fewer times per game. But that doesn’t really help because they score 4 fewer points per game than last year.

There is one positive that has come from this season — the Bucks are a much better rebounding team. Last season their opponents outrebounded them by 300 boards, this year they are net-positive 30 and are actually one of the top offensive rebounding teams in the league. That’s good to see — there’s probably nothing more frustrating to watch in basketball than your team constantly getting pounded on the glass.

From a talent perspective, this team should be significantly better. Bogut is much improved. Mo Williams is slightly improved and much healthier. Michael Redd is slumping a little, but is healthier. Yi Jianlian is an improvement on Brian Skinner. The only difference has been small forward — Ruben Patterson was far superior to Desmond Mason even before Mason got hurt, and the “throw it at the wall and see what sticks” combination of Simmons, Redd and Bell has been brutal at the 3. But with all the injuries last year, Patterson played a lot of power forward, so that’s not really a direct comparison.

Especially without a true small forward (and the inability of Simmons to step up this year) then this team’s ceiling was probably never much more than 42 or 43 wins (so about 20 or 21 as of today). But is there any excuse for their point differential being worse than last year? And for their offense getting worse without the defense getting better? The spotlight for that falls directly on Larry Krystkowiak.

Say what you will about Terry Stotts — but at least he kept his team from getting blown out every time they faced a good opponent. On a team of offensively talented, defensively limited players, Stotts had them firing away. It didn’t work all the time, but the Bucks stole a few games (winning at San Antonio and Golden State last year) and kept some of them surprisingly close (at Phoenix). After getting manhandled twice by Detroit this season Andrew Bogut commented that he couldn’t understand why they had played the Pistons tough for the previous couple of years but suddenly don’t look like they belong in the same league as them. Well — the difference is that now they have the same players trying to play Detroit’s style. And that wont work when the Pistons are much better suited for the defense-first game.

This is a perfect example of why NBA teams shouldn’t hire college coaches — the only way to win at the highest level is to customize your coaching strategy to maximize the strength of your players. You can’t just run “your” system because that’s what you are most comfortable doing and hope the players fit in.

What are some changes that Larry Krystkowiak has to make?

Less Royal Ivey, more Charlie Bell. Defensive ability is so hard to quantify. I’ve become convinced that except in the case of erasers like Kevin Garnett or transcendant stars like Michael Jordan the way to get a reputation as a defensive stopper has less to do with ability and more with a willingness to get into a good-looking defensive stance and look frustrated with yourself after you get beat. The bottom line is that one of these guys has to play. Ivey has no offensive game whatsoever and not nearly enough defensive ability to make up for it. Now that Bell is shooting much better, he is a far superior option — as long as he’s playing point guard and guarding players his size.

Pick up the pace. The Bucks have so many players that can score that they simply must run more. If there are more shots available for everyone then it becomes easier for players to take good shots. The defense-first thing simply isn’t working, and there’s nothing about playing at a higher pace that means you automatically play worse defense. I’d use some full-court pressure as one means of speeding things up.

Play Villanueva, Yi and Bogut together. The Bucks are the first team ever to have three athletic 7-footers, two of whom have 3-point range and one of which once starred in a Nike commercial where after dunking over some Chinese guy he started flashing gang signs. It’s a truly unique combination. Why not throw these guys out there and see what they can do? At the very least you’ll get some highlight dunks. And it keeps Michael Redd in the backcourt, where he belongs.

Don’t be so afraid to use your timeouts! After excellent first halves against Golden State and New Orleans, the Bucks came out flat in the third (another indictment of the coach, by the way). The Warriors stretched a 1 point lead to 10 in four posessions and the Hornets erased the Bucks’ lead with an 11-2 run. The flat third quarter starts doomed the Bucks in both games. Both times Krystkowiak waited too long to try and stop the runs by calling time out. Look, why save timeouts for the end of the game when if you don’t use them early you’ll be down by 20 at the end? I learned this lesson by watching Pat Riley a couple of years ago. The Heat came into Milwaukee without Shaq and playing poorly, and early on whenever the Bucks would string together two baskets he would call time out. He simply refused to let the Bucks go on a run and open the game up. And it worked — by keeping it close then he was able to let Dwyane Wade do his “can’t keep me off the foul line” act in the fourth quarter.

The bottom line is that coaches don’t win games — players do that. But it’s up to the coach to put his players in a good position to succeed. Larry Krystkowiak has failed miserably at that job, and suddenly this season has more in common with last season than anyone would think.

Let’s be honest.

But on the bright side, my son learned to crawl last week. And I’ve updated IPM.

The Bucks have five games this week, and if they don’t make a move right now then the playoffs will be pretty much an impossibility. At 8 games under .500 with 40 games down, they will have to go about 25-17 the rest of the way to get into the postseason. But if they struggle to a 1-4 record this week? Then they would need a 24-13 finish. Considering they have played like a 30 win team to this point of the season, only the biggest optimist could envision an extended 11-over .500 run.

The schedule this week is a rough one, too — Monday at New Orleans (going on right now, but courtesy of Fox Sports Net, we get to see the International Fight League instead), and considering the Hornets are on fire and have the best guard in the NBA in Chris Paul it’s hard to see the Bucks’ mixed up backcourt containing them. Then it’s Phoenix on Tuesday. A home game to be sure, but a back-to-back against another top team.

The Bucks should beat Indiana .. should .. but then it’s a game in Toronto the next night. They finish off the stretch on Sunday with another crack at not embarrassing themselves at home against the Wizards.

That’s 4 games against what IPM says have been among the top ten teams in the league over the last 2 weeks. Let’s face it, 2-3 would be a good week. But that doesn’t help jump start a playoff run.

Now that Bobby Simmons is a question mark with a neck strain, the lineup has become thin enough that it’s hard to fill out a complete lineup. They now have no choice to either shoot themselves in the foot by using Michael Redd at small forward or try something unconventional. But as the Golden State game showed, Larry Krystkowiak isn’t going to do unconventional.

The Warriors game annoyed me to no end. We all know that Mo can’t stop anyone. We all know that Royal Ivey can’t offer enough offense to make up for his defense. We (or, at least anyone except Krystkowiak) know that Michael Redd can’t guard small forwards or score all that effectively when guarded by bigger, more athletic players. So HOW CAN REDD PLAY THE WHOLE GAME AT SMALL FORWARD AND IVEY PLAY 42 MINUTES WHILE VILLANUEVA AND BELL COMBINE FOR 35?

Bell’s game has come around enough that even if Ivey is a little better defensively, Bell more than makes up for it offensively. Playing Redd (24 points/3 rebounds/3 assists) at forward means that the 6′8″ Steven Jackson (12/3/8 in 25 minutes) can cancel him out.

So (broken record time) why not use Villanueva at small forward, so that Redd can move back to shooting guard and have a huge height advantage on Monta Ellis? The Williams/Redd backcourt might have caused enough problems for the Warriors defense that they would have needed to get Ellis out and move Jackson to the backcourt, which could have changed the whole game. The game was competitive in the first, second and fourth quarters — it was a six minute stretch of the third where Ellis absolutely shredded the Bucks defense that decided the game!

Another thing about that third quarter — the Bucks were down only one at the half, and started the third quarter allowing scores on the first two Golden State posessions while turning it over on their one posession. My friend who I had brought to the game, who is a pretty casual basketball fan and not a Bucks or Warriors fan, immediately said; “They need a timeout right now.” He was absolutely right. Why not call time out and try to stem the rush? Instead you risk letting the game get out of hand right there? Of course, Krystkowiak didn’t call timeout until after Redd turned it over and Harrington hit a 3 (9 point deficit in three posessions). Even more perplexing, Krystkowiak then didn’t make a single subsitiution in the third quarter until the 8:55 mark — right after a 7-0 Bucks run got the deficit back to 8. What gives?

Well, enough about the past. I think my feelings about Krystkowiak’s coaching style has been hashed out enough — it’s time to move on and watch this week with interest. Now is the time to make a move — a 3-2 stretch and the season is still alive. Otherwise it’s time to start doing draft previews.

39 games in the books, and how is Yi holding up? Is he getting better? Worse? Is he a future star?

I guess it’s too early to predict stardom, but we can safely say he’s a solid player. Compared to Andrea Bargnani – last year’s number one pick, who many predicted would bust out this season, but has instead fallen apart – Yi looks really good. Yi is having a superior season to Bargnani’s rookie year in every way. He shoots better, rebounds better, passes better, blocks more shots and turns the ball over less. Everyone touts Bargnani’s upside because of his age while denigrating Yi because everyone knows he isn’t 20, but even if Yi is 23 he is still only a year older than Bargnani. So that’s a positive – Yi is probably unlikely to have a second-year slip like Bargnani, as he is already better than Bargnani was.

Compared to Dirk Nowitzki, though, the comparison isn’t as rosy. While Yi has been much better than Dirk was at 20 years old, by 23 Dirk was playing in his first all-star game.

Probably the most interesting thing about Yi has actually been his consistency. He has had a couple of great games and a couple of stinkers, but overall everything balances out and he averages out to consistently averaging about a 0.65 IPM for every 5 games. I’d call this sort of consistency a very good sign for any rookie, regardless of his age. On the flipside, if you want the guy to be a future superstar, then you’d like to see more games where he takes over and dominates, with the idea that once he reduces the bad games he becomes a great player. I see Yi with more like an Andrew Bogut career trajectory — becoming fairly good at everything, but not really dominant.

To try and look at how he has performed at various aspects of the game, I’ve looked at every box score and assembled a few stats, which are available here. I used IPM, of course, to assess his overall game. I also calculated rebounds per minute (my research shows that the typical big man averages about 0.2 rebounds per minute, so my chart lists how he fared vs. the average – so it shows a positive number if he was over 0.2 rpm. A positive number is very good, a number below about -0.1 is really bad).

I also calculated Yi’s “Curry Ratioâ€?, which was invented by a columnist for Yahoo Sports (I’m afraid I’ve forgotten who). This is a basic, fun stat that doesn’t really mean much but is a rough approximation of how well-rounded a players’ game is. Basically, this columnist noticed that when you add a players’ assists, steals and blocks and divide by their turnovers, most players average about a 2:1 ratio while only the worst black holes averaged below a 1:1 ratio. Every year only a couple of guys would make it all year with a sub-1:1, but every single year Eddy Curry was well below that Mendoza Line. This year he is at 0.67:1. It’s a sort of “general lazinessâ€? indicator, asking “what does this guy do besides score and rebound?” Since the average Curry Ratio is 2:1, I set the data against the average so a positive Curry Ratio is very good, below -1.0 is bad.

Yi endured a little mini-slump on the West Coast trip last week, which was interesting because it seemed like he was getting the ball more and being more aggressive about putting it on the floor. However, the last several games have illustrated Yi’s biggest problem to no end – getting his own shots blocked. His percentage of shots blocked is down a little from the last time I wrote a post about this, but with 35% of his “in close� shots getting thrown back it is still ridiculously high. After the last time I lamented this stat, a commenter who has seen him play in China said that he was having a problem adjusting to the physicality of the NBA, and that in China the officiating is so tight that it’s pretty rare for shots to even be challenged aggressively since a foul is always called. While I kind of doubt that – I think it’s probably that the level of competition in the Chinese League is probably so low that nobody could challenge a Yi shot without fouling him – it’s still a valid point that a big part of the blocked shot issue is that he having a problem getting the officials to blow whistles for him. That’s something that will come with time.

What’s interesting about that explanation is how much it reminds me of Elton Brand’s rookie year with the Bulls. After being touted as an instant post scorer, Brand got his shots stuffed constantly in his rookie year. He was having 4 or 5 attempts rejected a game, and by midseason of his rookie year many people had written him off as a bust who wasn’t athletic enough to get his shot off at the next level. Obviously, those people were quite wrong, and once Brand figured out how to draw fouls he became unstoppable down low.

What does Brand have in common with Yi? If the previously mentioned commenter is correct, then Brand and Yi had the same relationship with the officials at the lower levels – other players couldn’t look at them funny without picking up a foul. Anybody who thinks that Duke and Coach K (or any college program with a highly influential coach) doesn’t get all the whistles is kidding themselves. My guess is that it took Brand a while to figure out how to jump properly and draw contact, and Yi is going through the same issue.

Moving on to the other stats I looked at, it’s safe to say that Yi has been a much better rebounder than I thought he would be. He’s averaging about 0.2 per minute, so right about average for a forward. That prorates out to only 8.5 per 40 minutes, which isn’t that great but is much better than Bargnani’s 6.5 per 40 last year. What is most interesting about these numbers is Yi’s consistency – he’s only had four 10+ rebound games, so it’s not like his stats are skewed by a couple of lucky 20 rebound games. He’s been very consistent, which I think bodes well for the future. If he consistently gets 0.2 RPM now, then maybe he consistently gets 0.27 in a year or two.

Yi’s Curry Ratio has also been okay, as he is slightly below average 1.71 (average for a forward being 2.0) but not significantly so. He has been a much better shot blocker than people thought, while maybe a slightly worse passer (averaging about 1 block and 1 assist per game). Almost all of his turnovers have come from ball handling errors and bad passes (50 out of 60) instead of offensive fouls and 3-second violations. It just doesn’t look to me like his future is at small forward – I don’t think he can handle the ball well enough to have smaller players slapping at it every night, and defensively that would take him away from the basket where his shotblocking has become a weapon.

It seems like Yi has struggled a little recently (6 subpar IPM games in the last 8), and I think that he is hitting the “rookie wall�. However, the numbers show that the main reason for his poor games has been a little shooting slump – his rebounding and Curry Ratio has held up okay. I feel that is a very good sign that he is rounding into a pretty solid player – one that can contribute when he isn’t at his best.

Is he a future superstar? I don’t really think so, mostly because I think he is closer to 24 years old than 20, so he may be closer to maximizing his talent right now than people may care to believe. But is he becoming a good, well rounded player who is going to help this team for years? Definitely.

I can’t want to see how he does once he starts using his body better when he jumps, drawing fouls instead of getting his shot blocked.

Against a team with a big, athletic front line, Coach Krystkowiak finally realized, “Hey, I’ve got guys like that too!” and he saw that it was good.

While the combination of Yi and Villanueva didn’t overwhelm Atlanta’s frontcourt of Josh Smith and Marvin Williams, they played them to a draw. Since the same could be said for the fairly underwhelming Michael Redd/Joe Johnson matchup and Bell/Ivey vs. Atlanta’s trio of barely NBA level point guards, Andrew Bogut’s excellent night (21 points, 10 rebounds, 4 blocks, 1 turnover) was enough to propel the Bucks to a win over a team that came in having won 3 of their last 4.

So Villanueva didn’t shoot very well (2-7 in the 4th quarter). But he still made one more basket than Smith and Williams combined in the 4th (1-8 shooting, 11 points between them) and had 1 fewer rebound than the pair of Atlanta forwards (6 vs. 7). That illustrates my whole logic about using Villanueva at the 3 — while he’s not a shutdown defender by any means, he brings enough offense that he should be able to make his matchup a push, scoring and rebounding enough to cancel out about as much as he allows. This is opposed to using Redd (whose defense isn’t good enough to stop small forwards and whose offense gets dragged down by playing the 3) or Bell (who, for all of his effort, simply isn’t big enough to play up front).

The result from using the big front line? A 52-40 rebounding edge, including 18 offensive rebounds for the Bucks. That’s how you win when you shoot 38% for the game and take one fewer free throw (23) than the opposition makes (24). The rebounding gave the Bucks 13 more shots than the Hawks, which made the difference in the game.

Hopefully we’ll see Krystkowiak try the big lineup again in the next couple of games. Golden State always forces a crazy series of matchups. You need the extra big man in against New Orleans because of their superior rebounders in Tyson Chandler and David West, and against Phoenix you need your best offensive players in the game as much as possible. It’s not going to work well every night, but this team isn’t good enough to win every game either.

One major source of frustration about this game was that Yi is still having such a hard time with having his shots blocked inside. He obviously trying — using a series of pump-fakes trying to get his man in the air before going up. However, if you don’t go up strong enough in the first place, the fakes aren’t going to work, and sometimes they just make things worse. Once last night he got the ball right under the basket, but one fake simply allowed Josh Smith to get close enough to him to smother the shot.

It’s interesting watching the difference between Yi and Bogut going to the hole. Bogut does a nice job of leaping with his body, warding the defenders away from his hands and allowing him room to complete his shooting motion. Yi, on the other hand, leaps with his arms, extending them straight up as he elevates and getting his elbows extended so he doesn’t have much power coming back down. It’s really annoying that the last place you want to see your athletic 7-footer is right under the basket — that should at least be a trip to the line every time. But instead it’s usually a highlight play for the defense.

From a rotation perspective, I guess the one thing that I would have done differently last night was after removing Yi in the 4th quarter, I would have brought in Gadzuric to play power forward alongside Bell, Redd, Villanueva and Bogut instead of bringing Ivey back in. After all, the Hawks were still going big with Marvin Williams, Smith, Joe Johnson and Anthony Johnson while replacing Lorenzen Wright with Al Horford. But the the Bucks smaller lineup went on a game-sealing 7-0 run, so all is well.

Three straight tough home games coming up. Hopefully this win — over a deceptively good team and without Mo Williams — will propel them to more success on this tough homestand.