The Bratwurst – Milwaukee Bucks Blog

It pains me to write this post. Larry Krystkowiak seems like a really good, standup guy who has found himself in a difficult situation with a flawed roster. But all year long, after each loss and many wins, I’ve been scratching my head at some of his moves. The substitution patterns. Poor end-game execution. All season it was a foregone conclusion before every road game against a good team that the Bucks had no chance. Then the road blowouts started with regularity. Now the blowout losses come to the Bradley Center.

That seals it in my mind: It’s time for Larry Krystkowiak to go.

When the Knicks lost to the Celtics by 45 in November, judging from the media’s reaction you would have thought it was the biggest blowout in league history.

Now the Bucks have lost by a similar margin 3 times in the last two weeks.

It’s easy enough to justify the Bucks’ 24 point loss to Washington , they didn’t have Michael Redd. Well, on the same night, Sacramento lost in Cleveland by 4 without Bibby, Artest or Martin. The Knicks lost in San Antonio by 4 without Zach Randolph. The Heat lost by 5 in Dallas without Wade, Shaq, Mourning or Jason Williams. Everybody has to play games without starters. Every coach has to find a way to keep those games close, and Reggie Theus, Isiah Thomas (!!!) and Pat Riley all managed to do it on Friday night. But when Krystkowiak has run into a short lineup, the result has been games that were over in five minutes, three times.

When Krystkowiak was first hired I had mixed feelings. On one hand, I thought; “not only was he a college coach, but he’s an inexperienced one at that!” On the other hand, though, look at the track record of NBA coaches , there wasn’t anything to suggest that Krystkowiak couldn’t be successful. Only two NBA coaches have ever won titles in two cities , Phil Jackson and Pat Riley , and they both had Shaquille O’Neal in common. Every single big name college coach to make the leap to the pros (Jerry Tarkanian? Lon Kreuger? Rick Pitino? Mike Montgomery?) has been a flop to varying degrees. Basically, every single great NBA coach started out as a no-name. So why not Krystkowiak? I remember when the Bulls hired Phil Jackson. All of the fans thought Jerry Krause had lost his mind. But he was right , the no-name was the right move. I figure Bucks management knows more about basketball and about Krystkowiak’s skills than I do, so who was I to judge?

Well, the problem is that he coaches like the Bucks are a college team. This whole “defense and energy” thing is great in college when you are coaching 18-20 year-olds who are still learning the game and you can recruit the sort of players you want. Every college player can improve himself and mold his game to fit a coaches system. Every NBA player, though, is already one of the 400 or so best basketball players in the world. These guys got to where they are by maximizing their best skills , they can’t just change into something that they aren’t because the coach decides he wants them to. The Bucks have a bunch of thin, athletic, scoring specialists, not bruising defenders. That’s what they are, and no amount of telling them otherwise will change that. The NBA coach has to coach with the players he has, not the players he wants to have , because the guys he has are all he’s got.

And the guys he has are there to run the floor, push the pace, and put up tons of shots. The Bucks have enough offensive weapons that they should be among the league leaders in pace, instead the defensive emphasis has slowed them down to about 20th in the league. If they want to play defense it should be pressure D to push the tempo, not slow-down, clock burning defense.

The rotations have cost the Bucks dearly so far. Early in the season he consistently went with all-bench lineups made up of the players he felt “gave the most energy in practice” and without regard to these players’ actual talent levels. Nobody in the NBA does this, and for good reason (except for Reggie Theus. Another rookie coach with a little college experience before getting his pro job). For starters, at the highest level “talent” defeats “energy” every single time. Whenever a group of NBA players that have been playing for a few minutes come against a group that is cold off the bench, it’s a huge advantage to the guys who are already warmed up. That causes 3-5 minute long runs that killed several Bucks games in late November, after their long winning streak turned into a brutal slide.

To Krystkowiak’s credit he stopped doing the all-bench stuff, but now that the losing is starting to wear on the team and injuries are piling up he can’t make them competitive most nights any longer. He has lost them.

The bad record isn’t totally all his fault. I think that coaching moves have cost them maybe 3 games so far, but the number of should-be-8-ponint-losses that turn into 30 point blowouts is the real problem. NBA coaches don’t really have all that much effect on the actual record, the players are mostly responsible for that, but Krystkowiak’s rotation strategy and misguided philosophy has not helped. Under Stotts the Bucks were an exciting offensive team that overachieved a little (by IPM) until injuries destroyed them. Under Krystkowiak they are boring, poor offensively, and the defense is going into the tank.

The roster problems also aren’t Krystkowiak’s fault , to a point. I’m still 100% convinced that Simmons’ problems have to do with his “personal absence” from last month. Let’s say he left the team because a relative was having surgery and it was successful. So wouldn’t the fans have heard the reason for his absence by now? What’s the harm in announcing it and letting everyone know that everything is now OK? No “¦ something’s wrong with this picture. I get the feeling that Simmons has other things on his mind, and probably wouldn’t be playing at all if Mason was healthy. Bobby Simmons simply isn’t this bad a player. Bell, on the other hand “¦ who could imagine that he’d still be this bad 2 months into the season?

But it’s still up to Krystkowiak to make the best of these problems. He should use Simmons as little as possible and make Villanueva the primary small forward. He should start Ivey if Williams or Redd can’t go and kick in Larry Harris’ office door every day telling him to get another backup guard.

The coach simply has to do something , you can’t face adversity by giving Bell more and more minutes and leaving Simmons out there every night until he plays his way off the floor. It becomes a broken record , your regular starters play well, your subpar fill-ins kill the team, you shrug your shoulders to the media after another loss and make some comments about how everyone has to play harder, and the exact same thing happens the next game. Eventually the starters stop playing hard. A situation like this requires creative thinking, and it hasn’t been there.

So who replaces him? Rick Carlisle.

Any coach who could take the post-brawl 2004 Pacers, with their 3 best players suspended anywhere from 20 to 60 games and still get them into the second round of the playoffs is my kind of guy.

Carlisle was coach of the year for Detroit before he was unceremoniously dumped by them, and was fired by Indiana because his teams played too boring a style (and apparently Carlisle has a bit of a tact problem). I’m sure he’d love a chance to return to the Central division and try to stick it to both of those teams.

The one problem with Carlisle is that he is a legendarily prickly guy who doesn’t really get along with anyone. But Karl, Porter, Stotts and Krystkowiak are all nice guys. Time to get a jerk winner in here. Maybe he will wear out his welcome in 3 years, but considering that both Ben Wallace and Jermaine O’Neal blossomed under him, you can bet that Bogut and Yi will be much better players by the time Carlisle talks himself out of town.

I’m not 100% sure that it’s time to get rid of Harris yet , lets see if he can rectify any of this mess by the trade deadline. But the time for a coaching change is now.