The Bratwurst – Milwaukee Bucks Blog

Sure, I can hear you thinking, the Bucks play two good games against lousy teams and suddenly he thinks Krystkowiak is a great coach.

No, I’m not taking back my statements that the Bucks need a coaching change, but I saw a couple of things in the Philadelphia game that I really liked. Lets not get too excited about what the Bucks have done recently — the have beaten three lousy teams, and primarily won last night because Philadelphia went 0-13 from three point range. But Krystkowiak has done a couple of things that I have really liked.

He has tried playing Villanueva and Yi together a couple of times. Only for a few minutes, but if you are talking about moving people to a new position, then baby steps are necessary. They only played together for about 3 minutes and weren’t incredibly successful, but Yi had an awful game so it wasn’t really indicative of how good they would have been. It seemed like Yi was playing the “3″, which I don’t like, but that was hard to tell because Philadelphia went small and the Bucks played zone. Krystowiak also made a very nice move by going even bigger in reaction to the small ball Sixers, bringing in Simmons to play alongside Williams in the backcourt for a couple of minutes there. Creative! I like the way you are thinking!

The Bucks also briefly used some pressure defense to show a new look to the Sixers. While it didn’t do much (and wasn’t too terribly agressive, either), that might help the Bucks push the pace a little and take advantage of their offensive firepower by generating some turnovers and faster possesions by the opposition.

Kudos to just about everybody who took the floor for the Bucks for a nice game — Bogut, Williams and Villanueva were all solid and Bell was spectatcular. With him scoring 20 ppg, the loss of Redd sure is easier to take. Bobby Simmons also had a nice game, shooting 4-8 and stretching his minutes to 28.

It’s so much more fun to write about wins.