The Bratwurst – Milwaukee Bucks Blog

Wow, I head off to the Florida Keys for a while and the playoffs slip away. This season sure got strange in a hurry, didn’t it?

I managed to miss:

1) A five game losing streak punctuated by yet another blowout loss to a juggernaunt Philadelphia team (and a perfectly routine blowout to Boston), giving them 14 such 20+ point losses this season. The Bucks are still on pace for 18 blowout losses this season, which would give them something in common with the 1972-93 Philadelphia 76ers.

2) Rumors that Yi Jianlian is about to get shut down for the season with a mystery wrist injury, which comes about at an awfully convenient time. When his game fell apart in January it was because of the “rookie wall”, when he sat out after the Houston game it was because of an injured shoulder, and when he came off the bench after that it was because he was tired and needs rest with the Olympics coming up. Now they say that he’s been hurt with a wrist problem since January that only now is keeping him off the court. Oooo…kay. Look, this is the problem with having foreign players on your team — there is always something to do over the summer. If it isn’t the Olympics; it’s the World Championships, or the Asian Games (or the European Championship or the Pan Am Games), or the Olympic Qualifying Tournament, or something else. He’s never going to get a summer off. This past summer Yao Ming took time off to get married. Not only was it his first summer break ever as a professional, but he took some heat from the government and media for doing so.

3) Mo Williams missing five games with something called “pubic symphysitis”, an injury about which my wife, an ER physician, said “I could see someone getting that in childbirth, otherwise, I don’t really know.” We then did a little research and found that it is a somewhat common athletic injury (often ocurring in swimmers who concentrate in the breast stroke or when an athlete accidentally gets his leg whipped out from under him), and it sounds really awful when you consider exactly what the pubic symphysis is attatched to.

Obviously, since I haven’t been around I haven’t seen the games recently and am not about to offer much in the way of opinion, other than to say that the writing is on the wall: this is yet another lost season and the team seems to know it. While they haven’t given up on the court, as evidenced by the close losses to Portland and Utah, one gets the feeling that all of these lingering injuries (except for Williams’) wouldn’t be cropping up if the team was gunning for 50 wins instead of 30.

So what else is there to talk about this season? For one, I think that this season has made it clear that the core of this team is made up of a bunch of good (even great) players who are not a good fit together. The team needs some major personell changes and new coaching tactics. I’ll be writing about what needs to be done soon.

Also, the Bucks will once again have a pretty high draft pick in a very risky draft. I’ve pinpointed the player I want the Bucks to get, and I’ll be starting to write about the draft very soon. I guarantee you that the player I think should be the Bucks’ #1 target (after Michael Beasley, of course) will be a surprise to you — and in fact, he may even be available in the second round.

In the meanwhile, I’ll keep watching the Bucks, win or lose. That’s what I love the most about the NBA — things don’t have to go well for it to make great theater.