The Bratwurst – Milwaukee Bucks Blog

In March of 2007 I went to a Bucks-Bulls game and was treated to an incredible offensive display from Michael Redd and Ben Gordon. The pair combined to shoot 36-64 and scored 100 points between them (52 for Redd and 48 for Gordon) in a 126-121 Bulls win. But there was one play that has stuck in my mind ever since, and I found myself thinking about it more and more as this season went along.

At the end of a third quarter that saw Redd and Gordon pretty much match baskets for the whole time — neither of them could do anything to stop the other — the Bucks had a four point lead and the ball with about a one second game clock/shot clock differential. Mo Williams brought the ball up and stood at midcourt, dribbling the clock down so the Bucks would get the last shot. Redd, however, had other ideas.

With 20 seconds left, Redd had Gordon on his hip at the 3-point line and called for the ball. Williams waved him off, intending to run out the clock. Redd called for the ball again, Mo ignored him. Finally, Redd went over to Mo and literally took the ball out of his hands, faced up Gordon (from about 30 feet out) and tried to go to work on him. However, by walking over to Mo, it meant that Redd had also walked over to Mo’s defender, Kirk Hinrich, and it was obvious that considering the time remaining and what Redd had just done that he was never going to pass the ball. So basically Redd had just double teamed himself. Needless to say, he had no chance to shake both Gordon and Hinrich and to make matters worse, fired up a fadeaway 3 from about 30 feet with at least 6 seconds left.

The result was a long rebound that caromed out to Hinrich, who took off the other way and buried a running 3-pointer at the buzzer, cutting the Bucks lead to one.

I thought, “That was weird.”

At the time I kind of wrote the play off as the sort of thing that happens in a meaningless game late in a lost season. But then I saw the Redd-Williams dynamic on the court this season and started to think that maybe that play against the Bulls was a little indicator of a bigger problem. Maybe these guys are so afraid that by passing the ball they will never get it back, and that is unintentionally short-circuiting the offense.

Maybe they are both too talented offensively to play together.

Mo Williams ($7.75M, 0.852 IPM): It’s so trendy to bash Mo for a variety of reasons: “He shoots too much”, “His defense sucks”, and (my favorite because it’s ludicrous) “He’s not a “pure” point guard.” But all of that misses the point — Mo Williams has really become a terrific offensive player.

First of all, Mo Williams does not shoot too much. He averaged 15.4 shots per 40 minutes this season (pace adjusted) which placed him 12th among point guards who played over 22 minutes per game. He took 2 more shots per game than the #24 point guard on that list, Steve Nash. “Pure” point guards like Tony Parker, TJ Ford, Chris Paul and Sam Cassell all took more shots per 40 minutes than did Mo.

One shouldn’t really complain about Mo’s shooting because he converts them so well, as he made a career high 48% this season. In fact, according to 82games.com, Mo was one of only three players to shoot above 50% on 2-point jump shots this season (behind Kyle Korver and ahead of Steve Nash). Mo also spent his first season on his new contract setting career highs in just about every category — shooting percentage, 3-point shooting, free throw shooting, assists and blocks, while holding his steals steady and cutting his turnovers and fouls.

However, there is evidence that Mo’s defense is a real problem. Despite the fact that the Bucks had no other decent option as a backup point guard (since Ivey was horrible, Bell played three positions, and Sessions didn’t show up until April) the Bucks weren’t much better with Mo on the court as they were with him off. Part of the problem is Williams’ size (or lack thereof), and part of it is the lack of accomplished defenders he has as teammates. But his defense was a problem, and the coaching staff knew it. There was a rumored near-fistfight between Williams and assistant coach Tony Brown over Mo’s defensive effort, and after a game against Sacramento (in which Kings point guard Beno Urdih had run all over the Bucks) Krystkowiak made some veiled references to benching a player who he felt was slacking on defense.

It’s not that Mo doesn’t put effort into defense — I remember him tying up Chris Paul during a huge possession late in the Hornets game — but he seems to get frustrated if calls don’t go his way, because of his size he is easy to overpower and cannot close out on shooters if he leaves his man to double-team someone else.

Facts are facts: Mo Williams has improved every season he has been in the league and his team has done worse every season that his role has increased. Maybe there is something to the idea of being “just good enough to be a good player on a bad team.”

As it is currently constructed, this team is not a good place for Mo. There is too much offensive talent (making his shot-creation skills redundant) and not enough defensive help (exacerbating his shortcomings). He’s a bad backcourt partner for Michael Redd, and Scott Skiles has never been a head coach with a small point guard (he has had Jason Kidd, Stephon Marbury and Kirk Hinrich previously). Either Redd or Williams has to go this off season. Mo is young, has improved every season, and his contract is reasonable for his production, so he should be able to garner some trade interest.

Mo Williams is a very good player who was a very bad fit for Larry Krystkowiak’s system and is a bad fit for this roster.

Responsibility for Coach K’s dismissal: 20%

Michael Redd ($14.5M, 0.838 IPM): It was an incredibly disappointing season for Redd, as he came into training camp in great shape and riding high from the Team USA experience over the summer. However, he started the season in something of a shooting slump (but posted some of the best rebounding and assist numbers of his career), and things never got better. After Mason got hurt, Redd spent most of the season out of position at small forward and seemed to be competing with his teammates to get his shots. He wound up with his worst IPM in several years, and only the third best on the team (behind Bogut and Mo).

It’s easy to blame Redd for concentrating on scoring seemingly to the detriment of his teammates, but look at it from his point of view for a second. The last time this team was any good, two years ago, the starting lineup included a player coming off of a major injury (TJ Ford), a rookie playing out of position (Bogut), a new player whose main offensive weapon was corner 3′s (Simmons) and a new player with not much of an offensive game (Magloire). If that group was able to win half of their games and make the playoffs with Redd taking every single big shot, then shouldn’t this group of ostensibly-more talented players be able to chip in an extra 10 points a night than the 05-06 crew could? Shouldn’t that be enough to make this team really good, without Redd doing anything differently?

Of course, it doesn’t really work that way. The 07-08 roster may be more talented than the 05-06 one was, but the collection of skills was less complementary.

Unfortunately, the effort to get Bogut more shots, the blossoming of Mo Williams into a highly-efficient scorer (and the attendant paycheck he started getting), and the presence of Yi Jianlian seemed to affect Michael Redd very badly — it was as though he feared becoming an afterthought in his own offense, and seemed to feel that if he got the ball he had better shoot it because it wasn’t ever coming back to him.

This led to a season of incredibly poor shot selection from Redd. Horrible, awful flat-footed 20 foot jumpers, where he would just stare at his defender and then fire away with a hand in his face. He would regularly ignore his post players when they called for the ball, doing it so often that I questioned whether he was intentionally freezing out Yi.

Larry Krystkowiak noticed it as well, and said as much to the Journal-Sentinel in a postseason interview:

“One player Krystkowiak did not communicate well with was guard Michael Redd. An uneasy relationship existed between the coach and the star guard during most of the season and Redd admitted after the season that there had been no chemistry between them. Redd did add, though, that they had gone about their jobs in a professional manner.

Asked about Redd, Krystkowiak said, “I understand the chemistry of a team and I know that there’s a lot of issues with shot selection and taking bad shots. I tried to get our team to play together and I came to the realization that it really wasn’t going to happen.”

Krystkowiak said a big part of the problem from his perspective was that Redd and his teammates played well together in practice, but then reverted to a more solo mentality in games.

“There was a different mind-set in practice than there was in a game,” Krystkowiak said. “It was like two different types of teams so we could never address sharing and moving the basketball because we did a decent job of it in practice. It was in games where it didn’t happen. . . . Things became very focused on scoring points and that’s Mike. Truly great players make the players around them better.

“A lot of times in practice he would defer and wouldn’t be as scoring-minded and so I don’t know how you’re supposed to get better as a team when . . . practice was different than games.”

This statement is a perfect example of why Larry Krystkowiak is no longer the coach of this team — the whole idea of “great players make other players better.” That’s not true — great players are great because they are better than the players around them.

You can’t take your best scorer and try to tell him to score less because that will give more opportunities for other guys. That doesn’t make any sense. This is the sort of thing that cost the Bucks some wins and cost Krystkowiak his job — sending Redd out there to play small forward when he’s not strong enough defensively to handle bigger players and expecting his best scorer to defer his scoring to his teammates.

With a bunch of efficient scorers on his team, Krystkowiak should have pushed the pace to get as many shots as possible in the air every night. That would have been the only way to keep everyone happy. He can’t expect players to give the ball up just because someone else will get upset without it.

I know that it sounds like I’m being too soft on Michael Redd here, and I probably am, but I just feel that Larry Krystkowiak was being unrealistic to think that he could tell his players to just change their games around in order to fit into his team concept. The NBA doesn’t work that way. You know how they say that great players make the worst coaches because they expect the game to come as easily to everyone as it did to them? Maybe the opposite was Krystkowiak’s problem as coach — he saw the game from the perspective of a journeyman who had to tailor his game to fit into a team concept, when in reality good players need the concept set up to help maximize their own strengths in order for a team to win.

In the meantime, while it has become popular to blame Redd for the Bucks’ problems, forget it — he’s not going anywhere. His salary makes it almost impossible to get fair value back, and he cannot possibly be traded along with one of the Bucks’ bad contracts in order to clear some cap room. Fortunately, with a coach better able to put him into a position to succeed and make the offense flow, Redd should bounce back next season just fine. But he’s never going to be a very well-rounded player.

Responsibility for Coach K’s dismissal: 35%

———————–
Other installments in the Season In Review:
I Need One to Play the Three!
Stop the Danny G Experience! I Want to Get Off!
The Aussie and the Flintstone
The Men of Mystery
The End of the Bench

According to ESPN, former Indiana coach and serial NCAA rule violator Kelvin Sampson is on Scott Skiles’ short list to join his staff as an assistant coach. Other names include New Mexico coach Craig Neal and former Buck Joe Wolf.

It just goes to show you how once you are in the basketball “fraternity” just how hard it is to talk your way out of it. First Billy King is rumored for open GM jobs in Miilwaukee and New York, and now Sampson — who was fired from Indiana for the exact same violations that he committed at Oklahoma — is a job candidate?

I guess he’s a good coach. And at least at the pro level, calling the other teams’ players on the phone a thousand times can’t get you fired.

And now, the small forward position, home of the Bucks’ undoing. Things were cruising along pretty well this year, but then one injury weakened the whole structure of the roster. Larry Harris and Larry Krystkowiak’s errant roster and rotation management made the position a problem night-in and night-out. After Mr. Offensively-Challenged (Mason) got hurt; Mr. Slump (Simmons), Mr. Out-of-Position (Redd), and Mr. Small (Bell) couldn’t fill the role, while Mr. Defensively-Challenged (Villanueva) never got a chance, while at least he could have kept the other guys in the backcourt or on the bench.

The result was something similar to the end of Reservoir Dogs. Deadly.

Desmond Mason ($5.0M, 0.622 IPM): Mason’s constant energetic play and dirty-work defense , plus his well-known solid character — makes him an endearing guy to watch and to root for. His offensive inefficiency is well known, but he made up for it by not trying to do too much at that end while buckling down on defense.

He was a good signing, too, given a 2 year/$10 million contract that was a nice value for Larry Harris. He got a reasonably priced guy who would be able to start, but if he was sent to the bench he would produce and not complain, while not eating a huge percentage of the salary cap.

The Bucks were quite a bit better with him on the floor, being outscored by 5 points per game with him and 10 without. With all of the high-priced talent around him in the starting lineup, it was surprising that it was an injury to him that sent the team into it’s ¾-season-long tailspin. But I think that says more about how bad the bench was than about how good Mason was.

Despite playing with Chris Paul for two seasons, Mason’s stint with the Hornets featured two of the most pathetic offensive efforts I have ever seen. Mason’s jump shot, always a problem, completely deserted him, as he shot below 30% on jumpers both seasons and had a 2-year FG% around 42%, yet he took 10 shots per game. His IPM for both seasons hovered around 0.50, which made him one of the worst players in the league considering how many minutes he played. And this was playing with one of the best point guards in the league! It’s funny that nobody has credited the Hornets’ surge to the top of the Western Conference to the fact that Desmond Mason is no longer on their team.

This season his jumper was not quite as bad as usual (33.7%) but he shot exceptionally well when close to the basket (59.5%). The result was career high 48% shooting, which made his offense good enough to make him a net-positive player for the Bucks when combined with his energetic defense.

But the reason why he shot a higher percentage is interesting , he seems to have finally figured out that he’s a horrible creator off of the dribble, so he stopped trying it.

This season, Mason was assisted on 69% of his baskets, vs. 54% and 53% his two seasons with the Hornets , when he was playing with Chris Paul! Just letting the game come to him and allowing his teammates to get him good shots worked wonders. Sort of makes you think about the, “Mo Williams isn’t really a point guard” stuff, doesn’t it?

But even with all of that, it’s not as though Desmond Mason was all that great a player. He’s not a bad guy to have around, but not a good guy to have as your starting small forward. But at least he did his job the best he could.

Responsibility for Coach K’s dismissal: Negative 20%

Bobby Simmons ($9.2M, 0.558 IPM): “Simmons=Pippen.” That’s what Jim Boeheim told Simmons’ college coach, Pat Kennedy, after coaching him on a high school all-star team. But it hasn’t quite worked out that way.

Simmons’ contract has been roundly criticized as one of the worst in the league, but that’s not true at all , Dan Gadzuric’s contract is light years worse, because it is longer and has a slightly smaller ending value. Simmons’ at least only has two years remaining on it, and will be worth much more , over $10 million , when it expires, meaning that he will be a useful trade asset down the road, or the source of a nice chunk of cap room. This room will be used to slot in Andrew Bogut’s extension should the Bucks keep Simmons.

The problem with Simmons is that he has now played six out of seven years in the league and has only had one really good season , his Most Improved Player 2004-05 season. This year looked a lot like his first season with the Bucks , a slow start, followed by some sort of problems (his first year he got an ankle injury that lingered most of the season, this year he had a mid-season three-game “personal leave” that then coincided with an incredible mega-slump), and a late-season resurgence that makes it look like he’s going to be good to go the following year. In the No Defense Allowed part of the season (April) he averaged 12.7 ppg on 51% shooting, and regained his form as a money 3-ball shooter.

So was Simmons slumping only to regain his form at the end of the year, or is he just a fairly poor player who has a knack for looking good late in the season? The evidence is starting to mount that the answer is the latter.

Taking Simmons’ averages of the 2002-03, 2003-04, and 2005-06 seasons (the last 3 he had played before this year, not counting the MIP season), he averaged 13.7 points, 7 rebounds, and 2.5 assists per 40 minutes, while shooting 41.3%. This season he averaged 14 points, 6 rebounds, and 2.1 assists per 40 minutes on 42.1% shooting. His numbers this year coincide almost exactly with his averages for the rest of his career, not counting the one season that he was clearly playing over his head. It’s starting to look like this is how good he really is , a guy who will show flashes of talent, but that’s it.

The news wasn’t all bad , despite such a disappointing offensive season, the Bucks played about the same with him on the floor as off (-7.9 ppg vs. -7.2), indicating that his defense was solid enough as to make his poor offense a wash. His ability to play tough, physical defense was one of the reasons he was brought aboard in the first place

It seems like Simmons and Krystkowiak may not have been on the same page, as his minutes yo-yoed all over the place. Considering that Krystkowiak had been making his “playing time comes from practicing hard”, it sure doesn’t make Simmons look good no matter what the cause really may have been. Most likely there was something to that “personal leave” that never became public.

But the bottom line is that when the Bucks needed Simmons to step in after Mason got hurt, he wasn’t able to answer the bell, which meant that the injury to Desmond Mason was enough to kill the season. And now we enter year four of the Bobby Simmons era in Milwaukee without really knowing what we’ve got.

Responsibility for Coach K’s dismissal: 30%

Up next: The Mo and Michael Show , Will There be a Sequel?

How well did the Bucks fare this year when it comes to television viewers?  Not that well, if you exclude China.

Curious how the Bucks fared on television this year?  If you rule out China, not that well.
The Milwaukee Bucks’ dismal 26-56 season translated to unremarkable local TV ratings for their games.

FSN Wisconsin’s 70 Bucks telecasts averaged a 2.0 rating, an estimated 17,820 households.

The highest-rated game of the season came Saturday, Nov. 3, the Bucks’ third game, at home against Chicago. It had a 4.3 rating, or 38,313 households.

The season before, Bucks telecasts had a lower rating, 1.3, but because of a problem with Nielsen Media Research, that rating could have been under-reported by as much as 40%. Under-reporting by Nielsen was a problem in this market from April 2005 until April 17, 2007.

The last season a clean rating is available is the 2003-’04 season, when 35 Bucks games on WCGV-TV (Channel 24) averaged a 3.9 rating and the 40 games on FSN averaged 2.2.

Fans sitting at home clearly weren’t all that interested in the Bucks last year.  It’ll be interesting once the Brewers final numbers are available this year to compare the two.

Up to this point I have talked about each player in reverse order of their salaries, but I’m getting away from that because Simmons/Mason and Williams/Redd should really be discussed together.

That leaves only one other $5 million man to talk about.

Dan Gadzuric ($5.7M, 0.625 IPM): My season ticket rep upgraded me to courtside seats for the Feb. 13 game against New Orleans, so I gave my regular seats to a friend who took his father to the game. The game turned out to be a well played, hard-fought 111-107 loss to the Hornets, who had the best record in the West at the time. That game, however, was not Dan Gadzuric’s finest moment. While you should never say that one player cost you a win, on this night Danny G cost the Bucks the win. His 2-8 shooting was highlighted by at least three missed open layups from point-blank range and one missed dunk.

After the game, what was the first thing my friend’s father said to me? Not; “Thanks for giving us the tickets” nor was it; “That was a good game, too bad they couldn’t pull it out.”

No, the first thing out of his mouth was; “Boy, that Gad-zurick really sucks! Can’t even make a layup! Why’s he even on the team? How much are they paying him? What a bunch of bums. No wonder they suck. That Harris is so dumb for giving him that contract.”

I would have preferred; “Thanks for the tickets.”

But he perfectly summed up the problem with Dan Gadzuric. There are some positives that he brings to the court , short bursts of energy, rebounding, shot-blocking, and hard fouls. However, he is so incredibly inept with the ball in his hands that he makes a mockery of the very idea of professional basketball as being something entertaining that is worth paying money to see. If you want to see missed layups, you can go to a 5th grade game for free any time, but to pay money and leave home on a Tuesday night in February to see Gadzuric do it , well, who’s the idiot now? The guy who is doing it and getting paid or the guy who is paying to watch it?

Danny G’s shooting percentage continued plummeting (the last 4 seasons have been 53.9%, 55.3%, 47.4%, 41.6%) and a look at Gadzuric’s 82games.com page for this season and 2004-05 (the season that won him his ridiculous contract) shows that his shooting has fallen apart in every way. He now shoots a higher percentage of jump shots (30% this year vs. 16% in 04-05), makes fewer jump shots (19.6% vs. 27%), and shoots a worse percentage inside (50.9% vs, 59%). Even his propensity to miss dunks has grown (only shooting 84% on slam attempts this season).

At least Gadzuric chipped in by rebounding slightly worse than in past seasons, turning it over more often and getting fewer assists. And he is only under contract for three more seasons.

So what’s the matter here? Well, Gadzuric is older than he looks , he was an older college player, so despite only being a six-year veteran he is already 30. It’s a shame to talk about guys just out of their 20′s as getting “old”, but that is what is happening , he is past his prime, which is what happens to most centers around this age. Danny G was simply never that talented but was supremely athletic for his size. Over the last couple of years he has probably lost a step and a little bit of his springs, and he is simply not good enough at basketball to compensate.

The fact that he is not as explosive off of the floor shows up in the drop in his shooting percentage (and his incredible inability to make the wide-open short ones). Before the season I speculated that perhaps his shooting percentage drop in 2006-07 was due to some sort of hand injury (because he seemed to lose the ball on the way up a lot) but now I realize it is because he has started rushing his shot in order to get it up quickly enough to keep from being blocked.

What’s sad about it all is that I can’t really see where Danny G can improve his game to adjust for his age. He still rebounds and blocks shots pretty well, so he’s pretty useful at that end of the floor but those skills will decline as he continues to age. His turnover rate is up a bit , and I thought it was due to an increase in offensive fouls but according to 82games.com he only committed four of them all season, so it’s not like there is room for improvement there. He’s never going to become a jump shooter, and he fouls at such an immense rate (about 8 per 40 minutes) that he will never be able to stay on the floor long enough to be more than a 10 mpg player.

The only answer is to become a Michael Ruffin clone , get rid of the ball as soon as you get it, never shoot unless you are under the basket or there are less than 3 seconds on the shot clock (Ruffin shot 53% this season without making a single jump shot), and hammer anyone who comes within a few feet of you. I was hoping that Ruffin’s presence would rub off on Gadzuric in this way by showing him how a player could make an impact without doing anything offensively, but why would Gadzuric try to learn anything from him? Ruffin was playing on a 1-year, veterans minimum contract while Danny G is the one with 3 years/$20 million left on his deal!

If I could ask Larry Harris one question it would be: “What in the hell were you thinking when extending Gadzuric’s contract?” It’s as though his logic went like this:

“Okay, I just drafted Andrew Bogut with the #1 overall pick to be my starting center, and he’s getting a 4 year/$18 million contract. Bogut will definitely be a 35 mpg guy by next season (or else I’ve got big problems), so there’s only 13 mpg available for Gadzuric, who is already 27 years old. So if Bogut is averaging $4.5 million per year for 4 years to play about 75% of the minutes at center then to fill in the position for the other 25% of the game it sounds about right to pay “¦. Lets see, carry the three “¦ um “¦ 6 years at $6 million per. Perfect!”

I have no problem with a player being overpaid for a year or two, especially after playing well for peanuts for a while (like Charlie Bell). But these long term contracts to guys who will never be starters (like Charlie Bell) “¦. I just don’t get it!

It is a shame to spend several hundred words reaming a player whose greatest sin is having an incredibly effective agent. Gadzuric does still try hard on the court, and for all of his failings the team was outscored by the same amount this season with him on the court or off , so it’s not like his offensive failings killed the team, it just reduced the value of all of the good things he did by being a high-energy pest on the court.

But as time goes on he is not going to get any better, and unless he stops trying to be someone that he isn’t on offense then his usefulness will continue to decline over the next three years. And I can’t imagine any other team wanting to take on his contract, so those three years are going to be in a Bucks uniform.

It’s not really his fault that Krystkowiak is gone, but he certainly didn’t help matters.

Responsibility for Coach K’s dismissal: 5%

Up next: Yin and Yang at Small Forward

In the Racine Journal-Times, Gery Woelfel wrote an interesting piece about his asking around the Bucks locker room before Scott Skiles was hired to get the players’ opinions on him. He said that one player was definitely not enamored of the idea of playing for a coach that actually insists on running an offensive system and playing hard on defense.

“There was one player, however, whose face began to cringe almost in a painful manner when I mentioned Skiles. His look spoke volumes.

It was amply apparent he wasn’t a Skiles’ guy, and it was equally apparent he wasn’t looking forward to playing for him.

The player went on to say that he had conversations with several members of the Chicago Bulls, whom Skiles coached until being fired last December “” on Christmas Eve, of all times.

What this particular player heard from some of the Bulls about Skiles was anything but complimentary. To some Bulls, Skiles was condescending, egotistical and insensitive. And, no, they weren’t sad to see him fired.

First of all, Skiles wasn’t fired — he resigned. But that’s semantics.

So who is the mystery source? Lets speculate:

With the NBA being a fairly small fraternity, most players would have some familiarity with each other regardless of whether or not they have played together, so my speculation is pretty thin. But lets see what connections the Bucks players might have with the Bulls players.

The only Bull (as of Christmas, when Skiles left) with a recent history with the Bucks is Joe Smith, but he was only with the Bulls for a few months, and doesn’t seem like much of a complainer.

I doubt Woelfel’s source was Jake Voskuhl, Michael Ruffin, Royal Ivey or David Noel, as their contracts expire and they most likely wont be on the team next year. Awvee Storey is a Chicago native, but also won’t be here. It wouldn’t make sense for Ramon Sessions or Yi Jianlian to be the source.

One would think that Andrew Bogut would welcome Skiles, and since everyone already knows that he can’t stand NBA players, there’s no reason for him to talk to members of the Bulls.

Dan Gadzuric and Charlie Bell have spent their entire careers with the Bucks, and neither of them seem like the sort of player to object to Skiles.

Desmond Mason’s connection with the Bulls would be that he was teammates with PJ Brown for one year in New Orleans, who played with Chicago in 06-07. But Brown was on the Bulls were winning, and I’m sure everyone got along just fine then. It certainly doesn’t sound like Mason to complain about a coach he doesn’t know.

I can’t think of any connection between Mo Williams and any Bulls players, but I could be wrong.

This sort of reaction doesn’t seem like something Michael Redd would do, although apparently he and Smith had a pretty good relationship. Redd was also an Olympic Trials teammate with Kirk Hinrich. Still, it doesn’t sound right for Redd to say something like that, even if that’s what he was thinking. He’s a little more media savvy than that.

That leaves Bobby Simmons and Charlie Villanueva.

Simmons is a Chicagoan who most likely spends time with the Bulls players that stay in the area in the summer (many NBA players work out at Tim Grover’s gym, and the South Side summer pickup games are legendary). Simmons also was traded to Detroit in the Jerry Stackhouse-Richard Hamilton trade (and was cut before the season started), so he was a teammate of Ben Wallace for a short time. Wallace and Skiles did not get along from the beginning. Simmons has complained in the past about the Bucks’ coaching turnover.

Villanueva went to college with Ben Gordon, another player who always chafed under Skiles. Gordon had an issue with his minutes and never liked coming off of the bench, while Skiles had an issue with Gordon’s defense and shot selection. One could say that every coach would have the same issues with Villanueva.

So it seems most likely that Woelfel’s mystery “Skiles hater” is either Villanueva or Simmons. That’s convenient, since those are the two guys least likely to still be on the team next season.

Sounds to me like a non-issue.

Moving right along with the Bucks’ season in review, it’s time to look at the man in the middle and the man who should be in Miami.

Charlie Bell ($3.1M, 0.630 IPM): I feel that I’ve written enough about how much I couldn’t stand Bell’s negotiating tactics during last seasons’ free agency, how incredibly dumb it is to commit to a 5 year contract for a guy who is already in his late 20′s and who will never be a starter for you unless things have totally fallen apart, and whose unreal shooting slump early this year help push this season toward the complete disaster that it became.

It drove me absolutely crazy this season to see Krystkowiak constantly throw Bell out at small forward, where he works hard defensively (a one-on-one matchup with Tracy McGrady being highlighted in one of those “Where Amazing Happens” commercials) but is still way too short to be effective very often. With one exception , Bell’s defense on Carmelo Anthony stole the Bucks-Nuggets game in Milwaukee. But that still doesn’t make up for the number of times that Bell was forced into a defensive matchup that he couldn’t handle.

The bottom line is that you are never, ever going to win more than about 30 games with Bell playing over 20 minutes per game. He’d be a great 8th man, but he’s a lousy 6th man.

At least Bell proved himself to be somewhat internet savvy, complaining that the Bucks had matched his contract offer from Miami via his Myspace page, and occasionally posting on the RealGM message boards as “Flintstone” (a shout-out to the nickname of the group of players to make a beeline from Flint to Michigan State).

Bell didn’t do Larry Krystkowiak any favors as he shot the ball horribly and turned it over a little more than in the past, but otherwise played a typical Charlie Bell season , his assist rate was pretty good, he tries hard enough on defense and does very well when guarding players close to his height. When it was all said and done, the Bucks weren’t any worse with him on the floor as off. But based on the way that Bell’s minutes went up while in shooting got worse and worse in December then “¦.

Responsibility for Coach K’s dismissal: 15%

Andrew Bogut ($4.99M, 0.871 IPM): If the Bucks were a 50+ win team then Andrew Bogut’s season (14.3 ppg, 10 rpg, 1.75 bpg, 51% shooting) as a 23 year-old, along with the toughness exhibited by him only missing two games after surgery for a broken nose in March, would have people hailing him as the second best center in the East and a certain All-Star for the next several years.

But instead, the 26 win disaster of a season and Bill Simmons’ ego trip/excuse to make fat jokes about Wisconsin “candidacy” for the GM position overshadows all (Simmons’ claim that he should replace Larry Harris was primarily based on the fact that he wrote that Chris Paul would be the best player in the 2005 draft) . The NBA fanbase still assumes that Bogut is still a soft player, and by now 99 of 100 people insist that they knew without a doubt in 2005 that the Bucks should have taken Paul instead.

Playing through the broken nose both impresses and amuses me. It impresses me because he would have been perfectly justified calling it a season when the Bucks had only 24 wins when he went down, yet he returned to play in April and had his best month of the season (17.6 ppg/11.4 rpg, 56% FG). But the cynic in me notices that while the team had nothing to play for, he was gunning to get a signature on a contract extension this summer. Either way, I saw him get smashed in the face a couple of times in April, which even with the mask on, I sure can’t feel very good.

After three seasons of seeing Bogut develop, it seems to be pretty clear that he is rounding into form as the sort of player that can’t carry a team but can make a nice piece of the puzzle for a good team. If you replaced Yao Ming on Houston or Andrew Bynum on the Lakers with Bogut don’t you think those teams would be just as good? Bogut does the little things well , passes well, rebounds acceptably, takes a ton of charges, throws in a cheap shot here and there. If he’s on a good team that’s called playing winning basketball. He’s on a bad team so it’s called being a bust.

Bogut has one gigantic hole in his game (two if you count not being a genetic freak like Dwight Howard) , his shooting. His free throw shooting was a pretty brutal 58.7%, but it’s the complete lack of a jump shot that is the most mystifying , and unfortunate. When he entered the league he was advertised as having a solid 18 foot jump shot, but somehow that stayed behind in Australia. When he does chuck up a jumper, his form has regressed into an ugly, corkscrew release that is as likely to toss the ball directly out of bounds as it is to hit the rim. It’s funny, because I remember seeing him warm up in his rookie year by taking 18-footers and being impressed with his form (I remember this because I also remember noting that while his form looked good, he never seemed to make them).

If Bogut was able to add a 15-foot jumper to his arsenal, it would help every part of his offensive game. By forcing defenses to guard him at the free throw line it would open passing lanes for him, and he’s agile enough that he could take most 7-footers off of the dribble if they had to come out and check him. He would draw more fouls this way, and even if his free throw shooting didn’t improve much, it still would mean that his opponents would be in foul trouble more often.

Bogut made some waves last offseason with his comments about the NBA lifestyle, in which he said that most players were only concerned with living large and that 80% of players go broke after leaving the league. Never mind that Bogut’s comments weren’t so far off , the NBA Players Association says that 60% of former players go broke within 5 years , but since his actual experience with other NBA players’ lifestyles is pretty much limited to the 25 or so guys who have been his teammates, his comments about the hip-hop lifestyle sounds like a pretty pointed dig at a few members of his own locker room.

Bogut almost always plays with a sour expression on his face that seems to come from frustration with his teammates missing defensive assignments and he seems to perpetually be yelling at Charlie Villanueva about defensive positioning. All of that sounds to me that he needs a coach that has plenty of authority and doesn’t let mental lapses slide. Scott Skiles should be the perfect coach for Andrew Bogut. Skiles can pound accountability into everyone else and let Bogut worry about his own game and keep his mouth shut.

Andrew Bogut has one more major positive about him: while entering his fourth season, next year he will be the same age that Patrick Ewing was as a rookie. I’m not saying that Bogut has the same ability as Ewing, but there is definitely something to be said for the need to grow physically into the center position, and Bogut still has age on his side.

I think Bogut is the second-best center in the East and I’ll be surprised if he isn’t an All-Star next year. I also think that if the Bucks had won 38 games and made the playoffs, management may have looked at his development as reason enough to keep Larry Krystkowiak on for another season.

Responsibility for Coach K’s dismissal: Negative 25%

Up next: The Dan Gadzuric Experience

Marc Berman of the New York Post is reporting that Scott Skiles has come to a verbal agreement with the Bucks to become their head coach.

It’s a great hire, as Skiles is one of the best X’s and O’s coaches around. He has a reputation as being tough to get along with, but the real problem is that he can’t stand players with ego’s bigger than their games. He quit as the Phoenix coach after only a few weeks of coaching Stephon Marbury, and had problems in Chicago with Eddy Curry, Jamal Crawford and Tyrus Thomas. Basically, Skiles isn’t interested in coaching losers (I may be a little quick to paint Thomas with that brush, but his immaturity is well known).

Of course, Larry Krystkowiak had the same problem, but with Skiles’ winning track record and the support of a new GM, he has much more power to influence his players to play his way.

One interesting sidebar to this hiring is that apparently Skiles and Krystkowiak are very close, and Krystkowiak had initially sought advice from Skiles about taking the Bucks job when it was offered last season. It seems that Skiles’ hiring is one more but of proof about the strength of Krystkowiak’s character — you would think that a lesser man would have trashed the organization to a friend of his.

I remember when Skiles was hired by Chicago, and the change in the Bulls was evident immediately, although it took a little while for that young team to win much. From the first game there was a complete difference in the amount of discipline and structure in their team, and their defense improved astronomically. Even the most casual fan could tell the difference between Skiles and the Bill Cartwright-run ship of fools.

Welcome.

UPDATE: ESPN is reporting that Skiles was the only candidate interviewed by the team, and that his contract is for four years and is fully guaranteed.

Continuing my season review, today I am concentrating on the three mid-priced players that were complete enigmas for the Bucks this season.

Charlie Villanueva ($2.71M, 0.766 IPM): The deck was clearly stacked against Charlie V from the get-go this season. Coach Krystkowiak was telling the media that energy in practice and defensive intensity would determine playing time, but everybody knew that Yi had already been promised the starting power forward position. So even though there was nothing that Charlie V could do to get more playing time (especially since it would take Krystkowiak 60 games to try playing V and Yi together), Krystkowiak’s early position made it look like Villanueva was simply too lazy to earn court time.

On the court, Villanueva make an admirable recovery from last seasons’ shoulder injury to at least regain the form of his first two seasons, but he hasn’t really improved upon his rookie season at all. His game has stayed the same , he shoots too much from outside, rebounds pretty well (nine double-doubles in 31 starts), passes well for a big man, turns it over too much, doesn’t quite get as many blocks and steals as you would like, and is easily overpowered on defense.

Villanueva is wildly inconsistent on the court, simply not showing up every night. Just recently, he followed up a 2 point, 4 board, 1-6 shooting night against Boston with 38 points and 12 boards the next night against Toronto. It’s incredible how often he has a great game followed by a complete head-scratcher.

Often people look at that sort of inconsistency and thing; “Just wait until he figures it all out!” I look at it differently , Charlie Villanueva is the 6’11″ version of Jamal Crawford: Half the time he’s awesome, half the time he’s awful and it all averages out to a completely average player. Guys like that don’t change , you don’t just suddenly become “consistent”.

Fortunately Villanueva has the tantalizing talent, relatively low paycheck and track record as former ROY-runner up to make him a reasonable bargaining chip in an offseason trade. It’s very difficult to win with a player like him, as he is such a unique athlete that he creates matchup problems wherever he plays , for both the opponents and his own team , and you never know if All-Star Charlie or Putrid Charlie will show up on any given night.

Villanueva was misused this season by Krystkowiak. He’s much better than a 15-minute bench guy as he was treated early in the season, but he’s not a dependable 35-minute workhorse either. Winning with a guy like Villanueva on your team requires the coach to have a lot of imagination about how to use him, willingness to yank him when he’s doing poorly, and probably a double-standard regarding his practice habits because you need his head in the game. Krystkowiak failed on all counts regarding Charlie V.

Responsibility for Coach K’s dismissal: 10%

Yi Jianlian ($2.77M, 0.618 IPM): Hope for the best, fear the worst. After a season where Yi’s play got worse and worse and excuses started to mount around him, I worry.

The most enduring image of Yi’s rookie season, besides his picture-perfect jump shot, will have to be that of him flailing his arms after getting his shot blocked. According to 82games.com, he finished the season having 36% of his “in close” shots blocked, and only made 31% of those tries. As the season went on, this inability to convert clearly started to wear on Yi, as he began barking at the officials after every time he got stripped. He simply had a horrible time adjusting to the physicality and athleticism of NBA big men. Despite being a pretty legitimate 250 pounds and having a decent vertical, he is just awful at taking contact.

There’s really no reason to believe that he’s 20 years old any more as baseball’s experience has pretty much proven that once a player is rumored to be older than his listed age then he most likely is. So since we have to assume that he’s more like 24 years old then we have to assume that he’s pretty much not going to change all that much as a player , he’s not going to develop a crossover dribble or gain 30 pounds of muscle. As for the rumors that he has three point range and can do a 360 dunk , well, he shot about 20% from the international 3-point line his last year in China, and I remember hearing rumors when Eddy Curry was in High School that he could do a backflip. I’d pay $100 to see Curry try that now. Just because something is rumored only means it’s a rumor.

So just how good is Yi? Well, in his best month this season he averaged 12 ppg and 6.6 rpg. I think he can beat that for a full season, but I don’t think he will ever play physically enough to be a 20 ppg scorer. However, this could change if the next coach simply does a better job of getting him the ball. It seems that the Bucks should have been running a pick-and-pop play 25 times a game for Yi, but that never seemed to happen. In fact, it seemed to me that Yi rarely even got the ball in the post when he would call for it , almost as though his teammates were freezing him out. Strange.

Young superstars may take some time to blossom, but you almost always get a glimpse at their talent by then end of their rookie season. You can’t say that about Yi , it seems more like he’s got an air of “okay player when things go right” about him instead of “All-Star”.

There is also the issue of the amount of rest he will get in the summer , while much was made over him being tired after playing all of last summer, he will play in the Olympics this summer, the Asian games the year after than and the World Championship after that. Adding to the problem is that Yi’s Chinese handlers see his NBA experience as training for his summer international competition, so it’s not like they will take it easy on him in the summer.

I guess I’ve done a pretty good job of making it sound like Yi was a really bad pick, but that’s not true. For how incredibly deep the 2007 draft was supposed to be, it now appears that there weren’t that many great players available after the top 3. It looks like the only players taken after Yi who the Bucks may one day regret passing on could be Thaddeus Young and Brandan Wright, and even at his advanced age Yi still has about as much upside as them.

Of course, there are also the financial implications of Yi’s presence to consider. Yi caused the Bucks to play several games that were viewed by as many as 1 billion people worldwide this season, and was also the reason for the sale of several prominent ads at the Bradley Center. The money that cam from Yi this season is probably the difference between the Bucks making a losing money this year , and probably the reason that Herb Kohl was willing to spend enough to hire John Hammond away from Detroit and to apparently have a blank check available for the next coach.

However, it’s an open question as to how long the Yi cash flow will continue. He has to be good for anyone back home to care about him much longer. While Hideki Matsui and Ichiro are still superstars in Japan and have dozens of Japanese media still following them, it is long forgotten that Kaz Matsui arrived in New York with similar hype. While there is no way to conceive of potentially trading Yi because of the money he brings in, if he doesn’t start bringing it on the court next season then that cash flow will dry up quickly. One interesting note is that earlier in the season several of my posts about Yi were translated into Chinese and posted on a major message board there. That all stopped around mid-January, so after his struggles maybe the interest in him in China is already starting to wane.

In the end, it was a very disappointing season for Yi as he hit the wall in January and his play got worse and worse from there. After how his season ended with such a whimper it’s hard to even remember that he was a solid enough contributor early in the season. It’s a shame for Larry Krystkowiak that he was essentially forced to give Yi the starting job (compromising his whole “earn playing time through practice” message in the process) only to find Yi unable to carry the load.

Responsibility for Coach K’s dismissal: 15%

Jake “Invisible Man” Voskuhl ($3M, 0.587 IPM): What a strange season for Voskuhl. He took over as the backup center early on (after Dan Gadzuric got benched and Michael Ruffin got hurt) and played pretty well, posting a 0.69 IPM as of January 6. Suddenly he stopped playing, and when he did play he was awful.

He never went on the injured list but must have been hurt, as he started getting DNP’s even in blowouts. It’s too bad, since once Yi started struggling, Voskuhl was their best offensive big man on the bench. He always dressed for the games, but rarely saw action beyond running onto the court at timeouts telling his teammates to keep their heads up after allowing yet another 12-0 run.

His $3 million expiring contract means that we wont be seeing him in a Bucks uniform again, which is too bad because it means he wont be around for anyone to ask him where he went for the second half of the season.

Responsibility for Coach K’s dismissal: 0%

Up next: the Aussie and the Flintstone

Now that this season is finally over, it is time to recap the contributions of each player. I’m not a big fan of giving letter grades, especially since when you consider that the Bucks’ record this season was actually worse than last years’ injury-marred one, everybody associated with this team pretty much deserves an “F-”. Except for my season ticket rep, Nick. He has been great this season, always accommodating and helpful.

So I’ve decided to grade each player on how responsible they were for Larry Krystkowiak getting fired.

I’m going to review each player over the course of the next several days in reverse order of their salary, and also am giving their final IPM (data for all players available here). As you may know, typically an IPM greater than 0.9 is borderline all-star level, over 0.8 is that of a solid starter, above 0.7 is a useful player, and below 0.6 means you were probably hurting the team more than helping it. Also, because it is a per-minute measurement, it becomes much more accurate the more minutes you play , so take Ramon Session’s ranking with a grain of salt. He’s not really the 33rd best player in the NBA.

Ramon Sessions ($427K, 0.931 IPM): Thank you Larry Harris for this wonderful parting gift. Sessions was the lone bright spot of the end of the season, as he provided a boost with his pass-first game and eye popping statistics, highlighted by 127 assists vs. only 36 turnovers. The knee-jerk reaction is to jettison Mo Williams and turn the point guard spot over to Sessions, but let’s not get too excited just yet.

The red flag about Sessions is that his impressive play ran counter to his career style. In college and the NBDL, Sessions was a ball-dominating scorer who was hard to keep off of the free throw line, but once coming to the NBA he concentrated on passing first and shooting second. The results, when accompanied by some less-than-intense defense on the part of the Bucks’ opponents, were some excellent box scores (45 points, 38 assists, 15 rebounds and 5 turnovers on 18-29 shooting in the final two games). One has to wonder what will happen next season when he plays against teams that actually want to play defense against him.

The only reason for the Bucks to go into next season with Sessions as the starter is if they win the draft lottery and take Derrick Rose, but Sessions will clearly be a valuable reserve next season. Just think , a bench player who can actually create an offensive set and draw a foul once in a while!

Responsibility for Coach K’s dismissal: 0%

David Noel ($687K): Lost for the season to a shoulder injury, we will never get to see what Noel might have brought to the table this season. With the signing of Awvee Storey, Noel would most likely have been in the D-League or wearing a suit on the bench all season, anyway.

Responsibility for Coach K’s dismissal: 0%

Awvee Storey ($770K, 0.647 IPM): I can only see one reason why Storey was given a guaranteed contract in the first place: because Storey’s agent Mark Bartlestein is Mo Williams’ agent as well, and by helping out another client Larry Harris was trying to enlist Bartelstein to persuade Mo to stay in Milwaukee rather than head for Miami. How’d that one work out, Larry?

After an embarrassing 2006-07 season which saw Storey kicked out of the D-League for putting a teammate into a coma (and then breaking an opposing players’ rib while boxing him out in a German League game) it was amazing that Storey simply wasn’t blackballed out of the league in the first place.

The signing sort of made some sense at the time , Storey was veteran insurance in case Bobby Simmons couldn’t go after missing the previous season and/or the Desmond Mason signing turned out to be a bust (which it would have been had Mason played as poorly as he did with the Hornets). But why, then, give Storey a guaranteed contract? By the time his deal would have to be picked up the Bucks would have known what they had in their top two small forwards. They could have then released Storey before his contract became guaranteed and had an open roster spot to audition young players who may have been worth a shot (such as Nick Fazekas, the Mavericks second round pick who became Sessions’ top running mate for the NBDL’s Tulsa 66ers. Fazekas was released by the Mavs, signed by the Clippers, and would put up a 0.88 IPM in 26 games for them). Oh yes, he was given a guaranteed contract because of his agent.

But it seems that Krystkowiak couldn’t stand Storey’s game anyway. After Desmond Mason got hurt and Simmons simply sucked, instead of inserting Storey into the rotation Coach K continued to trot out Charlie Bell and Michael Redd at the small forward position. Storey wound up only seeing action in 26 games, with 90% of that coming after the season was long lost.

Probably the most pathetic thing is that Storey finished the season with the Bucks’ 6th best IPM, behind only Sessions, Bogut, Williams, Redd and Villanueva. The guy doesn’t even belong in the league and he was their best per-minute bench player this season!

Responsibility for Coach K’s dismissal: 0%

Royal Ivey ($798K, 0.548 IPM): Iveys’ reputation as a great defender sure got him a lot of playing time this season, and what a waste that was. Ivey must have really shut down Dee Brown and Scoonie Penn in his Bucks tryout, because despite all evidence to the contrary, Coach K kept on using Ivey as his “defensive stopper.”

There were two problems with that strategy , even if Ivey’s defense was absolutely awesome, there was no way it would make up for his own putrid offense (he actually finished with the lowest IPM on the team). However, there is no evidence whatsoever that Ivey’s defense was any good, either. According to 82games.com, the production of the player that Ivey was guarding averaged out to double that of what Ivey produced himself.

I don’t understand how any team could expect to win more than about 26 games if they are giving Royal Ivey 20 minutes a night. Yet, Coach K kept going back to him, probably because his “energy in practice” and “defensive intensity” (meaning: he looks really disappointed in himself when he gets beat) were there.

Responsibility for Coach K’s dismissal: 12%

Michael Ruffin ($1.0M, 0.610 IPM): I really liked the idea of signing Ruffin, because I felt that a team with so much offensive talent on it could use a defensive banger like him. Ruffin is the most inept offensive player in NBA history, but has carved out a nice niche for himself as a guy who comes in, throws his body around, gives some hard fouls, grabs some boards and stays out of the way of the talented players. He’s useful.

The Bucks even played a little better with him on the floor than off, being outscored by 8.4 points per game without him but only 2.2 ppg with him. Ruffin did his job. He won’t help you win, but he doesn’t help you lose, and he makes it all look pretty ugly.

Ruffin, however, was the centerpiece of the Play That Probably Sealed Larry Krystkowiak’s Fate As Bucks Coach. After blowing a 17 point third quarter lead to the New York Knicks, and with the Bucks trailing by one with three seconds remaining, Krystkowiak inexplicably left Ruffin in the game for the final play. Even Isiah Thomas realized this and started coaching long enough to tell the Knicks defense to leave Ruffin open in order to deny everyone else the ball. Ruffin was then left to miss a 6-foot finger roll at the buzzer.

Michael Ruffin has scored 4.2 points per 36 minutes in his nine year NBA career, and Larry Krystkowiak put him into a position to take the final shot in a game. And now Krystkowiak is looking for a new job. Need I say more?

Responsibility for Coach K’s dismissal: 3%

Next up: The mysteries known as Charlie V, Jake V, and Yi.