The Bratwurst - Milwaukee Bucks Blog

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