The Bratwurst - Milwaukee Bucks Blog

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?