The Bratwurst – Milwaukee Bucks Blog

That headline was too easy. And dumb.

But, sure enough, the Mo Williams to Cleveland trade has happened. Funny how when Mo was re-signed to all of that fanfare, only one year later he would be shipped out for expiring contracts. But it was the right thing to do.

The Bucks receive Luke Ridnour and Adrian Griffin from OKC and Damon Jones from Cleveland. Heading out is Mo to the Cavs and Desmond Mason to the OK Corrals. Joe Smith also went from Cleveland to OKC.

The NBA mantra is that the team that gets the best player usually wins the trade. In that case, then Cleveland is the big winner here. But it’s a strange deal all around, and it makes some sense for the Bucks.

Mo is probably going into a very good situation for him. All of my studies of defensive statistics indicate that the quality of a point guard’s defense is dependent on the quality of his teammates to a large part. Now Mo will have defensive aces like LeBron James, Anderson Varejao, Ben Wallace and Zydrunas Ilgauskas behind him. He can continue his offensive improvement and his mistakes on defense will not be noticed as much. I’ve often said that Williams’ career has paralleled that of Chauncey Billups for the first several years. Billups was known as a no-defense gunner early in his career, and remarkably that all changed when he arrived in Detroit. We will now see if the same thing happens to Mo Williams.

My feelings about Mo’s tenure in Milwaukee are summed up pretty well with this post from my post-season review (apologies for the formatting – something happened to all of our older posts after a WordPress upgrade).

The Bucks cut about $20 million in long term salary, and as I illustrated in April in this post (once again, sorry about the poor formatting) once Bogut signed an extension, the Bucks would need to make some sort of salary dump trade to avoid the luxury tax in 09/10. This became an even bigger problem when they added Richard Jefferson’s $15 million 10/11 contract.

Look, the Bucks lost a good player and got spare parts in return. But was this team really going anywhere with Mo running the show? As his playing time increased, he got better and better and the team got worse.

Probably 80% of an NBA teams’ record can be attributed to its three best players. A core of Redd/Bogut/Williams wasn’t working. Now it’s time to give Redd/Bogut/Jefferson a shot.

What can we say about the additions and what it means for the rest of the roster?

Luke Ridnour: Smaller than Mo, as bad defensively, injury-prone. Ridnour had a couple of good seasons for Seattle, but knee injuries have cost him chunks of the last couple of seasons. He does an okay job of managing games and has decent instincts. John Hollinger once wrote about him: “You couldn’t draw a better picture of what an average NBA point guard looks like.”

Honestly, as far as point guards go, I don’t really mind Ridnour. He should do a good job of spreading the ball around without throwing it away too much. I just hope his knees will allow him to hang on defensively. He’s paid $6.5 mil/year for two more seasons, and for 3/4 of the money due Mo Wiliams, Ridnour should offer about 3/4 of the production. He wont win any games by himself the way Mo occasionally could, but he shouldn’t cost the team any wins either.

Adrian Griffin: A Scott Skiles guy who plays solid defense at both shooting guard and small forward. Griffin is an energy guy on a par with Desmond Mason (but without the athleticism). Dont be surprised to see him as the sixth man for a long portion of the season. Skiles loves him. Griffin is also known as a quality guy.

Damon Jones: Everything I need to know about the self-proclaimed “best shooter in the NBA” I learned from an episode of MTV Cribs. How often do I get to see an NBA player show off a house that is smaller, less expensive, and not as nice as mine? And his cars — a line of Mercedes-Benz’s that I later read weren’t his. They were all loaners from a dealer with whom Jones had an endorsement contract. It was awesome to see a player clearly living within his means and with an eye toward saving his money for his future. It’s a good thing that Jones is apparently pretty fiscally responsible, because this season should be his last major NBA payday as his shooting has pretty much deserted him and he doesn’t have much in the way of other skills. Apparently he’s a fun guy to have in the locker room and if his appearance on Cribs means anything, he can serve as an example to Andrew Bogut that it’s not true that 80% of former NBA players go broke.

Ramon Sessions: Looks like the starting job is his to win now. Will that work? I’m not so sure, as Sessions has never played a single meaningful minute in his career. I hope I’m wrong about that, and I’ll be very interested to see if Larry Harris mined a steal with his final pick as Bucks GM. At the least, Sessions should be a capable backup.

Tyronn Lue: Why was he signed in the first place? The Bucks just added two guys who can play the two, meaning that Charlie Bell fits in best at point guard. What does Lue bring that the combination of Ridnour, Sessions and Bell doesn’t?

Power Forward: It would have been nice if the Bucks could have pulled off this deal with Joe Smith coming to the Bucks instead of Jones, but what are you going to do? Apparently John Hammond still believes Joe Alexander can play both forward spots. I hate that idea. Get ready for another season of Andrew Bogut spending 80% of his court time glaring at Charlie V in disgust. This deal gives the Bucks the maximum 15 players under contract so, unless Awvee Storey’s deal is not guaranteed, the Francisco Elson signing will most likely not happen.

Hammond cannot possibly intend to go into the season with only four big men on the roster. I hope that another deal is in the works and he isn’t thinking that Joe Alexander and Adrian Griffin can fill in up front. That just wont work.

Your 2007-08 Milwaukee Bucks:

Luke Ridnour, Ramon Sessions, Tyronn Lue
Michael Redd, Adrian Griffin, Charlie Bell, Damon Jones
Richard Jefferson, Joe Alexander, LR Mbah a Moute, Awvee Storey
Charlie Villanueva, Malik Allen
Andrew Bogut, Dan Gadzuric

Is that good? I guess it is if Bogut blossoms into a 22/11 guy (which might happen — as I love to point out, this season he will be the same age that Patrick Ewing was as a rookie). But I don’t really think I should reserve second round playoff tickets just yet.