The Bratwurst – Milwaukee Bucks Blog

Now that John Hammond has had a few months to work his magic, I can’t help but feel a little … underwhelmed. What’s got me so down? Maybe it’s just a dose of reality. It’s not easy to rebuild an NBA team — lets face it, when you make a trade the only reason teams will make them with you is because they want to get rid of the guy you are dealing for. Not everyone can get the my-good-friend-is-the-most-inept-GM-in-all-of-sports-and-has-a-Kevin-Garnett-to-trade discount that Danny Ainge got. You can’t expect a 25 win team to become a 50 win team overnight. But how much closer is this team to being a 50 win team in three years?

The Yi-Jefferson Trade: There’s no doubt that Jefferson is better than either Yi or Simmons, but is he a difference-maker? It’s clearly a good trade for the Bucks — they wanted to get rid of Yi and Simmons because they aren’t good basketball players, the Nets wanted to move Jefferson because he’s overpaid in three years. It’s easy to call this a “win now” move (since Jefferson is expensive and not incredibly young) but even if Jefferson is better than the players he replaced (including Mason) how many more wins can he get you by himself? 2? 5? Much is made of Jefferson’s declining rebounding over the past couple of years, but that’s not necessarily a problem. RJ’s rebounding may have hit a career low this year but his team actually outrebounded their opponents for the first time since they made the finals 4 years ago. And what did that get them? Their first trip to the lottery since Jason Kidd arrived. Basically, the team needed Jefferson to do other stuff than rebound. However, the Bucks will need RJ to hit the glass in a big way, so it’s an open question as to exactly why he didn’t board well last season.

Drafted Joe Alexander: I can’t help but think that this was a mistake. Everything about him screams “workout warrior who isn’t that much of a basketball player.” He played pretty poorly the first half of the season, got some attention by finishing the season strong, and burst onto the scene by blowing everyone away with his athleticism at the NBA combine. How often do these workout warrior types pan out in the pros? Didn’t the NFL learn from the Mike Mamula and Matt Jones fiascos? The bottom line is that Alexander has not played all that much basketball in his career. It’s great that he wants to be in Milwaukee and wants to improve his game, but does he have the skills to do so? An even bigger problem, in my mind, is the attitude that moving him to power forward is a logical thing to do. Nobody had ever suggested that Alexander was a power forward until he was drafted by a team that needed him there. How does this make sense? About the best thing I can say here is that Alexander looked awful at the summer league, and how a guy plays at the summer league seems to usually project him to do the opposite in the regular season.

Since the Jefferson trade was already done, then the Bucks should have tried to make a predraft trade. Once that didn’t work, they should have taken Jerryd Bayless and tried to work out a deal with someone else at that point in order to trade down for a power forward (such as Darrell Arthur).

Drafted LR Mbah a Moute: I’m going to recuse myself on this one, since my opinion about how the Bucks should have taken Richard Hendirx are plenty well known. But one thing about Mbah a Moute — if he does turn out to be great and Alexander doesn’t, then the Alexander pick will look even worse.

Traded Mo Williams: Talk all you want about “improved chemistry” and whatnot, for all of the games that the Bucks will theoretically win because of the steady hand of Luke Ridnour, it will be offset by the number of games (3-5 a year) that Mo could win by himself. That doesn’t mean the trade was a bad one, though. As Mo’s responsibility within the team rose, the team’s record got worse. If you are going to have a below-average record then you may as well not have an undersized point guard who is under contract for 5 more years. If this team is going to make a huge leap this year they need two things to happen: Andrew Bogut to make a leap, and Ramon Sessions to make a leap. Should Sessions become a must-play guy, it will be much easier to move Ridnour out of the lineup that it would have been Mo. This was the sort of trade that looks like a bad deal from a talent perspective, but in the long run it is the right move. Mo could still blossom into Chauncey Billups, but after his performance last season it’s hard to see that happening.

Kept Charlie Villanueva: I just love to pound Hammond for not moving Charlie V in favor of a bruising, rebounding power forward. The problem is: there aren’t many of those guys around. The only game-changing bruiser to change teams this offseason was Elton Brand, and obviously the Bucks had no shot at him. Ronny Turiaf? He’s a nice 12-minute a game player, but he’s not worth the contract Golden State gave him. There was talk of a Mo-Udonis Haslem trade, but Haslem will probably start at center for the Heat this year, and is he really that good? Is Villanueva really a downgrade from a limited Joe Smith/Brian Skinner type of player? The problem will be how Villanueva and Skiles interact. I can just imagine the Skiles-Villa relationship working out similarly to how the Skiles-Eddy Curry one did. Not well.

Signed Tyronn Lue, Malik Allen and Francisco Elson: Signing Lue was somewhere between pointless and dumb, given that with Williams the Bucks already had three capable point guards (Sessions and Bell being the others) and a ton of small forwards, meaning there would be minutes in the backcourt for Bell this year. Signing a shooting guard should have been more of a priority. Allen is a “Skiles guy” who I have a feeling will start more than his share of games this season while Skiles is pissed at Villanueva.

What do these changes mean for the Bucks record this year? Here’s my early opinion based on nothing but conjecture:

Last year they won 26 games.
This year they win 3 more simply by not having Krystkowiak as head coach (they blew 17-point 3rd quarter leads to the Knicks twice! In one of those, Isiah Thomas didn’t make a single 4th quarter substitution!)
They win 3 more by having an above average coach in Skiles.
They win 2 more because Michael Redd sucked last year and shouldn’t be that bad again.
They lose 5 games because Mo Williams is better than their other point guards (they were 2-15 in games that Ramon Sessions played. Lets wait until he’s played some meaningful minutes before judging him.)
They win 3 more games because the “chemistry” and “offensive flow” is better with Ridnour than with Williams. If you believe in that sort of stuff.
They win 4 more games because Jefferson is an upgrade over Simmons.
They lose 1 more game because Mason was surprisingly good last year.
They win 1 more game because Alexander simply has to be better than Yi. He won’t get 40% of his close-to-the-basket shots blocked, right?
They win 2 more games because Bogut’s career trajectory has shown moderate improvement every year.

That puts you at 38 wins. Probably not a playoff team, but at least they should show improvement. I’m not optimistic about a playoff trip, but at least they should be quite a bit better. Best case scenario? Bogut blossoms into a 20-12 guy (he’ll have to get 12 rebounds, because nobody else can grab one) and Sessions lives up to his gaudy numbers from last year. Then 45 wins might be possible. But asking for a 19 win improvement sounds like too much.