The Bratwurst - Milwaukee Bucks Blog

Ed Note: I wrote this post Thursday morning, for some reason it didn’t post until I looked for it on Friday.

In 1996 I happened to be in Birmingham, Alabama and went to a Birmingham Barons game. That team was the White Sox’ AA affiliate, so I had heard of one of their players, who was clearly the best player on the field at all times: Mike Cameron. So besides having one player who should become a star but was several years away from reaching his potential and one or two other guys who may have had a chance (like Lyle Mouton), the team was filled with players who were pretty much marking time until they had to find real jobs. Nobodys, basically.

Sort of like the Oklahoma City Thunder. Only the fans have to pay a lot more than $2.50 to see them play.

The bright side first: The Bucks now have 1/5 the number of double digit wins that they managed last season. The starting lineup looked excellent, and the Redd/Jefferson combo managed to completely remove Kevin Durant from the game (his foul trouble had something to do with it too).

The problem: the bench just sucked.

With the Bulls, Scott Skiles was blessed with a deep, athletic team that could bring scorers like Ben Gordon off the bench. This season, though, it seems we will see a bench composed of defenders who hope for a 0-0 tie while they are in the game. It remains to be seen how well that will work against good teams.

Also, Richard Jefferson made an interesting point in a postgame interview on FOX, saying that the Bulls were a bad team for them to play in the opener because most of Skiles’ former Bulls players know the Bucks’ offense and defense better than the Bucks do.

I have two very young children, so needless to say, pretty much all I do is work and … well … chase around the kids. So that means there isn’t much time to write up extensive reviews of the Bucks. So I’ve decided to give myself 10 minutes to write and two minutes to edit. If I can’t get it on the screen in that amount of time then it wasn’t a thought worth passing along.

– I grew up watching the MJ/Pippen/Phil Jackson Bulls teams, and I have decided that just about the most important skill that separates the stud coaches from the also-rans is the ability to install halftime adjustments. So it was so nice to see the Bucks come out on a run to start the third quarter. I can’t remember them doing that a single time under Larry Krystkowiak.

– It was funny watching the first half of the game because with all the foul trouble I kept thinking the Bulls were completely controlling the game but I would look at the scoreboard and see the Bucks trailing by one. It was pretty clear from the middle of the second quarter on that the Bulls were going to pull away later in the game because the foul trouble for Bogut, Villanueva and later Jefferson meant the game’s flow would favor the Bulls all night.

– 47% shooting certainly was a nice change from the preseason, especially with Villanueva only playing 9 minutes and shooting 1-5.

– Chicago: 40 rebounds. Milwaukee: 32 rebounds. Get ready to hear that a lot this year, especially in games when Bogut plays under 30 minutes.

– You can win a lot with a guy like LR Mbah a Moute playing 20 minutes in the middle of the game. You won’t win much when you are trailing in the fourth and a guy like LR Mbah a Moute is not only on the floor but playing a two-man game with Richard Jefferson. Moute taking 4th quarter shots is called “playing into the hands of the defense”. But it begs the question: down 10 with 5 minutes left, why wasn’t Charlie Villanueva in the game?

– Wow, Derrick Rose looks awfully good. And where did Tyrus Thomas get a jump shot from? I’m thinking of picking him up in my fantasy league already. Rose could do for Thomas’ career what Chris Paul did for Tyson Chandler’s.

14 minutes. Damn.

Now that the preseason has concluded, we can step back and take an honest look at where this Bucks team stands going into the season. Quite honestly, this preseason leaves me very nervous about whether or not the team has really improved.

The 1-7 preseason record is not a problem. In the preseason, obviously your best players don’t play a whole lot, and the teams’ performance will suffer. However, you want your best players to play well when they are in the game. I analyzed all of the box scores for the eight preseason games and calculated IPM’s for every player. I also calculated the team IPM score in order to objectively judge the quality of their offensive and defensive efforts. Obviously, the team IPM score is subject to the personnel on the floor, so players like TJ Cummings and Kevin Kruger had some influence. However, I think it is still something worthwhile to look at, since the numbers will indicate to a certain extent just how well the Bucks’ roster is complementary to Scott Skiles’ system.

IPM, in case you are not familiar with it, is my self-created player evaluation model. It attempts to summarize a players’ all-around contribution to his team and is boiled down to a single number, which stands for Impacts Per Minute. Think of an IPM of 1.0 meaning that the player makes positive contributions to his team equivalent to 1 point per minute on the floor. A player with an IPM over 1.0 is a superstar, above 0.9 is all-star level, above 0.8 is an above-average starter, above 0.7 is an okay starter, and above 0.6 is a decent short-minute player. Below 0.6 and you have problems. Team IPM sums up the whole teams’ offensive statistics and the statistics of the teams’ opponents to give an offensive and defensive score which, when subtracted from each other, gives a differential that correlates very closely to a teams’ actual record. A team with identical offensive and defensive IPM’s would have a differential of zero, and would be expected to be a .500 team. Team IPM’s typically range between 3.0 and 4.0 (higher is better for offense and worse for defense). More description of IPM is available here, last years’ player rankings are available here, and last years’ full-team power rankings are here.

The numbers for the preseason analysis, both for individual players and the teams, is available here.

On to my preseason analysis:

The Team: Yikes, what a display of god-awful offense. 40% shooting and 89 points per game will not get it done. The team suffered from a sort of mass shooting slump with only four players making over 40% of their shots (fortunately three of them were Bogut, Redd and Villanueva), so it’s not all that surprising that the offense was brutal.

The defense, on the other hand showed only moderate improvement from last year. They allowed 103 points per game and 48.5% shooting – pathetic numbers and it’s only because the defense was unbelievably bad last year that this would actually represent an improvement. The Bucks were only outrebounded by their opponents by a slim margin (39.9 per game vs. 40.15) and forced more turnovers than their opponents (16.71 vs. 18.58). Some of the defensive weakness can probably be attributed to Andrew Bogut only playing 5 games, but that underscores this teams’ biggest problem: since there is no banger big man behind Bogut, if he misses more than a handful of games this season, this team is sunk.

The Bucks’ offense managed an incredibly meager 3.26 IPM. Some of which can be attributed to the new offensive system being implemented, so many new players being integrated into the offense, and the best players being on cruise control during the meaningless games; but it is still a sign of a lack of team depth. After all, the teams the Bucks were playing weren’t putting out their best players or max effort either. Last season, a 3.26 offensive IPM would have been the worst in the league by a lot.

Defensively, the Bucks had an IPM of 3.85, which represented a small improvement from last years’ 3.99, but still isn’t amazingly good. The team simply isn’t athletic enough to do much statistical defensive damage. As I said before, they need Bogut on the floor and need to get rebounding help from someone other than Bogut and Gadzuric.

With the Bucks’ best players on the floor in the regular season I would expect both of their IPM numbers to improve, but they show how far the team has to go. The teams’ preseason IPM differential of -0.59 (3.26 minus 3.85) would have translated to about a 20 win team last season, placing them just ahead of the Grizzlies as the leagues worst. Last season the Bucks had the #23 offense (3.61 IPM) and #28 defense (3.99 IPM). A defensive IPM of 3.85 would have ranked #21 in the league. Should the Bucks have the same offense as last year and the same defense as they did in the preseason the differential of -0.24 would equate to a 32-50 regular season.

You would expect the teams’ numbers to improve on both ends of the floor in the regular season, but the numbers really show just how far this team has to go.

One bright spot is that in the two games the team played that had much more intensity and effort than a typical preseason game – the two in China – the Bucks actually outperformed Golden State in both. By IPM the Bucks won the first game by a 3.46-3.40 IPM score and game 2 by 3.81-3.67. By my observation, these games were played pretty hard and show that there is some room for improvement once the regular season begins. Perhaps a team capable of playing .500 ball is in place. Perhaps.

The players (reviewed in order from best to worst):

1- Charlie Villanueva (0.911 IPM): It was a big preseason for Charlie V, as everybody wanted to know how well he will fit in as a defense-allergic power forward for Scott Skiles. If he keeps filling it up the way he did in the preseason, he will do just fine. Villanueva averaged 26 points per 40 minutes on 49% shooting. Maybe going 0 for 8 from 3 point range will encourage him to finally give up that shot. His rebounding will have to come up from the 8.6 per 40 minutes he managed in the preseason.

In his two years with the Bucks, Villanueva has done a disconcertingly poor job of getting blocks and steals, which I always attributed to his injured shoulder not being healthy. In his first 101 games with the Bucks he had only managed 105 blocks and steals combined, for a thoroughly awful ratio of 1.03 per game. In the preseason, however, he averaged a much healthier 2.40 blocks and steals per 40 minutes, which likely reflects both improved health and commitment at the defensive end. Villanueva’s best game came in the second game against Golden State, when his numbers in 26 minutes of action would have prorated out for 40 minutes of work to 40 points, 12 rebounds, 4 blocks + steals and (just to prove this is still Charlie V we are talking about) 1 assist.

Villanueva certainly has the talent to put up a 0.9 IPM season, but whether or not he can play enough defense to make him a net-positive contributor is an open question. However, there is a lot of good stuff to see from his numbers in the preseason. If he scores 22 and grabs 8 boards all year but allows 18/7 at the other end, that’s still a positive contribution.

Of course, Skiles has been making implications to the media that he doesn’t intend to start Villanueva because of his defense, instead preferring some nonexistent better player. That’s funny, I must have missed where the Bucks traded for Tim Duncan in the last few weeks. Skiles does have a habit of doing that sort of thing, such as starting Chris Duhon over Ben Gordon for two years, but I can’t imagine anyone thinking that Malik Allen is that much better than Villanueva.

2- Luke Ridnour (0.911 IPM): Ever since coming to the Bucks, opinion about Ridnour has been somewhere between “he’s great” and “he sucks”. The answer is right in the middle – he’s average. Ridnour takes exceptionally good care of the ball and doesn’t shoot or defend all that well. Basically, he’s better than half of the other starting point guards in the league – which means that if he’s your worst starter that is good and if he is your second best player that is bad. Ridnour had a very good preseason, managing a 3:1 assist/turnover ratio and grabbing 9 steals in 6 games (28 mpg). He shot poorly, only 38.9%, which makes his sterling IPM even more impressive. He also managed to grab 4.26 rebounds per 40 minutes, over 1 more than Richard Jefferson (more on that later).

Ridnour overachieved in the preseason and will drop off but should still be a solid addition to the club. Expect his A:TO ratio to stay about the same, his shooting to improve a bit and his rebounding to slide. It’s a good thing he played so well and sealed his name as the starting point guard, because nobody else at that position stepped up.

There is no way that Ridnour will carry a 0.9 IPM through the regular season, but a 0.8 is not out of the question.

3- Matt Freije (0.864 IPM): Yes, Matt Freije was the Bucks’ 3rd best player this season. He did it through shameless gunning – 23 points per 40 minutes on 39% shooting, only 1.3 assists per 40. He did manage 2.62 blocks+steals per 40 against the sub-par preseason competition. He had a good preseason, but the problem is that everyone knows that he is not an NBA-caliber athlete. He could probably make a good living in Spain or Turkey, but his primary skill – scoring – isn’t really in demand from 12th-man types. The thing that is most vexing about Freije stacking up so well among the Bucks is that it doesn’t say much about the rest of the team – the better players on the squad should put up much better per-minute numbers than someone like Matt Freije.

4- Michael Redd (0.7243 IPM): The numbers are subpar, but I don’t see anything to worry about here. Redd has no reason not to coast through the preseason, especially after spending the summer on the Olympic team instead of resting. Redd shot 47.5% from the field and made 9 of 20 three pointers, so it appears he is good to go from a scoring standpoint. He also averaged 4 boards and 4 assists per 40 minutes against 2 turnovers. The only thing missing from Redd’s game was the seven free throws per game he usually averages – he shot 18 in 6 games – but there is no reason for him to try and seek contact in a preseason game. Redd should be back to his usual 0.9 IPM once the real games start.

5- Andrew Bogut (0.643 IPM): It was a pretty disappointing preseason from a numbers perspective for Bogut, as his regular season IPM was close to 0.9 last year. I’m sure Bogut, like Redd, was cruising a little after a rough Olympics, and he has apparently been trying to beat some nagging injuries. Considering Bogut wasn’t really playing as tough as he would in the season, it’s still impressive that he managed to block 6 shots and get 4 steals in 5 games (29 mpg) and average almost 11 rebounds per 40 minutes. Bogut didn’t shoot particularly well (47%) and was awful from the foul line (53%) so that’s some reason for mild concern, but he also shot poorly early last season.

Of bigger concern is that he means so much to the team’s success at the defensive end that they will be totally sunk if he misses any time this year. The three preseason games he missed saw the Bucks’ 4th, 6th, and 7th worst defensive showings and the only other Bucks to average over 9 rebounds per 40 minutes were Matt Freije, Dan Gadzuric and Malik Allen. There just aren’t enough tough big guys on this team. It scares me that John Hammond tried to build a win-now team (by adding Jefferson) but didn’t add any toughness up front.

On the bright side, and I’ve brought this up many, many times: Andrew Bogut is the same age this year that Patrick Ewing was his rookie year. This means that Bogut’s physical maturation at the most physical position in the game means that his career trend of modest improvement should continue. If he can average 11 boards per 40 without trying very hard in the preseason then he should be able to do that easily in the regular season. Bogut should average 18 points, 11 boards and 2 blocks this year and make the all-star team (admittedly that has something to do with there being no other good centers after Dwight Howard in the East).

6- Dan Gadzuric (0.620 IPM): I know, can you believe it? Dan Gadzuric was the Bucks’ sixth best player in the preseason? Maybe that doesn’t say much about the rest of the roster, but Danny G just pretty much did what Danny G always does – if there’s nothing to do but rebound and throw his body around then he’s pretty good for short bursts. It’s when he tries to score that things get screwed up. Last season I advocated playing him alongside Bogut many times, and hopefully Skiles sees the value of that this season. Gadzuric averaged 11 boards per 40 in the preseason, and by getting the Bucks’ two best rebounders on the floor at the same time occasionally is about the only way this team will out rebound anyone this year. To Dan’s credit he didn’t turn the ball over or foul much this preseason, averaging about 2 of each per 40 minutes.

7- Charlie Bell (0.615 IPM): Bell only played 2 preseason games and got a total of 40 minutes, so he has a really small sample size to work with here. His numbers in those two games looked a lot like last years, right down to the 6 of 17 shooting.

8- Ramon Sessions (0.596 IPM): Let’s put those “Sessions is a future star” stories on hold for a bit. After a dominant season last year, Sessions spent this preseason showing why he was a low second-round pick in the first place – he can’t shoot and he’s not much of an athlete.

Sessions shot 29.6% from the field in the preseason, and that’s while only going 0 for 2 from 3-point range. There’s a big difference between potentially playing for a starting job this season and lighting it up in 15 games that didn’t matter last year, and Sessions seemed to feel the heat. In 154 minutes of preseason action, Sessions only managed 4 steals and no blocks, an indication that his athleticism is suspect. He was also a turnover machine, averaging 5.45 per 40 minutes (although some of that can be attributed to the And1 nature of preseason games). However, he wasn’t exactly an assist machine either, only averaging 7.5 per 40 minutes.

The preseason raises some legitimate questions as to how good Ramon Sessions will be in meaningful NBA games. Hopefully he can maximize his talents – he’s a guard with a gift for breaking down defenses and getting to the foul line, and he’s big enough to at least be a solid if unspectacular defender – enough to prove to be a capable backup. But if not, then maybe the Tyronn Lue signing wasn’t that bad an idea after all.

9- Richard Jefferson (0.590 IPM): Uh Oh.

This is what John Hammond wanted when he added an extra $15 million in long term salary to take on Jefferson’s contract? 38% shooting and a whopping 3.17 rebounds per 40 minutes? Yikes. Just, yikes.

Yeah, Jefferson was awful in the preseason. Most of the lame numbers aren’t too alarming to be worried about yet (poor shooting early isn’t a big deal for someone who is likely to slash to the hoop more in the regular season) but I wonder about the 2.12 blocks + steals per 40 minutes. It means he was sticking his hands in less often than players like Charlie V and Matt Freije, and it makes one wonder just how committed he is to his all-around game, having spent the last couple of seasons as primarily a scorer.

But the real problem is the putrid rebounding. Much was made before Jefferson came to the Bucks about his declining rebound rate over the past several years, from over 7 per 40 minutes early in his career to about 4 last season. The optimists tried to explain that Jefferson had concentrated on scoring more because that’s what his team needed, but it’s starting to look like maybe he’s just not as good a rebounder since a major ankle injury a few years ago.

There are always explanations for poor numbers in the preseason, and I’m sure there are plenty of reasons to justify RJ’s preseason being only moderately better than Bobby Simmons’ 0.564 IPM last season. But the rebounding is a major concern for me because it has been clear all along that the Bucks would need him to help out in that department in a major way this season, and he should have been spending his preseason minutes concentrating on that part of the game.

Jefferson should improve significantly once the real games start, but if he doesn’t, we are going to be wondering how John Hammond couldn’t have gotten a pick back from New Jersey in return for taking on RJ’s brutal contract.

10- Francisco Elson (0.5645 IPM): Elson was brought in to be Bogut’s 10 mpg backup this season, and judging from his preseason, John Hammond may as well have kept looking. It’s not that Elson did anything bad, he just didn’t really do anything at all.

11- LR Mbah a Moute (0.560 IPM): Scott Skiles gave Moute the most minutes in the preseason of anyone by far, and Moute proved that he was as advertised: hustles on defense, has no clue on offense. Moute had a couple of incredibly bad outings (highlighted by a 1-12 shooting night in game 2) but acquitted himself well in the last two preseason games (0.87 IPM in them).

Mbah a Moute’s preseason looked a lot like Richard Jefferson’s except that he didn’t create quite as many shots and got over double the rebounds (averaging 7.57 per 40 minutes). He should be a decent spot player, but I fear a little Royal Ivey-ish – no matter how good he is defensively, he might not be good enough offensively to make up for it.

12- Malik Allen (0.552 IPM): He’s a “Skiles guy” and will be Charlie Villanueva’s primary backup. It’s a good thing that he averaged 9.62 rebounds per 40 minutes, because between that and consistently being in about the right spots on defense are the only things he brings to the table.

13- Joe Alexander (0.534 IPM): There’s not much here that screams “future star”. Alexander had two nice games in the preseason (playing a big part in the win against Golden State and a 17 minute, 0.97 IPM night against Chicago where despite shooting 2 of 9 he stuffed the box score with 7 rebounds, three assists, a steal and a block) but was otherwise really awful.

The book on Alexander is that he is supposed to be very athletic but raw, a product of having not played much high-level basketball to this point in his career. That’s all well and good, but the last person I heard that about was Jamal Crawford, and he’s turned out to be just good enough to kill your team. Not having much experience at a young age has to limit your ceiling as a player somewhat.

That said, Alexander did play much better as the preseason went along and put up some huge rebounding numbers in the last couple of games. He is a rookie and the jury must stay out on him for at least a year, but I really hate to see him being one of the least productive players on the team – especially in games that don’t mean anything and where he should be able to go out and hone his skills against guys who are about to get cut.

14- Tyronn Lue (0.495 IPM): Lue didn’t play all that much and didn’t do anything of note when he did. He played 75 minutes and managed three rebounds, no blocks and no steals while shooting 35%. He did, at least, have a 2:1 assist to turnover ratio. I’d still rather have another backup power forward than him.

15- Adrian Griffin (0.300 IPM): He only played in the first two preseason games and was a non-factor in them, totaling as many turnovers as shots (three). But the most discouraging thing? That Griffin, a shooting guard, averaged almost double the rebounds per 40 minutes of Richard Jefferson (6.22 vs. 3.17).

The bottom line here: It’s probably not all that unusual for players with secure roster sports to post poor preseason statistics, but the way it seemed to infiltrate the entire team worries me. It wouldn’t bother me as much if there was also a massive improvement in the defensive statistics, as that would tell me that the wavering effort level of the opposition renders preseason stats useless. But that didn’t happen – statistically, the Bucks played like a 2-6 team this preseason (and they should have been 2-6 – not only did they lose the second game on a lucky shot, I believe that Golden State actually didn’t get the ball inbounded in 5 seconds on the game winning play, nor did they get the shot off in time. But it made better theater the way it worked out).

There is no way this team is the 20 win team they looked like in the preseason, but I worry about how much upside there really is for this roster. Before training camp started I predicted 38 wins this year, and I stand by that. It seems to me that the best case scenario for this team is about 43 wins and the worst case (except for a barrage of injuries that renders them noncompetitive) is about 32 wins (the “this preseason’s defense and last years’ offense” that I alluded to at the beginning of the post).

So that’s my call: 38 wins. I don’t think that gets a playoff berth, but I’m still not a believer in what Indiana is up to – I think the Bucks escape the cellar in the Central Division.

Acquired in the Mo Williams trade, it wasn’t long before the Bucks and Damon Jones agreed that the “best shooter in the world” would not join the team and would instead work out on his own while the Bucks tried to work out a deal for him.

So what’s happening on that front?

I can’t imagine that it is very much.

Jones is owed $4.46 million this season, and his contract expires after the year. Whether or not he is with the team he is on the roster, so if the Bucks don’t trade him or buy him out then both Matt Freije and TJ Cummings will have to be cut and the Bucks will go into the season with 14 players. No big deal there.

But what sort of trade could be negotiated for Jones?

Lets see, who wants a player who does nothing but shoot 3’s and is fairly good at it (making 42% last year but 38% the previous two)?

What would anyone give up for Jones?

Lets go through the league and toss out some ideas:

Atlanta, if they really like Randolph Morris as Al Horford’s backup, might be willing to swap the expiring $4 million contract of Zaza Pachulia for Jones.

Drew Gooden for Jones and Charlie Villanueva would work.

Denver could save $2 million by trading Steven Hunter for Jones (Hunter has 2 years and $7 million left on his contract). This trade could be a possibility except that Hunter is apparently not recovered from knee surgery that cost him all of last season.

(I can’t figure out how to get Jones to Golden State even though they really need a point guard but I would do Tyronn Lue for Marco Belinieli and Richard Hendrix in a heartbeat. But I’m sure the Warriors would never do that, and Lue can’t be traded until December 15.)

To Orlando for Brian Cook?

To Phoenix for Raja Bell? I could see Phoenix doing that — they save 6 million and 1 year on Bell’s contract, but I don’t think the Bucks would because of the money.

That’s pretty much it for realistic trades, and I don’t think any of them would happen. The Bucks aren’t really in a situation where they would add a long contract unless they are getting a potentially high draft pick back, and no team is going to go out of their way to add Damon Jones unless they save some major money along the way.

So what’s going to happen? Jones is going to get bought out.

This is the best division in basketball. Home of possibly three of the top five teams in the league, it really says something when a team like Dallas might be on the outside looking in come playoff time. Last year saw an explosion by Chris Paul and the New Orleans Hornets into one of the league’s best, and poor George Shinn will likely find that his team will be so good this year as to force him to keep his team in the Big Easy for the next 10 years (a failure to average 14,000 fans this year would allow Shinn to break his lease).

And so, this year the Best Division In The League will look like:

1- New Orleans: Has there ever been a more mismanaged, luckier team than the Hornets? They have consistently fallen to the depths of the NBA standings, only to have the lottery drop great players right in their lap. In 1992 they had the #2 pick in the year that just happened to have two franchise centers available (Shaq and Mourning). Then in 1999 Baron Davis fell into their laps when Vancouver took Steve Francis at #2, despite knowing that Francis had no interest in playing for them. Finally, after Davis lost interest in playing for the Hornets, they found themselves with the fourth pick in a draft that featured two franchise point guards, three teams in front of them who needed point guards (Atlanta, plus the fact that Utah traded up to Portland’s #3 pick), and one more team that needed a point guard but didn’t realize it (Milwaukee). Remarkably, Chris Paul fell into their lap.

Meanwhile, the rest of this team is for real. David West has blossomed into a star, Tyson Chandler is the perfect player for their system, and while the Hornets may still wind up regretting the contract to Peja Stojakovic, he has provided the deep shooting they need. And they addressed their one major weakness — their bench — by adding James Posey this offseason. They will definitely regret his contract in a couple of years (especially since Julian Wright is probably a better player right now) but give them credit for trying. The Hornets are primed for a shot at the finals this year.

Last year: won 56 games.

+2 wins from the continued improvement of Chris Paul (23 years old!).
-4 wins because Peja and David West both have injury histories that are likely to crop up again at some point.
+1 win because Tyson Chandler is for real.
+1 win because James Posey has made a career of helping out good teams (and promptly falling out of shape for bad ones).

This season: 56-26.

2- Houston: 82-82-79-43-48-61-26.

What’s that, and why should it make Rockets fans worried?

That is the number of games Ralph Sampson played in each of his first seven years. Why is that a problem?

82-80-80-57-48-55.

That’s the number of games Yao Ming has played in his first six seasons. Plus international ball every year. You have to wonder how much pounding the body of a 7′6″ player can handle. And now, I fear that the leg and foot injuries that Yao has sustained over the past few seasons are starting to become more of a trend. Yao clearly wasn’t 100% at the Olympics and should have been resting. When does the guy get a chance to sit back, relax, and let his body recover?

The other problem for Houston is that Tracy McGrady’s game has become a sort of balancing act between “coasting to try and reduce the stress on my back” and “turning it on and hoping it doesn’t hurt my back.” Both T-Mac and Yao have crossed over into the realm of being listed as perpetually “questionable”, and it’s hard to believe that you can win a title if you can’t count on your players remaining upright until the end of the season.

It’s too bad, too, because the Rockets have done almost everything else right in putting together a championship-level team. They have one of the best defenders in basketball in Shane Battier, stole Luis Scola from San Antonio, and have mined second-round gold repeatedly in Chuck Hayes and Carl Landry. I’m not sure how well Ron Artest will fit in, as it seems to me that he and Battier will have a hard time co-existing, as both are too small to be very effective at power forward. But it’s still a worthwhile gamble with Artest’s contract about to expire — he will be motivated to keep his mouth shut and do what the coaching staff wants.

But, unfortunately, given the brittleness of their two stars, I can’t imagine this team has the horses to go all the way.

Last year: 56 wins.

No change from the inevitable Yao/McGrady injuries costing them their stars for several games yet again.
-2 wins from an overextended Yao suffering a post-Olympics hangover.
-2 wins from the Battier/Artest combination suffering growing pains.
+3 wins from Artest’s offense making up for some of the loss suffered when Yao/McGrady can’t go.
-2 wins from Carl Landry coming back to earth.

This season: 53-29.

3- San Antonio: I just cannot believe how old this team is getting. Of their top seven players, only Tony Parker is under 31 years old. The core group of Duncan, Ginobili, Oberto, Bowen, Finley and Thomas stays together, but for how long can this bunch stay athletic enough to go deep into the playoffs every year? They have been trying to limit Manu Ginobili’s minutes for a long time, but now he’s hurt before the season has even started. Basically, this team doesn’t have anybody on it who is getting better — everyone is either getting incrementally worse with age or struggling to stay at the same level.

The core reason for the Spurs’ success over the past decade (aside from getting lucky and grabbing Tim Duncan) was their ability to mine talent from overseas. However, that advantage is long gone now that other teams have copied the San Antonio scouting method. The inability to continue stealing international talent is going to bring about the end of the Spurs dynasty, and that end begins this year.

Last season: won 56 games.

-5 wins from age.
-3 wins from the loss of Ginobli.

This season: 48-34.

4- Dallas: I’ve always felt that Mark Cuban was overrated as an owner. Last year he proved it.

He is always credited for rebuilding the Mavs after buying them, but he acquired a team that already had Dirk Nowitzki, Steve Nash and Michael Finley in place. He then embarked on a strategy of willingly accepting salary additions in trades, which only netted them players like Raef LaFrentz, Shawn Bradley, Christian Laettner and Juwan Howard. Their front office — primarily Don Nelson — extricated them from that mess by drafting Josh Howard, signing DeSagna Diop for almost nothing and making a savvy trade for Jason Terry and a draft-day deal for Devin Harris.

But then Cuban started meddling again. And the resulting Jason Kidd trade threatens to pull the whole thing down again.

The problem is that Dallas is the worst possible place for Kidd, especially since players like Tony Parker and Chris Paul run the show for the Mavs’ primary divisional competition. Kidd couldn’t stay in front of Parker in the finals 5 years ago. What is he supposed to do against them now? This problem was exposed in the first round of the playoffs last year, and was also illuminated in the Olympics when Kidd was anointed as the starting point guard for Team USA but Paul and Deron Williams were both clearly better than him. Cuban took a huge financial hit from the trade (exacerbated by re-signing Diop to a full-midlevel contract this off season) and traded away Devin Harris — who will be better than Kidd three years from now, can defend quick point guards better than Kidd, and just might be better than Kidd right now.

Kidd is also a known coach killer, which is a problem when you remember that Dallas just signed Rick Carlisle to be their head coach. It is also well known that Carlisle doesn’t get along very well with anyone, as shown by him getting fired by the Pistons while he was the reigning coach of the year and then fired by Indiana — and by Larry Bird, his best friend — for missing the playoffs once in six years.

This team still has quite a bit of talent, but between the competition in the division and growing pains within, it will be a tough season for the Mavs.

Last season; won 51 games.

-2 wins from the struggle to adjust to the coaching change and to find a style that maximizes their players’ strengths.
-2 wins because Jason Kidd is in decline and isn’t the right guy to defend the division’s best point guards.
0 change because Dirk Nowitzki and Josh Howard (no matter where his head is) are still in their primes.
-1 win because Jerry Stackhouse is in decline.

This season: 46-36.

5- Memphis: I love mediocre NBA basketball. Sometimes the more incompetent teams are more interesting than the well-run ones, to me. When I read John Hollinger’s player previews, I almost alway skip to losers like Eddy Curry and Tim Thomas first for the laughs. I write a blog about the Bucks for, goodness sakes.

But if I had to be a Grizzlies fan I would abandon the NBA.

General Manager Chris Wallace is redefining “not having a clue” on a daily basis. For arguments sake, lets just say that I’m wrong about OJ Mayo and he’s going to be much better than Kevin Love. Let’s just say that Mayo is worth trading away Mike Miller and Love and accepting the contracts of scrubs like Antoine Walker and Marko Jaric in return. Then why on Earth would Wallace ignore the logjam he has with Mike Conley, Kyle Lowry and Javaris Crittendon despite the need to make room for Mayo?

It’s like Wallace has gone out of his way to field an NBDL team. He is going to start a point guard with next-to-no experience (Conley or Lowry), a rookie (Mayo), a player who has been mentioned as “underrated” so much that he has become totally overrated (Rudy Gay), either a career loser (Darko Milicic) or a guy who might still be high from the NBA’s rookie orientation session (Darrell Arthur) and the younger brother of the franchise’s best player (Marc Gasol). And they expect people to pay money to see this happen?

It’s not so much that this team has gotten so bad, but the way that Wallace has done it. He managed to dump Pau Gasol for nothing, and in the Mayo trade manage to take on bad contracts rather than shed them. Then, despite adding Mayo he failed to sort out the rest of the back court as well. No wonder the Grizzlies are the laughingstock of the NBA right now.

Oh, and I don’t think OJ Mayo is all that good in the first place.

Last season: Won 22 games.

-3 wins from the loss of Mike Miller.
+1 win from the improvement of Rudy Gay.
-3 wins from the backcourt not being NBA ready.

This season: 17-65.

The preview train rolled on into the NBA’s Central Division this week.

Chicago Bulls
Nels: Give Me The Rock
Matt: Blog-a-Bull

Cleveland Cavaliers
Rock: Waiting For Next Year
FTS: Fear The Sword
David Friedman: 20 Second Timeout
Amar Panchmatia: Cavalier Attitude

Detroit Pistons
Brian Spencer: Empty the Bench
Natalie Sitto: Need4Sheed.com
Matt Watson: Detroit Bad Boys

Indiana Pacers
Tom: Indy Cornrows

Milwaukee Bucks
Brett Boyer: The Bratwurst
Frank Madden: BrewHoop

After the Bucks drafted Joe Alexander, it wasn’t long before John Hammond was saying that the 6′8″, 235 pound Alexander would be able to co-exist with Richard Jefferson as a prototype next-gen power forward in the Shawn Marion mode. But Hammond seems to have failed to consider one thing:

Kevin Garnett, 6′11+.
Chris Bosh, 6′11.
Zach Randolph, 6′9, 255.
Elton Brand, 6′8, 265.
Yi Jianlian, 7′0, 255, now 17 years old!
Ben Wallace, 6′9, 245.
Drew Gooden, 6′10, 240.
Troy Murphy, 6′9.
Antwan Jamison, 6′8.
Michael Beasley, 6′8, 250.
Rashard Lewis, 6′10.
Marvin Williams, 6′10.
Emeka Okafor, 6′11, 250.
Rasheed Wallace, 6′11.

Who might this bunch of big men be? A list of likely Eastern Conference starting power forwards. The players that Joe Alexander will eventually have to match up against if he is to play power forward. Alexander would be giving up height and/or strength to all of them and rebounding ability to all of them except maybe Rashard Lewis. Andrew Bogut would get body-slammed all night, every night by trying to fight off two big men at once for every board.

It would be a disaster.

Fortunately, after only two preseason games, it appears that Scott Skiles has already moved on from the idea of moving Alexander to power forward. Alexander has gotten about 30 minutes so far (and has played pretty poorly, but I’m not worried about that yet) and has mostly been on the floor at the same time as a frontcourt of Villanueva-Bogut or Villanueva-Malik Allen. So that’s good.

My NBA draft prospect list shows exactly why Alexander-to-power forward would have been dumb. Alexander is a below average rebounder, ranking as the fourth-worst rebounder among the top 40 frontcourt players who were likely to be drafted. Moving him to power forward would not only highlight his rebounding weakness, but would also take away his biggest strength — his all-around ability to get assists, steals and blocks while minimizing turnovers (he ranked 10th in the “curry ratio” — explanation at the bottom of the draft preview link).

It appears that Scott Skiles has figured this out, and is willing to let Alexander earn minutes behind Richard Jefferson rather than to pound a square peg into a round hole by moving him into the frontcourt.

At least, that’s how it looks so far. It will be worth watching the two games in China to see exactly how Skiles does plan on using him.

David Noel, he of former much promise, has been released by the Los Angeles Clippers.  The Clippers have indicated they simply have too many people for the “swingman” role and Noel was the odd man out.  When the Bucks released him last season Larry K was quote as saying ”I don’t think this was a situation where we let him go,” continued Krystkowiak. “He had an opportunity to play overseas.”

While Noel has yet to really catch on in the league and has had decent numbers in the D-League, look for him to breakout in Europe and earn a trip back stateside in a year or two.

A roundup of the blogger previews on the net for the NBA’s Southwest Division.

Dallas Mavericks
Jake Kerr: Mavs Moneyball

Houston Rockets
grungedave and UofTOrange: The Dream Shake

Memphis Grizzlies
Joshua Coleman: 3 Shades of Blue

New Orleans Hornets
Rohan: At the Hive
ticktock6 & mW: Hornets Hype
Ryan Schwan & Ron Hitley: Hornets247.com

San Antonio Spurs
Graydon Gordian: 48 Minutes of Hell

A roundup of the Atlantic Division blogger previews from around the blogosphere.  Brett’s look at the entire division was posted earlier.

Boston Celtics
Jeff Clark: CelticsBlog.com
Jim Weeks: Green Bandwagon
FLCeltsFan: LOY’s Place
John Karalis: Red’s Army
Dustin Chapman: Celtics 24/7

New Jersey Nets
Dennis Velasco: About Basketball

New York Knicks
Joey: Straight Bangin’
Seth Rosenthal: Posting and Toasting

Philadelphia 76ers
Dannie & Pete: Recliner GM
Jon Burkett: Passion and Pride

Toronto Raptors
Franchise: RaptorsHQ.com
Ryan McNeill: Hoops Addict
Cuzzy: Cuzoogle