The Bratwurst – Milwaukee Bucks Blog

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.