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.