The Bratwurst - Milwaukee Bucks Blog

• Mo Williams on the Wikipedia
• Mo Williams on NBA.com
• Mo Williams on ESPN.com

It’s only been a few games, but what are last years’ Bucks doing with their new team?

With one notable exception, not much.

You remember how I used to maintain that Royal Ivey wasn’t much of a defensive player, and even if he was, he was so bad offensively that it doesn’t really matter? Well, he has only played 7 minutes per game for a Philly team that is off to a slow start, and they have been outscored by 8 ppg with him on the floor while outscoring their opponents by 3.5 ppg without him. Ivey was the Bucks’ sixth man for long stretches last season … and he is being used much more effectively now. He is shooting 43%, not bad for him.

After shooting 48% for the Bucks last season, Desmond Mason is back up to his old tricks, only shooting 38% in 27 mpg for the Thunder. He’s also turning the ball over more than last year, rebounding worse, and getting fewer assists. At 31 years old, the athleticism is likely starting to wane, and the Bucks were lucky to have gotten as effective a season out of him as they did.

Mo Williams is off to a slow start with the Cavs, only shooting 40% and seeing his numbers fall off in nearly every other category. However, after going into a new situation in Cleveland, an adjustment period is to be expected and with the ball in LeBron’s hands, a decline in Mo’s numbers can only be expected. As the Bucks-Cavs game showed, the team is doing just fine with Mo.

You thought Bobby Simmons was bad last year? Oh man, look at him now! He’s playing 27 minutes a game and shooting 33%. His rebounds are down to 3.5 per 40 minutes and assists are down to 1 per 40 minutes. At least he’s not turning it over much, but the real problem is he isn’t really doing anything on the court. In my post-season recap last year I wrote that Simmons’ averages last year were almost the same as his previous four years, not counting the big 04-05 season that got him his big contract. Well, he’s underperforming those numbers by a lot. He recently made some comments about needing to do more without the ball, but the real problem is what he does with the ball near the basket — he is shooting 45% on jumpers but only 20% close to the hoop.

Don’t look now, but Yi Jianlian is off to a really nice start for the Nets. He is playing 27 minutes a game and has an IPM of 0.83, making him the #20 forward in the league for this young season. He is shooting a little worse (41%) but is actually rebounding this season — averaging 11.9 boards per 40 minutes! He’s doing everything a little better this season — getting more assists, averaging a block per game, and not turning it over. However, his defense probably still has problems — the Nets aren’t really doing any better with him on the floor. And, just to be sure this is Yi Jianlian we are talking about, he is still getting 25% of his shots close to the basket blocked.

Sports Illustrated is predicting that the Bucks will finish the season ranked 12th in the Eastern Conference and miss the playoffs again.

12. Bucks: New GM John Hammond has made two big trades already, acquiring Richard Jefferson from the Nets (for Yi Jianlian and Bobby Simmons) and Luke Ridnour from Oklahoma City (for Williams and Desmond Mason). Jefferson, along with new coach Scott Skiles, should help improve a woeful Bucks defense. Ridnour has potential as a distributor, and he comes with a better contract, but he’s not much of a defender and he’s not a scorer like Williams. With Jefferson, Michael Redd, Andrew Bogut and Charlie Villanueva, Milwaukee apparently felt it already had enough firepower. The trick will be just how fast Skiles can implement his system, and whether there is enough bulk in the frontcourt.

On the flip side, the Cavaliers rank second in the East (the article indicates this was true even before the Williams trade).  The Pistons find themselves as sixth.  You can read the rest yourself.

Only time will tell where the Bucks end up, but here’s to hoping that it’s at least better than 12th.

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.

UPDATE: It’s official

On Monday, when I saw the story being reported by the News-Herald of Northern Ohio that the Cavs, Bucks and Seattle OKC Nobodys were working on a trade centering around Mo Williams going to the Cavs, I almost wrote a post saying that I thought the story was totally bogus.

There were several things in that report that didn’t sound right to me. Why would the Bucks send Mo to a division rival? Since Cleveland just extended the contract of Daniel Gibson, why would they want to add another short point guard (as a newly re-signed player, Gibson cannot be traded immediately). It always bugs me when trade rumors are published but are attributed to nothing but anonymous “NBA sources” and don’t mention any concrete trade scenarios beyond speculation. That’s just lazy reporting.

The more I read that story, there was something in it that made me think it had been given to the reporter by someone either from the Bucks’ or Mo Williams’ camp to encourage a deal. It says that Mo is 6′2″.

Everybody who follows the Bucks knows he is listed at 6′1″ and plays smaller than that. He is listed as 6′1″ on the Bucks website. The only way a reporter gets that wrong is if someone tells him the wrong height and he just runs with it. Why would someone want Williams to be 6′2″ instead of 6′1″? Because they don’t want him to appear smaller — and, by implication, worse defensively — than Daniel Gibson.

Now, though, the Journal-Sentinel is on the story, with Charles Gardner saying that the Bucks are interested in getting back Luke Ridnour in the deal. Now it sounds like someone is doing some real reporting.

One thing about Ridnour — he isn’t nearly the offensive threat that Mo is, but defensively he positively makes Mo look like Gary Payton (the Seattle Payton, not the Milwaukee version). Ridnour is listed at 6′1″, 167 and was the starting point guard on a Seattle team a couple of years ago that was the worst defensive team of all time. However, the biggest problem with Mo and the Bucks is that Mo is basically “too good” offensively to fit in. Ridnour, for better or worse, fits the bill as a distributor who would help the offense flow. Ridnour, after all, was also the starting point guard on the surprising 52-win 04/05 Sonics.

Ridnour also only has two years remaining on his contract, so he would give the Bucks flexibility to see just how good Ramon Sessions really is — Ridnour will be fine off the bench if Sessions is good and adequate as a starter if Sessions isn’t.

So what would each team want from a trade in order to make it work?

Cleveland is gunning for a championship shot this year or next. They are well into luxury tax land this season, but have a little cap room next year and will drop well under the cap should LeBron leave after next season. By adding Mo they would probably build around him should LeBron leave. They also need a general talent upgrade in every other spot besides small forward.

Seattle wants to save money and clear a frontcourt logjam to eventually move Kevin Durant to a forward position.

The Bucks are trying to remake their long-term salary structure on the fly, remake the roster into a more complementary group, and picking up some rebounding would be nice.

Here’s the best trade I could come up with:

Cleveland gets Mo Williams and Chris Wilcox.

Seattle gets Wally Szczerbiak (I just spelled that correctly from memory. Amazing).

Milwaukee gets Luke Ridnour and DJ White.

The OKC Runaways would save about $7 million next season, and would free up room for both Russell Westbrook and Kevin Durant. This would also solidify their shot at the #1 pick in next years’ draft, as their team would be awful this season. But it is well known that they are in a long-term rebuilding plan, and with several high picks and about $40 million in cap room in 2010, they are biding their time.

Cleveland would add two ostensibly talented players, one of which (Wilcox) has an expiring contract. I’ve never thought much of Wilcox’ game — he’s the 6′10″ version of Mo Williams. He scores just well enough to be a good looking offensive player but not enough to really carry a team, and he’s lousy defensively to boot. But Cleveland made the finals with a power forward tandem of Drew Gooden and Anderson Varejao, so a Wilcox-Varejao combo might work just fine. Cleveland will be $30 million under the cap after next season (if LeBron leaves) so Mo’s salary wouldn’t be a problem.

The Bucks get rid of Mo’s contract and a point guard who should fit the roster better. DJ White has a chance to be a Carl Landry-type of player — an undersized bench guy who gives 15 energetic, effective minutes a night. In the long run, the Bucks would save about $20 million on this deal.

How would this trade affect the Bucks? I don’t think they will win more with Ridnour than they would with Mo. But they wouldn’t lose more, and they would have much more roster flexibility going forward.

I am pleased to announce that I have made an upgrade to my IPM rankings — thanks to the geniuses at www.82games.com, they kept track of charges this season and so I was able to add them into the ranking. I’ve been waiting for this. The rankings don’t change much (Andrew Bogut gets a little boost), but I still feel it helps with accuracy a bit. The rankings are available here.

But the real improvement is that I have added a defensive component to IPM, making this ranking truly unique — not only does it include charges, but also defense. I’m mighty proud of it.

The idea for a defensive ranking came from this article by Jon Nichols at 82games.com. His method — called Defensive Composite Score — ranked players by three categories, summed the rankings, and then ranked them by percentage to come up with a 0-100 ranking. His categories were athleticism ratio (if you are familiar with my draft preview, I also used it there. It is blocks+steals/fouls), Dean Oliver’s Defensive Rating (a single number developed and described in the book Basketball on Paper) and on court/off court differential.

I took Nichols’ DCS, tweaked it and took it a step further. First, I added charges to the athleticism ratio (blocks+steals+offensive fouls drawn/fouls committed). After getting the individual ratings, I took my team defensive IPM score in order to add a “team adjustment” to each individual. Then I adjusted for how much each player was responsible for their teams’ defensive IPM, by backing out each player to determine how much better or worse each team would be had he not been on the team. Finally (and I wish I didn’t have to do this, but the data demanded it) I inputted a position adjustment to reflect the fact that big men have much more difficult demands on their defense.

I absolutely hate position adjustments, and feel that if you have to use them then there is a flaw in your methodology because you can then just change a players’ ranking by changing their position — even though they don’t always play the same position. It’s a major flaw that also crops up in the “Wages of Wins” school of thought, but that’s a whole other story.

Anyway, I then had an adjusted score that I could convert to IPM, and by combining IPM with the Defensive IPM I obtained a final, all-around ranking. Because the rules of basketball are slanted toward offense I weighted the combined rankings as 75% IPM and 25% defensive IPM. Basically, I figured that since a 25 ppg scorer would likely score 35 points against the worst defender but about 20 against the best defender, you can’t truly assume the two systems are equal. A great defensive player will still allow enough scoring that he has to at least be able to pick up a little slack at the offensive end.

The ranking are available here.

What does the defensive ranking component tell us?

The most interesting thing is that it says that in the case of top players, they usually bring the goods at both ends of the floor. It makes some sense — logically great players like LeBron, KG and Kobe are so superior athletically that they can dominate at both ends. So the players who don’t have their overall rankings changed very much when defensive IPM is included tend to be the best players (or, like Matt Carroll, they just suck at both offense and defense).

What was also interesting was looking at the players who had their rankings changed the most by adding defensive IPM. It clearly shows that there are some “winning”, “intangible” skills that some players bring and that some lack.

It doesn’t come as much surprise that the players who had their rankings improved the most were the known offensively-challenged defensive specialists: Shane Battier, Ben Wallace, and Anderson Varejao types. But what was interesting was that of the 40 players who had their rankings improved by the most (among those who averaged 20 mpg), 30 of them made the playoffs this season. At the other end of the spectrum, among the 40 20mpg+ offensive specialists who were hurt the most by incorporating defensive rankings (Eddy Curry, Ben Gordon, Hakim Warrick …. Charlie Villanueva) 30 of them missed the playoffs. Coincidence? I think not.

What does this ranking system tell us about some of the Bucks?

Charlie Villanueva must go. While Charlie V’s offensive IPM was decent (0.7756, #116 overall) his team-worst 0.508 defensive IPM dropped his overall ranking 58 spots to #176. Quite simply, Villanueva is a pretty average offensive player who doesn’t defend well enough to make him a net-positive player.

Michael Redd should stay. Redd suffered through an awful offensive season by his standards and had a pretty lousy defensive IPM to boot, but when it was all said and done his overall ranking dropped by 19 spots. However, Redd is good enough offensively to score 25 a night and get to the line 10 times, while attempting to replace him would likely lead to a replacement who is moderately better defensively but much, much worse offensively. And Redd is likely to be better on offense next season.

Mo Williams should go. Mo’s 0.625 defensive IPM lowered his overall ranking by 25 spots, which pretty much negates all of the strides his offensive game has made. Added to that is the way Mo’s decision making seems to make the game harder on his teammates, and he winds up looking like a real drag on the team.

Andrew Bogut should sign that extension. When charges were added, Bogut’s IPM rose to 0.910, which is borderline-all-star level. At his age, there is still plenty of time for Bogut to mature into a solid contributor for a good team. Bogut’s defense was also the best on the team, which suggests that once Scott Skiles beats some defensive responsibility into his teammates, he should be able to become the centerpiece of a pretty good defense.

Yi was … good defensively? I don’t know about this one. Yi’s defensive IPM was pretty good, but I think that Yi gets a big assist from Bogut here. Bogut would always guard the oppositions’ best big, and Yi’s on/off court differential looks a little better than it is because he got hurt a little before the team really cratered. Yi has a lot of work to do next year — and he owes it to Bogut for making his numbers look good this season.

Thank God Royal Ivey is gone. Having a defensive specialist can be a good strategy. However, Ivey was so bad offensively that even great defense couldn’t make him a net-positive player. But Ivey, despite maybe looking good here and there, was lousy defensively as well — his 0.523 DefIPM was the second worst on the team. Charlie Bell’s DefIPM was awful as well, but he gets a pass because he was thrown to the wolves at small forward way too often. How can a 6′3″ player be expected to guard LeBron James straight up?

Ramon Sessions isn’t as good as the numbers say. While Sessions had the best offensive and defensive IPM on the team, don’t forget that his 17 games played amounted to 450 minutes of extended garbage time. Nobody was very serious about guarding him and there wasn’t much incentive for him to play much defense beyond gambling for steals. He’ll be a good backup, but he’s not nearly as good as the numbers think.

And there’s my two cents for John Hammond.

In March of 2007 I went to a Bucks-Bulls game and was treated to an incredible offensive display from Michael Redd and Ben Gordon. The pair combined to shoot 36-64 and scored 100 points between them (52 for Redd and 48 for Gordon) in a 126-121 Bulls win. But there was one play that has stuck in my mind ever since, and I found myself thinking about it more and more as this season went along.

At the end of a third quarter that saw Redd and Gordon pretty much match baskets for the whole time — neither of them could do anything to stop the other — the Bucks had a four point lead and the ball with about a one second game clock/shot clock differential. Mo Williams brought the ball up and stood at midcourt, dribbling the clock down so the Bucks would get the last shot. Redd, however, had other ideas.

With 20 seconds left, Redd had Gordon on his hip at the 3-point line and called for the ball. Williams waved him off, intending to run out the clock. Redd called for the ball again, Mo ignored him. Finally, Redd went over to Mo and literally took the ball out of his hands, faced up Gordon (from about 30 feet out) and tried to go to work on him. However, by walking over to Mo, it meant that Redd had also walked over to Mo’s defender, Kirk Hinrich, and it was obvious that considering the time remaining and what Redd had just done that he was never going to pass the ball. So basically Redd had just double teamed himself. Needless to say, he had no chance to shake both Gordon and Hinrich and to make matters worse, fired up a fadeaway 3 from about 30 feet with at least 6 seconds left.

The result was a long rebound that caromed out to Hinrich, who took off the other way and buried a running 3-pointer at the buzzer, cutting the Bucks lead to one.

I thought, “That was weird.”

At the time I kind of wrote the play off as the sort of thing that happens in a meaningless game late in a lost season. But then I saw the Redd-Williams dynamic on the court this season and started to think that maybe that play against the Bulls was a little indicator of a bigger problem. Maybe these guys are so afraid that by passing the ball they will never get it back, and that is unintentionally short-circuiting the offense.

Maybe they are both too talented offensively to play together.

Mo Williams ($7.75M, 0.852 IPM): It’s so trendy to bash Mo for a variety of reasons: “He shoots too much”, “His defense sucks”, and (my favorite because it’s ludicrous) “He’s not a “pure” point guard.” But all of that misses the point — Mo Williams has really become a terrific offensive player.

First of all, Mo Williams does not shoot too much. He averaged 15.4 shots per 40 minutes this season (pace adjusted) which placed him 12th among point guards who played over 22 minutes per game. He took 2 more shots per game than the #24 point guard on that list, Steve Nash. “Pure” point guards like Tony Parker, TJ Ford, Chris Paul and Sam Cassell all took more shots per 40 minutes than did Mo.

One shouldn’t really complain about Mo’s shooting because he converts them so well, as he made a career high 48% this season. In fact, according to 82games.com, Mo was one of only three players to shoot above 50% on 2-point jump shots this season (behind Kyle Korver and ahead of Steve Nash). Mo also spent his first season on his new contract setting career highs in just about every category — shooting percentage, 3-point shooting, free throw shooting, assists and blocks, while holding his steals steady and cutting his turnovers and fouls.

However, there is evidence that Mo’s defense is a real problem. Despite the fact that the Bucks had no other decent option as a backup point guard (since Ivey was horrible, Bell played three positions, and Sessions didn’t show up until April) the Bucks weren’t much better with Mo on the court as they were with him off. Part of the problem is Williams’ size (or lack thereof), and part of it is the lack of accomplished defenders he has as teammates. But his defense was a problem, and the coaching staff knew it. There was a rumored near-fistfight between Williams and assistant coach Tony Brown over Mo’s defensive effort, and after a game against Sacramento (in which Kings point guard Beno Urdih had run all over the Bucks) Krystkowiak made some veiled references to benching a player who he felt was slacking on defense.

It’s not that Mo doesn’t put effort into defense — I remember him tying up Chris Paul during a huge possession late in the Hornets game — but he seems to get frustrated if calls don’t go his way, because of his size he is easy to overpower and cannot close out on shooters if he leaves his man to double-team someone else.

Facts are facts: Mo Williams has improved every season he has been in the league and his team has done worse every season that his role has increased. Maybe there is something to the idea of being “just good enough to be a good player on a bad team.”

As it is currently constructed, this team is not a good place for Mo. There is too much offensive talent (making his shot-creation skills redundant) and not enough defensive help (exacerbating his shortcomings). He’s a bad backcourt partner for Michael Redd, and Scott Skiles has never been a head coach with a small point guard (he has had Jason Kidd, Stephon Marbury and Kirk Hinrich previously). Either Redd or Williams has to go this off season. Mo is young, has improved every season, and his contract is reasonable for his production, so he should be able to garner some trade interest.

Mo Williams is a very good player who was a very bad fit for Larry Krystkowiak’s system and is a bad fit for this roster.

Responsibility for Coach K’s dismissal: 20%

Michael Redd ($14.5M, 0.838 IPM): It was an incredibly disappointing season for Redd, as he came into training camp in great shape and riding high from the Team USA experience over the summer. However, he started the season in something of a shooting slump (but posted some of the best rebounding and assist numbers of his career), and things never got better. After Mason got hurt, Redd spent most of the season out of position at small forward and seemed to be competing with his teammates to get his shots. He wound up with his worst IPM in several years, and only the third best on the team (behind Bogut and Mo).

It’s easy to blame Redd for concentrating on scoring seemingly to the detriment of his teammates, but look at it from his point of view for a second. The last time this team was any good, two years ago, the starting lineup included a player coming off of a major injury (TJ Ford), a rookie playing out of position (Bogut), a new player whose main offensive weapon was corner 3’s (Simmons) and a new player with not much of an offensive game (Magloire). If that group was able to win half of their games and make the playoffs with Redd taking every single big shot, then shouldn’t this group of ostensibly-more talented players be able to chip in an extra 10 points a night than the 05-06 crew could? Shouldn’t that be enough to make this team really good, without Redd doing anything differently?

Of course, it doesn’t really work that way. The 07-08 roster may be more talented than the 05-06 one was, but the collection of skills was less complementary.

Unfortunately, the effort to get Bogut more shots, the blossoming of Mo Williams into a highly-efficient scorer (and the attendant paycheck he started getting), and the presence of Yi Jianlian seemed to affect Michael Redd very badly — it was as though he feared becoming an afterthought in his own offense, and seemed to feel that if he got the ball he had better shoot it because it wasn’t ever coming back to him.

This led to a season of incredibly poor shot selection from Redd. Horrible, awful flat-footed 20 foot jumpers, where he would just stare at his defender and then fire away with a hand in his face. He would regularly ignore his post players when they called for the ball, doing it so often that I questioned whether he was intentionally freezing out Yi.

Larry Krystkowiak noticed it as well, and said as much to the Journal-Sentinel in a postseason interview:

“One player Krystkowiak did not communicate well with was guard Michael Redd. An uneasy relationship existed between the coach and the star guard during most of the season and Redd admitted after the season that there had been no chemistry between them. Redd did add, though, that they had gone about their jobs in a professional manner.

Asked about Redd, Krystkowiak said, “I understand the chemistry of a team and I know that there’s a lot of issues with shot selection and taking bad shots. I tried to get our team to play together and I came to the realization that it really wasn’t going to happen.”

Krystkowiak said a big part of the problem from his perspective was that Redd and his teammates played well together in practice, but then reverted to a more solo mentality in games.

“There was a different mind-set in practice than there was in a game,” Krystkowiak said. “It was like two different types of teams so we could never address sharing and moving the basketball because we did a decent job of it in practice. It was in games where it didn’t happen. . . . Things became very focused on scoring points and that’s Mike. Truly great players make the players around them better.

“A lot of times in practice he would defer and wouldn’t be as scoring-minded and so I don’t know how you’re supposed to get better as a team when . . . practice was different than games.”

This statement is a perfect example of why Larry Krystkowiak is no longer the coach of this team — the whole idea of “great players make other players better.” That’s not true — great players are great because they are better than the players around them.

You can’t take your best scorer and try to tell him to score less because that will give more opportunities for other guys. That doesn’t make any sense. This is the sort of thing that cost the Bucks some wins and cost Krystkowiak his job — sending Redd out there to play small forward when he’s not strong enough defensively to handle bigger players and expecting his best scorer to defer his scoring to his teammates.

With a bunch of efficient scorers on his team, Krystkowiak should have pushed the pace to get as many shots as possible in the air every night. That would have been the only way to keep everyone happy. He can’t expect players to give the ball up just because someone else will get upset without it.

I know that it sounds like I’m being too soft on Michael Redd here, and I probably am, but I just feel that Larry Krystkowiak was being unrealistic to think that he could tell his players to just change their games around in order to fit into his team concept. The NBA doesn’t work that way. You know how they say that great players make the worst coaches because they expect the game to come as easily to everyone as it did to them? Maybe the opposite was Krystkowiak’s problem as coach — he saw the game from the perspective of a journeyman who had to tailor his game to fit into a team concept, when in reality good players need the concept set up to help maximize their own strengths in order for a team to win.

In the meantime, while it has become popular to blame Redd for the Bucks’ problems, forget it — he’s not going anywhere. His salary makes it almost impossible to get fair value back, and he cannot possibly be traded along with one of the Bucks’ bad contracts in order to clear some cap room. Fortunately, with a coach better able to put him into a position to succeed and make the offense flow, Redd should bounce back next season just fine. But he’s never going to be a very well-rounded player.

Responsibility for Coach K’s dismissal: 35%

———————–
Other installments in the Season In Review:
I Need One to Play the Three!
Stop the Danny G Experience! I Want to Get Off!
The Aussie and the Flintstone
The Men of Mystery
The End of the Bench

According to the New York Daily News, the Bucks (and the Knicks) have been pursuing Indiana Pacers CEO Donnie Walsh to join the front office next season.

This would be a good hire, as Walsh was the architect of the Pacers’ run of success dating back to the early 90’s, but considering that there are other teams in the mix and that he is 67 years old, I’d guess that his actually coming to Milwaukee would be a long shot. The more important story is that it signals the end for Larry Harris.

Reading between the lines, it has been pretty obvious that Harris was about done. Their failure to make any moves, the rumors about the ridiculous Zach Randolph, and Kohl’s silence about extending Harris’ contract were signals, but if they are now actively pursuing a replacement, it’s a done deal. And it’s time, too. Harris assembled this team and now it needs changes. Those changes are tough to make if you are emotionally invested in bringing the current pieces in.

I know that money talks and the Knicks can offer far more money than the Bucks can, but honestly Milwaukee would probably be a more appealing destination for Walsh.

Consider the pros and cons:

Knicks

Significantly higher salary.
Seemlingly unlimited roster budget.
Money no object for hiring coaches and assistants.
Ridiculous roster makes it impossible to make major changes until 2009/10.
Roster contains three players who would have any trade value (Lee, Balkman, Robinson).
Walsh is from New York.
Owes a future first round pick to Utah.
Horrible, insular working nvironment and culture at Madison Square Garden.
Owner is completely insane.
Highest paid player is completely insane.

Bucks:

Limited cap manuverability until 2010.
Five potential trade chips in case of a major overhaul (Redd, Williams, Bogut, Yi, Villanueva).
Location is closer to Indianapolis-based family.
Payroll limited to below luxury tax.

Money aside, the Bucks job is far more appealing. Would you honestly want to work for James Dolan? Would you really want to take on a complete organizational housecleaning at 67 years old? Wouldn’t you rather have the Bucks’ relatively inexpensive core to work with over the Knicks’ completely disjointed one?

Anyway, I’m sure that the Knicks checkbook will carry the day in this battle, while the Pacers’ current VP of Basketball Operations, David Morway, might be the Bucks’ consolation prize as their next GM.

Meanwhile, I attended my first Bucks game in a couple of weeks last night against the Heat, and I came away thoroughly perplexed.

It cannot be overstated just how bad the Heat are right now. They dressed nine players. They are missing their three best projected opening night starters (Wade and Haslem out, Shaq gone). Marion was a nonfactor, playing 28 minutes and with the Bucks outscoring the Heat by 10 with him in. They were so starved for wins that their bench was acting like it was game seven of the finals. Jason Williams actually looked interested!

Clearly the Bucks should have won this game going away, but that isn’t the only thing that has me confused. The season is now lost, so at this point shouldn’t learning a little about your team be a goal, instead of tossing out the same old lineups that haven’t worked all season?

Instead, after the game, Krystkowiak talked to the Journal Sentinel and vaguely blamed his players.

“We’ve talked about just about everything,” (Krystkowiak) said. “I’m not afraid to repeat some stuff but it’s frustrating. We need to be self-starters. We’ll look at the plan . . . what broke down as far as the tactical approach. . . . We’ll see as coaches if we can fix that and not put ourselves in the (same) position.

“Players have to take more responsibility. We all have to. Everybody has to step up a little bit here. It’s not a time for speeches and a lot of talk. It’s getting out and playing.”

I don’t really understand what Krystkowiak is trying to say here. I guess he’s decided that his players aren’t doing what he wants them to for whatever reason. But who is that really an indictment of? Doesn’t that reflect back on him?

I think that this was a veiled shot at Mo Williams’ defense, specifically his complete inability to get through picks and keep Jason Williams from getting open 3 after open 3. It got so bad that eventually Krystkowiak switched Mason onto Jason Williams (which didn’t stop Chris Quinn from getting 3 open 3’s himself in the 4th quarter).

But my real problem with Krystkowiak in this game was my usual complaint about him — lack of imagination. It’s time to realize that some new lineups — for a few minutes at a time — are necessary. Just a couple of adjustments might have given a little insight into the team, and maybe even saved the game.

Two examples:

When the Bucks were cruising along with a 13 point lead in the 3rd quarter I turned to my friend and said, “Now’s the time to bring in Yi for Mason.” Yi looks awful right now, and seems to be moving at half speed, but he did an okay job against Marion in the first half and that would have moved Villanueva to the 3. This was a perfect situation to try a big lineup out. How would Villanueva have looked matched up with Ricky Davis? What would Pat Riley have done? If it doesn’t work and Miami runs off a quick 6-0 run, then take Yi out.

In the fourth quarter, when the Bucks were in the process of blowing the game but hadn’t quite lost the lead yet, Krystkowiak gave Mo a rest and trotted out a lineup of Ivey-Bell-Mason-Yi-Ruffin. How, exactly, is that supposed to work? Who is supposed to score? With Yi in such a funk, not one of those players is remotely capable of creating a shot. Not surprisingly, that lineup was on the floor while Miami would take their eventual lead. Why not use Sessions in that situation? You would get a real point guard in there, someone who is bigger who might be able to defend a pick-and-roll a little better, and he would be matched up against a relatively poor defender (either Jason Williams or Chris Quinn). Don’t you want to see what you have in Sessions, even if it’s only for a couple of minutes at a time?

Either way, it is clear: from his actions during the game and his comments after it, Krystkowiak is missing the point: winning is still the goal, but the time has come to accept that what you have done to this point hasn’t worked. It’s time to think up some new options with an eye toward the future. If you are going to lose to Miami anyway, it’s pointless to lose to them by doing the exact same things that have carried you to 43 other losses this season.

It was almost exactly one year ago when Larry Krystkowiak had his home debut as head coach of the Bucks. They played the Spurs and after Mo Williams got kicked out of the game for arguing calls, Lynn Greer came in and inspired a rally which propelled them to a win over — and season sweep of — the eventual NBA champions.

Last night, though, was different. The Bucks had a 7-point lead when Mo blew his top, arguing a foul call against him (which was an accurate call, by the way) until he got one technical. Exactly why he got the second one is an open question, but the fact remains that Mo was still standing near the offical at the time. Ime Udoka makes both free throws, the lead is cut to five, and the next thing you know the Bucks lose by two.

After Mo went out, credit the Spurs for adjusting. Bell replaced Mo and the Spurs turned up the defensive heat, pressing the Bucks into submission. Milwaukee went several minutes barely able to get the ball across half court and the ensuing 15-0 Spurs run would wind up giving them the game.

So how is the loss to be blamed on Larry Harris?

Because he’s the one who put together a team with only four guards on it. You’ve got to hand it to the Spurs — Popovich realized that once Mo was out, he wanted to force the Bucks to go small. So he gave Duncan a rest and moved Oberto to center alongside Parker, Ginobli, Finley and Udoka. Instant 8-0 run against Bogut, Villanueva, Mason, Redd and Bell. When Krystkowiak had to rest Redd and go small by pulling Villanueva he had to get significantly weaker by bringing in Simmons and Ivey. The Spurs extended that run to 15.

Statistically, the Bucks have had the worst bench in the entire league this season. A large part of that is that they get no offense from their backcourt. At least last season they had Greer on the bench behind Blake/Boykins. Between Ivey and Bell, there just isn’t enough help on the bench. So as soon as Mo takes a seat, a good defensive team realizes they are easy pickings.

Sorry I haven’t posted much recently — in addition to some family obligations, I’ve been starting my NBA Draft preview. I have, however, found time to update IPM and Power Rankings. The surprise of the rankings: I had no idea the Sixers had been playing so well over the last month (7th best Eastern team). Maybe they are the team that wants to jump up and grab the #8 playoff spot.

The Bucks-Hornets game on Wednesday was a very entertaining, generally well-played game by both teams. Lets be honest about this teams’ prospects — they aren’t going to the playoffs, so all there really is to root for are exciting, hard-fought games that go down to the wire. They took on one of the best teams in the league last night — an athletic team that matches up poorly against them — and made it interesting.

While the heat seems to fall on Michael Redd for not getting a better shot up with 5 seconds remaining, unfortunately it must be said that the real goat was Dan Gadzuric. His 8 shots were peppered with four missed layups and a blown dunk. Once again, I don’t understand why he is backing up Bogut. Wasn’t Voskuhl playing 20 mpg a few months ago? Without Villanueva available, Gadzuric should be playing his 10 minutes a game alongside Bogut so that he never gets any touches outside of offensive rebounds. I don’t really understand how Gadzuric can get the ball so much that he puts up 8 shots in 15 minutes (only one off an offensive rebound) while Bogut can only manage 8 shots in 33 minutes.

One logical explaination for using Gadzuric at center is that Krystkowiak wanted a better athlete matched up with Tyson Chandler, but Chandler was out of the game for 9 of Gadzuric’s 15 minutes.

But the bigger news is that the Bucks held a team meeting on Tuesday, and according to details posted on RealGM (and then on the Journal-Sentinel message boards), the results weren’t very pretty. The essence of the posts are that the Bucks aren’t very happy with Krystkowiak’s comments after the Knicks game, aren’t happy with Krystkowiak’s game management, and aren’t very happy with Mo Williams’ play or attitude.

First of all, with all due respect to the RealGm poster who goes by “Europa” and first developed this story, it’s important to take all of this with a grain of salt. It’s one thing to hear details about something from a reporter who has well-developed sources (and who should have confirmed his story with multiple people), and another thing from someone who puts something up on an anonymous message board. While the details that “Europa” posts may be accurate or true, there is no way to know. This meeting hasn’t been mentioned in any other media outlets — it may even have never happened. Since one would assume that a meeting like this would only be attended by players and coaches, then logically his source is a player, coach or one of thieir close confidants. This source may, for example, have some sort of a personal issue with Mo, and would try to portray him in a negative light.

But this meeting probaby did happen. What do I think of it? It’s great! I’m very glad to hear that the players understand that the teams’ performance has been awful and is mad about it. It seems like they realize that they have underachieved better than management does. And then they follow up this “horrible, divisive meeting” by losing by four to one of the best teams in the league? Wonderful! At least somebody seems to think that Krystkowiak’s coaching strategies are more suited to a college than a pro team. I’d much prefer that they get mad and start fighting versus simply becoming indifferent.

Look, no matter what walk of life you are in, whenever groups of people are involved in something that is going badly they start hating each other. Poorly-run businesses have politicking and back-stabbing all the time. Divorces happen in families that have had a run of bad luck. It’s normal. It’s part of life. And in professional sports (probably in basketball more than others, because the small roster size makes each individual more important) closed-door meetings and infighting happens with every single team when things aren’t going so great.

Portland’s turnaround has been credited to a single practice that had turned into a series of cheap-shots and fistfights. Just because a few insults are thrown doesn’t mean that teams are torn apart.

Thanks to my season ticket rep, my wife and I sat courtside in the corner by the Bucks bench for the Hornets game. I spent a lot of time watching the bench to see how much the team seemed to be in the game, and I was pleasantly surprised. Everyone (even Villanueva and Sessions, in street clothes) was paying attention for the whole game. After Gadzuric came out of the game in the first half (after missing four layups) several players came over to console him and tell him to keep his head up (leading me to crack the incredibly obvious joke, “I’m surprised he connected on that high-five”). I had a lousy view for the final play because the members of the bench kept on standing and walking onto the court to see it for themselves. It was clear that the team was working hard throughout the game at both ends of the court.

Even Mo’s much-maligned defense almost turned the game for the Bucks when he tied up Chris Paul at the end of the third quarter, leading a frustrated Paul to pump-fake throwing the ball at the official for not calling a foul (drawing a technical but probably deserving an ejection).

The Bucks didn’t lose on Wednesday because their effort was lacking, they lost because they played a better team that is exceptionally good at getting high-percentage shots. All the team meetings in the world won’t change that.

Against a team with a big, athletic front line, Coach Krystkowiak finally realized, “Hey, I’ve got guys like that too!” and he saw that it was good.

While the combination of Yi and Villanueva didn’t overwhelm Atlanta’s frontcourt of Josh Smith and Marvin Williams, they played them to a draw. Since the same could be said for the fairly underwhelming Michael Redd/Joe Johnson matchup and Bell/Ivey vs. Atlanta’s trio of barely NBA level point guards, Andrew Bogut’s excellent night (21 points, 10 rebounds, 4 blocks, 1 turnover) was enough to propel the Bucks to a win over a team that came in having won 3 of their last 4.

So Villanueva didn’t shoot very well (2-7 in the 4th quarter). But he still made one more basket than Smith and Williams combined in the 4th (1-8 shooting, 11 points between them) and had 1 fewer rebound than the pair of Atlanta forwards (6 vs. 7). That illustrates my whole logic about using Villanueva at the 3 — while he’s not a shutdown defender by any means, he brings enough offense that he should be able to make his matchup a push, scoring and rebounding enough to cancel out about as much as he allows. This is opposed to using Redd (whose defense isn’t good enough to stop small forwards and whose offense gets dragged down by playing the 3) or Bell (who, for all of his effort, simply isn’t big enough to play up front).

The result from using the big front line? A 52-40 rebounding edge, including 18 offensive rebounds for the Bucks. That’s how you win when you shoot 38% for the game and take one fewer free throw (23) than the opposition makes (24). The rebounding gave the Bucks 13 more shots than the Hawks, which made the difference in the game.

Hopefully we’ll see Krystkowiak try the big lineup again in the next couple of games. Golden State always forces a crazy series of matchups. You need the extra big man in against New Orleans because of their superior rebounders in Tyson Chandler and David West, and against Phoenix you need your best offensive players in the game as much as possible. It’s not going to work well every night, but this team isn’t good enough to win every game either.

One major source of frustration about this game was that Yi is still having such a hard time with having his shots blocked inside. He obviously trying — using a series of pump-fakes trying to get his man in the air before going up. However, if you don’t go up strong enough in the first place, the fakes aren’t going to work, and sometimes they just make things worse. Once last night he got the ball right under the basket, but one fake simply allowed Josh Smith to get close enough to him to smother the shot.

It’s interesting watching the difference between Yi and Bogut going to the hole. Bogut does a nice job of leaping with his body, warding the defenders away from his hands and allowing him room to complete his shooting motion. Yi, on the other hand, leaps with his arms, extending them straight up as he elevates and getting his elbows extended so he doesn’t have much power coming back down. It’s really annoying that the last place you want to see your athletic 7-footer is right under the basket — that should at least be a trip to the line every time. But instead it’s usually a highlight play for the defense.

From a rotation perspective, I guess the one thing that I would have done differently last night was after removing Yi in the 4th quarter, I would have brought in Gadzuric to play power forward alongside Bell, Redd, Villanueva and Bogut instead of bringing Ivey back in. After all, the Hawks were still going big with Marvin Williams, Smith, Joe Johnson and Anthony Johnson while replacing Lorenzen Wright with Al Horford. But the the Bucks smaller lineup went on a game-sealing 7-0 run, so all is well.

Three straight tough home games coming up. Hopefully this win — over a deceptively good team and without Mo Williams — will propel them to more success on this tough homestand.