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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.

Drew Olson at OnMilwaukee.com managed to find the clip of Andrew Bogut high-fiving the air after a made free-throw in Atlanta on Wednesday. I had watched it during the game and assumed I would never get to relive the moment, but thankfully someone caught it and put it up on YouTube.

What does it mean? Well it’s amusing to say the least. A lot of OMC commenters went back and tried to say it was because of Bogut’s remarks about NBA players over the summer. I don’t think that’s it. We would have seen that all season long if that were the case.

What could it be? How about the idea that Charlie V and Player X (I’m not sure who the player on the other side was) had simply zoned out? Isn’t it possible that after losing twice to the Heat in a week, having to go on the road to Atlanta, and falling behind early that the players had mentally checked out?

If you watch the video closely, you can see Charlie V turn his head as Bogut makes the free throw to watch Zaza run out of the game. Possibly some sound over the speaker system snapped him back to life, but not in time to high-five Bogut.

In short, I really don’t think this is as big of a deal as everyone seems to want to make it out to be. It wasn’t a personal dig against Bogut. It simply was just a case of a losing team losing on the road resulting in players not paying attention.

Players are going to do a lot of things on auto-pilot as a season goes along, I think this was one of them that just happened to be caught on camera.

It is good to hear that the Bucks and Andrew Bogut are working on signing a contract extension, which will kick in after next season. But the real question is: how much should he get?

There are two things to consider when valuing Bogut’s contract extension – his age and production. While it’s hard to believe that averaging 13 points and 9 rebounds could actually have someone kicking around proposals that involve yearly paychecks of $15 million, that’s actually not so far off when comparing Bogut’s numbers to the contracts of his peers. Plus, Bogut gets a boost from the relative scarcity of semi-athletic big men compared to, say, six-foot-two point guards who shoot a lot.

At 23 years old, age is a factor in Bogut’s favor. Not counting Greg Oden, only two of the other top 15 centers in the league are significantly younger, Andrew Bynum (20) and Andris Biedrins (21).

Bogut will be looking for a five- or six- year contract, covering him from the ages of 25 to 29. To see how that would stack up against the contracts of his peers, I made a chart of the top 15 centers in the league that shows their current contracts and their ages (I included the 5 year/$60 million extension that Emeka Okafor turned down last year).

I felt that averaging how much current centers are making at those ages would be a fair way to judge an extension for Bogut. While Bogut is clearly not at the level of stars like Amare Stoudemire or Dwight Howard, he has done more in his career than Chris Kaman or Tyson Chandler had done at the point where they signed their extensions.

25-to-29 year old centers average about $12.5 million/year. That number is right between the $15 million that Stoudemire/Howard make and the $11 million that Chandler/Kaman earn. So, $13 million a year sounds about right.

Five years, $65 million or six years, $81 million.

This would mean a starting salary of $11 million in 2009/10, increasing by $1 million per year until 2013/14 or 2014/15.

Compared to his peers, this is a reasonable amount. It’s a lot of money, but that’s NBA big man economics for you. At least the Bucks have the center spot locked up with a capable option for the next six or seven years.

But there’s a problem, and it’s a mess created by Larry Harris’ $100 million bench. If the Bucks don’t make a deal to rid themselves of some combination of Bobby Simmons, Dan Gadzuric or Charlie Bell by the end of next season, they might be paying the luxury tax. If I assume that the cap and tax level goes up by 5% each of the next two seasons, then the luxury tax will be $69.9 million in 2009/10. When setting aside money for draft picks for the next two seasons, they would currently owe $68 million to 11 players at that point. And that is assuming that Charlie Villanueva is gone and doesn’t include resigning Ramon Sessions.

Further complicating matters is that between the fact that attendance is down across the league this season and that the slowing economy is probably hurting the league’s revenues across the board, the salary cap might go down this year. This means that the Bucks might find them already projected to be over the luxury tax in 09/10.

That isn’t that big a deal if you are gunning for a title now, but means something else when you have won fewer than 60 games in the last two years combined.

This, my friends, means that the Bucks have to make a move to dump salary this summer.

This means they might have to give up a valuable piece in order to get an expiring contract back. Like Mo Williams.

The more I think about it, the more I think Mo will be shopped around this summer. He would have value to several teams that need point guards, and his contract is large enough that he could be packaged with Simmons (or Gadzuric, but most likely Simmons) to get a big, expiring contract back. Trading Michael Redd doesn’t work because, at $15.7 million next year, you can’t combine him with one of the Bucks’ dog contracts and get back a $30 million expiring contract.

I’ve come up with some proposals, and I’ll publish them tomorrow. But be forewarned, they are ugly. They work financially, and can even get the Bucks under the cap in 09/10, but they aren’t going to sell tickets. However, this team needs work, and these potential trades are a starting point for the necessary moves that will have to be made to eventually make this a good team.

Be forewarned: the trades that the Bucks will have to consider in order to accomodate an extension for Bogut will make you sick to your stomach.

Milwaukee’s favorite Latrell Sprewell apparently really does need money to feed his family. He’s fallen on hard times as of late, failing to pay his bills on time. Everything we’ve seen in the past few months seems to indicate that he’s broke.

Of course, he could have $21 million from the Timberwolves at this point if he would have accepted their extension instead of randomly retiring after stating “I’ve got my family to feed.”

That $21 million would probably have been plenty to pay off the $1.3 million he owed on his boat (now something like $500,000), and to pay the mortgage on his $400,000 home in River Hills.

Latrell, if you’re reading this, we’d love to bring you on board to join the Fresh Coast Sports team. We realize you’re 37, and your playing days are over, but we think you’ve got an exceptional amount of insight on player-coach relations and contract negotiating strategy.

How about it Mr. Sprewell?

(As a side note, Andrew Bogut’s comments over the summer about NBA players blowing through money may have been inspired by bumping into Latrell on the Milwaukee party circuit.)

How in the world can you blow a 17 point lead with 14 minutes remaining?

First of all, I don’t care that Mo Williams was out. Everybody has to deal with losing starters, and the Knicks were also playing without Nate Robinson (as well as the addition-by-subtraction loss of Stephon Marbury).

Isiah Thomas even threw in the towel in the third quarter — after the Bucks extended their lead to 81-64, Thomas brought in Malik Rose and Renaldo Balkman, to go with David Lee, Jamal Crawford and Fred Jones, and didn’t make a single substitution for the rest of the game! He stopped coaching for 10 minutes (basically just telling his guys; “just do whatever you want and see what happens”), not calling a timeout until the Knicks had made a game of it at 93-86.

The “Wages of Wins” believers will try to say that David Lee was the reason the Knicks came back and won the game, but Lee didn’t really do anything out of the ordinary. His 8-12 shooting and 9 rebounds (4 offensive) looks great, but that’s just typical sneaky David Lee stuff — he shoots 55% anyway, so a 7-12 game would be average for him, and in his normal 32 minute outing he averages 10 boards (3 offensive). So he had a pretty typical game for hin — just your standard, underrated scrappy stuff that has carried the Knicks a 13-36 record against teams other than the Bucks this season.

Jamal Crawford was on fire, making all sorts of crazy stuff on his way to 30 points. That can happen with Crawford — he’s an average player overall but he either looks like a world-beater or the worst player in the league on any given night. The Knicks had good Jamal on Saturday, and their record is pretty respectable when he springs for 28+ points. This is a perfect example of how using a player “because he’s a good defender” is stupid. Crawford was making everything, and there really wasn’t much Ivey could do (within the rules, anyway) to stop him. Guys like Crawford will get hot sometimes and that’s life. So Ivey couldn’t do anything to stop Crawford early, and by shooting 2-9 and scoring 4 points, Ivey didn’t help out offensively as well. So Crawford isn’t really the reason the Knicks won the game — he helped, but even with him putting up big numbers this game was winnable.

No, it comes down to coaching. Larry Krystkowiak, I have a few questions for you. Specifically:

When you have a 17 point lead, why would you wait until the Knicks have run off 15 unanswered points before calling a timeout? I can see the logic that Krystkowiak wanted to let the quarter run out and then things got out of hand, but this is the second time this season that the Bucks have blown a big 3rd quarter lead to the Knicks. After they got two or three consecutive baskets, why would you not call timeout to break the Knicks’ rhythm and remind the guys that the Bucks have been in this situation against New York before?

How does Charlie Villanueva get one shot in the fourth quarter? He shot 10-22 for the game and didn’t see the ball in seven minutes of work in the fourth. He shot 6-12 and grabbed 6 rebounds in the third quarter. Is anyone calling plays here? Did anyone realize that the Knicks went small, were using a 6′7″ and 6′9″ frontcourt, and Isiah wasn’t bothering with substitutes?

How does Bogut get two shots in the fourth quarter? He made one and then got called for his sixth foul on the second. Once again, he was being guarded by 6′7 Malik Rose.

Why would you not go big with Gadzuric in the fourth quarter? Krytkowiak used Gadzuric at power forward a little against Dallas and it worked quite well. The Knicks were charging back into the game with their small lineup so why wouldn’t you try to force the Knicks out of it? Get Ivey out of the game, let Bell play point guard, and move Villanueva to small forward so that Redd will be guarded by Crawford instead of Balkman. Then Gadzuric’s athleticism can at least try to match Lee’s, Villanueva has a big height advantage over Balkman, and Redd gets to pick on the worst defender in the league.

Why in the world was Michael Ruffin in the game on the final posession? Michael Ruffin is the WORST OFFENSIVE PLAYER IN THE HISTORY OF THE NBA! In a nine year career he has averaged 4.2 points per 36 minutes. He is a nice enough player, and his strengths in other areas makes up for his lack of scoring. But you cannot have him in the game in a situation where you have to get a basket.

I’m no NBA coach, but I know for certain that if I was in Isiah Thomas’ shoes drawing up my defense for the final play I’m doubling Redd hard with Ruffin’s man (Lee or Rose) and hoping to force the ball into Ruffin or Ivey’s (2-9 shooting) hands. Wouldn’t you know that’s exactly what Isiah did — when the Bucks first ran their inbounds play, Redd was doubled as soon as he caught the inbounds pass and fouled (the Knicks had a foul to give). As Redd was fouled, he passed the ball to Ivey, who would have had an open 20-footer for the win (which would have been option #2 on the list of “likely good outcomes for the Knicks”). Instead, the Knicks denied Redd the ball on the second try, leaving Bell with multiple defenders running at him and no choice but to dump it off to an open Ruffin (#1 on the list of “likely good outcomes for the Knicks”). Incredibly, the Knicks were able to double team two guys on the final play, because the Bucks were using two players (Ivey and Ruffin) that Isiah didn’t mind being open.

You needed a shot from a decent scorer. Why wasn’t Yi in for Ruffin? If it was me, I’d have had Simmons inbounding instead of Ivey, but that’s nitpicking — it’s not like Simmons was any good last night, either. But Michael Ruffin? Michael Ruffin. In a situation where he might take the last shot. Michael Ruffin. He’s 6′8. He’s taken 19 shots this season. When you have a 7-foot shooter on your bench. Really. Michael Ruffin.

Well, anyhow, another day another loss. This was on the list of “games the Bucks need to win if they are going to make the playoffs”, so one more bad loss and they need to start beating good teams to make up ground. The door is closing. If they lose Monday to the Clippers, then it will slam shut.

Well, the year’s most hotly anticipated sporting event in the world took place in Milwaukee on Saturday night. And it was kind of a bust. Yao wasn’t particularly effective, Yi was pretty bad, and both of them got dinged up in the game (Yao tweaking his ankle and Yi hurting his shoulder a little bit).

There might be a silver lining to the Yi injury, though — while it doesn’t seem to be anything serious, maybe it will give the Bucks an excuse to rest him for a couple of games, as his play has become worse and worse over the last few weeks (1-10 shooting last night, posting a miserable, team-killing 0.4504 IPM over his last 8 games).

The Rockets game should finally put to rest the idea that the Bucks are better without Michael Redd. Redd is just as capable of allowing 33 points to Tracy McGrady as Royal Ivey proved to be, but at least Redd wouldn’t only score two points himself. One thing I couldn’t understand was why Krystkowiak kept putting progressively smaller defenders on McGrady. Yi had him for a couple of posessions, then Ivey, then Williams, then Bell. Even when they doubled him I kept seeing what seemed like a steady stream of midgets running at T-Mac. Meanwhile, bigger players like Simmons and Mason were cruising along after Shane Battier. I realize that Battier is a perfectly good player who can kill you with his 3-point shooting and ability to crash the boards, but don’t you have to try to make him beat you instead of McGrady? Without Redd the McGrady matchup was a no-win situation, but it sure looked bad to see McGrady getting 4-6 inches on his defenders all night.

All things considered, this wasn’t that bad a game for the Bucks. Houston is a better team and came in on an 11-3 winning streak. For all my complaining, the Bucks really had no good option as far as trying to stop McGrady, so that was a big Rockets advantage. Considering that the Bucks shot 39%, allowed 50% shooting, were outrebounded by 13 and had to counter McGrady/Battier with Ivey/Bell/Simmons/Mason — losing by eight isn’t all that bad. At least Andrew Bogut slightly outplayed Yao.

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.

An enjoyable, energetic Bucks-Jazz game was ruined by a true clunker of a 4th quarter. After shooting 57% through three quarters, the Bucks managed to shoot 2 for 18 in the fourth, turning a close game into an 11 point loss.

When Andrew Bogut had shot 8-11 going into the 4th, how does he only get one shot in the final 12 minutes?

Why does Charlie Villanueva play 8 minutes, meaning that Charlie Bell has to guard Matt Harpring for half of the quarter and Andrei Kirilenko for the remainder? The most perplexing thing about this decision is that Villanueva actually played his 8 minutes at small forward, just like I’ve been asking for!

There was no way that the Bucks would win this game with Mo, Redd, Yi and Bell combining to shoot 1-16 in the quarter. They probably wouldn’t have won had they shot closer to 7-16, because Utah is pretty good and was getting to the foul line at will (22 free throws in the 4th). But I just don’t see how the team is going to get anywhere by pinning one of their 5 best players to the bench more and more.

Stories abound about how Villanueva’s practice habits are a major problem, and I’m sure that’s what’s going on here. However, it seems to me that the best way to get him in the flow would be to play him more, not less. I know that Krystkowiak’s whole M.O. is defense, energy, hard practice gets you game time. But you have to treat these guys like men — give them some responsibility and a reason to go out and work harder. Some people simply don’t respond as well to that “practice well and the rewards will follow” stuff. But this isn’t college — you are stuck with the players you have, so you have to reach them all in different ways.

Krystkowiak also used the “all-bench” lineup for a bit in the second quarter, but I’m certainly not going to complain about it at all today. The altitude probably makes it a bit of a necessity (I notice that Jerry Sloan used it as well), and Krystkowiak only used it for 4 minutes while the Bucks also played well during that stretch. But most of all, I was glad to see that Gadzuric was part of that lineup.

While Danny G didn’t really fill the box score — 2 points, a board, two blocks, a steal and 3 turnovers in 10 minutes — he also forced two Jazz turnovers by taking charges. One of his turnover was on the classic Gadzuric offensive foul — he sets a screen and “rolls” to the basket by turning his back to the hoop, holding both of his hands up, (probably screams out to the defense “I’m not looking where I’m going!”) and starts chugging backwards. This sequence ends with him looking surprised at the fact that (a) a defender jumped in and took a charge or (b) he ran over a defender that wasn’t looking. You’d think that after 10 years of NBA and college ball that Dan would have learned that this move doesn’t work, but I guess not. That’s why he should be playing power forward and working on the baseline where he can attack for offensive rebounds, not being a part of the offense as a center.

Yi’s game was kind of hard to figure out. Only 6 points on 2-8 shooting and only 3 rebounds, but 4 blocks and 2 steals made him a helpful piece of the puzzle. He also cross-matched onto Okur and did well against him, harassing him into 3-11 shooting. Between that matchup being a push and Bogut-Boozer being even as well, (23-10-3 vs. 21-10-3), it was nice to see the Bucks get a draw against one of the best frontcourts in the league.

All things considered, an 0-3 road trip against the Lakers, Suns and Jazz isn’t so bad, especially since the Bucks didn’t get blown out in any of them (and with the incredible disappearing Michael Redd being pretty poor in two games). But 8 minutes for Charlie V? That’s no way to win.

Just how good is Andrew Bogut? Where does he rank among the best centers in the NBA? While he is definitely behind players like Stoudemire, Howard and Yao, I feel a compelling argument can be made that he is currently the 6th best center in the game.

While there is nothing very spectacular about his game, I feel that he has made dramatic improvements this season. His defense has been much better, and while he is not quite the rebounder the Bucks had hoped for, he is holding his own. And, let us not forget, he is still a year younger than Patrick Ewing was in his rookie season. There is still room for Bogut to improve as he physically matures.

It seems to me that people generally have 4 complaints about Bogut: His free throw shooting is terrible (very valid point), he doesn’t shoot enough (look at the coaches for that one), he’s not Dwight Howard (not really his fault) and he’s not Chris Paul (again, not his fault).

When looking at IPM, Bogut’s numbers are just okay, with an 0.828 ranking him at #13 among centers. However, there is one major stat that is not recorded in box scores, and it’s something that dramatically improves Bogut’s value: charges taken.

Charges really should be part of the box score. They are far more valuable than the other defensive stats, steals and blocks, because not only does a charge always result in a change of possession (while a block is often sent out of bounds or recovered by the shooting team), it also causes a personal foul on the offender. Announcers just love to say how the mere presence of a shotblocker causes players to think twice about driving the lane – the same can be said for a player who has been hit with an offensive foul or two.

Fortunately, 82games.com tracks the number of charges taken, and last season Bogut took the third most in the NBA (74), behind Anderson Varejao (99) and Devin Harris (77). However, Bogut missed 15 games. He and Varejao were the only two players to average over 1.0 charges taken per game (1.22 for Varejao, 1.12 for Bogut). While I don’t have precise data, Bogut has taken charges at about the same rate this season – I heard someone mention a couple of weeks ago that he had just taken his 30th charge of the season.

82games.com only listed the top 35 charge-takers from last season, but there are two interesting things from that list. One is that the number of charges taken by the top players drops off very quickly – only 31 charges (0.38 per game) were enough to get Jarron Collins and Kevin Martin on the list of the best charge-takers in the league. There are also very few centers who take charges, clearly preferring to go after blocks instead. Besides Bogut, the only other starting center on the list was Ben Wallace (44), while Varejao, Jermaine O’Neal (57), and Jason (45) and Jarron (31) Collins rounded out the big guy contingent.

So, I think it’s reasonable to assume that the average center takes about ¼ a charge per game. Therefore, Bogut and Varejao probably take about 0.8 charges per game more than the average center and Ben Wallace takes 0.25 charges per game more. So, I adjusted IPM, counting charges the same as a blocked shot and adding in the expected number of charges those three players would take above the average center. The data is available here.

Not surprisingly, Bogut got a nice boost, moving up to the #8 center with a 0.8776 IPM, narrowly behind Pau Gasol (0.8938). Despite having a reputation of being a soft defensive player (because he’s, you know, white and from another country), Bogut’s charge-adjusted rate of blocks per minute (.074) ranks him 6th among centers with over 200 minutes played, and two of those ahead of him are Alonzo Mourning (who retired on Monday) and David Harrison (13 mpg, plus one drug suspension).

So that takes care of the numbers. But who would GM’s want on their team?

Bogut is clearly well behind Amare Stoudemire, Dwight Howard and Yao Ming. Every GM would prefer to have one of those three players over Bogut.

With all the accolades that David Lee and Gerald Wallace have gotten over recent seasons about being underrated players, Marcus Camby has probably become the most underrated player in the game. He’s the best shot blocker and second best rebounder in the league and is pretty efficient offensively. He has gotten better with age, although his injury history will always make his GM nervous. Most GM’s would take Camby over Bogut, except for a couple that may be afraid of his brittleness. Of course, I’m only thinking about who a GM would want right now — if the next 3-5 years are a consideration, the Bogut gets the nod from everyone.

I’ve been thinking about writing this post for a while, but I wanted to wait until after the Bogut-Bynum matchup this week. Well, I think it’s pretty clear that Andrew Bynum is a superior player to Bogut (the title of this post was originally supposed to be “Is Andrew Bogut the 5th best center in the NBA�, but that changed). Bynum is shooting 63% this season, has become an excellent rebounder and shot blocker, and while Bogut had a good game in LA, Bynum pretty much dominated that matchup. There are two questions about Bynum – his defense and his motivation. Bynum’s position defense has been on-and-off enough that Phil Jackson hasn’t seen fit to give him 30 mpg, while Jackson also made some odd comments to the media about how Bynum is doing a great job of motivating himself by playing for a contract extension. Normally one would say that there is no way Bynum shouldn’t be playing until he fouls out every night, but Jackson knows a thing or two about the game – if he thinks Bynum’s mental lapses are enough to limit him to 30 mpg then he’s right. Still, almost every GM would take Bynum over Bogut, except for a few that might feel an $80 million contract extension will send Bynum’s weight into the stratosphere.

Can you say fluke? It’s pronounced “Chris Kaman.� While Kaman’s IPM (0.9268) has dominated Bogut’s, I really doubt that he is going to keep it up beyond this season. Kaman’s production has risen along with his increased responsibility without Elton Brand alongside him, and it’s likely that he will slide back a little bit. While he has rebounded much better this season, the most impressive thing about him is that he is blocking double the shots he has in years past, while fouling much less (averaging about the same number of fouls per game as last year but in 10 more minutes per game). He is clearly playing smarter and better, but that hasn’t translated into wins. Kaman has been very up-front about his childhood struggles with hyperactivity and ADD, and while that is under control now he does still have some quirks (such as recently discussing on ESPN how he likes to take his boat to international waters so he can fish with a shotgun – not a smart thing to do, and definitely not a wise thing to discuss with a news organization), so his personality still has to be something of a question to GM’s when considering him. Kaman is having a great year, but when looking at his career as a whole, I believe that given the choice most GM’s would choose Bogut over him.

Pau Gasol and Bogut have put up almost identical IPM’s this year, but have done it in the opposite manners. Bogut is a much better rebounder, shot blocker, passer, and gets more steals than Gasol; while Gasol’s only clear advantage over Bogut is his free throw shooting (making almost 100 more free throws this season). Gasol may be a slightly better player, but the only thing he brings is scoring ability – the easiest attribute to find in other players – while Bogut does the gritty stuff much better. The two players would probably make for a great pair, but if a GM had to choose one over the other, I’d think that at this stage of their careers most of them would choose Bogut, unless they were desperate for scoring.

Of the next 10 centers behind Bogut in IPM, 4 of them (Shaquille O’Neal, Zyrdunas Ilgauskas, Brad Miller, the now-retired Alonzo Mourning) are formerly excellent players who are clearly on the downside of their careers. Nazr Mohammad and Brendan Haywood are effective short-minute players, but not someone to build a team around. Bogut would clearly be preferable to all of them.

That leaves four defensive specialists behind Bogut:

Andris Biedrins and Tyson Chandler are somewhat similar players – both are bad enough offensive players to know not to shoot much, which makes them highly efficient because they take nothing but good shots and shoot over 60%. Both are great rebounders – far superior to Bogut – but while both have reputations as shot-blockers, Bogut has actually outperformed both of them thus far this season (which I found to be very surprising). Biedrins is a hard player to figure out – he produces great numbers and has a solid plus-minus differential, but doesn’t seem to fit anywhere because of his slim build and poor shooting skills. I think that Chandler’s leap in shooting percentage has more to do with playing with Chris Paul than anything he has done – Chandler seems to finish an alley-oop per quarter. You might be able to find a few GM’s who would prefer one of these players to Bogut, but not a majority. Samuel Dalembert is another defensive specialist, and I’ve always liked his game (but not so much at $10 million/per), but Bogut over him would be obvious.

That leaves one final comparison: Emeka Okafor. His numbers are down across the board from his career year last season, and despite what all six Bobcats fans will tell you, it’s getting a little late to predict stardom for him. He is a very formidable rebounder and is shooting above 50% but he is a very poor passer and a turnover machine, and despite a reputation as a shotblocker, Bogut has been much better. Additionally, it seems like Okafor’s own organization has doubts about him as a center, as they traded their only healthy power forward for a backup center in Nazr Mohammed, and have been using Okafor at power forward a lot since the trade. There’s also the matter of Okafor’s back problems, which haven’t been an issue for a couple of years but are something that never truly goes away. On stats alone Bogut is a superior player, but when age and health are considered, Bogut pulls away.

Of course, I’m not comparing Bogut to the top big forwards who also play a lot of center like Garnett, Duncan, Bosh or Jermaine O’Neal, so I wouldn’t go so far as to call him the 6th best big man in the game, but my real point is to see how Bogut stacks up against his peers – the back-to-the-basket centers.

The numbers don’t lie, and it’s confirmed by observations about his peers: right now, in terms of “you are a GM, who do you want?� Andrew Bogut is the 6th best center in the NBA.

I’ve updated IPM and Power Rankings this week, links available as aways on the side of the page, and I’ve got some thoughts about the Lakers and Phoenix games.

First of all, it sure was nice to see the Bucks be competetive on the road against a couple of good teams. These last two games are literally the only times the Bucks have not been blown out when up against tough competetion. Of course, they still managed to trail by double digits late in the 4th quarter of both games, so it’s not like they were going to win them, but it’s better than losing by 35.

Of course, these games coincided with two of the fastest paced games that Milwaukee has played this season, and they illustrated the advantages and disadvantages of running more:

The Bucks’ personnel is much better suited for a running attack. Andrew Bogut had two excellent games against top competition (although his counterparts had even better games both times), shooting 19-28 in the two games, grabbing 22 rebounds and dishing 8 assists vs. two turnovers. He might not be the most athletic guy, but he can run with the best big men. Despite playing poorly, Yi looked much more comfortable in a faster offense, as he actually got some post touches (gotta go up strong when you’ve got a size mismatch, though!) and put the ball on the floor agressively. More running equals more shots for the Bucks’ talented offensive players.

The problem was that the rebounding really suffered at a higher pace. The Bucks were outrebounded badly in both games (which I believe is the first time that’s happened this season) , 46-41 against the Lakers and 34-27 against Phoenix. Getting outrebounded like that against Phoenix, the worst rebounding team in the league, is unacceptable but somewhat justified when you figure that the Bucks’ rebounding strength has been their offensive rebounding and they did shoot 56% for the game, limiting their chances. Still, not enough crashing the boards.

The Bucks really needed the flu virus to stop Kobe Bryant, because it was pretty obvious that their defense couldn’t. I’ve sorry, Coach K, but 6′3″ Charlie Bell cannot check Kobe. Between Bell, Ivey and a returning Redd there was not much of a chance they would keep Kobe from doing whatever he wanted. So isn’t that the perfect time to use Villanueva at the 3 and move Simmons to shooting guard for a stretch or two? It makes sense against the Lakers — they start Luke Walton at small forward, who isn’t particularly fast or a shooter but is a great passer. Wouldn’t the long arms of Villanueva make him a tough matchup for Walton? Then you can use a defender against Kobe who is a better physical match for him than Bell. It’s not like Villanueva was having an awful game — he scored 8 points and got 4 rebounds and two assists against one turnover in only 15 minutes — or that he had to play because Yi was struggling. Mo was playing well and is perfectly capable of running the offense. So why not go big?

So even though Villanueva is seeing his minutes cut as Yi’s increases (36 minutes in the two games for V, against 50 for Yi), Charlie V now has a higher IPM than Yi. There’s nothing wrong with using Yi (who only played 17 minutes when he struggled against Phoenix) but has to be more time for V.

Meanwhile, Gadzuric didn’t see the court in either game. I really think he should be getting a few minutes a night — he’s played well in his limited minutes the last month.

Well, two losses in games the Bucks weren’t supposed to win. But it’s encouraging to see them play well after just a couple of weeks ago when it looked like they were about ready to give up and mail in the rest of the season.