The Bratwurst – Milwaukee Bucks Blog

When Scott Skiles was hired as the Bulls coach, the improvement was immediate. The Bulls didn’t win much more with Skiles at the helm at the beginning (he replaced Bill Cartwright mid-season) but they immediately looked better on the court. Much more hustle, a much more coordinated defense. 20 point losses became 6 point losses. They were simply better.

The same thing is happening with the Bucks.

It’s not quite time to start making playoff plans, as the team’s 3 wins have come against some of the leagues’ worst (Washington, OKC and the Knicks) but the product on the floor is so much better than last year — better with people rotating to help out on defense and better with Sessions and Ridnour quickly deciding what to do on offense instead of Mo and Redd pounding the ball and refusing to give it up until the shot clock wound down to 2 seconds.

I’ve posted the seasons’ first IPM update and season power rankings.

What do the numbers say? Lets take a look:

The Bucks have been the #10 team in the league, and the #6 team in the East. Given their rather lackluster schedule strength thus far (beating 3 of the bottom 7 in the league), I’d expect this ranking to fall once they play Boston, Phoenix and San Antonio in the next 5 days. But there are some good things going on here.

First: The Bucks are playing defense and it shows. Through the first 5 games, the Bucks have averaged a defensive IPM of 3.28, good for #8 in the league. That’s simply fantastic. The offense is a somewhat anemic 3.45, only #20, but the defense has been better than the offense — and that translates to wins. It’s hard to believe that the defense could make that much of a jump with Andrew Bogut the only dependable big man, so it will likely slip somewhat soon. But the difference in the way the team plays is obvious to the naked eye and is also borne out in the stats. Scott Skiles has made a huge difference already.

The players:

Charlie Villanueva, 0.918 IPM: Charlie V has mixed in some lousy games with a couple of really good ones, and the result has been a really nice IPM. He is averaging 22 points and 13 rebounds per 40 minutes, and a respectable 1.84 blocks+steals per 40, which is a huge improvement over the last couple of seasons. So why is he only playing 22 minutes per game? Obviously, Scott Skiles has major problems with Villanueva’s defense. I get the feeling that Skiles may be intentionally putting up with Villa’s defense just long enough to make sure he is feeling it offensively, and then getting him out of the game as soon as it appears he is going cold. An example is the Wizards game on Wednesday — the Bucks ran out to a 15 point lead with Villanueva in during the first quarter, where he only shot 2-8 but grabbed 6 rebounds and had 2 assists. But once he struggled in the third quarter — 4 minutes, 0-1 shooting, 2 fouls — he was benched for the game. The result here is that Skiles may be artificially inflating Villanueva’s IPM by only using him while he is on a hot streak, but maybe he’s found the best way to use a player who is sometimes unstoppable offensively but always a liability defensively.

After a horrible preseason, Ramon Sessions (0.9224 IPM) chose a great time to really turn it on. 18 points and 8 assists per 40 on 50% shooting is exactly what the biggest optimist would have predicted for him. The best part has been Sessions’ decision making — he doesn’t mess around (like Mo) when he brings the ball up. Either he swings the ball around, tries to hit a cutter, or heads for the rim. He still has trouble with his jump shot when pressured — his natural form results in an ugly shot that comes out of his hands with sidespin on it — but he has clearly been working on his form, as it looks pretty nice when he is left open. Luke Ridnour should remain the starter, as having a Vinnie Johnson-type like Sessions coming off of the bench is a huge luxury, and one the Bucks need, given the awful production from the rest of the bench. I just hope the shooting percentage can hold up — as it might not as players start laying off of him to cut off the drive and make him shoot.

Andrew Bogut (0.713 IPM): I guess you can justify the slow start somewhat for Bogut as the only real problem for him seems to simply be not getting many shots. He’s shot 67.5%, which, as I like to say, means one of three things — you are Wilt Chamberlain, you are a horrible offensive player who is smart enough to only shoot when wide open under the basket, or you aren’t shooting enough. Clearly the latter is the problem, but he seems to be having a hard time getting open. I think the problem isn’t with Bogut, it is either his teammates or Skiles’ offense (and probably a bit of both). With Bogut the only inside presence on the team it becomes very easy to double him the second he touches the ball because his teammates are always hanging around the 3-point line. As a result, Bogut’s turnovers are up a little more than you would like, but at least he is rebounding (11.6 per 40) and getting dirty on defense (8 blocks and 7 steals). However, the free throw shooting is becoming a real problem — is there any reason for an athletic 7-footer like Bogut to be 33% from the foul line? If he had a jump shot then he could distribute out of the high post and probably average 18 ppg and 3 assists in his sleep, but that’s wishful thinking at this point of his career. But the free throw shooting is a major, major problem that threatens to short circuit the Bucks season — their offense is predicated on getting him touches and freeing up someone else for jumpers, so what good is he if you don’t want him touching the ball late in games because you don’t want him getting fouled?

LR Mbah a Moute (0.669 IPM): I was wrong about him. I admit it. I wanted Richard Hendrix in the draft, so that clouded my judgement of Moute from the beginning. But his defense and ability to guard three positions is a major plus — the type that wins games. The problem with LR is that his IPM right now is significantly better than it was in college (0.577), and an increase when moving up to the next level is beyond rare. He has shot 60% and so far has made some big ones, but I’d expect his FG% to drop to the low 40’s by seasons end.

Charlie Bell (0.29 IPM): I don’t know where that huge knee brace came from, but Bell might be better off staying on the bench and rehabbing for a while. He should not have started Wednesday’s game against Washington. He has shot poorly (30%) and turned the ball over far more than usual (8 times in 100 minutes played) while clearly not being able to play as physical defense as normal. He’s not right. The Bucks have been outscored by 16 points per game with him on the court and outscored the opposition by 12 ppg without him.

Overall, I would say this has been a very encouraging start to the season but one that is likely to hit a rough patch. The schedule gets a lot rougher in the next week, and then comes a long road grind. The record will slip, but as long as the team keeps playing like they have, I will be happy.

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

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

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

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

On to my preseason analysis:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

With a T-Shirt. Seriously.

Through the beauty of the benefits of being a season ticket holder, a friend and I found ourselves sitting on center court, 12 rows up on Sunday night. We were having a great time. Until the Bucks brought in the T-Shirt cannon, the T-Shirt slingshot, the T-Shirt Cheerleaders, and, apparently, Derrick Turnbow.

As shirts were flying about, suddenly I look up and see whizzing toward my face a shirt that must have been a misfire off of a slingshot — it was coming in low, fast, and had me in its sights. I put up my hands too late, and got blasted solidly in the left eye. I yelled, “I’m hit!” and fell backwards into my seat. The shirt ricoched off of my face and hit my friend in the ear hard enough for him to say; “Ow! That hit me in the ear, man! That hurt!” I bounced into my seat, my legs coming up fast enough to catch the offending shirt on the rebound between my knees.

Being the nice guy that I am, I gave the shirt to the little girl next to me, whose brother had already caught another shirt.

Boy, you tell the truth for 30 or 40 negative posts about a team, and this is the treatment you get?

In all seriousness, though, an inch down and to the right and I could have had my nose broken by a flying T-shirt.

The problem was that the shirt was balled up to slightly larger than a baseball, and strapped together with insulated cord that was about as thick as what you would use to wire a house with. Whose bright idea was it to send these things into the stands at 100 mph? Are they going to stick firecrackers in them next? Better train your slingshot operators better, guys. It would have been something else if the person who got hit wasn’t me but was the 5-year-old girl on her mothers’ shoulders who was next to me.

In other issues surrounding the Wizards-Bucks game, there was the matter of the Bucks allowing an 11-0 run to end regulation and let the Wizards get into overtime. This did not bother me at all.

That 11-0 run was a series of fluke plays by the Wizards that just happened despite the best efforts of the Bucks. They allowed two deep 3-pointers by DeShawn Stevenson (who is a 36% 3-point shooter. He should miss one of those.), Had a turnover where Mo tried to get the ball to Bogut down low and it was slapped away (Bad luck. 90% of the time something good would come out of that play), and allowed an offensive rebound off of a missed free throw that turned into a potential 3-point play (Bell sliced in and actually knocked the rebound away from Bogut).

Several plays in a row for the Wizards that can only be attributed to luck. Or to beating the odds 4 times in a row. No big deal.

Actually, I felt it was a great effort by the Bucks tonight. To call the first quarter “sloppy” would understate it, but both teams were clearly thrown off by the 5 pm start time. Even though the Bucks played without Michael Redd and Charlie Villanueva (and Bobby Simmons was up to his old “1-5 shooting, three turnovers” tricks), the backcourt was more than up to the task.

I don’t know if this was actually Krystkowiak’s gameplan, but by letting Caron Butler get his (40/8/5) and clamping down on everyone else, the Bucks were able to get a win.

Of course, we are now going on a month of seemingly playing better without Michael Redd than with him. Which begs the question: are they a better team without him?

No way.

If Redd had been available tonight, then once Simmons got into foul trouble early, Krystkowiak would have shifted Redd onto Butler instead of bringing Bell in to face him. This would have hurt the Bucks in two ways — Redd would have had to expend energy defending him and costing himself offense in the process; and Butler would have had to continute to run his teams’ offense instead of taking the shorter Bell into the post all night.

It worked like a charm.

And it also helped that both Bell and Ivey were teriffic offensively, combining for 39 points, 8 rebounds, 12 assists and 4 steals vs. only 3 turnovers.

Please don’t think this team is better without Redd — it’s better without Redd playing small forward.

Last year the injury-riddled Bucks often played with as many as 4 starters sidelined. They fired their coach for underachieving. While having one of the best offenses in the conference (11th best offensive rating in the league — measured as points per 100 posessions) their defense was miserable (29th in defensive rating). They were outscored by 4.4 points per game, the second worst margin in the conference.

How could it get any worse?

They hired a new coach who brought a “defense and intensity” mantra. They got their starters back, having withstood only one major injury through half of the season. However, while their offense is worse (18th offensive rating) their defense has not changed (still 29th). Most damming, they are now being outscored by 6 points per game, still the second worst margin in the conference.

What’s the difference between last year and this year — the “season of defense”? Nothing, except that the Bucks are playing at a slower pace (getting the 19th most posessions per game this season, vs. the 10th most last year). So they are allowing three fewer points per game — because the opposition is getting the ball one and a half fewer times per game. But that doesn’t really help because they score 4 fewer points per game than last year.

There is one positive that has come from this season — the Bucks are a much better rebounding team. Last season their opponents outrebounded them by 300 boards, this year they are net-positive 30 and are actually one of the top offensive rebounding teams in the league. That’s good to see — there’s probably nothing more frustrating to watch in basketball than your team constantly getting pounded on the glass.

From a talent perspective, this team should be significantly better. Bogut is much improved. Mo Williams is slightly improved and much healthier. Michael Redd is slumping a little, but is healthier. Yi Jianlian is an improvement on Brian Skinner. The only difference has been small forward — Ruben Patterson was far superior to Desmond Mason even before Mason got hurt, and the “throw it at the wall and see what sticks” combination of Simmons, Redd and Bell has been brutal at the 3. But with all the injuries last year, Patterson played a lot of power forward, so that’s not really a direct comparison.

Especially without a true small forward (and the inability of Simmons to step up this year) then this team’s ceiling was probably never much more than 42 or 43 wins (so about 20 or 21 as of today). But is there any excuse for their point differential being worse than last year? And for their offense getting worse without the defense getting better? The spotlight for that falls directly on Larry Krystkowiak.

Say what you will about Terry Stotts — but at least he kept his team from getting blown out every time they faced a good opponent. On a team of offensively talented, defensively limited players, Stotts had them firing away. It didn’t work all the time, but the Bucks stole a few games (winning at San Antonio and Golden State last year) and kept some of them surprisingly close (at Phoenix). After getting manhandled twice by Detroit this season Andrew Bogut commented that he couldn’t understand why they had played the Pistons tough for the previous couple of years but suddenly don’t look like they belong in the same league as them. Well — the difference is that now they have the same players trying to play Detroit’s style. And that wont work when the Pistons are much better suited for the defense-first game.

This is a perfect example of why NBA teams shouldn’t hire college coaches — the only way to win at the highest level is to customize your coaching strategy to maximize the strength of your players. You can’t just run “your” system because that’s what you are most comfortable doing and hope the players fit in.

What are some changes that Larry Krystkowiak has to make?

Less Royal Ivey, more Charlie Bell. Defensive ability is so hard to quantify. I’ve become convinced that except in the case of erasers like Kevin Garnett or transcendant stars like Michael Jordan the way to get a reputation as a defensive stopper has less to do with ability and more with a willingness to get into a good-looking defensive stance and look frustrated with yourself after you get beat. The bottom line is that one of these guys has to play. Ivey has no offensive game whatsoever and not nearly enough defensive ability to make up for it. Now that Bell is shooting much better, he is a far superior option — as long as he’s playing point guard and guarding players his size.

Pick up the pace. The Bucks have so many players that can score that they simply must run more. If there are more shots available for everyone then it becomes easier for players to take good shots. The defense-first thing simply isn’t working, and there’s nothing about playing at a higher pace that means you automatically play worse defense. I’d use some full-court pressure as one means of speeding things up.

Play Villanueva, Yi and Bogut together. The Bucks are the first team ever to have three athletic 7-footers, two of whom have 3-point range and one of which once starred in a Nike commercial where after dunking over some Chinese guy he started flashing gang signs. It’s a truly unique combination. Why not throw these guys out there and see what they can do? At the very least you’ll get some highlight dunks. And it keeps Michael Redd in the backcourt, where he belongs.

Don’t be so afraid to use your timeouts! After excellent first halves against Golden State and New Orleans, the Bucks came out flat in the third (another indictment of the coach, by the way). The Warriors stretched a 1 point lead to 10 in four posessions and the Hornets erased the Bucks’ lead with an 11-2 run. The flat third quarter starts doomed the Bucks in both games. Both times Krystkowiak waited too long to try and stop the runs by calling time out. Look, why save timeouts for the end of the game when if you don’t use them early you’ll be down by 20 at the end? I learned this lesson by watching Pat Riley a couple of years ago. The Heat came into Milwaukee without Shaq and playing poorly, and early on whenever the Bucks would string together two baskets he would call time out. He simply refused to let the Bucks go on a run and open the game up. And it worked — by keeping it close then he was able to let Dwyane Wade do his “can’t keep me off the foul line” act in the fourth quarter.

The bottom line is that coaches don’t win games — players do that. But it’s up to the coach to put his players in a good position to succeed. Larry Krystkowiak has failed miserably at that job, and suddenly this season has more in common with last season than anyone would think.

Let’s be honest.

But on the bright side, my son learned to crawl last week. And I’ve updated IPM.

The Bucks have five games this week, and if they don’t make a move right now then the playoffs will be pretty much an impossibility. At 8 games under .500 with 40 games down, they will have to go about 25-17 the rest of the way to get into the postseason. But if they struggle to a 1-4 record this week? Then they would need a 24-13 finish. Considering they have played like a 30 win team to this point of the season, only the biggest optimist could envision an extended 11-over .500 run.

The schedule this week is a rough one, too — Monday at New Orleans (going on right now, but courtesy of Fox Sports Net, we get to see the International Fight League instead), and considering the Hornets are on fire and have the best guard in the NBA in Chris Paul it’s hard to see the Bucks’ mixed up backcourt containing them. Then it’s Phoenix on Tuesday. A home game to be sure, but a back-to-back against another top team.

The Bucks should beat Indiana .. should .. but then it’s a game in Toronto the next night. They finish off the stretch on Sunday with another crack at not embarrassing themselves at home against the Wizards.

That’s 4 games against what IPM says have been among the top ten teams in the league over the last 2 weeks. Let’s face it, 2-3 would be a good week. But that doesn’t help jump start a playoff run.

Now that Bobby Simmons is a question mark with a neck strain, the lineup has become thin enough that it’s hard to fill out a complete lineup. They now have no choice to either shoot themselves in the foot by using Michael Redd at small forward or try something unconventional. But as the Golden State game showed, Larry Krystkowiak isn’t going to do unconventional.

The Warriors game annoyed me to no end. We all know that Mo can’t stop anyone. We all know that Royal Ivey can’t offer enough offense to make up for his defense. We (or, at least anyone except Krystkowiak) know that Michael Redd can’t guard small forwards or score all that effectively when guarded by bigger, more athletic players. So HOW CAN REDD PLAY THE WHOLE GAME AT SMALL FORWARD AND IVEY PLAY 42 MINUTES WHILE VILLANUEVA AND BELL COMBINE FOR 35?

Bell’s game has come around enough that even if Ivey is a little better defensively, Bell more than makes up for it offensively. Playing Redd (24 points/3 rebounds/3 assists) at forward means that the 6′8″ Steven Jackson (12/3/8 in 25 minutes) can cancel him out.

So (broken record time) why not use Villanueva at small forward, so that Redd can move back to shooting guard and have a huge height advantage on Monta Ellis? The Williams/Redd backcourt might have caused enough problems for the Warriors defense that they would have needed to get Ellis out and move Jackson to the backcourt, which could have changed the whole game. The game was competitive in the first, second and fourth quarters — it was a six minute stretch of the third where Ellis absolutely shredded the Bucks defense that decided the game!

Another thing about that third quarter — the Bucks were down only one at the half, and started the third quarter allowing scores on the first two Golden State posessions while turning it over on their one posession. My friend who I had brought to the game, who is a pretty casual basketball fan and not a Bucks or Warriors fan, immediately said; “They need a timeout right now.” He was absolutely right. Why not call time out and try to stem the rush? Instead you risk letting the game get out of hand right there? Of course, Krystkowiak didn’t call timeout until after Redd turned it over and Harrington hit a 3 (9 point deficit in three posessions). Even more perplexing, Krystkowiak then didn’t make a single subsitiution in the third quarter until the 8:55 mark — right after a 7-0 Bucks run got the deficit back to 8. What gives?

Well, enough about the past. I think my feelings about Krystkowiak’s coaching style has been hashed out enough — it’s time to move on and watch this week with interest. Now is the time to make a move — a 3-2 stretch and the season is still alive. Otherwise it’s time to start doing draft previews.

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.

Sure, I can hear you thinking, the Bucks play two good games against lousy teams and suddenly he thinks Krystkowiak is a great coach.

No, I’m not taking back my statements that the Bucks need a coaching change, but I saw a couple of things in the Philadelphia game that I really liked. Lets not get too excited about what the Bucks have done recently — the have beaten three lousy teams, and primarily won last night because Philadelphia went 0-13 from three point range. But Krystkowiak has done a couple of things that I have really liked.

He has tried playing Villanueva and Yi together a couple of times. Only for a few minutes, but if you are talking about moving people to a new position, then baby steps are necessary. They only played together for about 3 minutes and weren’t incredibly successful, but Yi had an awful game so it wasn’t really indicative of how good they would have been. It seemed like Yi was playing the “3″, which I don’t like, but that was hard to tell because Philadelphia went small and the Bucks played zone. Krystowiak also made a very nice move by going even bigger in reaction to the small ball Sixers, bringing in Simmons to play alongside Williams in the backcourt for a couple of minutes there. Creative! I like the way you are thinking!

The Bucks also briefly used some pressure defense to show a new look to the Sixers. While it didn’t do much (and wasn’t too terribly agressive, either), that might help the Bucks push the pace a little and take advantage of their offensive firepower by generating some turnovers and faster possesions by the opposition.

Kudos to just about everybody who took the floor for the Bucks for a nice game — Bogut, Williams and Villanueva were all solid and Bell was spectatcular. With him scoring 20 ppg, the loss of Redd sure is easier to take. Bobby Simmons also had a nice game, shooting 4-8 and stretching his minutes to 28.

It’s so much more fun to write about wins.

A few weeks ago I wrote a post about 14 potential trades the Bucks could do, but that most likely wouldn’t happen. I’m going to try that exercise again.

I figure that everybody is fair game except for Bogut, Williams and Yi. Williams, as a newly resigned free agent, is almost impossible to trade; as a somewhat productive, moderately paid big man Bogut would be impossible to replace; and Yi is too important to the health of the franchise to let go.

It has become much more difficult to figure out semi-reasonable trades, as Simmons and Gadzuric have played so poorly that I can’t imagine anyone taking on their contracts. There is one exception, though , a title contender might be willing to take on Gadzuric as “an energetic big guy to crash the boards and use his fouls” but that’s about it.

Additionally, salary cap rules make it well nigh impossible to trade Charlie Bell this season. As a newly resigned free agent, he (and Mo) falls under base year compensation (BYC) rules. Basically, should he get traded then his outgoing salary would only count for half of his actual salary. This was instituted to prevent teams from overpaying guys simply to fit them into trades. The thing that makes it so prohibitive, though, is that if the Bucks traded away Bell for a player who made between $1.55 mil and $2.03 mil (half of Bell’s $3.1 times 125%+$100,000) then Bell’s return $3.1 million salary would mean the other team is taking back too much money. Therefore Bell can only be traded to a team who is at least $1.07 million under the cap, and nobody is. One other caveat , in the first year of a BYC contract, the player can refuse to be included in any trade.

There are two loopholes in the BYC rules that would make it possible to trade Bell. One would be if a team has a trade exception (generated when they make a trade in which they take back less salary than they gave). However, I’m not sure who has them except for Phoenix, and as a luxury tax payee they did the Kurt Thomas deal in order to obtain the exception so that they can save the money. So I’m not considering exceptions in any proposals, which means that there may be some attractive potential deals out there that I wouldn’t figure out. The other loophole is that I believe that Bell could be traded for another BYC player who makes a similar amount of money as he does.

One other thing that makes this much more difficult , ESPN’s Trade Machine isn’t working correctly. Somehow it thinks the Bucks are under the cap, so it accepts nearly any moronic trade you stick in there. Simmons and Gadzuric for Kevin Garnett and Rajon Rondo? Sure! Want a side order of Paul Pierce with that? So I’m just going by my own math and understanding of the salary cap here , there is a chance that I might propose a trade that couldn’t actually work. Sorry.

And on to the ideas:

Dan Gadzuric to Boston for Brian Scalabrine and Scot Pollard: Scalabrine is one of the only players in the NBA who is significantly worse than Gadzuric. He can’t score, can’t rebound, can’t pass, doesn’t play good defense “¦ and yet he’s got 3 years/$10+ million left on his contract. Apparently he is a good teammate, though, and has a sort of cult “human victory cigar” following in Boston. Pollard has a one year contract and is a shade worse than Gadzuric in every area except for turnovers. The Bucks would save about $10 million and 1 year on this deal, and Gadzuric would be an occasionally useful 12th man for Boston. Is Boston willing to take on the extra salary in 2010 to make this trade happen? You never know when having Gadzuric to foul Duncan 5 times and grab a couple of boards in the finals might make the difference in a championship game. This is a fair trade. But Boston wouldn’t do it , there are a surprising number of “Scalabrine” jerseys walking around Beantown.

Royal Ivey to Cleveland for Shannon Brown: A sort of “why the heck not” proposal for both teams. The Cavs have soured on Brown, thinking they had drafted an eventual starter to run the floor with LeBron, but he’s turned out to be too small and not enough of a ball handler to start at either backcourt spot. Ivey’s defense would help them make a playoff run this season. With the Bucks, Brown might be able to back up both guard spots effectively in a sort of Charlie Bell role. Both contracts expire after this season, so it’s a low risk trade for both parties. Also one which wouldn’t have any effect on the W/L record.

Charlie Bell and Charlie Villanueva to Golden State for Mickael Pietrus, Patrick O’Bryant and a first round pick: The one trade that I can come up with that fits in with Bell , both he and Pietrus are BYC players so this trade would work. I can’t help but think that Villanueva would shine in Don Nelson’s system, and the only power forward he has is Al Harrington. While taking on a long contract like Bell would seem to be detrimental to them, it actually may not be because Monta Ellis is a free agent after this season and Baron Davis can opt-out. They could possibly lose one of those players (likely Ellis), and as Marco Belinelli hasn’t shown much, they might need Bell to come off the bench for the next few years. O’Bryant is a bust who is in the last year of his contract, but Pietrus would be an interesting addition to the Bucks. He’s going to be a free agent, so the Bucks would get Ruben Patterson-style maximum effort from him. He’d be an immediate starter for the next 6 weeks while Mason is out, and still would get almost 30 mpg backing up Mason and Redd the rest of the year. It’s a big improvement on the 19 mpg he’s currently getting and would allow him to showcase himself for his upcoming free agency. That’s an important incentive to get him in Milwaukee since both he and Bell would have to approve this trade. The Bucks would save a lot of money on this deal (or they resign Pietrus and hope that he fills the void at small forward) and clear a logjam at power forward, while the Warriors would get two useful players (provided they are confident that Bell will find his shot eventually).

Michael Redd and Michael Ruffin (or Jake Voskuhl) to Houston for Tracy McGrady: This one looks like the sort of deal that would be good for both teams but that neither one would actually do. Apparently McGrady has been making noise about not being happy in Houston (wow, when has he ever done that?). Rockets management might like the idea of trading him for a player who, while only being 80% the player McGrady is, at least isn’t perpetually questionable due to a trick back, and should be a much better running mate for Yao Ming. One has to worry about McGrady not wanting to be in Milwaukee and suddenly his back “acts up” almost every single night. When he’s on, though, he still can be one of the top 3 players in the game. Financially this would be a push for both teams, but the Bucks would save one year on McGrady’s contract. Neither team would do this because “¦. trades like this never happen. But it’s an interesting idea.

Charlie Villanueva and Dan Gadzuric to the Lakers for Kwame Brown: An outright salary dump by the Bucks as Brown’s contract expires this year, but Brown hasn’t offered anything to the Lakers in what has otherwise been an excellent season for them. I still think the idea of Odom and Villanueva on the same team is intriguing, and the growth of Andrew Bynum means they don’t lose much without Brown’s size. Much like the Boston proposal, Gadzuric could be a useful (albeit expensive) 12th man for a good team.

Charlie Villanueva to Memphis for Hakim Warrick and Kyle Lowry: As long as Memphis has Pau Gasol they will be searching for someone to play alongside him. A bruising big guy? A finesse power forward? We just don’t know any more! Meanwhile, Lowry doesn’t have a spot any more with the arrival of Mike Conley and Warrick has been squeezed down to 14 mpg. Another deal where the Bucks get two inexpensive players and have a couple of years to figure out exactly what they got, while Memphis tries the same with Charlie V. Lowry could probably be spun off in another deal for salary filler and a draft pick.

Charlie Villanueva and Royal Ivey to New Orleans for Julian Wright and Hilton Armstrong: The Hornets bench has really, really really sucked this year (but not destroyed the rest of the team like it has for a certain other city) and recent stories in the New Orleans Times-Picayune say that they are desperately seeking backup help for Chris Paul and David West. Armstrong is awful but inexpensive and Wright has a lot of potential but hasn’t seen the floor behind Peja Stojakovic and Morris Peterson. If the Hornets are serious about making noise in the playoffs this season this is a good deal for them, while Wright will likely be the best player involved in this trade 3 years down the road.

Charlie Villanueva and Desmond Mason to New York for Quentin Richardson and David Lee: Even Isiah Thomas can’t be so stupid as to not realize what he has in Lee “¦ right? Lee is a rebounding, energy machine that is the sort of guy that keeps plays alive and doesn’t need the ball to succeed. He’s a winner on a team of losers. Should Yi be able to eventually move to small forward, Lee would be the perfect complement to Yi and Bogut. There are those who say he’s been the most underrated player in the game for a couple of years, but I don’t know how underrated you can be when you start for, are the leading scorer for, and MVP of the Rookie-Sophomore game at All-Star Weekend last season. Anyway, I include this proposal because “¦ well “¦ only Isiah Thomas might do it. Realistically, there’s no way it happens.

And there we go. Eight proposals, most of which are fairly realistic. It’s interesting how few decent bargaining chips the Bucks actually have, but it’s also interesting how difficult it is to figure out just who would help the Bucks. The Bucks need a small forward, that is clear. But all of their best bargaining chips have spent this season killing their trade value.

The chance that any of these trades will actually be consummated is approximately zero, but it’s an interesting exercise because it kind of highlights what the Bucks’ biggest problem is: it’s not the starters, it’s the bench. Specifically, the expensive members of the bench. Those guys simply don’t have much value.

Now that was how it’s supposed to work. Timely scoring from the bench in the absence of a starter. Active hands leading to a 12-5 steal advantage and 18-9 turnover edge. Most importantly, near-perfect late-game execution creating a game-ending 13-2 run that propelled the Bucks from a 7-point deficit with 2:50 to play to a five point win.

11-18 shooting from Bell kept them in the game and Andrew Bogut sealed it with three baskets at the end. Bell’s best game of the season couldn’t have come at a better time, as a cold shooting night from Yi (2-9) and Villanueva (2-10) meant that this could have easily been one of those nights where Mo and Bogut had no help at all.

One criticism — why do the Bucks never, ever run a pick-and-roll for Yi? I know he’s not much of a threat to drive to the hoop there, but shouldn’t he be able to easily curl out for an easy catch-and-shoot?

Ah, complain, complain. It was a great game with a satisfying end.