The Bratwurst – Milwaukee Bucks Blog

Forget the no-trade of Richard Jefferson, or the injuries to Andrew Bogut, Michael Redd and Luke Ridnour — now Bango managed to ruin his knee by falling through the hoop at an All-Star Weekend event?

This is getting ridiculous! I’m almost scared to go to the game tomorrow now, lest the team try to kill me with a t-shirt again!

(Which reminds me of something I saw earlier this year — you know the t-shirts attatched to parachutes that fall from the rafters during the first quarter? Well, I saw a shirt earlier this year come loose from the parachute when it was released. It fell straight down from the rafters — what’s that, maybe 60 feet? — landing squarely onto the head of a kid who was about 10 years old in the next section over from me. He had no idea what hit him — he almost started fighting with the kid next to him because he thought he had gotten smacked in the head for no reason. To add insult to injury, the jerk sitting behind the kid picked the shirt up on a bounce and kept it.)

Okay, so no more Redd, Bogut or Bango but at least Ridnour is supposed to be coming along well from his broken thumb and by not making a trade on Thursday the Bucks have serious salary cap problems now.

Here’s the issue. The cap this year is $58.6 million, and the luxury tax level is $71.15 million. The Bucks are right at the luxury tax threshold (HoopsHype has them listed at $71.2) but there are a couple of exceptions for minimum players so they shouldn’t be a payer this year. But that’s a lot of money for a borderline-.500 team when healthy, no?

Next year, it gets ugly. Assuming Francisco Elson and Malik Allen invoke their player options, the Bucks owe a little over $65 million to 10 players. That doesn’t include Ramon Sessions, who will be a Gilbert Arenas-clause restricted free agent (which means nobody can offer him a contract starting over the midlevel exception, so the Bucks can match any deal as long as they have not yet used the exception) and Villanueva, who has a $4.6 million qualifying offer. So for the Bucks to bring back the same team next year, it will cost them about $76 million (assuming $5 mil for Sessions and $2 mil for their first round pick).

But the real problem here is that the salary cap, because of the economic state the country is in, will most likely go down next year. This Bucks roster could find themselves $8 million or more into the luxury tax — for a borderline playoff team!

Maybe Portland or Cleveland were the ones to walk away from the Jefferson for either Sczcerbiak or LaFrentz trades, but if John Hammond was the one to turn them down then it was fiscally irresponsible for him to do so.

Now, by waiting until next offseason, there really isn’t anything Hammond can do, except try to make an offseason trade to a team with significant cap room (so the Bucks can take back less salary then they sent out). So who is going to have major cap room this offseason?

Atlanta

Detroit

Oklahoma City

Memphis

The thing is that Oklahoma City, for example, isn’t going to be interested in something like “Dan Gadzuric for Damien Wilkins”. No, they will be thinking more along the lines of “You’ve got luxury tax problems, eh? How about Andrew Bogut and a sign-and-trade of Ramon Sessions for Nenad Kristic and one of the first rounders San Antonio owes us?”

This is bad. Really, really bad. Like Herb Kohl staring a $30 million operating loss next year in the face bad.

First of all, I want to thank all of the commentors who have given me crap for not writing much any more. Between work and having two young kids, I don’t have the time to write any more. It’s not so much the writing that is time-consuming — last year I only had one kid and was staying at home with him, so I had plenty of time to think about interesting things to write. This year, it’s totally different — I have responsibilities from about 6:30 am until 8:30 pm every day, and by then it’s all I can do to even watch a basketball game, much less think about something good to write about it. I really enjoyed producing an excellent blog last year (and the amount of writing I did was very helpful in that it kept my skills sharp for when I went back to work). I hate to be letting it go in the way I have, but I’d rather not write than just throw up some crap posts fairly regularly that are no more than glorified twitters.

Anyway, where is this team now?

Screwed in just about every way.

Lets see if I can recap:

– At full strength, this was an exciting team that had an outside shot at maybe the #5 seed and a chance to advance to the second round. Most likely, they were going to wind up with the #6 seed and could hopefully give Orlando a scare (a team which I have been completely wrong about for two years now. They are good).
– Then Michael Redd got hurt. For a well coached team, losing Redd was not a total disaster. Sure, it probably lowered the ceiling of the team from the #5 seed to the #7 (and getting blown away by Boston), but in the games Redd had missed the team had only averaged about 4 points per game less than with him. Most of his scoring could be picked up with relative ease by other players.
– Then Andrew Bogut’s injury turned out to be a stress fracture that will cost him the next two months. To be honest, I consider this diagnosis to be a positive one. I was starting to worry that his back issue might become one of those Tracy McGrady-style trick backs, where the guy is just perpetually questionable for the rest of his career. Fortunately, a stress fracture should heal.

This, however, leaves the team completely screwed. They have no chance at the playoffs with a frontcourt rotation of Gadzuric, Elson, Malik Allen and Villanueva. However, with Bogut and Redd signed to long-term contracts, just trying to dump salary doesn’t really make sense. The team would have no interest in trading away the two players who would likely garner the most interest around the league — Ramon Sessions and LR Mbah a Moute are fairly untouchable, and their contract status means they are both important to the Bucks and hard to include in other trades. Obviously, Dan Gadzuric has no trade value unless the Bucks take back something even worse in exchange.

What do the Bucks do? How do they make a big move without shafting themselves in the long run?

First of all, I would be more than willing to trade this years’ first round pick. The draft looks awful this year, and between Sessions and Moute, the Bucks have a couple of young, inexpensive players to fill out their rotation.

The best option is to try and trade for one of the superstar players who has an expiring contract after next year. Players like Bosh and Stoudemire have recently been rumored to be on the block, and should the Bucks be able to get one of them, they could be poised to make a 1-year run next year.

The deals?

1: Richard Jefferson, Charlie Villanueva, Luke Ridnour and Damon Jones for Amare Stoudemire and Jason Richardson. Phoenix would save $5 million on this deal, as Jones’ contract expires and Villanueva could be renounced after the season. Charlie V’s per-40 minute numbers compare pretty favorably with Stoudemire’s this season, and the trade would allow the Bucks to audition Alexander and Moute for the starting small forward position next year. It would also solidify Ramon Sessions as the point guard of the future. A starting lineup next year of Sessions/Redd/Moute/Stoudemire/Bogut with Richardson off the bench would be a nice group. It would likely only be a one-year run, though, as Stoudemire would be a free agent after the season, and with Redd, Richardson and Bogut owed $43 million in 2010/11, it’s unlikely Herb Kohl would be able to pay what it would take to keep him.

However, Stoudemire is pretty much known as a pain in the ass. What about Chris Bosh?

2: Bosh and Kapono for Jefferson, Alexander, Jones and a first round pick. It’s tough to come up with a reasonable deal with Toronto, since should they actually decide to deal Bosh, the Bucks don’t really have what they want. They wouldn’t need Jefferson and wouldn’t get much cap relief on the deal, and Joe Alexander and the likely-#15 pick in the draft isn’t a fair return for a perennial all-star. But if Bosh is going to walk after next year, maybe they would be willing. Not likely, though.

3: Jefferson and Jones for Shawn Marion. If Miami is serious about building around Michael Beasley, maybe they would be willing to turn Marion into a true small forward. This would kill Miami’s cap room after the season and would do nothing for the Bucks after this year, but would make a huge difference in the Bucks’ cap situation for the next two years and would clear up the small forward position as well. Marion is a prima-donna head case, but would probably put up huge numbers for the Bucks as he plays for his next contract with someone else. Losing Marion next year would make it easier to resign Ramon Sessions (and pick up Richard Hendrix out of the D-League. There I go again.)

Three deals that wont happen. But that just illustrates the quandry the Bucks find themselves in right now — they are built to win now, but have an incredibly low ceiling with Bogut and Redd hurt.

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.

That headline was too easy. And dumb.

But, sure enough, the Mo Williams to Cleveland trade has happened. Funny how when Mo was re-signed to all of that fanfare, only one year later he would be shipped out for expiring contracts. But it was the right thing to do.

The Bucks receive Luke Ridnour and Adrian Griffin from OKC and Damon Jones from Cleveland. Heading out is Mo to the Cavs and Desmond Mason to the OK Corrals. Joe Smith also went from Cleveland to OKC.

The NBA mantra is that the team that gets the best player usually wins the trade. In that case, then Cleveland is the big winner here. But it’s a strange deal all around, and it makes some sense for the Bucks.

Mo is probably going into a very good situation for him. All of my studies of defensive statistics indicate that the quality of a point guard’s defense is dependent on the quality of his teammates to a large part. Now Mo will have defensive aces like LeBron James, Anderson Varejao, Ben Wallace and Zydrunas Ilgauskas behind him. He can continue his offensive improvement and his mistakes on defense will not be noticed as much. I’ve often said that Williams’ career has paralleled that of Chauncey Billups for the first several years. Billups was known as a no-defense gunner early in his career, and remarkably that all changed when he arrived in Detroit. We will now see if the same thing happens to Mo Williams.

My feelings about Mo’s tenure in Milwaukee are summed up pretty well with this post from my post-season review (apologies for the formatting – something happened to all of our older posts after a WordPress upgrade).

The Bucks cut about $20 million in long term salary, and as I illustrated in April in this post (once again, sorry about the poor formatting) once Bogut signed an extension, the Bucks would need to make some sort of salary dump trade to avoid the luxury tax in 09/10. This became an even bigger problem when they added Richard Jefferson’s $15 million 10/11 contract.

Look, the Bucks lost a good player and got spare parts in return. But was this team really going anywhere with Mo running the show? As his playing time increased, he got better and better and the team got worse.

Probably 80% of an NBA teams’ record can be attributed to its three best players. A core of Redd/Bogut/Williams wasn’t working. Now it’s time to give Redd/Bogut/Jefferson a shot.

What can we say about the additions and what it means for the rest of the roster?

Luke Ridnour: Smaller than Mo, as bad defensively, injury-prone. Ridnour had a couple of good seasons for Seattle, but knee injuries have cost him chunks of the last couple of seasons. He does an okay job of managing games and has decent instincts. John Hollinger once wrote about him: “You couldn’t draw a better picture of what an average NBA point guard looks like.”

Honestly, as far as point guards go, I don’t really mind Ridnour. He should do a good job of spreading the ball around without throwing it away too much. I just hope his knees will allow him to hang on defensively. He’s paid $6.5 mil/year for two more seasons, and for 3/4 of the money due Mo Wiliams, Ridnour should offer about 3/4 of the production. He wont win any games by himself the way Mo occasionally could, but he shouldn’t cost the team any wins either.

Adrian Griffin: A Scott Skiles guy who plays solid defense at both shooting guard and small forward. Griffin is an energy guy on a par with Desmond Mason (but without the athleticism). Dont be surprised to see him as the sixth man for a long portion of the season. Skiles loves him. Griffin is also known as a quality guy.

Damon Jones: Everything I need to know about the self-proclaimed “best shooter in the NBA” I learned from an episode of MTV Cribs. How often do I get to see an NBA player show off a house that is smaller, less expensive, and not as nice as mine? And his cars — a line of Mercedes-Benz’s that I later read weren’t his. They were all loaners from a dealer with whom Jones had an endorsement contract. It was awesome to see a player clearly living within his means and with an eye toward saving his money for his future. It’s a good thing that Jones is apparently pretty fiscally responsible, because this season should be his last major NBA payday as his shooting has pretty much deserted him and he doesn’t have much in the way of other skills. Apparently he’s a fun guy to have in the locker room and if his appearance on Cribs means anything, he can serve as an example to Andrew Bogut that it’s not true that 80% of former NBA players go broke.

Ramon Sessions: Looks like the starting job is his to win now. Will that work? I’m not so sure, as Sessions has never played a single meaningful minute in his career. I hope I’m wrong about that, and I’ll be very interested to see if Larry Harris mined a steal with his final pick as Bucks GM. At the least, Sessions should be a capable backup.

Tyronn Lue: Why was he signed in the first place? The Bucks just added two guys who can play the two, meaning that Charlie Bell fits in best at point guard. What does Lue bring that the combination of Ridnour, Sessions and Bell doesn’t?

Power Forward: It would have been nice if the Bucks could have pulled off this deal with Joe Smith coming to the Bucks instead of Jones, but what are you going to do? Apparently John Hammond still believes Joe Alexander can play both forward spots. I hate that idea. Get ready for another season of Andrew Bogut spending 80% of his court time glaring at Charlie V in disgust. This deal gives the Bucks the maximum 15 players under contract so, unless Awvee Storey’s deal is not guaranteed, the Francisco Elson signing will most likely not happen.

Hammond cannot possibly intend to go into the season with only four big men on the roster. I hope that another deal is in the works and he isn’t thinking that Joe Alexander and Adrian Griffin can fill in up front. That just wont work.

Your 2007-08 Milwaukee Bucks:

Luke Ridnour, Ramon Sessions, Tyronn Lue
Michael Redd, Adrian Griffin, Charlie Bell, Damon Jones
Richard Jefferson, Joe Alexander, LR Mbah a Moute, Awvee Storey
Charlie Villanueva, Malik Allen
Andrew Bogut, Dan Gadzuric

Is that good? I guess it is if Bogut blossoms into a 22/11 guy (which might happen — as I love to point out, this season he will be the same age that Patrick Ewing was as a rookie). But I don’t really think I should reserve second round playoff tickets just yet.

UPDATE: It’s official

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cleveland gets Mo Williams and Chris Wilcox.

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

Milwaukee gets Luke Ridnour and DJ White.

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

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

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

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

In their drive to corner the market on Dutch players, rumor has it that the Bucks are close to signing center Francisco Elson.

Elson kind of reminds me of Royal Ivey — he is so poor offensively that people assume that he must be a great defender in order to stick around in the league. He’s a bad shooter and a deceptively poor rebounder (he has averaged over 10 rebounds per 40 minutes once in his career), but he’s fairly quick around the basket and can block some shots. He was able to parlay some modest success with Denver into a 2 year/$6 million contract with San Antonio in 2006 but couldn’t fill the bill as Tim Duncan’s backup, and the Spurs shipped him to Seattle midseason last year.

The highlight of his career came with Denver during the 2004 playoffs against Minnesota. He was part of a goon squad defensive unit for the Nuggets that was in charge of roughing up Kevin Garnett. Elson got into several confrontations with Garnett, at one point throwing him into the seats. After one scrap in which Elson complained of a cheap shot by Garnett, Elson got into some trouble for saying, “You don’t do that. That’s gay on his part. I told him that he was gay, too, for touching me in my private parts.”

Elson later offered an apology to the gay and lesbian community, but it was left to Garnett to administer the final verbal beat-down, saying, “I don’t even know half those guys’ (on the Denver bench) names.”

I like to think I know a little about the NBA, but I had never heard of Francisco Elson before that incident. Because of it, though, he still has a reputation as a defensive enforcer. A 7 foot, 235-pound enforcer. He’s 20 pounds lighter than Jake Voskuhl.

The bottom line is that nobody should get too excited about this signing. Elson isn’t going to help much, but then again he is probably the best player currently available as a backup center. I was going to make a joke about how Dan Gadzuric had better use some of his $500,000 monthly paychecks to buy some new suits since he’s going to be inactive a lot more now, but Danny G’s nunbers were actually superior to Elson’s last year in almost every way.

He would put the Bucks roster at the max of 15, assuming that Awvee Storey’s contract is guaranteed. That means that once the Elson signing is official, then your 2007-08 Milwuakee Bucks look like:

Mo Williams, Tyronn Lue, Ramon Sessions
Michael Redd, Charlie Bell
Richard Jefferson, Desmond Mason, Joe Alexander, LR Mbah a Moute, Awvee Storey
Charlie Villanueva, Malik Allen
Andrew Bogut, Francisco Elson, Dan Gadzuric

I can’t bring myself to envision Joe Alexander as anything but a small forward. And I can’t help but think that John Hammond is trying to make a trade for a power forward that can rebound.

I don’t know if John Hammond is paying attention, but after the Yi/RJ trade and the draft, the Bucks’ roster has some pretty big holes. Take a look and see if you know what I mean:

PG: Mo Williams, Ramon Sessions
SG: Michael Redd, Charlie Bell
SF: Richard Jefferson, Desmond Mason, Joe Alexander, Luc-Richard Mbah a Moute, Awvee Storey*
PF: Charlie Villanueva
C: Andrew Bogut, Dan Gadzuric
(*I’m not sure if Storey’s deal is guaranteed)

Am I the only person who thinks that a 12-man roster with three guys taller than 6’8″ is a problem? Especially when one of them is Danny G?

It’s not as though trading for a starting caliber power forward is going to be easy. There simply aren’t many of them out there. I wanted to write one of my “12 potential trades that won’t happen” columns, but it was impossible. I couldn’t really find any decent power forwards who the Bucks would want and who their current teams would be willing to give up. Mo Williams for Udonis Haslem? Mo and Charlie V for Chris Wilcox and Luke Ridnour? Gadzuric, Villanueva, Mason and a #1 for Elton Brand? Those are silly ideas. You could probably get a stopgap power forward from Sacramento, but do you really want one of Kenny Thomas, Shareef Abdur-Rahim, Mikki Moore or Shelden Williams?

Maybe Hammond is hoping that the Detroit fire sale starts soon. Mo, Mason and a #1 for Chauncey Billups and Amir Johnson or Mason, Villanueva and Bell for Rasheed Wallace would work but neither of those ideas sound like something that Joe Dumars would do.

The more I think about it, the more I think Hammond was taken by surprise in this draft. The Yi-Jefferson trade came out of nowhere, so it probably happened so close to the draft that the Bucks didn’t have much of a plan “B” beyond taking Alexander. Most likely, they made the Yi trade hoping that one of Kevin Love, Eric Gordon or Russell Westbrook would slide to them; but when the player to slip was Jerryd Bayless (who was supposed to go #4 or #6, so the Bucks had not worked him out) they didn’t know what to do.

So what does it all mean? Will Hammond be able to pull off something incredible or are we going to try the Bogut-Villanueva combo again, and hope that it works this time? I’m not really sure.

If the best they can do is sign Brian Skinner to be Villanueva’s backup, I’m going to be mighty upset.

Some other things of note:

Don’t forget that Ersan Ilyasova is still Bucks property. There’s no way they sign him and add him to this years’ roster since they don’t need a small forward, but he could be signed and traded.

Also, the final thing I am going to mention about Richard Hendrix (unless he turns out to be really good or gets released in training camp): according to Draft Express, his draft stock fell because of a knee injury that was uncovered at the predraft camp (despite his apparently playing well there). Draft Express points out that not only were Hendrix’s college numbers almost identical to Carlos Boozer’s, but Boozer also fell in the draft for the same reason.

If you are interested in the NBA Draft, I suggest donating to Draft Express. By making a donation, you will be able to view the site with no pop-up ads, which is well worth it.

After the Richard Jefferson trade, I thought for sure that it meant the Bucks would go in a different direction than Joe Alexander. I was hoping that Kevin Love would slip all the way to 8, and when Jerryd Bayless turned out to be the player to slide, I thought that would be the direction the Bucks would turn.

But now … small forward has become a glut, and suddenly we really need a power forward.

When it’s all said and done, Alexander should turn out to be a good pick. Players like Bayless and Anthony Randolph will slide for one reason — because teams think there is either something wrong with their heads (not a question about either Bayless or Randolph) or their games. My guess is that the Bucks never even had Bayless in for a workout in the first place (since he was supposed to go either #4 or #6). So when the RJ/Yi trade came down the pipe, the Bucks weren’t ready to look in another direction.

Here’s my thoughts about Alexander. He doesn’t grade out all that well in my draft rankings, but the optimist would point out that his numbers improved dramatically as the season went along. He graded out as one of the best athletes and strongest players at the NBA predraft camp. In interviews he sounds like a believer in making himself the best player he can be and in (channeling Larry Brown) playing the “right” way. Scott Skiles and Andrew Bogut should love playing with him.

I’ve said before that when assessing small forwards, I like to think of the answer to: “What would happen if he has to guard LeBron James for a whole game?” Since the best athletes play small forward, in order to be a good one you have to be able to stick the best athletes.

Obviously, you can’t stop LeBron. But would he make you look bad or would he make you look laughably bad?

I can see Alexander, with his combination of size and strength, being able to at least make LeBron work hard. Compare that to Yi — LeBron would score 100 on him.

I hope the Bucks aren’t thinking that Alexander will eventually become a power forward, because that would waste his open-court skills.

Alexander will be 22 years old, so while he may not necessarily have the ceiling to become a star, that may not be a bad thing at all. The Bucks have two cornerstone type of players in Bogut and Redd, so maybe a career dirty-work role player is what they are really looking for here.

I am not excited in the least about Luc Richard Mbah a Moute in the second round. Not at all. His numbers were very poor — a 0.57 IPM is simply pathetic. He’s supposed to be a defensive specialist, but he’s going to have to play small forward at the NBA level, as he only measured out at 6’5 3/4 without shoes at the predraft camp. He is shorter and lighter than Joe Alexander … and he’s going to have to change positions after playing power forward in college.

On the bright side, he is actually a prince in his village in Cameroon, so at least we can say we got Prince Akeem from “Coming to America”.

Oh, and about Richard Hendrix — he is taller than Mbah a Moute and was exactly twice as productive last season. And Hendrix doesn’t play the same position as your first round pick or the guy you just traded for. Unbelieveable.

If you really wanted to draft for defense and didn’t want Hendrix, then why not take Kyle Weaver, who went with the very next pick? For a guy who supposedly is only good for defense, Weaver was efficient enought offensively to rank as my #11 prospect. I see Weaver as a player who has a good chance to become a taller Charlie Bell (but the 04-07 version, not last seasons).

I can’t believe that I’m going to bed tonight angry that the Bucks blew their second round draft pick. What’s wrong with me?

According to CNN-SI, the Bucks have agreed to trade Yi Jianlian and Bobby Simmons for Richard Jefferson.

Wow.

From a basketball standpoint, I love it.

From a financial standpoint, if the Bucks are willing to do it, then I’m all for it.

What’s most interesting about this move is that it sure does throw the idea of drafting Joe Alexander by the wayside. Does John Hammond have another trade up his sleeve to move up in the draft? Villanueva and the #8 pick for ….. what?

I’ve never been the biggest Richard Jefferson fan, as I’ve always felt he was a little overrated and benefited greatly from playing with Jason Kidd. But even if he falls off by 10% as a member of the Bucks then he’s still better than Yi — and light years better than Bobby Simmons. The Bucks actually take on salary in the trade, as Jefferson is owed $15 million in 2010/11 on a contract that is one year longer than Simmons’.

In my combined offensive/defensive IPM rankings, Jefferson looks like an okay offensive player and a pretty lousy defender. Whether that’s true or not, I don’t quite know, but the Nets were a much better team with Jefferson on the court than not, being out scored by 5 pp/48 with him on the floor and 7.5 with him off, according to 82games.com. Jefferson has an injury-prone reputation, but that’s not true — he has had two major injuries (a broken hand and something else I can’t remember) but in his five other seasons has played at least 78 games. He averaged almost 40 mpg last season.

So long, Simmons, we hardly knew ya.

But the big part of the story is that the Yi phenomenon has petered out, and that’s probably a good thing for Milwaukee. There wasn’t much he did in his rookie season to suggest that he is going to become a great player, as you can’t really expect his ability to get his shot off in traffic to improve much. It’s too bad. Drafting him was probably a good gamble. But I think we saw enough of Yi on the court to know he wasn’t really worth all the hype. When your most devastating skill is a beautiful 22-foot jumper your ceiling is always going to be limited because any defense will let you shoot that shot all night — because you wont make more than 45% of them, even if you are the best shooter in the world. Yi needs more post moves, he needs more quickness, and he needs to hold on to the ball better. Maybe that will come in time, but I think we saw enough to know that the best he will ever become is “okay”.

So who wants Villanueva and the #8? How about Memphis for the #5?

Don’t annoint John Hammond as a hero GM just yet — he may have just added an average player with a brutal cap-killer contract. But he addressed a team weakness, and if this move frees him up to make a big splash with another move, then today might wind up being a great day to be a Bucks fan.

(Edit — draft changed to reflect the fact that I forgot that Ty Lawson and Chase Budinger had returned to school)

I’ve been way too busy lately to write much, and I apologize. But I’ve heard enough odd rumors that I’m ready to put together a new draft preview.

My prospect rankings are here, and here we go with the predictions:

1: Chicago, Derrick Rose. When it’s all said and done, there is no way the Bulls don’t draft and keep Rose.

2: Miami, Michael Beasley. I’ve heard all sorts of rumors (including Mo Williams and the #8 for Udonis Haslem and the #2) but I don’t think any of them will come to fruition. Whether Miami takes Beasley for themselves or someone else, they still take Beasley. I think they will wind up keeping him.

3: Minnesota, OJ Mayo. Sounds like NBA types are convinced that Mayo is the third-best player in the draft, and someone is likely to try and trade into this spot. Another fairly ridiculous rumor has the Bucks trading Charlie V and the #8 for the #3. Won’t happen.

4: Seattle, Jerryd Bayless. One thing about Bayless, his character isn’t in question. He’s the pick here.

5: Memphis, Kevin Love. I still think they take him, I just don’t know if they will keep him.

6: New York, Dalino Gallinari. I’m back to thinking he goes to the Knicks. Gallinari, much like Yi, wants to go to a big market and has refused to work out for anyone but the Knicks and Nets. He also has more bargaining power than Yi, since Gallinari can sign a European contract for more than he would make on a rookie NBA contract whenever he wants. So, since he has stayed in the draft, I think he’s gotten a promise from someone.

7: LA Clippers, Russell Westbrook. When push comes to shove, I think they take the local guy.

8: Milwaukee, Joe Alexander. For the same reasons I said in mock 3.0. I don’t think Michael Redd will be traded, and I think they wont want to wait for Eric Gordon.

9: Charlotte, Brook Lopez. It makes too much sense.

10: New Jersey, Robin Lopez. It doesn’t make much sense, but it looks like Lopez got a promise from the Nets. He canceled his remaining workouts after visiting Jersey.

11: Indiana, Eric Gordon. I would simply be shocked if the Pacers pass on the local kid.

12: Sacramento, Darrell Arthur. Much like Lopez at #10, apparently Arthur canceled all of his scheduled workouts after meeting with the Kings. I have no idea why they would want him, though.

13: Portland, DJ Augustin. Once again, a pick that makes too much sense to happen.

14: Golden State, Anthony Randolph. He’s 6’11″, 197. Doesn’t that seem like a bit of a problem? Randolph has been compared to Chris Bosh many times, but compared to Bosh’s season at Georgia Tech, Bosh had him by 30 pounds, 0.1 IPM (0.93 vs. 0.84) and 10% from the floor (46% vs. 56%). Bosh was also the same age as Randolph in college. Anthony Randolph is no Chris Bosh.

And my guess for the rest of the first (I’m just ignoring the foreign players):

15: Phoenix, Donte Greene
16: Philadelphia, Marreese Speights
17:Toronto, Kosta Koufos
18: Washington, DeAndre Jordan
19: Cleveland, DJ White
20: Denver, Mario Chalmers
21: New Jersey, Courtney Lee
22: Orlando, Brandon Rush
23: Utah, Roy Hibbert
24: Seattle, JJ Hickson
25: Houston, Kyle Weaver
26: San Antonio, Richard Hendrix (because they are geniuses)
27: New Orleans, Joey Dorsey
28: Memphis, JaVale McGee
29: Detroit, Chris Douglas-Roberts
30: Boston, Jamont Gordon