The Bratwurst - Milwaukee Bucks Blog

Michael Redd on the Wikipedia

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

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

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

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

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

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

The ranking are available here.

What does the defensive ranking component tell us?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And there’s my two cents for John Hammond.

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

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

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

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

I thought, “That was weird.�

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

Maybe they are both too talented offensively to play together.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Responsibility for Coach K’s dismissal: 20%

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Responsibility for Coach K’s dismissal: 35%

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

With 29 games remaining, Bucks fans can pretty much forget about a playoff run, especially now that Atlanta has brought in a real point guard in Mike Bibby and it appears that the Jason Kidd trade has fallen apart for New Jersey. I suppose that it’s possible for this team to run off a long home winning streak (they do have 18 home games left), but to think that they can leap over four teams is a bit of a long shot.

So what else would I like to see over the rest of the season?

Choose an offensive identity and stick with it. All season long, I have expressed my frustration with Krystkowiak’s strategy of slowing the game down in an effort to improve the team’s defense. Of course, the net result is that the Bucks’ offense has gotten worse while their defense has stayed equally bad. There are indications that Krystkowiak now wants to open up the offense more, leading to more shots for Mo and Redd at the expense of Bogut. As far as I’m concerned, the faster a pace the Bucks play the better — if they are blessed with anything it is several high-percentage scorers, as their top five players all shoot better than 43.5% (and Redd is uncharacteristically low at that number). I’d much rather see this team trying to outscore teams rather than beat them with defense.

Rest Yi. Yi Jianlian has clearly hit the “rookie wall” and needs a break. The problem is that with Olympic duties looming this summer, Yi isn’t going to get much rest this summer. I wouldn’t mind if Yi comes up with a “sprained ankle” or “sprained shoulder” that keeps him out of a few games. Let him get some rest now, because the last thing we need to hear in training camp next season is how he’s tired from the summer.

Lots of playing time for Charlie Villanueva. Either at power forward or small forward, Villanueva needs to be in the starting lineup, playing big minutes, and showcasing himself for an offseason trade. Not counting the game in which he sprained his ankle, Charlie V averaged 17.6 points and 12 rebounds in his three starts. He is never going to start at power forward for this team (Yi is too important to the financial future of the franchise to ever be moved) so either we have to see if he can play small forward or move him. He’s about the most desirable trade chip this team has, so if he puts up big numbers in the final two months of the season he should garner some interest around the league.

Get Michael Redd some better shots. For any number of reasons, Redd has been suffering through a poor shooting season by his standards. To the casual observer it looks like he takes a ton of bad shots, but I think the problem is that he has been having trouble getting open. I believe that part of this is that he has been spending far to much time at small forward — where his size is negated by his lack of strength and quickness. But the rest of the offensive strategy has to bear some blame for not getting him open as well. You would think that the Bucks would run a steady diet of pick-and-rolls with Redd and Yi (only with Yi fading for a jumper than rolling to the basket).

But this brings me to something else I have noticed all season — is it possible that Redd is freezing out Yi? While Yi does not post up enough, I don’t think that I’ve seen Redd toss a post entry pass to Yi all year, and I’ve definitely seen Redd pass up on feeding Yi several times. I hate to think something like this about somebody like Redd, but could he be refusing to involve Yi because of jealousy over Yi’s profile in the recognition? Does Redd have a problem with not being the face of the franchise as he used to?

I’ve noticed this all season, but really started to wonder after the December 22 game against Charlotte, when Yi scored 29 points on 14-17 shooting. Yi had 25 after 3 quarters, and suddenly Redd started firing up shots from anywhere in the fourth, taking nine shots to Yi’s four. You could almost hear Redd saying, “No way this guy’s leading us in scoring tonight.” And while the Bucks led that game by 22 late in the third quarter, Redd’s decisions to pull the trigger early in the shot clock so many times contributed to the final victory margin only being four points.

It pains me to suggest this, but it does remind me of the 2002 Bulls when Jalen Rose openly refused to pass to Jay Williams. There’s absolutely no evidence to support what I’m saying, but it bears watching — I think that Redd’s next post entry pass to Yi will be his first.

Either extend Larry Harris’ contract — or don’t. For all of the complaints about how Harris has done as GM, the truth is that he has done about as well as he could in running a franchise that had been short-circuted by the mismanagement of Ernie Grunfeld (as he had traded away the Bucks’ 2004 first round pick in 2000 and had somehow managed to trade their 2003 pick along with Ray Allen for a two month rental of Gary Payton). Now Herb Kohl has a decision to make — either let Harris try to continue building the team, or to hand the reigns to someone else. My guess is that the answer will be someone else — and if the Bucks are silent on the trade front between now and the deadline, it will be a stong sign that Kohl has tied Harris’ hands and that he will be gone before the NBA draft.

Stop getting blown out by good teams! As the Dallas and New Orleans game showed, there was no reason for the incredible early-season run of 20+ point blowout losses to good teams. This is probably the single biggest indictment of Larry Krystkowiak’s coaching philosophy — good teams have chewed up his gameplans in minutes. This team may not be a championship contender, but it also has no business getting blown out at a pace similar to that of the worst teams in NBA history.

I don’t think it’s too much to ask for. I don’t want them to tank games for draft position (this years’ draft looks to be full of busts to me). I just want this team to play hard, not to quit on their coach, and to be competitive through the end of the year.

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.

The Knicks have lost 8 straight. They are coming into the Bradley Center on the second game of a back-to-back. They are 4-19 on the road. They are awful.

So why am I worried?

Is it because the Knicks always seem to play the Bucks fairly tough? Is it because the Bucks loss at New York in November was the game that led us all to say, “Umm, Maybe these Bucks aren’t that great after all?”

No, I think that the thing that has me worried is the fact that this is a must win game for the Bucks, and the Knicks can cause a bunch of tough matchups with their athleticism.

Also, the Knicks haven’t been playing all that badly in this losing streak. It coincided with a 5 game west coast trip, and in addition to an OT loss to San Antonio the streak includes losses by 1, 2 and 3 points.

Meanwhile, the Bucks concluded a pretty successful 1-1 road trip with a competetive loss in Dallas. Hey, after how often this team has gotten blown out, just making a game of it with so many players out was impressive.

You know what I really liked to see in the Dallas game? Apparently Larry Krystkowiak has been reading The Bratwurst and is taking my advice (well, okay, so I know that isn’t true) by using Dan Gadzuric at power forward and playing him alongside Andrew Bogut. The results were solid — 4 points, 4 rebounds and no turnovers in 16 minutes. It’s a great idea — get Danny G on the floor where his rebounding can make a difference, but have Bogut out there too so that Gadzuric gets no touches and his offensive ineptness isn’t a problem.

Another positive note is that Michael Redd is returning against New York, and I believe that the combination of a couple of weeks of rest and a chance to face Jamal Crawford’s interpretation of “defense” will lead to a big night for number 22.

I just hope it results in a win. Why am I so worried?

According to Charles Gardner in the Journal-Sentinel, Yi Jianlian had an MRI on his shoulder on Monday and may not play against Memphis tonight.

Yi did, however, make the trip to Memphis with the team (which will then move on to Dallas for a game on Wednesday). But Michael Redd stayed home.

While I have been saying that Yi needs some rest, I sure hope it’s not due to anything that serious. Holding him out for one game and maybe bringing him off the bench for another might do him a lot of good.

Obviously, this does mean that Charlie Villanueva will finally get to play extended minutes. Since Yi has been playing so poorly for a couple of weeks losing him now shouldn’t be too much of a problem. Redd’s slow return, though, is throwing a wrench into my master plan of how the Bucks can make the playoffs. The Bucks need this win in Memphis.

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

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

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

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

While the fact that the Bucks have gotten blown out ten times so far this season has been a neverending source of frustration, if there was ever a night where it is no big deal it was Wednesday night in Philadelphia.

Of course, losing by over 40 is never acceptable, but once the Bucks were down by 19 at the half, there was no telling how bad it would get.

After seven games in nine days, and missing Redd as well, it was no surprise that this game would be a problem. Philly is a lousy matchup for a Bucks team with a thin backcourt, as their best players — Andre Iguodala, Andre Miller, Louis Williams — would be able to stress the Bucks defenders and Samuel Dalembert is a pretty tough matchup for Andrew Bogut. Also, while the Bucks were playing a back-to-back, the Sixers were coming off of a three-day rest.

I do have two questions, though:

Doesn’t it look like Yi needs some rest? Whether it’s hitting the “rookie wall” or just simply being tired from playing constantly since the NBA Draft, Yi Jianlian is playing horribly right now. Less than two weeks after I wrote that the most impressive thing about him has been his consistency, his game has really fallen apart. He has gone through his worst five-game stretch of the season, and he has fallen off in every way. He hasn’t scored in double digits in 8 games, his rebounding has been below average in five of his last six, and his “Curry Ratio” (defined in this post) has been subpar in 7 straight games. He has been awful offensively (IPM of 0.6 or less in 7 straight — below 0.6 is “you are hurting the team more than helping” territory) and his defense has slipped, only blocking two shots in 8 games.

It really seems like the guy is tired, and maybe after the Houston game, Yi should come off of the bench for a couple of games.

With Redd hurt, why wasn’t Sessions called up? The Bucks only have four guards on the roster anyway, but with Redd out and Bell playing some small forward, they only had two full time guards available. Doesn’t it seem like three games in four nights is a little long to go with such a shorthanded backcourt? It’s not as though it was a cost savings move — while in the NBDL, Sessions still gets his NBA paycheck. At the very least, Sessions could have played the fourth quarter against Philadelphia.

The shorthanded backcourt was also a problem against New Jersey as Kidd-Carter-Jefferson gets a big edge over Williams-Ivey-Bell. Not that it’s likely Sessions would have turned one of those losses into wins, but at least he could have helped spell the starters some.

Other than that, I don’t have many other specific complaints about the Philadelphia game. They were screwed from the beginning. The Bucks’ defense was horriffic, but with Yi playing poorly, then Bogut can only do so much to help the guards when they get blown past. Mo has enough trouble guarding point guards his own size, what is he supposed to do against Vince Carter and Andre Iguodala? With Yi doing badly then my master strategy of moving Villanueva to the 3 isn’t an option, and thus his weak interior defense contributes to the problem. I think the only thing I might have done differently would have been to throw in the towel even earlier than Krystkowiak did, and taken Bogut out for good after Philly pushed their third quarter lead to 24.

It’s still an embarrassing loss, and at some point the team isn’t going to keep brushing off the blowouts. Hopefully they get back on track against Houston, a game that is supposed to mark the return of both Michael Redd and Desmond Mason.

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.

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.