The Bratwurst – Milwaukee Bucks Blog

Michael Redd on the Wikipedia

Michael Redd, formerly the biggest star on the Milwaukee Bucks before some kid from Compton showed up, is finally back on the court. It’s been quite the journey with Redd the past three years, watching him be limited by injuries to an average of 52 games each of the past three years.  Hopefully, for his knee’s sake, he never dunks the ball again.  Despite cries from fans to trade him and his large contract, there are plenty of reasons to be excited that #22 is back on the court.

1. Complete scorer. Michael Redd is more than just a perimeter jump shooter, he is a complete scorer. He gets inside and scores efficiently. I bet you didn’t know he attempted the same percentage of inside shots as head-down-drive-and-throw-it-up Lebron James did last season. Redd shot a better effective field-goal percentage from inside and got his shot blocked less than King James while doing so too. Michael Redd is a complete scorer, a team will always have a need a player that can score at will.
2. Scoring droughts.  Think back to some of the Bucks tough losses.  The ESPN game in Oklahoma City where the team couldn’t score in the third quarter.  The trouncing at home where the team went 11 minutes without scoring. Michael Redd can score in more ways than one, when his jumper isn’t going, he can take the ball inside to either find a good shot or get fouled. As much as I love Ersan Illyasova and Carlos Delfino, they can’t be relied on to do that when the team needs them. Redd has the tools to make scoring droughts much shorter.
3. The corner three. It’s one of the most efficient places to score from on the court. If Brandon Jennings and Andrew Bogut continue to run the pick and roll with success, the Bucks are going to want Michael Redd hanging out in the corner ready to shoot open shots as his man runs to double the player cutting to the basket with the ball.  If I had to pick any player from the Bucks roster to knock down an open corner three to save my life, I’m picking Redd.  With Redd having less pressure to create on his own shot with Jennings in the backcourt, the chances of Michael breaking his own record of 8 three-pointers in a quarter are higher than they ever were with TJ Ford, Mo Williams or Ramon Sessions at the helm. If Redd’s man doesn’t leave him to help guard the cutter, it’s likely the man guarding Delfino or Illyasova will. An open three for Delfino or Illyasova is good news for the Bucks as well. The Bucks are simply a more potent team from three with Redd on the court.
4. Replacement value. When Michael Redd is out it means more minutes for Charlie Bell. I like Charlie Bell as a player, but only in small doses. Forcing him to log extensive minutes is not in the Bucks or Bell’s long-term interests, as illustrated no more clearly than Skiles recent benching of Bell after his minutes had increased with Redd out. While Bell looked good for a stretch, things definitely appeared to be a downward trend, perhaps towards the abysmal shooting percentage he had during the 2007-2008 campaign (he ended up shooting 38.1%, he’s at 38.7% this year). More minutes for Redd results in fewer minutes for Bell, which should translate into better shot selection, more energy, and Flintstone being a better asset to the Bucks.  All of this of course also results in less playing time for potential future-Michael-Redd Jodie Meeks, who despite being regarded as a shooter is only shooting 34.1% this year. Less Jodie Meeks is probably a good thing in the short-run, Redd himself became a star after riding the bench behind recent inductee into the 20,000 point club, Ray Allen.
5. Pressure. Brandon Jennings has looked decently poised at the end of games when he has it going.  Andrew Bogut has shown significant improvement overall offensive improvement this year. They’ve both had stretches where they have played poorly too. Throwing Michael Redd into the mix minimizes the pressure on them to perform at at a high-level on the offensive end every night for the Bucks to have a shot to win. Also, when the Bucks lose, Redd’s presence will deflect attention from Jennings, giving him room to grow as a player and person.

We were treated to flashes of this working to perfection in the recent Portland 2/OT win. Redd hit some open shots.  Defenders stayed home on him, giving Jennings more room to work with on his way to the basket. Charlie Bell wasn’t on the court in crunch time. Jodie Meeks looked good in a suit with Francisco Elson.  The team as a whole didn’t force as many bad shots. Redd didn’t have to have the ball in his hands to affect the game.

It also went poorly at times, with flashes of Redd of old, jacking up a contested three off a pass from Jennings early in the shot clock after having made an open three just a moment earlier. It’ll take time for Michael Redd to adjust to his new role where he doesn’t have to be the man every time down the court, but when he figures it out, and he will, the Bucks are going to be a significantly better team.

The play by play went like this:

12:00 – Start of the first quarter
11:49- Andrew Bogut fouled by David Lee

That’s all she wrote. Game over. I even said so at the time.

With David Lee picking up a foul on the first possession of the game then he had to dial his hustle/energy game back to stay out of foul trouble. Then, when he picked up foul #2 six minutes later then he was on the bench for the rest of the quarter.

Mike D’Antoni fell into my favorite coaching blunder of all time at that point — He sat Lee until the end of the quarter and then yanked him five minutes into the second when Lee picked up his third foul. D’Antoni played the matchups in the second half, using Lee for a total of 9 minutes, generally only keeping him on the floor when Charlie V was also in the game.

The result for Lee, a player who had averaged 14.5 points, 11 boards and 2 steals in the Knicks first two games? 3 points, 2 boards and 2 turnovers in 19 minutes. And only three fouls.

So by yanking Lee with two fouls, D’Antoni moved his best player to the bench — his only player who makes a living through hustle and rebounding; his only player who makes his living doing the things that help teams win basketball games. This meant that not only was he not on the floor helping his team, but he was also successfully staying out of foul trouble. He finished with 3 fouls! He wasn’t even in foul trouble at the end of the game!

When D’Antoni yanked Lee in the second quarter after picking up his third foul the Knicks had just concluded a 10-4 run that saw them take their final lead of the night at 37-35. As soon as Lee checked out the Bucks went on a 12-3 run to essentially salt the game away (the Bucks made no substitutions immediately before or during the run, except to take out Bell and insert Redd at the end of it). If D’Antoni had left Lee in he might have possibly played out the half without picking up any more fouls and potentially helped keep his team in the game.

Even if he had picked up 1 or even two more fouls in the half, he still would have been available for at least some second half duty. And then the second half might have actually been a game instead of about 22 minutes of garbage time. Lee only played 19 minutes last night. If he had been left in the game with three fouls after playing 10 minutes is it really likely that he would foul out in less than 19 minutes? Instead, D’Antoni did the Bucks a favor my keeping his own player off of the offensive glass — which was probably the Bucks’ #1 priority in last nights game plan.

Of course, the whole point is moot because of what the Bucks did at the start of the second half — roaring out of the gate with a 12-0 run. Good coaching! Good halftime adjustments! It feels so good to say that the team seems to be hitting the floor ready to roll in the third quarter this season!

Now, hopefully Michael Redd’s sprained ankle gets better very quickly.

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.

I started watching the USA-China game when it was 35-32, so all I saw was a US romp, but I was most interested to see if it looks like Yi would look any more authoritative on the court than he did on the Bradley Center floor last season.

Nope.

Aside from a nice follow dunk, Yi was pretty bad. And according to ESPN.com’s Chris sheridan, I missed the worst of Yi’s game. 4-13 shooting, 3 rebounds, two turnovers. Nine points. Non-factor.

Sheridan’s description:

Remember that rookie wall he hit back in February? Back before the Milwaukee Bucks got rid of him?

He’s still hitting it.

But the best line of all, from Sheridan’s artice, was from Michael Redd, when asked who got the better end of the Yi-Richard Jefferson trade:

We did, oh we did, we did, we did, we did. We’re happy, no question.”

Sounds about right.

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.