The Bratwurst - Milwaukee Bucks Blog

Enough about the Bucks. Time to look at what’s going on among the good teams, and preview the first round of the playoffs.

Instead of thinking about how teams have played throughout the whole season, I’m a little more interested in how they are playing now. So I calculated IPM power rankings for the last six weeks of the season, which gives a good picture of which series’ might be the most competetive, and where potential upsets may lie.

If you are not familiar with IPM (as I recently learned that my friend Mike Headd is not, despite his having read the blog for nearly a year), it is my proprietary player ranking calculation. IPM stands for Impacts Per Minute, and more about the methodology is available here. I update IPM rankings for all players weekly (here) as well as team power rankings (here). All of this information is also avaliable through the links on the right side of the page.

I’m writing the preview under the assumption that the playoff matchups will not change in the next couple of days. If they do then I will update them accordingly.

Listed next to the team names are each team’s power rank for their offense, defense and overall for the last six weeks. The information is also given here.

On to the preview:

Eastern Conference

1 vs 8. Boston (#4 Offense, #1 Defense, #2 Overall) vs. Atlanta (#9 Offense, #18 Defense, #16 Overall): Welcome back to the big time, Hawks. Blink and you will miss it. Obviously the Celtics completely outclass Atlanta in this series, and it looks to be a 4-0 sweep.

4 vs 5. Cleveland (#13 Offense, #9 Defense, #10 Overall) vs. Washington (#12 Offense, #15 Defense, #14 Overall): The Cavs haven’t really jelled as much as I thought they would since their deadline trades, only going 13-12. They have, however, played a little better than their record, as my numbers say they have underachieved by two games. Washington is struggling to reintegrate Gilbert Arenas into their rotation, and the combination of home court advantage and LeBron James should make this series a pretty easy Cleveland win. I say the Cavs in 5.

3 vs. 6. Orlando (#20 Offense, #6 Defense, #13 Overall) vs. Toronto (#10 Offense, #13 Defense, #12 Overall): This is an interesting matchup — I feel that Orlando has overachieved all season and Toronto has underachieved. They come into this series as an even matchup, but I feel that the point guards will decide this series — and I think that Toronto has a huge advantage there. I’m calling the upset here — Raptors in six.

2 vs. 7. Detroit (#8 Offense, #3 Defense, #3 Overall) vs. Philadelphia (#11 Offense, #11 Defense, #9 Overall): The only Eastern Conference matchup that features two top ten teams over the last six weeks, the Sixers could make some noise against Detroit. However, I think that the Pistons’ veteran savvy will carry this one pretty easily. Pistons in 5.

Western Conference

1 vs 8. LA Lakers (#2 Offense, #12 Defense, #4 Overall) vs. Denver (#3 Offense, #29 Defense, #19 Overall): Despite getting the edge over Golden State by beating them this week, the Nuggets are staggering to the finish line. Recent losses to Seattle and Sacramento highlight the absolute defensive collapse that they are suffering as they abandon that end of the floor to concentrate on scoring. Their home court advantage will win them a game or two, but they cannot seriously challenge Kobe and the Lakers. Lakers in six.

4 vs 5. Utah (#1 Offense, #4 Defense, #1 Overall) vs. Houston (#15 Offense, #5 Defense, #7 Overall): Utah has been the best team in the league for several months, but it hasn’t been borne out in their record, as they have underachieved by 5 games in the last six weeks. The problem is that they are simply dominant at home (36-4) but subpar on the road (17-23). That makes home court advantage the deciding factor in this series, which will be up in the air until the final day. Houston has one more game left than Utah, giving them an edge on getting home court. Even without Yao, the Rockets have been one of the best teams of the second half this season, and maybe this finally is the year that T-Mac finally gets out of the first round. My prediction? Lets see who gets home court advantage. Either way this will be the best first round series (which is saying somethng) and whoever is at home for game seven will prevail.

3 vs. 6. San Antonio (#23 Offense, #2 Defense, #6 Overall) vs. Phoenix (#7 Offense, #14 Defense, #11 Overall): Now the playoffs begin and the Spurs turn it on. One reason their numbers look so bad is that they limit Manu Ginobli’s minutes so much in the regular season. Once he starts playing a little more, look for them to get that much better. Meanwhile, I think that the Suns’ acquisition of Shaquille O’Neal will be exposed as a mistake in the playoffs — in the last six weeks their offensive and defensive rankings have all declined from their full season rankings. Spurs in seven.

2 vs. 7. New Orleans (#5 Offense, #7 Defense, #5 Overall) vs. Dallas (#6 Offense, #10 Defense, #8 Overall): After the acquisition of Jason Kidd, this is the worst possible matchup for Dallas. Kidd couldn’t stay in front of Tony Parker in the finals six years ago, what makes Dallas think he can check Chris Paul now? Meanwhile, the Mavs traded away their best matchup against Paul, Devin Harris, and in the process fell from the #3 seed to the #7. This is actually a pretty close matchup with two top-ten teams, but the Hornets are simply a little better at both ends of the court. Hornets in seven.

I’n not going to call the second round, but I guess I should give my finals prediction: Boston over San Antonio.

Bob Costas thinks Brett and I live in our mothers’ basement. I don’t know if he’s tired and stressed from the long and cold winter (I imagine it’s hard to constantly fly to warm destinations), but he clearly hates his own fan-base.

Before rumors get out of hand, I would like to tell you that that sadly isn’t true.

In all fairness, Costas appears to have misdirected anger. If you read the original story, he was angered that fans voted for the Denver Nuggets in an ESPN poll about which Western Conference team wouldn’t make the playoffs. Isn’t that more a problem with the poll and the ESPN employee that created it? I mean the Denver Nuggets were the most obvious choice for a society that has been taught to choose the most-correct multiple choice answer. Perhaps Costas should be more concerned with the employees at ESPN, and a little less with fans actually openly participating in the discussion.

I received a tip to check out a Nuggets fan site supporting the firing of George Karl. Has George burned bridges in Denver already?

Check out FireGeorgeKarl.com to learn what they’re saying in Mile High city.

Honestly, I wonder how the Denver Nuggets can ever lose a game. It seems like they have it all — dynamic scorers, a shot-blocking defensive presence, talented players coming off of the bench, and one solid power forward between the combination of Kenyon Martin and Nene.

But they do lose one out of three games. And thanks to a spectacular comeback by the Bucks, one of those losses came Saturday night.

I suppose it’s only fair for me to point out that on this night Krystkowiak proved me wrong about almost all of my compaints about him. These would be:

Slowing the game down to play a “defense first” game. This might have had more to do with Denver forcing the tempo and the Bucks having to fight back from a 23 point deficit, but the Bucks finally have started running an offense that puts the ball in the hands of their best offensive players — Redd and Williams — and lets them run and fire away at will. If any of their teammates want shots they have to hustle to keep up. This type of offense wont win championships and will sometimes lead to ugly losses when Redd or Mo never heat up but keep firing away. But it gives the Bucks the best chance to win any given game — and it means that they are never all the way out of a game. Maybe this is a result of the rumored team meeting before the All-Star break, or maybe Krystkowiak opened the offense up on his own initiative. Either way the results are clear — a 2-2 record in their last 4 games against 3 playoff teams.

Never playing Gadzuric and Bogut together. When Villanueva struggled mightily in the first quarter, I was happy to see Krystkowiak bring in some rebounding help for Bogut with Gadzuric instead of the knee-jerk move of subbing Yi in. I have a feeling that Coach K was most interested in avoiding a Yi-Kenyon Martin matchup than thinking about Gadzuric’s position, but no matter what the motivation it was the right move. In that stint, Gadzuric played nine minutes, grabbed 4 rebounds, blocked 2 shots and only took 2 shots. Perfect.

Using Charle Bell as a late-game “defender”. Even as the Bucks were charging back into the game I was telling everyone around me that Krystkowiak had to get Bell out because he wouldn’t be able to stop Carmelo Anthony one-on-one. On this night, I couldn’t have been more wrong. Not only did Bell do a great job on Anthony (holding him to two shots and 3 turnovers in the final 6:30, despite touching the ball on every posession), he also hit the 3-pointer that gave the Bucks their first 4th quarter lead. I still don’t think that using a 6′3″ player to defend small forwards is much of a percentage play, but it worked great on Saturday.

Is it time to get excited about a playoff push? I don’t really think so. Lets wait until the Bucks beat up on a few bad teams first. But you have to like what we’ve seen recently.

Also, one other thing I noticed during the Nuggets game — Kenyon Martin sits on the bench with his arms splayed out over the backs of empty seats on either side of him, and refuses to make room for teammates checking out of the game. Seems like a really good guy, doesn’t he?

The Northwest division contains all the elements of a fine Victorian-era tragedy. Wealthy, volatile favorites. A whiny Russian. A potential superstar. Another potential superstar facing adversity. And a chorus of snowbound alley-dwellers hailing from the upper Midwest. This season this division will contain 3 of the worst teams in the NBA – albeit two with exceptionally bright futures – and my dark-horse contender for the championship.

1: Denver: First of all, I hate everything about Allen Iverson’s game. I’ve always felt he was overrated, made the game harder on his teammates, and was such a low-percentage scorer that all of his machinations made it that much harder for his teams to win. That said, Denver is the perfect place for him because they play at such a high pace that there are more quick shots to go around. Given some time for his game to meld with Carmelo Anthony and the rest of the Denver bunch, this team can give anybody trouble – and I feel that this team will be one of the final 4 standing in April, because the thin air of Denver should give the Nuggets an almost insurmountable edge in a playoff series.

The Nuggets have a deep roster, but the one question mark is injuries. While their frontcourt of Camby and Nene is active and excellent defensively, neither player has been able to play a whole season in years and despite their best efforts to increase depth, the loss of either of these rebounding machines late in the season could torpedo their year.

I never could understand all the noise about JR Smith’s “breakout season� last year – he seemed like little more than a defensively-challenged standstill shooter to me, and one with a well documented bad attitude at that. The Nuggets seemed to agree with me, signing Chucky Atkins to provide a point guard who is a three-point threat, moving Iverson to shooting guard and Smith to the bench. The Nuggets don’t have a backup point guard of note (and since Iverson plays 40+ minutes a night, probably intend to use him at that position), but other than that Denver has good depth in Smith, Eduardo Najera, Steven Hunter and Linas Kleiza.

Questions abound about this team – particularly regarding team chemistry – but George Karl has succeeded in this situation (in Seattle) before, and at the end of the year last season was seeing pretty good results (after squeaking into the playoffs as the 7 seed, they had a tough series with San Antonio). I foresee a team that gets up and down the floor, scores lots of points, and keeps the egos in check enough to make the Western Conference Finals against the Spurs. 52 wins this year

2: Utah: Don’t you kind of get the feeling that everything went too perfectly for the Jazz last season? Deron Williams busted out as a bona-fide star, Carlos Boozer had his first healthy season in his third with the Jazz and finally justified his contract, and Paul Millsap turned out to be the steal of the draft. The Jazz rode the wave to the Western Conference finals, looked like they were a couple of players away from taking a shot at the championship … and then were silent this offseason.

It actually makes some sense – I think the Jazz looked at their payroll and the competition and realized that no matter what they did they aren’t ready for a championship run – but if they play their cards right, the window may open for them in two or three years. So why break the bank now? In 2 years, Williams, Boozer and Okur will all be eligible for extensions, so while Utah’s big hole last season was at shooting guard (exacerbated by the loss of Derek Fisher), they are addressing the position this season by throwing out a rookie (Morris Almond), a second year player (Ronnie Brewer) and a 2005 second round pick (CJ Miles). This sounds to me like a 2-year open audition: “Hey, we are going to have 3 starters making big money in 2009-10, who wants to play shooting guard for $1-$3 million?� Honestly, it’s not all that illogical a maneuver – to compete for a championship right now, Utah would have needed to add a Kobe Bryant-caliber player. That wasn’t going to happen, so now they try to position themselves to make a run after the Nowitzki/Duncan/Nash era fades past its prime.

Which leads us to the Kirilenko issue. Lost in the whole Kirilenko “my-wife-says-I-can-sleep-with-someone-else-once-a-year-I-hate-Jerry-Sloan� complaining, was the fact that Andrei was awful last year. The problem is that while Kirilenko is a matchup nightmare at power forward, slithering around defenders for baskets and blocking shots from the weak side at will, he had a hard time playing small forward with the emergence of Boozer. Offensively, he doesn’t shoot well enough to carry his weight at the “3� and defensively he gets pulled away from the basket, making it harder to rebound and freelance for blocks and steals. Kirilenko makes tons of money and doesn’t want to be in Utah any more, so trade him, right? Maybe not – his contract has 4 years left, so for the Jazz to trade him for expiring contracts (in order to extend Williams, Boozer and Okur) to have cap room in the 2009 offseason then they need to make that move next year, not now.

I feel that Utah will spend this season in a sort of holding pattern – good enough to cruise into the playoffs, not good enough to make much noise. Denver should be improved, shutting the Jazz out of home-court advantage in the playoffs, but the rest of the division is too weak for Utah to fall all that far. It’s too bad, too, because it was fun to see the Jazz emerge with their deep playoff run last season. My guess is about 43 wins.

3 (tie): Seattle: The Sonics took second prize in the draft lottery and won sure-fire star Kevin Durant, but other than his presence this team is a complete mess. The ownership situation is a major problem that will cause a distraction all season and the roster is filled with almost nothing but role players. It appears that Seattle’s great season three years ago made management believe that the Allen-Lewis show was ready for prime time and just needed some bit parts around them. That wasn’t the case, and now three years of mismanagement won them Durant and a golden opportunity to start over.

Apparently from 2004-2006 the Sonics were getting draft advice from Matt Millen, taking flyers on project big men three years straight. To the surprise of pretty much nobody, all three have been colossal busts with Robert Swift, Johan Petro and Saer Sene barely ever seeing the floor. The Sonics claim that losing Swift to a preseason knee injury was a blow to their season, but that just begs the question – if he was showing talent, then why bother with using picks on Petro and Sene in subsequent years? Anyway, Seattle entered the draft this year almost completely devoid of useful young talent, and going nowhere except to rebuild around Durant. So they made the entirely sensible decision to cut bait with Ray Allen and work out a sign-and-trade for the ridiculous contract that Orlando offered Rashard Lewis.

The Sonics will see significant roster turnover over the upcoming seasons, and that is partially a function of needing to wait to see what Kevin Durant’s game will be like when his body matures. Right now he is a 6’10� stringbean, understandable for a 19 year old, but will he become a 250 pound inside force or top out at 230 and depend on his long- and midrange game? Will he be a power forward or a small forward? Right now he is so explosively athletic but so physically weak that PJ Carlesimo is talking about starting him at shooting guard this year. Durant’s growth will have a major effect on the roles of the other power forwards – Chris Wilcox and Nick Collison – and Jeff Green, the only small forward on the roster after 2-year rental Wally Szczerbiak.

Seattle is kind of the anti-Portland – a roster filled with blah talent but a guaranteed end-game killer in Durant (word from the US national team was that he was sometimes the best player on the court), which should mean lots of blowout losses but a pretty good chance to win the close ones. Still, this team will be down this season and will spend most of the year shopping for new players and a new home. I’d guess that they win 30. Hopefully the fans of Seattle will still have a team when this bunch matures.

3 (tie): Boston’s AAA franchise: I think that by now it is common knowledge that the real problem in Minnesota is the owner, Glen Taylor, and the GM, Kevin McHale. After years of brutally bad management, they finally heeded the call from Boston and let them heist Kevin Garnett, while receiving Al Jefferson, Gerald Green and assorted other shiny beads and trinkets. This was the second major trade McHale has completed with his friend and former teammate Danny Ainge, and gives Minnesota an incredible 7 former Celtics on their current roster.

The T-Wolves now will rebuild around Jefferson, who put together a great 20 game streak to end last season, but the Celtics were tanking games then and finished the season on something like a 3-17 run. I guess I have to remain skeptical about a player until he does it in games that matter, but there is no doubt that Jefferson has offensive talent. His defense has been spotty, but it may come around for him. The Wolves have 3 other interesting young players – Randy Foye becomes the point guard after a spotty, injury-plagued rookie year while Gerald Green and Corey Brewer will try to make something of the small forward position. Green is a 3^rd year man who has done nothing of note beyond winning the slam dunk contest, while Brewer was widely regarded as a steal with the #8 pick in the draft. I have my doubts, however, as at 6’8�, 185 pounds Brewer desperately needs to put on some weight. He’s a defensive specialist, but how that skill will translate from guarding 19-year-old college players to 240 pound men is a question mark in my mind.

Other than that, Minnesota is made up of inexpensive veterans of dubious quality (except for Craig Smith, who was a steal in the second round last season). They made up for one mistake last season by swapping Mike James for Juwan Howard (saving several years of James’ contract in the process) and are apparently looking to trade Howard. And now their best veteran player is the famously me-first Ricky Davis, who will be gunning for his own stats in a contract year. What does it say about the Minnesota roster when the late Eddie Griffin ($2.9 million) will be their 8^th highest paid player this season? It says that they have a long way to go, and wins are a long way off. They’ll be lucky to win 30 games.

5: Portland: Even without Greg Oden this year, my God do the Trail Blazers have a lot of young talent! They have 7 former first round picks who are still in their rookie contracts, and they just extended Travis Outlaw, who is all of 23 years old. Unfortunately the future is probably two years away, as Oden will miss this season and will have to undergo his rookie trials next season, but that future is incredibly bright.

At least they have a somewhat adequate replacement for Oden in the starting lineup in Joel Pryzbilla, but he’s not much more than adequate. The rest of the starting 5 (Jarret Jack, Brandon Roy, Outlaw and LaMarcus Aldridge) is young and athletic and should keep the Blazers in a lot of games. However, finishing them will be a problem, as Portland traded away their entire offense in Zach Randolph. Randolph was heralded for his great season last year, but he really wasn’t much greater than he had been before his knee surgery. However, Randolph touched the ball on seemingly every possession last year – as often as noted ball-hogs Kobe Bryant and Gilbert Arenas. Not a single player on this Blazers roster has experience as a go-to guy (although Roy and Aldridge are on a track to become such a player) and as the Wizards showed last playoffs when Arenas went out, that if you have a one-man offense then losing your main man is a bitter pill.

I cannot help but think that Portland will take a step back this year. Even with Randolph, the Blazers had – by my metrics – the worst offense in the league last season. They are going to be young, they are going to be exciting. But they are going to go through a lot of 4^th quarters with a hard time executing well. I don’t think they top 28 wins, but fear not – with this core, they should win 60 in 3 or 4 years.