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.

I’ve posted the new IPM data through December 8. A few things that I’ve noticed:

1: I think it’s official — the winner in the TJ Ford/Charlie V trade is Toronto. TJ is playing his second straight spectatcular season with the Raptors, and now he’s shooting 48% from the field to boot. He’s finally curbed his most annoying trait, shooting too early in a posession, as he’s down to 38% of his shot attempts coming in the first 10 seconds of the 24 second clock. When he takes early shots they are good ones, too; hitting them with a 63% eFG% (which includes an adjustment for 3-point shots). On the other hand, Mo Williams has taken 41% of his shots early in the clock and shot 44.5% eFG. Meanwhile, Charlie V’s comeback season has been maddeningly inconsistent and there is always the problem with how he fits into a team concept — how do you use a player of his size who is too slow to guard small forwards and too thin to play power forward? The matchup problems he creates offensively are offset by the problems he has defensively.

2: Time to face facts: this whole “committment to defense” thing isn’t working for the Bucks. It’s a nice idea, but they aren’t defending that well. Their defensive IPM ranks them third to last, only a two spot improvement from last year (they were the #29 defense at the end of January 07, which is when they pretty much stopped trying last season). However, this team should be able to run pretty effectively as they have played at slightly faster than the league’s average pace for the past few years. However, this season they are playing at the 21st fastest pace in the league. A team with a pretty efficient offense but poor defense needs to get as many shot attempts as possible to make up for the weaker defense; they shouldn’t slow the game down. I am not saying that the Bucks should abandon defense altogether, but they have to run more and try to generate turnovers through pressure rather than slowing the game down with ineffective zones. One of the traits a good coach has is the ability to tailor schemes to your talent. Coach Krystkowiak has to know that the Bucks have plenty of offense-first players and needs to take advantage of it.

3: Boston’s team defense has been so good that their IPM differential is throwing off my formulas. For a while it said that the Celtics were good enough to win 83 games this year, now it believes that they look like a 76 win team. Well, I have my doubts about that. The Celtics haven’t really played anyone, and they needed last second shots to win two of their games. They also beat Miami by one at home. The Celtics are good, but they aren’t going to be threatening the Bulls’ 72 win season.

4: The Knicks are a lot worse than they look. They are so inefficient that they have the league’s worst offense and so lazy that they have the second worst defense. With only 6 wins so far, my formulas say they have overachieved by 3. It’s incredible how bad they are. What is amazing is that they don’t have a single player with a 0.8 IPM — the only team to do that. David Lee comes close — 0.7992 — but he only plays 25 minutes a game, so the Knicks aren’t even using their best player for much more than half a game! Coming as no surprise to me, Zach Randolph has seen his numbers drop significantly, and Eddy Curry’s “bust out” season a year ago was a mirage. What a joke.

5: My numbers say that Orlando is overachieving, my intuition says that Orlando is a overachieving … but the results look pretty serious to me. Their 5 losses came to Detroit, Phoenix (twice), San Antonio and Indiana; and they just finished a 5-1 west coast road trip. They are 11-2 on the road. Clearly Dwight Howard has become a complete beast, and still has upside. So why don’t I trust them? Because I don’t see how they can go very far with Howard as their only effective big man and without a decent shooting guard. Look at the positions that their top 8 players (by IPM) play: C, PG, SF, SF, PG, SF, PG, C. At some point they will get a matchup at power forward that Turkoglu and Lewis can’t handle and will need some well-rounded play from the “2″. They are off to a great start, but there’s a long way to go for that roster to keep this pace up.

Opening night: Orlando 102, Milwaukee 83.

The Bucks outrebounded Orlando 48-42.

That pretty much sums up the positive stuff.

I’m not going to get too much into this game, since I’m not really prone to overreacting to what happened on one given night, but there are a couple of things I wanted to mention.

Yi looked a lot lot lot better than I thought he would. Good coaching move by Krystkowiak by cross-matching Yi and Desmond Mason at the outset so that Yi guarded Turkoglu instead of Rashard Lewis. Hedo eventually lit it up, but not while Yi was on him.

I thought Yi looked pretty good on defense, and fairly tentative on offense but he took advantage of his opportunities. Yi shot 4-5 and two of his three turnovers weren’t really his fault — one was a travel when Mo gave him the ball in a bad spot on a fast break, and the other was either a great defensive play or a perfect example of what is wrong with the NBA and the way they call offensive fouls, depending on your perspective.

After how hot Orlando shot the ball in the 3rd quarter there was no way the Bucks were going to win, but I would have liked to see them fight back a little better. But it’s only one night.

But one night is all I need to be able to say that Bobby Simmons and Desmond Mason should not be splitting minutes. Simmons should be starting, finishing, and playing most of the minutes in between.

It’s not the end of the world. Teams wont shoot 55% from 3 every night, nor will they always make 26 free throws to your 22 attempts.

Ah, the Southeast. Warm, sunny weather. Laid back people. Several average basketball teams, each with major flaws – especially at power forward. Except for Atlanta, who lacks pretty much everything except a ton of power forwards. This is a funny division — the only one without a good championship contender, but Atlanta might be the best “worst” team in any division. There should be plenty of entertaining games in this division, but no hardware come June.

1: Washington: You know the old saying, “The best defense is a good offense�? Well, last year the Wizards proved that one true until the injuries piled up. Washington had the 6^th best offense in the league (by IPM) last year, but the 26^th best defense. It all seemed to be working as the Wiz cruised into mid-March at 34-25 and were thinking about the #1 seed in the East. However, injuries to Caron Butler and then Gilbert Arenas sent the team into a tailspin. They finished with a 6-13 face plant, with all 6 wins coming against non-playoff teams. The hobbled Wizards were then crushed in the playoffs by Cleveland.

Washington’s identity was built around the eye-popping play of Gilbert Arenas, who might be the deadliest late-game player currently in the league. However, Caron Butler may have actually been their most important player, as he raised his offensive game to All-Star level and was also one of their best perimeter defenders (but that’s all relative to his teammates. Butler’s defense was pretty average). The whole no-defense policy will continue for at least another year as defense-allergic Antwan Jamison and limited Brendan Haywood make up the starting frontcourt. Tragically, co-starting center (and frequent wrestling opponent of Haywood) Etan Thomas’ career is in doubt after requiring surgery to repair a heart defect, which will press first round pick Oleksiy Pecherov into action sooner than expected.

The Wiz didn’t do anything of note with their roster, mostly because they were already right at the luxury tax line and they will also have to break the bank next offseason to extend Arenas’ contract. They let bust Jarvis Hayes go and resigned DeShawn Stevenson and Andray Blatche, so their 8 man rotation returns virtually unchanged.

The Wizards had a system that worked last year – score enough to keep it close until the 4^th quarter, then give it to Gilbert and get out of the way – and they are going to try it again. Assuming that Arenas comes back at full strength (and there is no reason to believe he wont) then this team is the class of the division. They should win 50, but that shaky defense makes them ripe for a first-round playoff upset.

2: Orlando: A couple of months ago I wrote that if the Magic wanted a scoring small forward then they should have tried to trade for Corey Maggette instead of signing Rashard Lewis. I still think that is true, and if they hadn’t committed so much money to Lewis then they might have been one of the few teams able to put together a somewhat reasonable offer for Kobe Bryant. Oh well, we’ll never know. Instead the Magic used all their cap room on Lewis and failed to address their real needs – power forward and shooting guard.

Last year Orlando had a very oddly-composed roster. Their top seven players were either centers (Howard and Darko Milicic), small forwards (Hidyaet Turkoglu, Grant Hill and Trevor Ariza) or point guards (Carlos Arroyo and Jameer Nelson). This made it very difficult for them to field a balanced team – they never could find the right player to pair with Howard, couldn’t use their small forwards together because none of them shot well enough or was quick enough to play the 2, and couldn’t use Arroyo and Nelson together because they were too small for the 2. It resulted in a team that was awful offensively, but at least because of the emergence of Howard played very well defensively. However, that roster imbalance caught up to them eventually, and they were dispatched with ease by Detroit in the first round.

After losing Milicic because they elected to sign Rashard Lewis (to a totally ridiculous contract) they still have a logjam at small forward and completely failed to address the gap at power forward. They signed Adonal Foyle intending for him to tag-team with Tony Battie at the 4, only to learn that Battie will miss the season with a torn rotator cuff. They also did nothing to fill in the shooting guard spot, apparently assuming that JJ Redick will be ready to step in as the starter. However, it appears that the college knock on Redick – that he’s not athletic enough – has carried over into the pros. While Redick shot okay his rookie year, his numbers of rebounds, blocks and steals were sorely lacking – which is a good indicator of ones athleticism.

By adding a 20 point per game scorer in Lewis, the Magic did address their most pressing need – scoring ability. This should not be one of the worst offenses in the league any more. However, they are so thin at power forward that Dwight Howard will have to pretty much do all the work himself, which probably won’t lead to many more wins or get the team any farther than it did last season – an improvement to 45 wins this year and another first round playoff exit.

3: Charlotte: For a short while, it appeared that the Bobcats were ready to make their big splash, fill up their salary cap, and make their move for the playoffs this season. But they made one big misstep – and now an early injury has short circuited their season before it began.

Michael Jordan showed he was serious about spending some money on draft night when they traded Brandan Wright for Jason Richardson. This was a big move because it allowed Gerald Wallace (who they would resign to a very reasonable contract) to concentrate on his natural small forward position and would banish Adam Morrison deep on the bench. But here is where Charlotte screwed up – before resigning Wallace, they should have jumped all over Anderson Varejao and tried offering him a contract in the 4 yr/$40 million range. Cleveland is right up against the luxury tax and should they have let Varejao go, he would have given Charlotte great depth at power forward – a defensive specialist alongside the offensive minded, defense-impaired Sean May and Walter Herrmann. However, Charlotte took the easy route – resigning Wallace and then using the remainder of the cap lavishing a bizarre 6 year, $27 million contract on shooting specialist Matt Carroll (think Charlie Bell without the ballhandling ability or defense – no wonder Bell is pissed) and trusting that May and Herrmann could handle the power forward position.

That plan lasted 1 week into training camp. May tore up his knee and will miss the season, so Herrmann becomes the de-facto starter. That puts tons of pressure on defensive maven Emeka Okafor and, an even bigger problem, will make Gerald Wallace spend some time at the 4. But now Charlotte is saying that Adam Morrison will likely miss the season with a knee injury. Morrison was so bad last season that he was on the short list of answers to the question “who was the worst player in the NBA last year who saw regular playing time?� (with the answer being either Morrison, Antonie Walker or Brian Scalabrine). For a shooting specialist, Morrison showed no shooting ability, putting up a lovely 37% from the field and unremarkable 71% from the line. He couldn’t rebound or pass either, averaging 3.9 rebounds per 40 minutes and 2.8 assists/40. At least his defense was comically bad, though. He was awful in every sense of the word, and can already pretty much be written off as a bust. On the bright side, Charlotte’s insistence on playing him nearly 30 mpg cost them several losses – so at least the team was better than their record last season. However, now that he is hurt, Charlotte has to wonder who will replace his meager production.

Charlotte was poised to make a big leap this season, but the injury bug has already started to hit them and unless they can get a solid 35 mpg from Walter Herrmann they will have to settle for a little hop. They now have a nice starting 5 – a developing point guard, an established 2 guard, a near-star at small forward and a dominant defender in the middle. A little turn of good luck somewhere could propel them to 40 wins and keep them in the mix for the playoffs.

4: Miami: The Heat put together the lamest championship defense since the 1999 Bulls. On one hand it wasn’t their entire fault as injuries claimed most of the roster. On the other hand, though, the roster was fatally flawed, and it seemed like motivation was a problem – other than Dwyane Wade and Alonzo Mourning, the whole team seemed content to half-ass it until the playoffs. You could sort of tell on opening night that Miami wouldn’t be around in the end when they started their title defense by losing 108-66 to the Bulls.

Predictably, Shaquille O’Neal promptly hit the DL to rest up for the playoffs, and the rest of the roster was on cruise control as well. Jason Williams always seems to be disinterested, and Antoine Walker was simply unconscious all season – but I don’t mean that in a good way. Walker’s game completely collapsed, as he set career lows in points and rebounds, and only shot 25% from 3 point range but still managed to fire up 4 per game. How many bricks can you lay before you give it up?

The one bright spot was Dwyane Wade, who simply did everything for this injury- and motivation-plagued team. He was the best player in the league until a shoulder injury ended his season, and he is not supposed to be back until mid-November at the earliest (ESPN recently reported that Wade would be unavailable until January, which Pat Riley denies). Honestly, probably the most amazing thing about Wade’s season was that he lasted as long as he did, given the constant punishment he takes with his all-out playing style. I thought it was interesting that Miami used their first round pick on a shooting guard this season – maybe they are thinking that the only way to keep Wade in one piece is to eventually reduce his minutes?

The luxury tax-strapped Heat had an oddball offseason as they tried to use the midlevel exception and the star power of Shaq and Wade to raid the Bucks’ roster, but would up being played like suckers instead. First Mo Williams made noise about loving Miami until the Bucks raised their contract offer, and then Charlie Bell inked a deal that was eventually matched by Milwaukee (much to Bell’s chagrin). Miami wound up doing little more than signing Smush Parker and sensibly picking up Alexander Johnson to be their backup power forward. Other than that, this team is about as shallow behind it’s superstars as Boston.

It makes me laugh how media types keep referring to Miami as a place to go “to compete for a championship.� While in a perfect world – everybody healthy, motivated and in shape – the Heat can throw out an imposing lineup, in reality they are so full of holes that … there are more holes than solid sections. Because of the “I’ll be there for the playoffs� mentality Shaq is becoming less and less of a factor in the regular season, plus this year has the distraction of an increasingly bitter divorce. When Wade will be at full strength is an open question, and behind Udonis Haslem and Mourning the roster is made up of a bunch of has-beens and never-will-be’s. I can’t imagine them getting Shaq and Wade together more than 50 times this season, and those other 30 games will be rough. I don’t think they win more than 37.

5: Atlanta: You’ve got to love a team whose idea of adding veteran leadership is drafting Shelden Williams and Al Horford. The continuing front office mess in Atlanta hamstrung yet another offseason for the Hawks, as their warring ownership group is court-ordered to agree amongst themselves on any player moves that involves anything more complex (or expensive) than draft picks and minimum-salary signings. As a result, the Hawks wont agree on anything and so were forced to shoot down a 3-way Kevin Garnett trade that would have netted Atlanta Amare Stoudamire. Oh well, so much for that.

So that means the only thing that GM Billy “who needs Chris Paul?� Knight could do is draft Horford and Acie Law. Horford is supposed to be as close to a sure-thing contributor at power forward as can be, which Atlanta needs since it appears that Marvin Williams is never going to be able to fill the bill and that Shelden Williams is already as good as he is going to get. I don’t like players like Law, though – point guards who spring onto the scene based on one good college season and people say things like; “he’s more of a born leader than a point guard� and “he’s got a habit of hitting big shots.� Last guy I heard described like this who got taken around the 10^th pick in the draft was Reece Gaines. Remember him?

The Hawks better hope I’m wrong about Law, because he’s pretty much all they’ve got at the position. Speedy Claxton’s game fell apart, and Tyronn Lue won’t bring home many wins. The rest of the roster is theoretically pretty talented – at least, they have a ton of guys who were high draft picks there. Joe Johnson had a mildly disappointing, injury-plagued season after his bust out the season before, and Josh Smith asserted himself as one of the most talented and most immature players in the league, as Smith put up all-star numbers but also got a 2-game suspension from his team for throwing a temper tantrum on the bench. As far as bench talent, Marvin Williams, Shelden Williams, and Josh Childress were all between the #2 and #15 picks in the draft, and the quietly effective Zaza Pachulia holds down the center position.

But this is still a roster of talented guys who have never done anything. And if the Hawks don’t get their management/front office situation settled, they never will. It’s going to be yet another 32 win season in the peach state.