The Bratwurst – Milwaukee Bucks Blog

Boy, has this division seen some changes this offseason. One team bolts town, another trades one of their best players for a second round pick, and another adds the #1 pick from last year. But one thing doesn’t change: Jerry Sloan is still on top.

1-Utah: After winning 54 games and seeing Deron Williams blossom into one of the top 4 point guards on the planet, there isn’t much reason for Utah to make changes. And change the didn’t. They seem to have given up on the idea of trading Andrei Kirilenko (probably a good idea) and are sticking with the plan that between CJ Miles, Ronnie Brewer and Morris Almond they must have one decent shooting guard in there (Miles might surprise some people this year). One thing about the Jazz’ record that makes last year seem as though it was no fluke was that they were a pretty mediocre 17-24 on the road — their dominance at home is pretty much a given and with a couple of lucky breaks there is room for improvement on the road as well.

Last year: won 54 games.

+2 wins because they will be better on the road this year.
+1 win from the “Carlos Boozer contract year” effect (he can opt-out after the season, but apparently the Jazz are trying to sign him to an extension).
+1 win from the continued dominance of Deron Williams.

This year: 58-24.

2-Portland: No offense to John Hammond, but I wish Kevin Pritchard was my GM. He has built one of the most talented teams in the league and is set to drop $35 million under the salary cap this offseason. Meanwhile, he adds last years’ #1 pick, Greg Oden, to the team this year and stole Jerryd Bayless from Larry Bird as well. I’m not much of a Bayless fan — I don’t see how his helter-skelter style fits in with the organized system Roy, Aldridge and Oden are suited for and it seems like dominating summer league like he did is usually correlates with not doing anything at the NBA level. That said, Jarret Jack is a nice player who doesn’t do a whole lot for me and I don’t think much of Brandon Rush at all. The Bayless trade was a good risk for the Blazers — they didn’t give much up and just because I don’t like him doesn’t mean anything. I’ve been wrong before. Meanwhile, I think Greg Oden will prove to be very similar to Dikembe Mutombo early in his career — capable of dominating games with his rebounding and shot blocking, despite being a little raw offensively. You add a defensive anchor to this team and a year of improvement and you get a big jump this year and most likely 60 wins and a title three years from now.

Last year: won 41 games.

+6 wins from the arrival of Greg Oden.
+2 wins from the improvement of the Roy/Outlaw/Aldridge nucleus.
-2 wins from weakness at point guard and difficulty integrating Bayless into the system.

This year: 47-35.

3- Denver: George Karl has never struck me as much of a coach. He pretty much rolls the balls out onto the floor and lets the guys do what they want. He needs a dominant personality on his team to be on the same page as him, and it’s no coincidence that he had success with Gary Payton in Seattle and then mortgaged the Bucks’ future by pushing to get him again. Meanwhile, financial concerns are all set to blow up this Denver team. Allen Iverson is starting to show his age, and it seems pretty much settled that Carmelo Anthony doesn’t have the game or attention span (He is well known as one of the biggest partiers in the league. OJ Mayo got in trouble with the NCAA for accepting tickets from Anthony, after Mayo joked around with him that he was staying out too late the night before a Lakers game) to get through a whole NBA season, and is better suited for short, Olympic-style tournaments. The Nuggets are hamstrung with horrible contracts to Kenyon Martin and Nene, and this offseason’s trade of Marcus Camby for nothing is a clear indication that the team is all set to give up, let Iverson’s contract expire after the season, and start over. George Karl has no chance to motivate this bunch.

Last year: won 50 games.

-5 games from the loss of their only defender, Marcus Camby.
-2 games from the decline of Allen Iverson.
+1 game from the theft of Renaldo Balkman from the Knicks.
-2 games from the inevitable breakdown from the $25.7 million combo of Nene and Kenyon Martin.
-6 games from the fact that George Karl is a horrible coach for motivating a bad team.

This year: 36-46.

4-Minnesota: Give Kevin McHale some credit — he found the only GM in the league who is worse than him in Chris Wallace and stole Kevin Love and Mike Miller in exchange for the next Larry Hughes in OJ Mayo. This all came after McHale spent the pre-draft period talking about how badly he wanted a center so that Al Jefferson could go back to power forward and Ryan Gomes to small forward because as a center and power forward the two of them were the worst defensive tandem in the league. Then McHale did the smart thing and got the best player available instead of messing around with drafting for need. And he stole Mike Miller. And got rid of Antoine Walker and Marko Jaric in the deal. Nice move. However, the whole plan almost fell apart two weeks ago when Blake Ahearn fell into Al Jefferson’s knee. They say he will be back in two weeks and I’m basing my projection on this being true. But I hate to make assumptions like that about knee injuries.

Last year: won 22 games.

+4 games from Al Jefferson’s improvement.
+3 games from Kevin Love’s presence, who should pay immediate dividends.
-3 games from Al Jefferson being forced to play center. He’s as bad as Eddy Curry defensively at that position, but at least it’s not from lack of effort.
+3 games from Mike Miller’s presence, which really says more about how he will keep other T-Wolves (particularly Rashad McCants) off of the court than what Miller will do on it.

This year: 29-53. Still not good, but an improvement.

5- Oklahoma City: There isn’t much to say about this team. They don’t care about their record, only about amassing draft picks and cap room. They should concentrate on the picks, since they can have all the cap room in the world but wont be able to sign anyone of note in the sprawling metropolis of Oklahoma City. The team has a budding star in Kevin Durant and a couple of interesting players in Russell Westbrook and Saer Sene (not too excited about Jeff Green, though) but not much interest in anyone else on their own roster. The fans are excited for NBA basketball and all, but they aren’t going to see much of it from their own team.

Last year: 20 wins.

+3 wins from the improvement of Kevin Durant.
+3 wins from moving from the angry fans of Seattle to the college atmosphere in OKC

This year: 26-56.

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 don’t have much to say about preseason results, but there is one thing that is jumping out at me: The Bucks, and particularly Andrew Bogut, are rebounding the ball very well. The team rebounded Chicago to a 38-38 draw, but outrebounded Utah 41-38 in Utah and 41-34 on Sunday in Milwaukee.

Bogut had 3 boards against Chicago (against Ben Wallace and Tyrus Thomas) but 7 in both games against Utah (against Mehmet Okur and Paul Millsap). He played about 20 minutes in all three, so that works out to 10.5 boards per 40 minutes. That’s about the same rate he was at last season, but 3 of the 4 guys he’s had to match up against this preseason are some of the best in the league.

Just one little positive note.

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.

I’m a few days late, but better late than never.

• Fresh Coast Pistons notes the birthday of Rasheed Wallace.  ‘Sheed is now 33.
• The Bucks matched Charlie Bell’s offer sheet with the Miami Heat.
• Troy Hudson might join the Golden State Warriors according to Golden State of Mind.
• Andrei Kirilenko says he’s going to play in Europea next year.
• Fresh Coast Cavs wants Danny Ferry to bring in Sarunas Jasikevicius.