January 4th-10th
4 Games (3 Home 1 Road)

January 5th vs. Toronto (13-20)
The Raptors of Toronto have been labeled one of the great disappointments of this season so far. After tooling up in the off season by acquiring faded star Jermaine O’neal and handing the keys over to Jose Calderon the Raptors expected to take another step forward in the Eastern Conference this year. Unfortunately for them they have taken a huge flying leaping step back. After firing Sam Mitchell on December 3rd Toronto currently sits 13-20, virtually eliminated from contention in the Boston division. Now to be fair they did not expect to really push the Celtics for the division this year, but surely they expected to at least put up a fight. While Jermaine O’neal has shown he is no longer the JO of years past, the real trouble in Toronto has been their wing men. This is a team that at times this year has started Anthony Parker, Jason Kapono, Andrea Barginani, and Jamario Moon. Using the Player Efficiency Rating used by statistical guru John Hollinger of ESPN.com, the only one of those four who even comes off as average is Moon. All the blame in the world can be laid at the feet of the leader of the team, but a coach can only use the players he has…and the Raptors just don’t have much. The Raps have been booed at home and welcomed with open arms on the road, so this appears to be a winnable game for the Bucks. Calderon will need to be contained however as he went off for 25 in these teams first meeting this year.

January 7th vs. Philadelphia (13-20)
Competing with the Raptors for most disappointing team in the Atlantic division is the Bucks next opponent, the Philadelphia 76ers. The Sixers have been struggling to implement Elton Brand into their offense and coach/nice guy Maurice Cheeks was relieved of his duties on December 13th. Brand was brought in ideally to open up space for guys like ‘Dre Iguodala and Thad Young to operate, but they continue to have trouble working together. Last year the Sixers did their best work using their atheltic skills by running and getting up and down the court. Brand was thought to be the kind of player to change a system around, but hasn’t been as good as he was in past years. Collapsing on Brand has been working like a charm for opposing defenses also as the Sixers are shooting a paltry 29% from behind the arc. Things have not gotten any better with Brand out the past 8 games as the Sixers have stumbled to a 2-6 record.

January 9th vs. New Jersey (16-18)
Hometown hero Devin Harris leads a surprising Nets team into Milwaukee on Friday. With all these Atlantic teams struggling to blend together the Nets took advantage of early struggles and have surged to second place in the division. As it stands right now they are battling with Milwaukee and Chicago for the 8th and final seed in the playoff race. More importantly for them though they have a young team that is working well together. Devin Harris has been one of the top point guards in the Eastern Conference this year and is averaging over 22 points a game. Vince Carter continues to show up and do Vince Carter things, which means some lazy defense, some dunks, more threes than necessary, and game winners in Toronto. This also marks the meaningless return to Milwaukee for Yi Jianlian and Richard Jefferson’s first game against his former mates. This is likely to be the best game of the week and like almost every other Nets game could go down to the wire.

January 10th @ Minnesota (8-25)
Our neighbors to the west continue to struggle mightily. Like most teams they fired their coach this year, and like most of those teams, the Timberwolves are still crappy. At least the Timberwolves had the sense of humor to put the guy who made the mess in charge handling the players first hand, as Kevin McHale has struggled just as bad as Randy Wittman since taking over. Al Jefferson continues to be a walking double double and Kevin Love has been solid of late, averaging 12 points and 9 rebounds over his last 5 games, but bright spots are few and far between after those two. Rashad Mccants seems to be trying for the record of most shots taken in least amount of time every time he enters a game putting up almost 4 threes per game in only 20 minutes of action. In comparison, Michael Redd averages about 5 threes attempted per game in 35 minutes of action. Yikes.

Lots of opportunity for the Bucks to put a little distance between some of their lower level Eastern Conference cohorts this week. Knowledgeable basketball minds like the previously referenced John Hollinger have mentioned that the Bucks schedule early this year was about as tough as it could get, and they merely needed to hang tough until things evened out for them, well this is the evening out. 4 games in one week is difficult but three of them being at home helps out a lot and this week should show fans what the Bucks really are all about. To be successful is to take care of bad teams at home like they have done earlier with the Clippers and Bobcats, hopefully we’ll see more of the same this week.

Part 1
The Inexact Science of the NBA Draft

Oldest Teams in the NBA (As of Opening Day)
1. Spurs
2. New Orleans
3. Denver
4. Dallas
5. Houston
6. Milwaukee

This is a very telling statistic. With the exception of Dallas, who traded Devin Harris I remind you, every team ahead of Milwaukee will make noise in the playoffs this year. They have been building their teams for years, using wise draft decisions and smart free agent pickups to bolster their respective lineups. The Bucks are out of place in this group. They are a team rebuilding and trying to change their style. While they have made great strides this year on both sides of the ball, they have another year or two of smart decision making before they will be ready to reenter the atmosphere of playoff success. With no success achieved in the past 6 years, how have the Bucks become one of the oldest teams in the league?

Answer: Dismal draft picks. And it is those picks, not their ill advised free agent spending sprees that have left the Bucks on the outside looking in over the past 6 years. First round draft mistakes, by both Ernie Grunfeld and Larry Harris, have proven to be difficult for a team that will never be a major player for free agents to overcome. Since 2003, the Bucks have not been a better than average basketball team, ideally leaving them with a plethora of draft picks to increase their depth and re-energize the franchise. Let’s take a look at what exactly the Bucks have done with their draft picks since 2003.

2003 Draft
8. TJ Ford
Sadly, TJ Ford was probably the best selection that the Bucks have made in the past 10 years. I rank him higher than Bogut only because they showed courage and home run capability with this pick. Ford had a huge upside coming out of college after being named Naismith Player of the Year. The knock on Ford was that his slight stature would lead to injuries and word of a possible spinal cord problem…which all came to fruition on February 25th of his rookie year when he bruised his spinal cord. Ford continued to struggle with health problems, and he now appears to have a severe mental problem; he thinks he is a man with a jump shot. Reggie Miller he is not.

2004 Draft
No Picks
Surely the Bucks gave up 2 picks in this draft with good reason right? Right??? Not so much. Shortly before the 2001-2002 season, also known as The Anthony Mason Debacle, to make room for everyone’s favorite point forward, the Bucks shipped off lovable forward Scott Williams and a conditional first round pick which ended up being this one. In return, the Bucks got legendary Ohio State center Aleksander Radojevic and a 2002 second round pick which resulted in Dan Gadzuric. This obviously could not have worked out any worse as Anthony Mason proved to be a more destructive force than 90% of the natural disasters I have ever heard of. To make things a little bit worse, this pick was used on Josh Smith. Whoops. They were able to pry away promising big man Zaza Pachulia with their second round pick via the Bobcats. But he was allowed to walk during the legendary week in August of 2005 when the Larry Harris did everything he could to ruin their future cap flexibility…and then was given an extention and raise. Yikes.

2005 Draft
1. Andrew Bogut
Bogut was the safe choice. For everything Chris Paul and to a lesser extent Deron Williams have gone on to do since this draft, the choice was really between Andrew Bogut and Marvin Williams. TJ Ford was still seen as the point guard of the future and Mo Williams had proven to be a more than capable backup. Marvin Williams had tantalizing potential, but it seemed that he was a few years away from being the player they needed. The theory at the time (and maybe still??) Is that a player as talented as Bogut with that much size cannot be passed on. Bogut has gone on to a solid and still promising career. As a pick at the time it did not have the ceiling of the other players although would provide much quicker results, and with the ship sinking a little more each year, that was what appealed to the Bucks in the end.

2006 Draft
No First Round Pick
This pick was dumped along with Desmond Mason for Jamal Magloire so the Bucks could clear up the logjam they had mysteriously created at small forward. Of course this came weeks after Larry Harris had assured Mason he was not being shopped and months after telling coach Terry Porter, “We’re going to sink or swim together on this.” Porter was of course fired less than a month later. But hey, when a Terry Stotts becomes available, moves need to be made. This pick can be chalked up as another casualty of the Summer of 2005.

2007 Draft
6. Yi Jianlian
Can we just forget this whole thing happened? The Bucks left at least 3 future all stars on the board to take a guy who did not want to play here, whose agents did not want him here, whose family did not want him here, whose WHOLE COUNTRY DID NOT WANT HIM HERE!! This was an act of complete arrogance. Picking Yi was like throwing a middle finger up at all Bucks fans, and that is before even discussing that he was 3 years older than he claimed to be. Sorry Bucks fans, no Brandon Wright, no Thaddeus Young, no Rodney Stuckey, just Easy Yi. The only thing Yi will be remembered for, aside from making the whole Bucks delegation fly to China to beg him to show up and not embarrass them, will be that he was the vehicle which took away the awfulness known as Bobby Simmons.

2008 Draft
8. Joe Alexander
“Joey” doesn’t look so promising as of yet, but judgment must be withheld on him. It takes at least a season to see what a team really has with someone they drafted, although it does appear that Luc Richard Mbah ah Moute has kept alive the Bucks tradition of finding gems in round 2, as he has already become the Bucks primary defensive stopper. I do realize that the Bucks have had unusual success in the second round of many of these drafts, appearing to target players who have the work ethic to succeed in unlikely scenarios. Michael Redd, Dan Gadzuric, Flip Murray, and now Ramon Sessions, all were great finds in round 2. But for a team to truly pull themselves out of the depths of the league, they have to hit home runs in round 1. Portland landed Brandon Roy, Lamarcus Aldridge, Martell Webster, Travis Outlaw and famously Greg Oden in either draft day deals or smart early round choices. These are the kinds of guys the Bucks have not been securing.

John Hammond has a very strong track record going back to strong drafts when he worked with the Clippers of the early 2000s. The Bucks have a track record just as strong against drafting anyone with superstar potential, so something will have to give.Part Two will focus largely on the Summer of 2005, why the Bucks are where they are now, and what they can do to regain credibility in the NBA again.

First it seemed that Scott Skiles did not know what he was doing. I couldn’t have been wrong. Then the more games the Bucks played the more obvious it became. I know it has been there all year, I just chose to ignore it. I talked myself into it and I believed, but no longer can I believe it. Ramon Sessions is not elite. Sessions has a knack for penetrating and finding open men. Luke Ridnour is not elite. Ridnour is a keen pull up shooter from 20 feet and as well as the Bucks have played this year this is something that I can’t help but worry about for the future. They are both normal players, with some abnormal abilities. When the Bucks sneak into the playoffs as the 7 or 8 seed, (5 or 6 if they get Carl Landry) and lose to the Celtics or Cavaliers I worry that they will talk themselves into these two as their point guards as I did before.

This is usually where I would make the case that in the interest of finding out just what they have, the Bucks should be heaping all of their minutes unto Ramon Sessions and finding out for certain whether or not Sessions has the gifts necessary to be a lead guard for years to come. Lately however I have come across a significant recurrence of a problem with Ramon that simply would not happen to someone who could be a lead guard on a championship team. It was pointed out to me before, and I vehemently argued and disagreed, but…Ramon Sessions cannot dribble a basketball. In all my years as a Bucks fan I have never seen a guard dribble the ball off of his chest or foot, or simply have it bounce too high away as often as Sessions has these things happen. For all of the pluses Sessions has, this is such a glaring negative that it cannot be overlooked, and would be a justifiable reason for why Skiles has opted against giving him the minutes we all assumed he deserved thus far this season.

Being that this is a problem I’ve never seen encountered in a NBA point guard, I do not know if it can be corrected. It seems as if this is the right crew to turn that around for Sessions, a no nonsense ex-guard of a coach on a team that needs a future point guard, but who knows if Ramon will one day be able to have the handle necessary to lead a team. However, knowing and admitting this does allow me to justify why the coach is playing what seemed to be his second best point guard who has already established himself as an average NBA player. It keeps my faith in what Scott Skiles is doing and that is a good feeling.