-No Andrew Bogut AND no Johnny Mac tonight, I’m bummed.
-I’d say I was surprised that Yi and Bobby Simmons both weren’t playing tonight but then I remembered who they were.
-There were more people at the Super Bowl party I was at on Sunday than there are at tonight’s game in New Jersey.
-A whole lot of missing going on early including airballs from The Zombie and RJ.
-Speaking of the Zombie, he fell for the first time today with 6:36 left in the first quarter.
-Active hands early for the Bucks. If they were the Louisville Cardinals the announcers would be screaming about them charting deflections right now after Charlie V. and then Ridnour each poke the ball. Doesn’t every team chart deflections now? Why did Dickie V. keep pounding that point home about the Cardinals yesterday? Is that really that big of a deal? When Dwyane Wade played at Marquette the same things were said.
-RJ is looking ultra aggressive today. Too bad he isn’t finishing. You can tell this game means a little more to him by the way he’s playing. End of the first: 23-16 Bad Guys.

-Sessions blows a breakaway layup and Gadz gets called on offensive interference. Jim Chones says to win on the road, “you have to make shots”. Great insight.
-Gadzuric hits an elbow jumper, this is as far out as I’ve seen him make a shot this year.
-Josh Boone responds with a tip slam. The Nets are doing a terrific job on the offensive board it seems like. My suspicions are correct: 6 offensive boards early for the Nets with 9:30 minutes left in the first half.
-With Bogut out we’ve now seen Gadzuric and Alexander already in the game with 7:00 minutes to go in the first half after not playing in the last two games.
-It’s funny listening to Chones. He clearly hasn’t watched a Bucks game all year and it gives him a very “fresh” perspective.
-Keyon Dooling is on fire. He’s hit three treys thus far. He’s been in the league nine years? I remember when the Clippers got him as part of that ultra athletic group of swingmen they were assembling. He was the missing piece brought in to play point guard. That all didn’t work out so well.
-I can’t believe how many layups just haven’t fallen for Milwaukee tonight. Sessions gets fouled and justmisses the layup. He’s getting to the line though, 5-6.
-The Bucks D is looking SCRAPPY. Already a 7-1 edge in the steal department. The Bucks need to be active on the perimeter to have a shot without Bogut. Active hands we always call it in NBA 2K9. If you like basketball and have XBOX or Playstation you should really have that game. I can’t stress enough how fun it is.
-Jim Chones really likes what he sees from Luke Rindour thus far. Ridnour certainly does a good job of limiting his mistakes.

-45-37 Bad Guys at half.
-A lot of talk at half time about how the Bucks sink in to defend the lane and give up the three because of it. That is all due to Bogut not being in. If Bogut is in that makes it easier for everyone else to stay on the perimeter and let him handle guys one on one. There is no way Brook Lopez would have eleven points and six rebounds if Bogut was in.

-Ryan Anderson and Richard Jefferson are trading threes. RJ looks like he is going to make a play at taking over this game. That would be a treat. When he is shooting threes he in theory should be very difficult to stop, given his hellbent on getting to the line mentality when driving.
-Wow there is no help on the screen and Elson can’t ever recover in time to stop Brook Lopez from dunking. Lopez is looking so solid right now. I wish his uniform were red and not white.
-The rare four point play by Keyon Dooling. That was daggerific.
-The Bucks cannot string more than a basket or two together. Every time they seem on the edge of making a run the Nets have an answer. Usually the answer is Ryan Anderson.
-If someone told me earlier today that Devin Harris would have fifteen and Vince Carter would have ten, I would have been doing backflips.
-Sessions and Ridnour make for an okay back court, but have an obvious weakness, Sessions doesn’t spread the court. Everyone knows that Sessions won’t be shooting when he catches off a Ridnour drive and it makes it that much easier for the defense to stay in and pack the lane. That, more than anywhere else, is where Michael Redd is missed.
-Keyon Dooling is a great example of that last point I made. He can stay out and shoot the three and that opens it up or gives them great outside looks.
-Luc Mbah a Moute getting mere garbage minutes this evening. Skiles must be afraid of some rookie wall action going on.
-This is the second time I’ve done this and the second time the Bucks have gotten lit up. This wasn’t as bad as the Hawks game, but they still had no answer inside without Andrew Bogut. Fortunately the Bucks have three days off before Detroit comes in on Saturday, hopefully Bogut will return for that one.

Begrudgingly or not most sports fans admit that they feel like other forces are sometimes at work in their favorite sports. Be it the legendary “Curse of the Bambino” in Boston or “The ball don’t lie ref” after a player shoots a free throw on a questionable call in basketball. I’ve heard announcers over the years admonish players for excessive celebration and refer to the gods of sport as keepers of the game. The John McGlocklin’s and Bob Uecker’s have often times said stuff like, “the basketball/baseball gods will take care of him for that”. And it’s those kinds of lines that have me thinking right now. Do the gods of sport really keep track of legacies? Do they know what records could be forever tarnished? The timing and ensuing circumstance of Michael Redd’s injury seem very important to me. Have the basketball gods intervened to make sure Michael Redd does not become too prominent a figure in Milwaukee Bucks lore?

Currently Redd sits at 11,295 points. That sits him 5th in Bucks history between Bob Dandridge and Marques Johnson. He would have needed only 716 points the rest of the season (roughly 21 points per game) to leapfrog Glenn Robinson for the number 2 spot in franchise history. With 2 years left on a difficult to move contract, and only 2200 more points needed after netting the second spot on the all time list, it’s easy to think had he not have gotten hurt this year Michael Redd had a very good chance at becoming the all time leading scorer in Milwaukee Bucks history. That means two hundred years from now when someone from a planet far away from here finds a Milwaukee Bucks media guide from 2012 it very easily could have listed Kareem Abdul-Jabar’s name AFTER Michael Redd on the scoring list.

I just don’t think the basketball gods would have been okay with that. The Michael Redds of the world should not be celebrated. Scoring like gangbusters on a crappy team should not elevate you unto elite status. Had Redd eclipsed the hallowed scoring record he almost certainly would have needed his number retired. No way could Brian Winters and Johnny Mac be sitting up in the rafters while the all-time leading scorer wonders when his time will come. I mean, if Glenn Robinson is even in the conversation, which would have to be solely based on his contributions as a scorer and the team’s success during his years, Redd would have been guaranteed a spot in the rafters.

Given the Bucks current salary cap situation, Redd’s penchant for injury over the past few years, and my expectation of a playoff surge sans him, Redd will likely be shopped with great fury this offseason and into next season provided he can show that he has recovered from his injury. Sources had said that other teams were inquiring on the availability of Redd this season, but I feel like the Bucks thought they would need him to make what they deemed a necessary playoff run. Now that they will know they can be competitive without the man who was once thought to be their cornerstone, Redd will likely be gone long before his contract in Milwaukee is up.

Oddly enough Redd is probably a much more accurate figure to represent the Bucks than Kareem. The Bucks being as forgettable a franchise as Milwaukee is a city Kareem was a star far too big for Milwaukee, he was made for Los Angeles or his hometown New York.

“Live in Milwaukee? No, I guess you could say I exist in Milwaukee,” Abdul-Jabbar said in an early magazine interview. “I am a soldier hired for service and I will perform that service well. Basketball has given me a good life, but this town has nothing to do with my roots. There’s no common ground.”

Redd is a small town workhorse guy, the underdog who rose from second round wannabe to Olympian. Unless you’re a certifiable NBA fan or Milwaukeean, Kareem is, was and always will be a Laker. Even when the Bucks get it right they can’t win. Yes, Redd seems to fit the city right, a star with limitations. Milwaukee is an okay city, but it is not a Chicago or New York. Nothing in Milwaukee is “larger than life”. Milwaukee will forever be associated with the Michael Redd’s and Ray Allen’s who never could be the centerpiece of a great team. Milwaukee is home to the Sidney Moncriefs who get the most of their abilities and never say die. Milwaukee had the Mecca, but that didn’t mean it was destined to be the epicenter of the NBA. But the basketball gods don’t care about all that. They don’t care about player preferences or how large a city is, they just care about keeping things in order. And now that order will likely never be:
1. Redd
2. Abdul-Jabar

Redd will likely go down years from now as a productive scorer on crappy teams, and a forgotten Olympian on a team of shining stars. Just as the basketball gods planned.