As I’m sure you’ve read elsewhere, the Bucks have signed semi-veteran Eddie Gill. I’d say he is a veteran, but he’s played less than three full seasons of games in the League. Over at Ridiculous Upside (see link above) and BrewHoop they have similar takes regarding the move: blah. I agree. Why bother signing some guy who is just some guy. For all of the good young players there are floating around various leagues right now, why bother with a guy who couldn’t stick at any of the six stops he’s had. The only thing he’s really done well in the NBA is shoot free throws, coincidentally what Ridnour usually did at the end of games. Gill is a career .355 shooter, not overwhelming.

Essentially it looks like the Bucks want to go with a veteran guy who’ll be able to hold down the backup spot for ten minutes each game. One thing sticks in my mind at this time: Haywoode Workman. Workman was a journeyman who was out of the league for a year when the Bucks signed him as an injury fill-in during the 1998-99 season. He provided the Bucks with a pretty good boost, considering the circumstances, and even helped get them into the playoffs.

Something tells me Eddie Gill does not equal Haywoode Workman.

Everyone associated with the Milwaukee Bucks needs to watch out. The injury bug is out for blood it appears. Yes, for the Milwaukee Bucks last week was difficult. What began as a possible launching pad into the playoffs, spiraled into a tough realization that once again a season will be wrecked due to injury. The Bucks woke up last Sunday sitting on a two game winning streak for the first time in over a month. Their focal point, Andrew Bogut, had returned and the schedule had softened. It seemed as though the allusive lady luck had finally touched down.

Then they ventured to New Jersey…without Andrew Bogut. There were rumors that his injury may be more than back spasms. The rumors become news on Wednesday when it was announced Bogut would be out for 8 weeks. Tough as that news was to swallow at least the Bucks had been down this road many times this season. They hadn’t won without Bogut and Michael Redd in the lineup, but made an attempt to counteract the Redd injury by acquiring Keith Bogans on Thursday for Tyronn Lue. It seemed like an okay move at the time. Lue was riding the bench and the Bucks had been searching for perimeter shooting and defense ever since Redd was ruled out for the year. Bogans is a guy who provides both of those things in small doses, and gives a little more size to a Bucks team that has painfully small guards.

Then Luke Ridnour broke his hand. 4 weeks. Lady Luck must have taken a Sunday flight out of Milwaukee. The Bucks are now left with one point guard, six wings, three bigs, and a guy with six fouls to use every night. Gadzuric doesn’t really warrant a position; he just is six fouls to be used on a nightly basis.

The positives this week? That one point guard left is Ramon Sessions. Sessions punched Detroit in the mouth over and over Saturday night, earning 21 trips to the line and totaling 44 points. On top of that he dished out 12 assists and snatched five rebounds. He was a beast. Charlie V. is just as much of a positive. I’d say Charlie V. continued his trend of strong play, but can we even call it a trend anymore? We’ll just say Charlie V. was doing his usual thing, and then some, putting up 33 points and grabbing seven rebounds. These two are looking hella good over the past month and a half.

The negatives this week? Aside from everything I listed before the last paragraph, Richard Jefferson. I’ve been singling him out for most of the season and I think I’ve got a pretty good case. I know with Charlie V. and Sessions doing serious damage that it’s hard for RJ to put up numbers, but really? Since Redd has gone down RJ has gone over 20 points just one time. If John Hammond trades him he should win executive of the year, (even though he did trade for him originally) anyway, onto the week ahead…

February 9th vs. Houston (31-20)
At least this games at home. The Rockets are a pretty punishing team inside with Yao, Luis Scola, Ron Artest, and Carl Landry. Those guys had a field day against the Bucks on New Years Eve…and that was when Bogut was playing. This one could be ugly folks. The Rockets really should be a top 5 team. Not only do they have guys who are immensely talented, but they have a ton of great role players. Scola, Landry, Brent Barry, Aaron Brooks, Diekembe Mutombo, Shane Battier, and Chuck Hayes are all great glue guys. They all have specific roles and skills and do them very well. I realize that their three main guys are rarely healthy at the same time and that is what is holding them back, but with all those role players I think they should be doing better than they are. I guess 31-20 isn’t all that bad though. Speaking of Chuck Hayes, I was watching a game earlier this year on TNT and Reggie Miller was tearing him apart. He made it seem like the Rockets should have called a time out every time they got a stop on defense when he was in the game, just to make sure he didn’t play on the offensive end. I can’t imagine what seeing a guy like that would be like. Dan Gadzuric Dan Gadzuric Dan Gadzuric.

February 11th vs. Indiana (20-31)
I still don’t get how T.J. Ford put up 34 against the Bucks. Two games later he put up 36 on the Knicks, which doesn’t count the same, but at least it removed the Bucks from his record book. When he first started on the Bucks I predicted he’d one day average 11 assists a game. He now averages five. Why does this little guy shoot so much? I see that his percentage is pretty good (.445) but how effective can a team be when he’s putting up 12 shots a game? The Pacers play pretty up-tempo, so if he’s at five assists now, he’ll probably never average more than six again in his life. Sad. He even has shooters around him and a go to guy in Danny Granger. Danny Granger has been so monstrous this year. He’s like one of those creatures you put into an empty two liter bottle of soda with water and just watch it grow to like 10x its size. That has been his season in a nutshell. He’ll put 40 on the Bucks on Wednesday, I can already feel it. You heard it here first.

I’m just hoping that I don’t break anything going to the games this week.

If you’re reading this blog you probably are a Bucks fan. If you’re a Bucks fan you probably know by now that Andrew Bogut will be out for roughly 8 weeks, and I’d guess the rest of the season considering the Bucks will have been eliminated from playoff contention by then. I’m not here to describe how it feels to have heard that news. We all know Bogut was the most important player on the Bucks this year and without him a lot of things look grim for the immediate future of the Milwaukee Bucks. What I’m interested in currently is figuring out what could be done to prevent Bucks fans from having to watch more of the current backup center combination. I’ve scoured the free agent market and searched the D-League for hopefuls and compiled a list of players I would rather see, at least temporarily, than Dan Gadzuric and Francisco “That’s fun to say” Elson.

1. Lance Allred
Idaho Stampede
Lance is a D-League all star. I’ve never seen him play, but as I look at his picture I get the idea that he is a “scrapper”. A real Scott Skiles kind of guy. Skiles played Aaron Gray pretty frequently in his rookie year, could this guy be any worse? Lance’s numbers have improved in each of his three years in the D-League…except for this year. But still, he’s an all star. I’m not certain that either Gadzuric or Elson could make the D-League all star game. And last year in the playoffs Mr. Allred put up 24-17 in one game. That would be a weeks worth of Gadz numbers.

2. Chris Hunter
Fort Wayne Mad Ants
Michigan has a plethora of ex-players floating around the D-League. Hunter, Brent Petway, Courtney Sims, and Jamal Crawford are just a few. Actually Golden State still might be in the NBA, in which case Crawford would still be in the League. Anyway, this Hunter guy seems like a player. 17-9 and he is 6′11. Sign him up. Expectations are not high here folks.

3. Walt Waters
Lawton Fort Sill Calvary
Is this name familiar to anyone? Waters was a big juco recruit back in Bruce Pearl’s heyday at UWM. He was suppose to be a force inside for those teams after Dylan Page left. I actually remember seeing this guy on campus, he was HUGE. Further research says he was the 86th ranked player in his recruiting class. He was ranked ahead of Paul Millsap!! He’s now playing in the CBA. I think. Their web page is not the most useful tool in the world. They have some sort of statistics page that says Galen Young is the leading rebounder though. I thought that was funny. It’s possible that those statistics are from the 2003 season for all I know though.

4. Richard Hendrix
Dakota Wizards
Hendrix case is made here. I remember getting a first hand look at how good this guy was his Freshman (maybe sophomore?) year in college against Marquette in the NCAA tournament. That was the Noel Felix game. Speaking of Felix he is doing quite well in the D-League himself. Jerk.

5. Nick Fazekas
France
He kicked around the league with Dalls and the Clippers but didn’t stick. I remember him being pretty good in college. I feel extra bad for him because Dallas waived him to resign Keith Van Horn to that stupid deal so he could be part of the Jason Kidd trade. That whole thing was a sham. Poor Nick Fazekas deserves another shot in the L just for that.

6. Kevin Pittsnogle
MIA
I was thinking Pittsnogle would be a great guy to stretch the floor and give the Bucks some offense. I didn’t get why he never got more than one or two looks in the league. Looks like he’s been out of the game for sometime and has developed something of a medical related weight condition. Here’s to him keeping his health together, he provided us all with many cool memories of people getting “Pittsnogled“.

Alas I’m sure the Bucks will go with option seven, none of the above. They’ll likely ride it out with the veterans and let the season waste away into another year with no development and no regression. Milwaukee: Where Nothing Happens.

-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.