A special thanks to Andy Kamenetzky from ESPN’s Land o’ Lakers Lakers blog for stopping by to answer some questions I had regarding Milwaukee’s opponent this evening. Check out Land o’ Lakers and see a few answers I had for him as well.

1. He’s smart enough to do it, but will Kobe be willing to let Gasol and Bynum dominate the Bucks?

Given Gasol’s exceptionally aggressive nature Wednesday against the Clippers, I’d like to think Kobe will try to keep that going, for the sake of Pau and the matchup. And he’s already praised Bynum’s “thirst to score.” And for all the talk about Kobe’s high shot count this season, he’s done a pretty fine job moving the ball around. But as is always the case with Kobe involving teammates, there’s a leash, and it can be frustratingly short. Kobe’s natural desire to take games over, even when not always necessary, can also equal big men receiving too few touches over stretches.

But in fairness to Kobe, there are kinks being ironed out in Mike Brown’s offense, one of them being Gasol’s role. Pau’s number hasn’t been called enough by the coach, as opposed to Bryant. There’s also an onus on Pau to seek out more scoring opportunities with the ball in his hands, even if he’s theoretically working as a facilitator on a particular set.

Read more…

I don’t wish to alarm you, but slowly and surely over the past few years, something has changed in the Eastern Conference, little by little. And this season, it’s more evident than it has been in quite some time.

The East isn’t really the Least any more.

The 2004-05 season was the last time the Eastern Conference featured a playoff bracket without one team with a record either at .500 or below. You have to go back to the last lockout season, 1998-99 to find a season in which a team made it to the playoffs in the Western Conference with a .500 record. The West has been the best, in terms of volume of strong teams, for quite some time.

And the West is still deeper this season, with current eight seeds, the Houston Rockets and Memphis Grizzlies generally well regarded and currently sporting 10-7 records.

But this season, the Eastern Conference is as tough as it’s been 1-8 since the middle of the 2000s. The current top five is Chicago, Atlanta, Orlando, Miami and Philadelphia. Miami, Orlando and Chicago features superstars with supporting casts that have been tinkered with for multiple seasons now in an attempt to play to the strengths of their stars. Orlando has been an early surprise, but if they intend to keep Dwight Howard, and it seems they do at least through this season, they’ll always be relevant. Chicago and Miami are legitimate title contenders.

Atlanta and Philadelphia are on opposite ends of the “pretty good, but not great” spectrum. Philly is young and coming up. Jrue Holiday could still be something special and they have a number of guys in their early 20s learning how to be really good NBA players. We don’t know how good they’ll be by the end of this season or next, but we know they are a team worth watching for now thanks to their 12-5 record. The Hawks still have Joe Johnson and Josh Smith, so they still matter, as Bucks fans can attest to after Monday night’s loss. Al Horford is hurt, but the Hawks are still a tough team.

It gets no easier after that. Read more…

The Bucks tag team of Bogut and Mbah a Moute: “Twice the mayhem!”

It’s easy to credit Andrew Bogut with the success of the Bucks defense. In the way that we give quarterbacks or point guards credit for wins, we often attribute the success of an NBA team’s defense to its center. He’s the quarterback of the defense. Maybe he’s like the middle linebacker then. If that’s the case, Bogut has been the Bucks version of Ray Lewis over the past two seasons.

When healthy, he’s blocked shots, rotated and taken charges as well as any center in the league not named Dwight Howard. There are numbers to back that up too. We see the big block numbers and the impressive charge totals and we can see that he’s doing things very few centers in the league do very plainly.

The numbers don’t paint such a clear picture when it comes to Luc Mbah a Moute.

He doesn’t have big block or steal numbers. He’s more like a corner back that doesn’t get thrown at. Those guys don’t pile up interception totals, but the guy they were covering all game ended up with just two catches for 17 yards.  There isn’t a statistical category that makes it plain for us to see how much Mbah a Moute matters, so he doesn’t get quite as much credit for Milwaukee’s defensive success over the past few seasons, even if he is acknowledged across the league as a standout perimeter defender. The perimeter defender is viewed as a one-on-one stopper, not as someone who brings his teammates to a higher level defensively.

But that Bogut and Mbah a Moute tag team absolutely drags everyone on the Bucks up a couple of notches on the defensive side.

Read more…

From Eric Maroun of Hardwood Paroxysm

Eric Maroun wrote an awesome post over at Hardwood Paroxysm. It compares each player’s Usage Rate to their PER. Usage Rate is the percent of possessions a player uses while on the court. PER measures the overall statistical contribution of a player.

The Bucks chart suggests that Stephen Jackson, Beno Udrih and Tobias Harris eat up too many possession when they’re on the court. It also suggests that Jon Leuer isn’t involved in the offense enough. Read more…

Leuer is posing for a completely different picture

The big day is here Badger fans! Leuer is starting. Rejoice! Between him and Greg Stiemsma this is the greatest year for Badgers in the NBA ever.

Going into the season, it looked like the Bucks power forward spot was jam-packed and Leuer might not get a chance to shine. But he’s starting tonight against the Pistons. How did we get here and are the Bucks heading toward a new status quo?

• No back-up center

Leuer impresses the Bucks enough that they decide to fill the last roster spot with him instead of a free agent backup center. Drew Gooden has to take backup center role.

• Luc Mbah a Moute’s Knee Tendinitis

LRMAM would have been a prime candidate to take the power forward starting position, but he has only been able to play two games this year.

• Larry Sanders has great fine motor skills, but poor basketball skills

Sanders is a nice artist. Heck, he could be the best player the Bucks have, but we’ll never know because he can’t hold on to the ball for very long (very long = two seconds). Read more…