I never appreciated Glenn Robinson when he was around. What can I say? I was young and in love. With Ray Allen’s jumper.
In fact, you could say that I loathed Robinson. Not all the time, just sometimes. Definitely after game 5 against the Sixers when he missed a 10 foot baseline jumper to win. I made the astute observation that “Big Dogg friggen’ sucks” while I bawled into my fists.
I don’t cry anymore about sports. I wish I would though. Because that would mean that the Bucks would at least be in big moments. Read more…
This year is very quickly spiraling into last year.
Losing to the suddenly mighty Clippers itself isn’t real cause for concern. That 36.3% number from the field that’s becoming commonplace once again? That’s an eye-catcher in the same way a black spot on a broken television is. But it’s not striking me as the root of the problem with the Bucks currently. It’s more the result of what may be a broken mindset.
“We need somebody to step up and knock down shots for us. It has been difficult on this trip, for sure. We haven’t gotten anybody with any consistency knocking down shots.”
This is the same sort of thing we frequently heard from Scott Skiles last season. Here’s a Skiles quote from a loss in late January in which the Bucks shot under 40%.
“We had so many good looks again. We had our chances to create some momentum for ourselves, and we unfortunately just couldn’t knock them down.”
“Knocking down shots” was a problem for the Bucks last season and it’s been a problem early on this season. At some point, you can’t help but wonder if maybe the Bucks just aren’t getting the good shots they think their getting.
The Milwaukee Bucks faced the same problem against the Kings and the Jazz in their past two games that they faced at the beginning of the season last year. They were the favorites! They need to be underdogs, need us to write them off before the game gets started.
Fortunately they are playing a team with Chris Paul and Blake Griffin tonight.
”It’s personal so we are certainly not going to make it public, but Andrew needed to deal with it and will be mostly likely back on court in a couple of days,” he said.
Shoulders across Milwaukee are sagged in anticipation of another Milwaukee Bucks Brickfest without Bogut.
Sacramento offers the possibility of a more welcoming road venue though. Through seven games the Kings rank 27th in the league in defensive rating, allowing 109.6 points per 100 possessions. The Kings defense could be the water the Bucks have needed so badly in this desert of missed shots their trip West has been.
Drew Gooden is coming off a productive if uneven performance against the Utah Jazz. Though he finished with a robust 24 points and 12 rebounds, Gooden makes a number of plays each game uncustomary of a player capable of such gaudy stat lines. The obvious fouls when he’s beat on defense. A three-point attempt. Desparate attempts to draw fouls 22-feet from the hoop that end in him airballing a shot. These are all typical Gooden moves that detract from his solid rebounding and scoring abilities.
Seriously, bring back the high top and the Kanye glasses
Confession: I’ve never seen Brandon Jennings’ 55 point game. Yes, I’ve seen the highlights, but never the game in full. Even though I should probably be putting up some façade that I’m some sort of expert that has seen every Bucks game since Glenn Robinson was born, I’m not going to apologize for missing the biggest moment in recent Bucks history. If you must know, I was doing charity work to try to impress some ladies. So get off my case because I was helping sick children at the time. Now get back on my case because I was doing good things for terrible reasons.
So for me, the 55 point game has always been more of a statistic than an experience. It’s an outlier: a really large number that I look at with no emotion, sometimes even quizzically. And even though I can see past Jennings’ great con or at least I believe I can, I’m still disappointed by him and I honestly can say that I never suspected that. Because despite what some people may believe, there are a wealth of games that Jennings has played well in and do a much better job of showcasing his brilliance and identity. My favorite Jennings game was the one after the 55 point game against Dallas. This game was everything that he wants and defines him. The whole basketball world was watching – high stakes, chiaroscuro: not just toeing the line between scorer and creator, but destroying it all together. His box score for that game: 25 points, eight assists, a monstrous second half plus overtime and the charred remains of Rodrigue Beaubois. Read more…
