I’ll check this post again next year when it’s still the last one left and still hilarious just for existing.

We’re getting to that point in the year where I’m pretty exhausted about he Bucks. So be prepared for more funny Bucks things I find on the internet in the coming weeks.

And hey, if you click through the site, I’ll get a penny or so of this $1.50. Win and win.

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Jennings fate could mean as much to the Bucks as another lefty a few years back. (Photo by Gary Dineen/NBAE via Getty Images)

Brandon Jennings hit the modest individual shooting goal he laid out for himself before the 2011-12 season.

In fact, were it not for a miserable month of February that seemed to be the perfect storm of attitude and inaccuracy, Jennings would have blown past the 40% shooting mark with ease. After shooting better than 44% in January, Jennings slumped to an all-too-familiar 33.6% accuracy mark in February. He rebounded nicely though, making better than 43% of his shots over the final two months of the season while averaging better than 20 points per game.

He kept his turnovers down yet again. In three seasons, Jennings has a turnover percentage (estimate of turnovers per 100 possessions) of just 12%. No other regular starting point guard in the league that’s started as many games as Jennings has a better turnover percentage since he’s entered. Guys like Kobe Bryant, Ray Allen and Joe Johnson are the ones he’s most comparable with when it comes to turnovers.

So he’s getting better with his shot selection, or at least his ability to make shots, and he isn’t turning the ball over. He’s improving every season and looked like a natural fit for Milwaukee’s faster offense late last season. There are verifiable reasons to be hopeful that Jennings will take another step forward next season.

And that’s where things get tricky.

Another step forward would be great, but it probably wouldn’t be a great step forward. It’s hard to believe that Jennings could suddenly make the leap required to get on the level of an obvious superstar like a Derrick Rose or Steve Nash. He seems to lack whatever so many great point guards before him have had as a passer and he definitely doesn’t have the supreme athleticism some of the league’s best guards have.

The timing here is what makes things really sticky. Jennings will be eligible for a contract extension on July 1. If he and the Bucks can’t reach an agreement, he’ll be a restricted free agent after next season. The Bucks will very soon be faced with a tough decision regarding the point guard that’s become the face of their franchise.

There are no shortage of questions that will hang over that decision.

• How much is Jennings worth?

It’s hard to imagine Jennings as a max player right now, but if he scores better than 20 points per game next season and does so more efficiently? James Harden went to work destroying the Dallas Mavericks in the playoffs a week ago and after the game reporters were asking his teammates if he was worthy.

If  you’re Brandon Jennings and you hear that James Harden is generating max money talk, wouldn’t dollar signs be dancing through your mind? Harden is definitely better than Jennings right now, but if Jennings keeps getting better he’s likely to put himself on that sort of level. Whether or not the market dictates that he be on that level is another question, but free agency has a habit of inflating the price of a contract rather than deflating it.

• Is it ever a good idea to give up on a young point guard?

The Grizzlies were mercilessly mocked when they gave a then 23-year-old Mike Conley a five year, $45 million extension in late 2010. But that deal didn’t look too bad as Conley battled with Chris Paul in the first round over the past two weeks. Young point guards have a habit of getting better as they go along. How much better is what’s difficult to predict.

• Remember how bad things turned out after the Michael Redd deal?

Paying a very good player superstar money can scar a team for years. Redd was all the Bucks really had in 2003. He was the star and the Bucks decided they’d pay him like he was one of the league’s stars. It was a risky move and it ended up helping keep the Bucks firmly in the middle of the pack for years to come. Redd’s contract alone didn’t ruin the Bucks for the rest of his tenure, but it came to symbolize all of the mistakes they kept making. Do the Bucks want to get stuck overvaluing their own player again?

John Hammond was asked about Jennings’ contract situation at his end of the season press conference.

“It’s something that we’ll look at and we’ll explore,” he said. “It’s going to have to be a little bit of a two-way street, so to speak. Something that is important to them and important to us. I think that is. But, it’s not something that we have to do. And the one thing that we don’t want to do… And we talked about this. We’ve talked about this for the last couple of years, is not put ourselves in a position where we have to do things. If we have to do things, I think we’re negotiating and working out of a position of weakness.”

Soon enough though, the Bucks will have to make a decision, whether it’s to re-sign, trade or let Jennings walk away.

Shopping? You may as well click through the Amazon banner and support the site then. Also –Twitter.

Jeremy Schmidt writes the Milwaukee Bucks blog Bucksketball.com.

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It was a rough season on the defensive end for Carlos Delfino and the Bucks. (Photo by J. Dennis/Einstein/NBAE via Getty Images)

Decisions have been rolling in lately.

Scott Skiles will be the Bucks coach. John Hammond will (probably) be the GM. And Herb Kohl will build the Bucks a new stadium with his own money and bare hands. Or something along those lines.

The Milwaukee Bucks roster though, will be in a state of flux over the next few months. Chief among those in flux, will be Carlos Delfino. But he can look in the mirror on that one.

Delfino came to the Bucks three years ago something of a mystery. He’d played four seasons in the NBA and failed to establish himself as much other than an average 3-point shooter. He shot less than 40% and he averaged less than 20 minutes per game for the better part of his career. After his four season in the league, he ventured to Russia where he made a ton of money and played well enough.

Then the Bucks traded for him and turned him into a featured rotation player – a D and three guy. He played defense, he hit threes. He averaged better than 30 minutes per game in two of his three seasons as a Buck and when he’s been healthy, it’s been almost a certainty that he’d be in the starting lineup. He filled the gaps, knew where he was supposed to be and generally didn’t make too many mistakes in his first two seasons.

But the wheels came off last season.

Without Andrew Bogut behind him, Delfino, much like the rest of the Bucks, was exposed defensively. He gambled for steals almost constantly and didn’t come out ahead often enough. Last season, Delfino allowed .94 Points Per Possession (PPP), up from .85 in both 2009-10 and 2001-11. He plummeted from 91 to 120 to 385 in the league in PPP defensively. Milwaukee universally dipped without a center for most of last season, but the effects were most obvious when it came to Delfino. But it wasn’t just players driving by him off a gamble that hurt Delfino.

Delfino allowed 1.19 PPP to spot-up shooters last season after allowing .87 PPP on spot-up shooters in 2010-11.  This was the most drastic change, as 3-point shooters abused Delfino. His struggles with spot-up shooters are a terrific example of how the lack of a true center hurt the Bucks. With Drew Gooden as the only option to defend guys like Roy Hibbert or Dwight Howard, Milwaukee had to bring extra help from the perimeter. Delfino was left scrambling back and forth, trying to pressure post players while keeping an eye on shooters on the perimeter. The results were predictably dismal.

Bucks opponents shot 35.1% from behind the arc last season after shooting just 33.4% the season before.

Gooden’s sub-par rebounding year hurt too, as Bucks guards and forwards had to wade into the paint to help secure defensive rebounds throughout the season as well. Offensive rebounds led to open threes and extra points for Milwaukee opponents all too frequently.

A lot of this wasn’t necessarily Delfino’s fault, but if he’s just another cog defensively susceptible to the same problems as his teammates, where does his value lie exactly? A strong month of April brought Delfino up to the 40% shooting plateau — for his career. His athleticism is often referred to as quiet or sneaky, which is another way of saying it doesn’t show very often. He’s pretty much limited to a 3-point shooting and ball movement role offensively.

Two seasons ago Delfino’s absence after a concussion was blamed for some of the Bucks woes. Last season he stayed healthy and the Bucks found themselves in the same place they were in when he was absent. Delfino isn’t a make or break player, he’s just a serviceable backup. Unfortunately for Milwaukee, he’s been averaging 30 minutes per game as a Buck. Delfino enters this off-season an unrestricted free agent coming off a hernia surgery.

If he’s back starting for the Bucks at the small forward spot next season, you’d be wise to avoid holding your breath on that Bucks playoff run the team has been shooting for the last two years.

Shopping? You may as well click through the Amazon banner and support the site then. Also –Twitter.

Jeremy Schmidt writes the Milwaukee Bucks blog Bucksketball.com.

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Luc Mbah a Moute will undergo surgery on his right knee and Carlos Delfino will undergo surgery to repair a tear in his groin.

Jim over at OnMilwaukee.com talked to the newest, youngest members of the Bucks to get their take on the team as well as the city. Then pondered the extend or trade Brandon Jennings scenario that is on the horizon.

Charles Gardner at JSOnline graded each member of the Milwaukee Bucks. Only one A (Ilyasova) and one F (Jackson) were awarded.

Brian Matzat is a contributor to Bucksketball.com. Follow him on Twitter. Then become a fan of Bucksketball on Facebook (click in the sidebar).

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Scott Skiles says he will return next season.

Contrary to rumors and what appeared most logical, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported yesterday that, according to Scott Skiles, Scott Skiles will return for the Milwaukee Bucks 2012-13 season as head coach.

The previous scuttlebutt was that Skiles would explore a buyout and move on.

But after meeting with Herb Kohl and John Hammond, it appears both sides either:

A. Agreed that with a full training camp and a normal season, he was the best fit for the job of getting the Bucks back into the bottom half of the playoffs. Make no mistake, that’s the ultimate goal of the franchise.

or

B. Couldn’t reach a mutual agreement on a figure that Skiles would be bought out at.

What the story is, we won’t know. But for now, it appears that Skiles will return and that, once again, the Bucks will do everything they can to grab a playoff spot.

Skiles was significantly more enthusiastic about his young players yesterday than he had been two weeks ago when asked about whether he liked their work habits and responded with: “I don’t know.”

“I thought Larry showed real flashes of improvement,” Skiles said. “We like Ekpe a lot. I thought Jon and Tobias, even though they didn’t play very much, got better as the year went on.

Maybe he was just burnt out from a disappointing end to a frustrating season that night. He has the right to change his mind or have been in a bad mood that night, I’ll give him that. And I don’t think he was terribly disappointed with last season’s rookies all things considered. But it did surprise me that he’d go on as apparently excited about the Brandon Jennings/Monta Ellis combo at the guard spots.

“Monta is a good passer. Brandon is still learning how to play without the ball in his hands. And it’s a lot easier to learn when you have other people out there who are passing the ball, and the ball finds him (Jennings) again when he gives it up.

“I thought they worked really well together.”

Sometimes they did look good. But a lot of times, not so much. Ellis pretty much played the worst basketball of his career over the last 21 games. A lot could have factored into that – lack of practice with new teammates, a huge career transition and the lockout schedule all included. But he wasn’t very good offensively, spare a few big moments.

Roster aside, the Bucks now appear to be entering the off-season with both a coach and a general manager entering the last year of their contract. There’s two ways that can be looked at. It’s possible both have quite a bit of incentive to push the Bucks forward next season. But there’s also a lot of incentive to look at “the future” as next season. We might see some pretty crazy win now moves coming this July.

But certainly those looking for a rebuild won’t be pleased today. The franchise is moving full speed ahead with plans to make another stab at a playoff run.

Jeremy Schmidt writes the Milwaukee Bucks blog Bucksketball.com. He’d love it if you stopped by every time you wanted to buy something on Amazon and gave him some click-through love on the banner up on the top right. Also –Twitter.

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Season’s over. Off-season isn’t quite here. Draft prep is probably another week or two away.

Let’s do some looking back and hand out some ridiculous awards, shall we?

I just came across this informative video featuring Milwaukee Bucks forward Ersan Ilyasova. I had no idea that a tip rebound translated to a “hücum rebound” in Turkish. Or that Ers spoke four languages.

Sometimes, the internet just gives us these gifts and we need to graciously accept them.

But I shouldn’t be surprised about his multi-dimensional language skills. After all, this is a guy who ranks both among the league’s better rebounders and 3-point shooters. And whether he’s bombing away on a catch and shoot or crashing a board or even taking a charge (another superior skill of his), he goes pretty hard.

That sort of effort made it only fitting to lead off this sham of an awards series of posts with Ersan. It isn’t a stretch to say he was the most pleasant part of the Bucks season. After shooting just 43% and 29.8% from 3-point range last season, Ilyasova responded with career best marks of 49.2% and 45.5% this season. He got better where he was weak.

And he got better where he was strong. Always a capable rebounder, Ilyasova bumped his rebounding numbers up another level with Andrew Bogut out of the lineup and Drew Gooden not quite as capable as he historically was on the glass. Per 36 minutes, Ilyasova grabbed a healthy 11.5 rebounds. He especially shined on the offensive end, where he grabbed 12.7% of available offensive rebounds while he was on the court, good enough for seventh in the league.

Yes, things generally went swimmingly for Ilyasova. The effort to get the boards and the decision making on what shots to take, what shots to avoid, when to find the 3-point line and when to pump fake made him a candidate for the league’s most improved player award. He looks like a pretty legitimate extra scoring option on a good team too. A guy who doesn’t need plays run for him and can save a possession by hanging out around the arc or crashing in to keep alive a miss.

But how much is that worth? Specifically, how much is it worth to a team that has some pretty big needs elsewhere? Estimates on how much the free agent to be Ilyasova will command this summer seemed to have ranged from $6-$8 million per year. He’ll get suitors overseas and plenty in the NBA too. The Bucks will have some money available, but at what point does the team need to stop shelling out big money to keep its own good but not great players?

Maybe they won’t have the say in that matter. Ilyasova’s on and off seemed interested in leaving Milwaukee. But he’s said before money will be the biggest factor, so it seems fair to think the Bucks have as good a chance as anyone in keeping the power forward.

If so, let’s hope he has a few more of these seasons in the tank.

Jeremy Schmidt writes the Milwaukee Bucks blog Bucksketball.com. He’d love it if you stopped by every time you wanted to buy something on Amazon and gave him some click-through love on the banner up on the top right. Also –Twitter.

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If he's going to be around, John Hammond will likely have a busy summer yet again. (Getty Images)

Watching Stephen Jackson thrive off the bench for the San Antonio Spurs yesterday was neither super enjoyable for me nor surprising. I can only assume John Hammond felt the same way.

The Spurs brought Jackson in to be an extra lift. To give the bench some more life. He isn’t getting top billing, he’s just a supporting piece. In that role, Jackson apparently can still flourish.

In Milwaukee, Jackson was the focus. He had no established stars or leaders around him. He had a lot of responsibility both on the court and in the locker room. He couldn’t handle it on the court and as soon as things faltered out there, he became too much to handle behind the scenes apparently.

His problem in Milwaukee was that he was out of place. That appears to be the Bucks biggest problem across the entire roster. It’s not that the Milwaukee Bucks don’t have talent. They have a number of talented players. But most of the Bucks are one or two spots above where they should be.

Carlos Delfino is a fine player, but he isn’t really an ideal candidate for 30 minutes every night. Especially with the way he defended this season. He’s probably an eighth or ninth man who would thrive getting about 20 minutes each night.

Drew Gooden has talent, but aside from playing out of position at center, he’s out of his role as a cornerstone of an offense. In his two seasons in Milwaukee he’s been attempting more shots than ever before and responded with two of his worst shooting seasons as a pro.

Up and down the Bucks roster, players are forced to take on more than they can chew. Brandon Jennings isn’t really cut out right now to be the best player on a team. Monta Ellis has gone through his entire career as a 20 point and 20 shot per game starter when he’s pretty much Lou Williams and should be coming off the bench or a third option starter.

Hammond does have an eye for talent. He can recognize players that can play. Unfortunately, the pressure to make the playoffs has resulted in him and Scott Skiles reaching when it came to fit. The two of them have been forced to try and squeeze too much out of a number of guys. The biggest question facing the Bucks roster now, as it so often seems to be come summer time, is how can Milwaukee get players into roles where they can succeed?

With so precious few assets, it seems almost impossible. Milwaukee is a star away from being in pretty good shape. An actual star would allow everyone to slide back a bit into more natural and comfortable roles and responsibilities. But nothing in the NBA is as difficult as finding a star.

So the rumblings of John Hammond heading to Portland are hardly surprising. How much further can this roster go? How long can anyone keep making a series of overhaul tweaks every summer before just walking away? For every Mike Dunleavy who finds a spot that works for himself within the team’s structure, we seem to see a Corey Maggette who just doesn’t work.

So this week is a critical one for the Bucks.

We’ll likely learn a lot more about the futures of both Skiles and Hammond. Conversely, we’ll find out about the future direction of the franchise as well. While a blow up isn’t all that likely to come even if Hammond and/or Skiles leave, we can safely rule one out completely if they stay. Given how close they were to the playoffs, there’s enough reason for the current front office to spend another summer shuffling the deck and hoping the cards land more favorably.

Maybe they won’t be a factor in the lottery, but who’s to say the Bucks don’t need a bit of luck this summer. Here’s wishing it on them.

Jeremy Schmidt writes the Milwaukee Bucks blog Bucksketball.com. He’d love it if you stopped by every time you wanted to buy something on Amazon and gave him some click-through love on the banner up on the top right. Also –Twitter.

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In his final post game conference he handled questions the same way he always did. Until the last question. A reporter asked if he liked what he saw from his younger players in terms of their professionalism and attitudes.

Skiles stared straight ahead for several seconds before finally replying with a mumbled, “I don’t know.”

If those are indeed the unenthusiastic final words we hear from Skiles after a Bucks home game, it does make the pieces started to come together with a bit more ease.

If he’s not certain that he likes what he sees in the most basic terms, professionalism and attitude, from his younger players, that’s a pretty big strike in the con side for keeping his current job. Young players is a vague term, but the Bucks have a lot of young players. Everyone from Tobias Harris to Brandon Jennings to Ekpe Udoh could be referred to as a “young player.”

There are only 30 NBA head coaching jobs. Once someone moves into one of those jobs, it’s difficult to consider that they might remove themselves. Who steps away from such a high profile and difficult to obtain job? This seems like it’s been an especially trying season for Coach Skiles though. The Stephen Jackson situation. Brandon Jennings’ bizarre protest game and month long struggle that followed. A shift in team dynamic from an Andrew Bogut defensive centerd squad to the Jennings/Monta Ellis centered offensive powered middling team.

Apparently he’s seen enough.

It’s hard to blame him after a “meek” effort from the Bucks against the Philadelphia 76ers’ B Team.

Evan Turner torched the Bucks for 29 points, 13 rebounds and six assists. Jodie Meeks dropped in 27 points on his old mates himself.

Milwaukee’s only regular starter to get minutes, Jennings, struggled to a 19 point six assist night while Harris looked comfortable offensively once again with 15 points and 11 rebounds. Defensively, Harris has tons of work to do, but at the very least, he’s a capable offensive player right now. How quickly he learns on the other end will be what decides his future.

As for the future of the rest of the Bucks, we’ll know a lot more in the next week.

Jeremy Schmidt writes the Milwaukee Bucks blog Bucksketball.com. He’d love it if you stopped by every time you wanted to buy something on Amazon and gave him some click-through love on the banner up on the top right. Also –Twitter.

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The debate on Scott Skiles is sure to heat up now. (AP Photo/Morry Gash)

As they do before every Bucks home game, a gang of reporters made a half circle around Scott Skiles before the Milwaukee Bucks game against the Raptors Monday night. Out of habit and necessity, reporters began asking about the current state of the roster with regard to injuries. Who would be playing? Who would be sitting out?

As he always does, Skiles gave the bare minimum amount of injury information. It’s a funny dynamic. I like to think Skiles comes in, learns who is hurt and what body part on them is hurt before he turns and sprints the other direction as to avoid any more information that he’d have to divulge. That’s probably not the case. But for four years, reporters have been asking Skiles about injuries and for four years, he’s clarified who he expects to play and who he doesn’t expect to play and refrained from speculating on when any of the injured players may return.

Speculation has never been apart of his public persona.

“I’ve said this before, I think when coaches stand out here and say, much like the talking heads on TV, they say whatever they want and then nobody ever goes back when they’re wrong and says, ‘Wait a minute, you were wrong,’” he said after he was asked before the Bucks game Monday about whether he knew if his team was ready for what was at stake.

“They’re kind of above the law. So if a coach stands out here and says, ‘We’re ready to play’ and then we come out flat … I don’t think you ever really know.”

Contrary to his reputation fiery reputation, rarely do we see Skiles lose his cool or make bold proclamations. After the losses we deem big, he simply says there’s another game to be played in the next day or two. After we ask about a big win giving the team momentum moving forward, he says it only matters if they can string together a few more. Never too high, never too low.

He presents himself as quite a measure of focus. Only worrying about the game that’s about to be played and capable of moving on quickly to the next battle. But fans don’t have that ability. Fans are looking towards the future and back at what just happened.

His decisions with playing time have been scrutinized repeatedly over the past two seasons. He seems to handle those moves using the same basic logic he handles everything else with. When players aren’t playing well, he doesn’t play them. When players are playing well, he plays them. Meanwhile fans clamor for more minutes so they can try and figure out whether or not potential piece X is actually valuable or so player Y can develop more on the court. Skiles has always been more interested in winning games than playing guys just to develop them though.

All season we’ve heard the masses begging for more Jon Leuer, despite his defensive deficiencies and the Bucks general need for a big man capable of guarding larger defenders and protecting the rim. But the players ahead of Leuer haven’t really established themselves in the league. So there’s enough reason for most to figure that Skiles isn’t playing Leuer simply because he’s a rookie or for some other mysterious personal reason.

The reason seems to be as simple as Skiles is constantly doing whatever he thinks he has to do to win each and every game. He’s not a coach who coaches games to develop young players, he coaches games to win

Oddly enough, that’s left him with an 144-164 record through four seasons in Milwaukee. The former coach of the year runner up just two season ago finds himself burning up on the hot seat.

Coaching an NBA team without a superstar can be a pretty thankless job. Without a clear pecking order, every player could be an option every night. Honestly, how much of a difference is there between the Bucks best player and their tenth best player? Beyond that, how reliable are either one of them? That’s why every team wants as many stars as they can get their hands on. Stars bring it every night. They don’t have the long peaks and valleys that average players do. Brandon Jennings is the Bucks best player. He shot 34% in the entire month of February.

But I’m not sure Skiles is the kind of coach who can thrive with the Bucks right now. Things worked well when Skiles had veterans who understood their roles like Jerry Stackhouse and Kurt Thomas. But Skiles had loads of trouble with Stephen Jackson, a player past his prime who thought he should still be guaranteed 35 minutes per game regardless of how dreadful he was playing. Depending on who was doing the talking, those two had very different takes on their communication with each other. Jackson said they barely spoke, Skiles said they discussed the playing time situation. We’ll probably never know the whole story.

Skiles propensity for sitting anyone that isn’t playing well can have the explosive effect it had with Jackson in addition to some less explosive, but still undesirable side effects. Aside from Jackson, there were grumblings that erratic playing time took its toll on Andrew Bogut, Ersan Ilyasova and Beno Udrih as well. It’s no wonder NBA players voted Skiles second in the coach they would least like to play for poll Sports Illustrated conducted. There’s a clear disconnect between Skiles’ communication and minute disbursement methods and the thought processes of the typical NBA player. These are not guys who are used to sporadically sitting out when they aren’t playing well.

If he were coaching a winning team, he’d be able to get away with it. Two years ago players and coaches applauded Skiles fairness and how he treated everyone on the team the exact same way. Now that the Bucks are out of the playoffs for the second year in a row, it appears that sort of treatment, mixed with two seasons of inconsistent results that could be his downfall.

Jeremy Schmidt writes the Milwaukee Bucks blog Bucksketball.com. He’d love it if you stopped by every time you wanted to buy something on Amazon and gave him some click-through love on the banner up on the top right. Also –Twitter.

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There’s been some talk on this blog about whether or not it was all worth it. Whether the season was just a waste and whether the last ten seasons were all also a giant waste. There’s a strong argument to be made for tanking: better chance at a franchise player which will lead to more wins and more money and more relevancy. It’s a smart move. It’s much smarter than scratching and clawing just to stay in place.

When Clayton Bennett bought the Sonics, he blew the team up. The Maloofs right now are leading a fun little tank job as part of the debacle going on in Sacramento. The guide to relocating a sports team is right out of the Major League script: blow up the team, drive attendance as low as possible, cry about revenue then run out of town as fast as possible.

I’m happy they fought this season and I’m happy they fought every other season too (the 2006-07 season not included). And I’ll support them if they continue to fight because it means ownership still cares about Milwaukee and they’re still committed to making it work.

This doesn’t mean much right now because Herb Kohl would keep the team in Wisconsin no matter what. He is selling soon though. When he sells, if the new owners blows everything up and starts tanking, it won’t necessarily be the signs of a smart, new ownership, it could be a sign of something far worse than mediocrity.

Game Notes

• Bucks scored 53 points in the first half without hitting a single shot outside of 10 feet. There are degrees of nuance in judging defense, but if you want a really simple yes/no answer to whether or not a team plays good defense, look at how they perform against the Bucks. The Bucks offense right now is just a pretty simple motion offense full of offball movement. Good defenses pay attention to guys moving without the ball. Bad defenses like the Nets are completely flabbergasted by the idea of someone moving without the ball. The Bucks fed off cuts to the basket and fast breaks in the first half.
• Despite the first half dominance, the game was still in jeopardy with two minutes left in the game until Brandon Jennings started raining daggers to put the game away. A big 30 point game from him would have garnered an A grade if I decided to do grades. Monta Ellis would have received a D+ with his atrocious shooting performance. The two inefficient shooters seem to exist on separate islands from the rest of the offense and the distance might be too great for them to traverse back to the team. Due to time constraints caused by the lockout(lack of practice, lack of training camp) and the Bogut/Ellis trade, it’s pretty clear that the new Bucks offense isn’t quite complete.
• Ersan Ilyasova had 17 rebounds tonight. He is an unrestricted free agent this summer. The Bucks will never rebound again.

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