Kelvin Sampson: A soon to be head coach?
Friday, May 28th, 2010Winning organizations don’t last in the NBA. Professional sports leagues are copycat clubs, and the NBA is no different. The Bucks dove into Detroit’s annual conference champion organization to get general manager John Hammond. Successful organizations lose key members all of the time, it’s the price they pay for their success.
So perhaps Milwaukee should see it as a compliment that rumors have placed Kelvin Sampson in both Cleveland and Los Angeles.
From Adrian Wojnarowski at Yahoo! Sports:
As the Cleveland Cavaliers sift potential coaching candidates, general manager Danny Ferry has made calls checking on Milwaukee Bucks assistant Kelvin Sampson, sources tell Yahoo! Sports.
and
The Clippers are also showing an interest in Bucks assistant Kelvin Sampson, sources tell Y! Sampson has relationship with Blake Griffin.
At this stage, it’s not clear how sincere or how high up on the Cavaliers and Clippers lists Sampson may be, but it was only a matter of time before the Bucks assistant coaches started getting feelers. With the exception of Adrian Griffin, every assistant on the Bucks staff has been a head coach at some level (Joe Wolf was a D-League head coach, Sampson college and Jim Boylan in the NBA). Sampson’s work with Brandon Jennings in particular seemed to garner him much notoriety, starting with Jennings’ surprisingly effective summer league performance under Sampson’s tutelage as head coach. But if Sampson were to get his first NBA head honcho gig of his career, I’d expect it to be Cleveland before the Clippers.
His relationship with Blake Griffin in cited by Wojnarowski on Twitter, but his connections in Cleveland run deeper.
After his dismissal at Indiana, Sampson worked as an adviser to the San Antonio Spurs, getting his feet wet in the NBA and bracing himself for a career after college. There are few betters ways to rehabilitate one’s career than with the San Antonio Spurs and their uber-respected organization. In fact, where did Cleveland’s last coach, Mike Brown, spend time as an assistant before his head job with Cleveland? You guessed it, San Antonio. General manager Danny Ferry spent the last three years of his playing career in San Antonio before working in their front office prior to taking the job as Cleveland’s general manager.
The roots are there for this deal to go down.
But the catch would be that Sampson may not be the big name coach Cleveland is looking to bring in to appease Lebron James. Sampson’s experience at multiple levels and impressive pedigree could be enough to persuade James that he can get the job done. This one bears watching as it develops.
I Think We’re All Thinking The Same Thing: Cavs 101 – Bucks 98
Wednesday, March 31st, 2010Another sign that the Bucks are moving in the right direction as the playoffs are nearing was Scott Skiles’ post game reaction to a question about whether or not he was happy with the team’s effort in a Wednesday night loss to Cleveland.
“It’s not that I don’t care about that right now, but we should have won that game. We gave them that game.”
Moral victories no longer have a stall in the Bucks locker room, be it on the road or at home. These days, the Bucks are only interested in actual, real life, concrete victories. Citing a botched layup attempt rather than a dunk attempt and a missed open three, Skiles was clearly annoyed and it may have had to do with more than just his players’ execution.
The Bucks have had problems with allowing free throw attempts all year, but those numbers reached a new low Wednesday night. The Cavs attempted 45 free throws to the Bucks nine. The Bucks previous largest free throw attempt deficit this season was 22. An exhausted and exasperated John Salmons looked none too pleased about it after the game.
“It’s a discouraging stat. Nine to 45? That’s got to be a record. I don’t want to lose my money.”
Part of Salmons appeal to the Bucks has been his knack for getting to the free-throw line and he was at it again Wednesday, finishing 7-7 from the line. The problem was the two free throws the rest of the team attempted.
The foul differential was silly, but I’m hesitant to throw out the “BOO STERN OMG THEY FIXED IT FOR LEBRON OMG!” card. Milwaukee is generally a team that doesn’t attack the hoop a lot, except for Salmons. And Salmons got his from the line. Andrew Bogut scores the majority of the Bucks points in the paint and he is constantly drifting away from the hoop on his shots. Most post scorers get tons of points from the line, but while Bogut is a classic post-up scorer, he doesn’t rely on fakes to get into his opponents. His superior touch allows him to glide across the lane moving parallel with the hoop, this doesn’t leave defenders crashing into him very often.
Milwaukee worked for everything they got and while it was valiant effort, they came up short. Two years ago that would have been exciting, a year ago it may have been acceptable, but now it’s just a disappointing loss. Welcome to the top half of the conference Milwaukee. (more…)
Game 74 Preview: Bucks at Cavs
Wednesday, March 31st, 2010Milwaukee Bucks (Scott Skiles) 41-32
At
Cleveland Cavaliers (Mike Brown) 58-16
Date: March 31st, 2010
Time: 6:00 PM (CST)
TV: FS Wisconsin
Matchups
Point Guard
Brandon Jennings vs. Mo Williams
Williams struggled mightily in the Cavs trip to Milwaukee in early March, scoring just seven points while shooting 3-17 from the field. Even worse, he was dealing with a hot shooting and especially lippy version of Brandon Jennings. Jennings, sporting a red Mohawk that had Lebron James calling him “The Rooster” torched the Cavs for 25 points and many more than 25 words for the Cavs typically chipper bench. There was no dancing from Cleveland on that dark day in Milwaukee. But Williams and the Cavs will surely be looking for some redemption, largely at Jennings expense Wednesday night. Whether or not Jennings will be ready to back up the chatter from his last performance will be an interesting subplot.
Advantage: Cavaliers (more…)
Sure, Lebron Was Out, but Still, It’s a Win: Bucks 92 – Cavs 85
Sunday, March 7th, 2010Fortunately, the NBA doesn’t decide standings with a poll that measures the strength of each win.
No, in the NBA, every win, regardless of who it’s over, the margin of victory or the location of the game, counts just the same. So if anyone tells you that the Bucks wins over teams missing their star players (the Hornets without Chris Paul, the Heat without Dwyane Wade and now the Cavs without Lebron James) don’t mean anything, you can simply point to the Bucks current position in sixth in the Eastern Conference and inform them of their error.
A Cavs team sans James, Shaquille O’Neal and Zydrunas Illgauskas is a significantly weaker opponent than one with those three, or any of them for that matter. In two weeks, Shaq will still be out, but James will surely be back in the lineup, Illgauskas will be back and the Cavs will again be a force to be reckoned with. But that’s not important today. What’s important right now is that the Bucks won another game and even better, it’s one that not many people had penciled in a day or two ago. It’s important the Bucks are now two games up on Chicago for the sixth seed, it’s important the sold out Bradley Center had plenty of reason to cheer all night long Saturday and, most of all, it’s important that Brandon Jennings’ mojo finally returned.
Ben Gordon :: Trendsetter :: Brit
For just the third time since February 1 (17 games), Jennings topped 40% shooting, finishing 6-14 from the field and 5-7 from behind the arc. Jennings finished with 25 points and had a season high number of “three-point monocles.” Popularized in last year’s playoffs by Ben Gordon, the “three-point monocle” is an especially braggadocios celebration of a three-point shot. Seeing Jennings break it out was especially joyful for me for a number of reasons. First, it’s good to see Jennings having fun out on the court again, especially in light of his recent comments about packing in his shot for a while. Second, I just love the trey monocle. Jennings explanation:
I did a little mocking, a little dancing for (Lebron). Hopefully (Lebron) caught that, I think it got his attention.
That being said, it would have been nice to see just where the Bucks measure up against the NBA’s best team, especially with Jennings having it going. (more…)
You Know the Drill: Cavs 85- Bucks 82
Saturday, December 19th, 2009I guess this is the life of a jump-shooting team that plays better than average defense. If you’re looking for someone that can hang around against the best teams, the Bucks are the squad for you. If you’re looking for someone that can actually beat those teams? Well you might want to keep looking, because game after game the Bucks continue to fall justshort.
And to be honest, I don’t even know how they kept this one close. Typically it hurts the Bucks quite a bit when Brandon Jennings doesn’t have it going, but they’ve at least been capable of surviving thanks to the strong play this year of Luke Ridnour. But neither of them had it going Friday. Jennings could have built a small town house after his 5-21 effort (though the 7-7 contribution from the line was a nice change of pace), and Ridnour looked passive and ineffective in going 0-3 in 17 minutes.
Furthermore, Andrew Bogut battled foul trouble all night long and was limited to just 17 minutes. The minutes limited his effectiveness, but even when he was in there it wasn’t the usual Bogut Show we’ve been seeing lately. 2-7 with just four points. The Bucks aren’t going to win a lot of games that Andrew Bogut gets just four shots in. I guess that whole consistency thing remains on hold for the time being.
At this point, even I am wondering, how the hell did the Bucks even hang around in this one? (more…)
