I’ve watched Oklahoma City and more recently, the Minnesota Timberwolves, load themselves up with talented young players. I’ve seen them flounder and flourish. I’ve also seen the risks. The Washington Wizards present the flip side of the destroy and rebuild plan. Sure, they landed John Wall, but they also have hitched their wagon to Andray Blatche and Javale McGee. It’s a dangerous game.

Dangerous as the game may be, I’ve wanted to see the Bucks play it since it was obvious Michael Redd wasn’t enough to make the Bucks relevant. Playoff appearances may generate some revenue, but title contenders are what really sparks fan interest. Title contenders capture hearts and minds. The middling records and low playoff seeds the Bucks have been shooting for since 2003 haven’t been of much interest, they’ve been Band-Aids on a basketball wound.

Many have been begging for the tank. We saw it roll out for a little bit in 2006-07, but the Bucks got burned, landed the sixth pick and Yi Jianlian. But with Redd coming off the books in 2011 and John Hammond the new GM, it seemed 2008 would be the start of a new era. An era where the Bucks would spend a couple years losing then many years reaping the benefits. Joe Alexander didn’t work out, but Brandon Jennings seemed like just the young dynamic talent the Bucks would be acquiring over and over for the next few years.

But the Bucks were ahead of schedule in 2009-10. The planents aligned and some how that team started playing like a real threat, eventually landing a sixth seed in the playoffs. That team’s success looks to have the Bucks set on an infinite loop of mediocrity.

Scott Skiles, Andrew Bogut and Jennings made them a playoff team and a two month out of body experience for John Salmons altered the course of the franchise. Suddenly, they weren’t going to be rebuilding, just adding on.

So we’re still here. Still not good enough to contend and not bad enough to land a potential star. That’s a problem. But the biggest problem the Bucks have is that they can’t go back now.

Beg all you want, but this team can’t and won’t be tanking any time soon. It’s too difficult now. This is what would have to happen for the Bucks to completely blow things up:

• Trade Bogut for nothing. No lottery team would ever trade for Bogut, it wouldn’t make sense. No contender that would look to add Bogut could give up any sort of value to a rebuilding team.
• Lose Brandon Jennings. Is Jennings going to want to sit through a rebuild in Milwaukee? Tank now and Jennings is gone after two more seasons, no question. It would take at least two seasons before the Bucks could get together enough young talent to move forward with.
• Fire Scott Skiles. Skiles can’t be the coach of a rebuilding team. He’s too good. I have a hard time believing a team Skiles coaches will ever win less than 30 games. Freak out about his rotations and handling of Stephen Jackson all you want, this dude is a terrific basketball coach.

Look at those three bullet points once more. How could the Bucks possibly spin those items as positives to the casual fan that follows the team and wants to see a win when they come to the Bradley Center? Impossible.

If this were Portland and the Bucks had a die hard base, maybe they could level with the fans and get their point across. In Milwaukee, where the Bucks rank a distant third on the major league level and probably fifth after Marquette and the Badgers, these moves would be unforgivable.

Even if they could some how find a way, the Bradley Center’s uncertain future further muddies the situation. The blow up is a four to six year plan. Six years from now the team could be on the way out of town. More than anything, the Bucks need to sell themselves to Milwaukee again to get funding for a new arena. A blow up may be the thing that sells them to the die hard fans, but after the past 20 years, stringing together a bunch of 50+ loss seasons right now wouldn’t appeal to the average tax payer. This isn’t baseball and the Bucks don’t have the goodwill the Brewers had.

So clamor all you’d like, but things aren’t changing any time soon.

Milwaukee will keep trying to catch lightning in a bottle like they did two years ago while the rest of us stand watching in the rain.

Jeremy Schmidt writes the Milwaukee Bucks blog Bucksketball.com. Follow him on Twitter and become a fan on Facebook.

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Draft day begins with a bang for Milwaukee Bucks fans. All week we heard the Bucks were itching to make a move, but not necessarily just dump salary. So that’s how we got here. Milwaukee is bringing in the talented, but volatile, Stephen Jackson along with Shaun Livingston and Beno Udrih and the number 19 pick in today’s draft. Out the door head Corey Maggette and John Salmons (much to the delight of Bucks fans I’m sure).

The salary info:

Over the length of all of the deals involved, the Bucks will save $8,238,357 and the difference between the salaries of the 19 and 10 picks.

But this isn’t just a salary dump.

The Bucks appear to thrive with guards and forwards capable of handling the ball and making plays for others. Once upon a time, that’s how Salmons endeared himself so much to the franchise. After coming over from the Bulls, he drove and kicked right into the hearts and minds of Bucks fans. Not last year though. Last year he was more than a step slow and lacked any explosion whatsoever. A younger, cheaper Beno Udrih will attempt to slide into a fraction of that role he once played so well.

Udrih can spend time splitting between the one and the two — he’s a scoring point that should be able to move over in Milwaukee’s system, so long as he can keep his head above water defensively.

Livingston is, was and always will be as pure of a point guard as a point guard can be. His passing instincts are exceptional and his height gives him the ability to read defense like a quarterback. His length can help him with some point guards defensively, but his size can be exploited by the smaller quicker variety of point guard (think JJ Barea).

Milwaukee’s true success in this deal (unless you count escaping from the burdensome contract of Salmons as its true success), was swapping out Maggette for Stephen Jackson.

Yes, he’s crazy and yes, he was ejected within minutes of his last appearance at the Bradley Center, but Jackson can play ball. More importantly, he’s a much better fit on the court than the single-minded Maggette. Despite his reputation as a shoot first, last and always player, Jackson is actually a fairly accomplished passer. Last season he assisted on 18.4% of his possession, a monstrous number when compared to the 11.3% Maggette posted. He’s better in terms of creation of offense for the entire team and creating offense was a huge flaw for last season’s Bucks.

For now, this doesn’t appear much of a failure or success for the Bucks. They’ve acquired a couple players who seem like they may be better fits than the players they disposed of. Whether or not that will pan out, we’ll know when the ball drops next season. Milwaukee without question is saving some cash and appears to have improved on a personnel front. Whether the savings and the “right now” improvements will balance out moving down from 10 to 19 we won’t know for quite some time.

So now appears to be time to wait and see. It’s all we can do.

Jeremy Schmidt writes the Milwaukee Bucks blog Bucksketball.com. Follow him on Twitter.

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Chad Ford with the apparently final information on a crazy deal:

Bucks get Beno, Stephen Jackson, Shaun Livingston & 19. Bobcats get pick 7 & Maggette. Kings get 10 & John Salmons.

Whoa … again.

***

Minutes after Gery Woelfel’s tweet on the Bucks and the Kings, Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! tweeted the Bobcats would be involved in a three way deal. He’s now updated involving players:

Partial of deal: The Bucks get Stephen Jackson, Shaun Livingston, sources say. Charlotte gets the 7th pick and Corey Maggette.

Whoa.

***

First the Observer, and then this. Gery Woelfel has Tweeted a rather big piece of news:

Bucks appear to have deal with Sacamento for No. 7

No word yet on who is involved or the specifics.

***

Here’s an old one (and by old, I mean I added this and started this page roughly two minutes ago and it’s already irrelevant). This one’s from the Charlotte Observer:

There are definitely serious talks going on between the Charlotte Bobcats and Milwaukee Bucks. Don’t know all the particulars yet, but it sounds like the Bobcats could end with the 10th pick and maybe send No. 19 to Milwaukee.

The article goes on to mention the similarities in the contracts of Corey Maggette and Stephen Jackson. Do with that what you will.

Jeremy Schmidt writes the Milwaukee Bucks blog Bucksketball.com. Follow him on Twitter.

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Jeremy

What needs addressing this off-season the most?  I’d say shooting guard, and then I’d say it’s not even all that close.

82games.com makes the strongest empirical argument here, as Milwaukee’s collective PER at the shooting guard position this season was 11.4, while opponents managed a 13.5 PER against the Bucks at that position, leaving them with a net -2.1.  But anyone who has watched the Bucks over the past two years knows the importance of the two guard position and how much trouble it has caused the Bucks.

Before John Salmons arrival in the 2009-10 season, Charlie Bell logged the majority of the minutes there and could do little aside from harmlessly parade into the lane, representing no true threat to score or create.  He was a spot-up shooter being asked to do far too much.  And while we all forget it because the Bucks post-Samons trade impressed so much, Milwaukee’s offense was brutal for the first half of that season.  Virtually the only difference between that offense and the one that mucked up this past season was that team’s ability to hit some threes

Once Salmons arrived though, the onetime point guard brought to life the Bucks offense.  He drove as a threat: he could pass or finish equally as well.  The Bucks had shooters all around him, ready to capitalize off his drive and kick game.  With him dropping assists and scoring 20 points regularly, the Bucks offense flourished for the first time under Coach Scott Skiles.

So much of the Bucks offense starts out of the wing that it’s crucial they have someone creative and adept at scoring logging heavy minutes there

Josh

It is hard to say shooting guard isn’t the most pressing need for the Bucks.  Salmons’ 14 points per game on 41.5 percent shooting is unacceptable for a player that averaged 35 minutes per game. The team needs more efficient scoring from that position, especially considering Brandon Jennings is unlikely to ever shoot a high percentage. If Salmons is able to shoot at the 46 percent clip he averaged before this season, then the Bucks problem is solved. Based on his age and track record for playing well when first acquired by a team and then declining, it’s hard to see Salmons doing that.

While improving the shooting guard position is of utmost importance, acquiring a true backup center is another pressing need. It’s hard to figure out what John Hammond was thinking last offseason. When your starting center is coming off of a serious, season-ending injury, you have to do more than trade for 6-foot-7 Jon Brockman. I know Drew Gooden logged minutes at center too, but is that really ideal?

While with the Sacramento Kings as a rookie, Brockman was a solid rebounder and hustle defender. While with the Bucks this season, he was good at drawing charges and that is about it. Brockman’s numbers dropped almost across the board in Milwaukee. He went from averaging 13.1 rebounds per 40 minutes as a rookie to 10.8 in his second season. If you watched him at all this season, you probably concluded that Brockman would be a solid 11th or 12th man, not one of your top options at backup center.

Ian

So how do they solve the problem out on the wing? Draft? Free Agency? Trade? I say give Salmons peyote and send him on a vision quest to find his offensive spiritual forefathers: Oscar Robertson, Sidney Moncrief or Ray Allen.

But what if Milwaukee just minimizes/changes the role of the shooting guard? Bringing in a new assistant coach can do that.

When Skiles first took over coaching duties, the 2008-09 Bucks posted a respectable offensive rating of 106.7, according to Basketball Reference. In 2009-10, that rating dipped to 104.9 and in the most recent campaign, the team’s rating fell to 101.6. That’s the worst Bucks offense since the NBA/ABA merger.

The three best teams Skiles has coached, the 1999-00 Suns, 2000-01 Suns and 2006-07 Bulls, were offensively ranked 16th, 22nd and 21st respectively in their years. The man had Jason Kidd in his prime and his offense still sucked.

This isn’t a call for Skiles to be fired, far from it. He’s proven he can win and the defense has been a mirror to the offense — it’s only gotten better every year. So the offense doesn’t need to be great, it just has to be good enough. A minor tweak in the coaching staff could go a long way. What Skiles needs is an offensive-minded assistant coach the same way that Doc Rivers needed Tom Thibodeau for defense. Kelvin Sampson might be leaving, so there could be a vacancy to fill anyway.

Jeremy

I think the struggles Skiles had while having a point guard as talented naturally as Kidd illustrate the need for a shooting guard and a sound shooting point guard more than ever.  If ever Kidd had struggles, it was with his shooting early in his career.  He was “Ason Kidd” for nothing.  With little help creating on the wing and a poor three-point shooting point guard, Skiles has had problems.

When Ben Gordon and Kirk Hinrich ran a Skiles offense, he had two multi-tasking guards capable of shooting and getting to the hole off the bounce.  That was his offense at its peak.

Skiles doesn’t strike me as the type who controls his assistants incessantly, but he also doesn’t seem the type to bring in an offensive guru to alter the system he’s been running his entire coaching career.  Working inside of the structure that’s already present in Milwaukee seems to be most viable for the time being. If the Bucks hit the ground without a parachute next season after falling off a cliff this past season, then there may be some serious organizational re-structuring that would involve a change in offensive philosophy.

Even if Skiles copped to an offensive quality control assistant, where would he look?  I can’t think of anyone off the top of my head.

With that in mind, here are a few wings I’d love to see in Milwaukee, in no specific order:

Evan Turner
Alec Burks
JR Smith
Darington Hobson

Turner can create, but I question if he has the athleticism to score 20 points a night.  Even if he doesn’t, he could be a terrific bench option for 25 minutes a night.  Burks has the athletic chops and seems to be lining up as a real option for the Bucks.  Maybe he won’t be ready to come in and do damage right away, but his athleticism would be intriguing.  Smith can shoot it and he’s been more adept as a passer than his reputation may indicate.  He’s handled point guard duties on more than a few occasions during his Denver stint.  Sure he’s combustible, but that may serve to drive his price down to a downright affordable amount for Milwaukee this off-season.

And Hobson was touted as a poor man’s Turner.  He was in Milwaukee all season working out and rehabbing from his two hip surgeries.  It’s been a while since he’s last played in a game, but if he’s a competent shooter, he may be able to provide some solid relief minutes next season.

Follow Jeremy, Josh and Ian on Twitter and become a fan of Bucksketball on Facebook (to the right).

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Negatives

• Slamming John Salmons

Let’s keep this short because Salmons is going to be mentioned a lot while going through the rest of the negatives.

Many people like to point to his contract as a cause for his laziness. I will do no such thing. The reason there’s so much negativity towards the effort Salmons put forth is that the general public believes far too much in itself. Everyone believes that if they were handed millions of dollars to play basketball, they’d always play hard, do the little things and be the perfect teammate. This is bullshit. If it was, you wouldn’t have an office feud with Tammy in accounting.  You wouldn’t be on the internet right now. You’d be working, spending time with your kids, looking for a job or trying to make humanity better.

Here’s a less cynical explanation for Salmons season.

After the Bucks traded for him, Salmons became a prime scoring option along with Jennings and Carlos Delfino. But with the return of Bogut, the additions of Corey Maggette and Drew Gooden, Salmons’ touches have gone down; Hoopdata has his usage rate going down from 22.7 to 20.9. Understandable, the roster got a little more crowded than the previous year and there are only so many possessions in a game. What isn’t understandable is his lack of aggression. He only has 2.4 attempts at the rim last season as opposed to 4.2 in 2010. But all of this is in-tune with Salmons’ history, very happy as a first or second option, but goes into a funk when he’s given less to do.

Okay, that was still a bit cynical.

• Pick n’ Roll Ball handling

The top two ball handlers in the Bucks pick and roll offense are Jennings and Salmons.. In pick and roll situations, Brandon Jennings and Salmons record .82 and .8 points per possession and shoot 38.6 and 39.8 percent respectively. Keyon Dooling is even worse. His points per possession are .75 and his shooting percentage is 39.8. The team’s best pick and roll ball handler is Boykins, who scores .88 points per possession and shoots 46.6 percent in those situations. Together, they led the Bucks to the distinguished rank of twentieth in the league in pick and roll ball handling, according to mysynergysports.

The guards’ numbers show a lack of aggression in attacking the basket. It’s a sort of malaise that affects the whole team. One can blame it on the offensive philosophy of the coaches and some of it should be placed there, but it’s still up to the players to make better decisions on the court. Instead of persevering through a big man hedging on the screen, they take the easy way out and settle for a jumper. Jennings isn’t lighting the world on fire when it comes to finishing attacks at the basket, but as noted earlier, he is getting better.

Dooling’s field goal percentages warrant that he only attack the basket. He’s shooting 65 percent at the rim, but has had shooting woes everywhere else. Salmons can still be quite good when driving through the lane. When he attacks the basket off a pick and roll, he has 1.2 points per possession. Yet, he only does so 20 percent of the time of the pick and roll.

• Not looking inside

Jump shooting teams can be successful. The San Antonio Spurs are a fine example of this. They’re number one in the league in spot-up attempts and the Bucks are number two in that category. The difference is that the Spurs are competent and confident.

The Bucks tend to work the ball around the three-point with no looks inside, save for some dribble penetration. Their cuts are quite often along the perimeter, not inside and quite often that penetration is for the sake of getting something to the perimeter.

The Spurs on the other hand can do a post entry with Tim Duncan or penetrate with Tony Parker or Manu Ginobili. They show the defense a lot of different looks to get their jumpers. The 1:28 mark of this video is a good example.

One of the best big men in the game is on the team, but Bogut’s usage rate went way down last year to 19.58 compared to his usage rate of 23.24 from the 2009-10 season. Utilizing an inside-out look with Bogut would be huge. The Bucks can only be successful as a perimeter-oriented team, but the guards need to go inside and mean it.

Ian Segovia writes the Milwaukee Bucks blog Bucksketball.com. Follow him on Twitter. Become a fan on Facebook (right sidebar).

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We’re rolling out a three part series today reviewing Milwaukee’s pluses and minuses this season at guard forward and center.  Ian starts today with guards.  Up first, the positives.  Later, the negatives.  Next week we’ll look forward to the off-season and figure where the Bucks most pressing needs will be.

- Jeremy Schmidt

It was a tough year for the Bucks guards. Since the Bucks are such a perimeter-oriented offense, the guards deserve much of the blame for the team’s offensive struggles. Plus, it isn’t clear how much credit they deserve for the team’s stellar defense. The defensive standouts for the team were located in center and forward spots. And often the best defense against a great opposing guard was to funnel them to Andrew Bogut. Yet, the guards still had their silver lining.

• Boykins off the bench

John Hollinger’s PER rankings has Earl Boykins at 17.62, best among the bucks and good for fourteenth among all point guards. Obviously, this is ridiculous, but what PER does show is that Boykins was the perfect deep bench role player.

He dropped thirteen in the fourth quarter against the Lakers. He rang in the New Year with twenty-six against the Mavericks and then ran around like a chicken with its head cut off to drop in the game-tying bucket against the Heat. I haven’t kept track of anyone else’s third-string point guards, but I highly doubt any can boast as much.

When his playing time was cut short, he kept his turnovers limited, hustled and never complained. Sure, he could get lit up on defense. But everyone and their mother could spot-up on Earl, this is nothing new. As the oldest Buck, one could accuse him of not providing enough veteran leadership. But Boykins doesn’t exude that aura of “I’ve forgotten more about basketball than you’ll ever know,” that fondly remembered former Buck Kurt Thomas does. And I wouldn’t want Boykins to impart any wisdom of the game to Brandon Jennings.

Because he plays a giant game that only someone of his stature could, his every shot looks more likely to go into the rafters than the basket. Every fast break of his is a thrill, especially when Boykins is ten feet ahead of everyone, but LeBron James is taking two steps for every Boykins’ one. Will he make it to the basket? I don’t know, but I have a feeling something awesome is going to happen.

When he got his time out there, Boykins was always the most exciting Buck on the floor for both good and bad.  He is guile incarnate. And best of all, he pulled a Dream Shake on Tim Duncan.

At some point during the legendary 2007 Warriors-Mavericks playoff series, Don Nelson told Baron Davis, “Be dominant.” Far be it from me that I should decode the Zen of Don, but I like to interpret his words as such: “We are not good enough for you to not go out there and be dominant. Do not overexert, do not over think and most important of all, do not try to dominate.” I may have completely over thought this. But remember, a big reason for why the Warriors won that series was Baron Davis being simply sublime and making it all look effortless.

That is what Jennings needs to be for the Bucks. And he has been that, yet still only in flashes. However those flashes came more and more this past season. He had the first triple-double of his career, threw down four 30 point games and had six double-doubles. In his rookie year, with nineteen more regular season games and a playoff series, Jennings recorded just three 30 point games and two double-doubles in addition to his 55 points against Golden State. More importantly, he hit his lows far less often this year. In his rookie season he had 22 games with nine points or less. This year he had 14 games with nine points or less.

His worse stretch of the last season was his week after returning from injury. He scored six points or less five times that week and if you can’t give a basketball player a break for at a least a week after returning from foot surgery, then I don’t know what to tell you.

There is still a big difference between what Brandon Jennings is and what the Bucks need him to be. But he’s getting there. His most notable improvement is that he’s finishing better at the rim: Hoopdata has him finishing at 51.4 percent, not spectacular, but much better than last year’s 42.7 percent. His turnover rate is down, he’s shooting fewer jumpers from inside the arc and in general his stats show small, but positive steps. There are concerns. He’s not a great three-point shooter and he needs to make better decisions.   But I don’t know a single 21 year old who can’t say the same.

When watching Jennings play defense, one will see him getting beat off the dribble a lot. This is calculated. There are so many great point guards in the league and none of them can stay in front of each other. Jennings tries to cheat the guard in a direction so the bigs can provide him help defense. For isolations and pick and rolls, Jennings is only allowing 0.79 points per possession.

Keyon Dooling, John Salmons and the rest of the guards do a much better job of keeping their men in front of them and putting a hand up.  Salmons is his own defender: he’s solidly built and long. He’s been able to effectively check other wings for a while now. The other guards that have filled in for the Bucks follow the Dooling model. They pressure the ball relentlessly and if they get into a mess, hopefully they can funnel their man toward Bogut.

They handle spot-ups, isos and pick and rolls as well as anyone. As a group, mySynergySports has the Bucks ranked as first in the league against spot-ups, second versus isos and sixth against ball handlers in the pick and roll.

Ian Segovia writes the Milwaukee Bucks blog Bucksketball.com. Follow him on Twitter. Become a fan on Facebook (right sidebar).

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Continued to scrap
One of the walking wounded
Lost his long ball touch

Every NBA player needs a card to play that makes him unique.  Ilyasova’s appeared to be his combination of scrappy play with a solid touch from three-point range.  After last season, Coach Scott Skiles talked of his hopes that Ilyasova would turn into a 37-38% shooter from three.  That didn’t pan out.  Ilyasova took a step back as a shooter, falling to sub-30% from deep.  Going forward, that’ll be where Ilyasova must straighten himself out.  He was among the team’s leaders in charges taken, but he’ll never be the defender Mbah a Moute is at the four, and his rebounding is no better than average.

Brandon Jennings

Question of import:
Did his development stall?
Most pressing issue

Watching Chris Paul terrorize the Lakers is frustrating as a Bucks fan.  Size wise, Paul is no bigger than Jennings.  Maybe he’s a bit thicker, but he seems to have a sense ingrained in him about what to do and when to do it.  Jennings may not have that, but he could still be an effective player.  Some are jumping ship on him already, others are giving him a bit more string.  But after his third year, we’ll probably have a fairly good idea about whether or not Jennings is the right guy at the point guard position for the Bucks.  This will be a huge off-season for him.

Corey Maggette

On a losing team
Designated driver was
Pulled over as well

Brought in to even out the Bucks free throw numbers, Maggette largely did his thing.  Per 36 minutes, he attempted 8.4 free throws per game — in line with his 8.7 per game numbers per 36 for his career.  But he had trouble earning consistent minutes down the stretch, as Skiles went largely exclusively with John Salmons and Carlos Delfino at the wings.  Maggette had his moments before that — the game at Golden State comes to mind — but for whatever reason, he could never earn his coach’s trust.  Milwaukee may look to move him this summer, but it doesn’t appear that he’s pressed the issue just yet.  He was largely regarded as a positive teammate and got praise for just being a good guy.  In the NBA though, that’s not enough.

Luc Mbah a Moute

Offense of three years
Still a work in progress. But
Defense is fine tuned.

In his third year, his offensive numbers were eerily similar to those of his rookie season.  His playing time at the four was squeezed when the Bucks were at their healthiest and when Carlos Delfino was out, Mbah a Moute had to fill in at the three quite a bit.  This was fine defensively, but offensively, it was as bad a fit for him as ever.  He’ll be a restricted free agent whenever the off-season starts, we’ll see how much Milwaukee values his defensive contributions then.

Michael Redd

A touching comeback.
After so long, could move on.
A hopeful future.

Redd went out scoring 11 points in Oklahoma City.  He wasn’t able to lead the Bucks back from the depths they sunk to this season, only earning modest playing time until the team was officially eliminated.  His injuries have taken a lot out of him physically, but he still seems to have the same positive attitude that’s gotten him this far.  I don’t doubt that Redd can stick on a team’s rotation next season, but he’ll need to figure out his three-point shooting.  He made just four of 17 this season and struggled last season as well.

John Salmons

Oh my the struggles.
Crumbled under contract’s weight.
Needs to build back up.

When blame is being divvied out, Salmons has been more than willing to take his share.  And he’s more than deserving of that same share.  He spent most of the season with a sub-40% field goal percentage, a disastrous number from a player that was assumed to take on the biggest role offensively on the team.

Larry Sanders

Long with many tools.
Now, dangerous shot-blocker.
Leaves us wanting more.

Sanders minutes fluctuated, presumably with his attention to detail.  There were time when we’d see Sanders catch a tongue lashing while on the court from Coach Skiles and times in which he was pulled, instructed and re-inserted immediately.  It was a learning season for him.  But he seemed to be getting better all the time.  He’s always willing to taken an open 18-foot jump shot, the next steps for him are making those more often and building an attack move off of that.  If he can take those two steps in cohesion before next season, there may be a lot of minutes available for him.  He’s already a premier shot-blocker.

Brian Skinner

Always good soldier
Two games, no attempts.
Still, had a cool beard.

Skinner hung around Milwaukee and got a job when the team was a little thin up front.  He drives a huge Hummer and looked capable during the pre-season.  Seems unlikely he’ll ever have a regular NBA job again though.

Garrett Temple

Had chance, mixed results.
Bright guy, quick learner. Had flaws.
Errant shot. Could stick.

Temple seemed to get it while he was out there.  He just couldn’t get his shots to fall with much regularity while with the Bucks.  That was a problem for him wherever he was in the NBA this season.  He shot less than 30% on the year, that’s not going to cut it for a fringe player who looks like he’ll be makings his bones on defense.  That’s all well and good, but even the best defenders must be below average offensive players.  Not completely abysmal offensive players.

Jeremy Schmidt writes the Milwaukee Bucks blog Bucksketball.com. Follow him on Twitter. Become a fan on Facebook (right sidebar).

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I kind of think the remainder of this post should be written in wingdings.  Yeah, that’s where I’m heading.

Because the more I think about it, the more I start to justify this Bucks season as one that simply got away early and couldn’t be reigned in.  When I write that, I’m speaking to the power of Milwaukee’s defense and how much leeway it gives a problematic offense.  But it seems fair to ask if an offense could ever become more problematic than the one the Bucks trotted out this season.  With that in mind, I wonder if this season was a fluke.

The more I think about it, the more I think this team, almost as presently constructed, isn’t very far from being way better than average.

The “special” brand of basketball Milwaukee has played on offense this season has produced some maddening numbers.  The Bucks rank as the NBA’s worst in the following categories: field goal percentage, points per game, offensive efficiency, fastbreak points and effective field goal percentage.  If the Suns of the past five seasons have taken our breath away with their beautiful brand of fastbreak basketball, the Bucks have held down fans and forced air back into their lungs against their will.

But it’s not like the Bucks set the world on fire throughout their 46-36 run last season.  The Bucks were 23 in offensive rating and 29 in field goal percentage just a season ago.  Sure, they out performed both those numbers when John Salmons tore through opponents like a hungry eagle with a fresh fish, but they still weren’t exactly the Doug Moe Denver Nuggets.

The key has always been the Bucks defense.  Despite struggles scoring under Scott Skiles they have always played the type of defense that could win a team more than one playoff series.  In games in which the Bucks have scored more than 90 points this season, they are 30-12.  In games in which the Bucks have shot 45% or better, they are 21-6.  Both those numbers are promising, because it’s not completely unrealistic to expect the Bucks to approach those numbers more frequently next season.

Early season injuries robbed the Bucks the opportunity to have even one practice at full strength all season long.  We’ve all been told since we were just children that practice makes perfect, Allen Iverson be damned.  Now I don’t know that a handful of practices cure all that ails a team that’s shooting 42.8% this season, but it couldn’t hurt, could it?  Milwaukee’s problems have largely been shots that haven’t fallen, as we’ve been told over and over this season, but there has been quite a few miscommunications along the way as well.

The Bucks added eight new faces before this season started and 78 games in, they still haven’t gotten the chance to feel each other out thanks to injures that have plagued virtually everyone on the roster.  Combined, Bucks players have missed 267 games (prior to the Miami Heat game) this season, with maladies ranging from intercostal muscle strains to prolonged bouts of plantar fasciitis.  Surely these injuries haven’t just turned on and off like lights when Bucks have returned to active duty or gone to the injured list.  Many of these issues have plagued players for a while before they missed games and once they returned.

But I don’t want to sound like a complete Bucks apologist.  There have been many problems this season that were carry overs from last.  Milwaukee still often runs sets to end up with some of the worst shots possible.  And, as presently constructed, the team lacks much in the way of athleticism.  Without that athleticism, Milwaukee fails to get to the rim for easy layups and dunks.

Ultimately the keys for the Bucks next season will be getting more production from the shooting guard spot (reasonable to assume they will), a healthier Andrew Bogut (semi-reasonable to expect) and an improved Brandon Jennings (the wildest wildcard).  Will all that fall into place this off-season and lead into next season?  It’s far too early to tell — honestly, we won’t know until next October, this past summer has proven that much.

There’s reason for hope though.  As frustrating at this season has been, it’s still too early to toss the entire organization overboard and completely blow things up.  No one wants to wait and see, but that’s where we’re at with the Bucks right now.  Wait and see.

And hope.

Jeremy Schmidt writes the Milwaukee Bucks blog Bucksketball.com. Follow him on Twitter. Become a fan on Facebook (right sidebar).

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Player A averaged 18.3 points two years ago, but has never been within two points of that total for any other entire season of his career.  He came into the league as a point guard but quickly moved over to the wing in his rookie season.  His career assist percentage is 15.5, so he’s seen as a guy who keeps the ball moving on offense.  Solid is the word that most often describes his defense.  He’s not a bad guy to have around and he can occasionally carry a team.

Player B is a serious scoring threat.  Per 36 minutes, he’s averaged 20 points for his career.  A stat-geek’s best friend, his true shooting percentage and PER are always better than league average.  Though he’s traditionally not a strong outside shooter, he’s made better than 36% of his threes this season.  With each new stop, his defensive reputation precedes him and he’s seen as selfish offensively, despite a sterling locker room reputation.

Player A has played at least 30 minutes in all but six games he’s played in this season, while Player B has managed only 13 such games this season, his most recent coming February 11.

By now, you know I’m referring to John Salmons and Corey Maggette. At least you probably know, and you probably knew immediately.  But you’re probably wondering why I’d be comparing these two.  Salmons has spent the majority of his season at the two, while Maggette is more a three.  Whenever Carlos Delfino has been healthy this season, he’s been Maggette’s main competitor for minutes, not Salmons.  But this isn’t about competition.  It’s actually about last season and how sample size affected the Bucks.

For 30 games last season, John Salmons was everything the Bucks could have ever wanted at the two guard.  He slashed, he finished, he made threes, he found teammates and he closed out games.  More than anyone else, Salmons was responsible for the team that earned the Fear The Deer moniker and had everyone talking about the Bucks.  This was the second season in a row that Salmons took off after a mid-February trade, so there was some reason to be skeptical regarding how productive he would be in the season following.  But he seemed such a natural fit for Scott Skiles wing reliant offense.  He could create and score, that’s an ideal Skiles two guard.

This season, the bottom has fallen out for Salmons.  He showed up to training camp and immediately suffered a knee injury.  He missed all of pre-season and still occasionally seems as though he hasn’t recovered.  Any explosion he had last season looks sapped and all of the difficult shots he so regularly made last season haven’t gone down this one.  After hitting 47% of his shots for the Bucks last season, Salmons has made just 40% this season.

The most frustrating moments with Salmons come on nights like Saturday.  In a meaningless game, Salmons drops in 19 points and eight assists, but ends up with two turnovers and a missed shot in the final 5:33.  The Bucks have needed him to step up all season, and occasionally have gotten terrific overall lines that indicate he’s moving the ball and playing well, but haven’t gotten the same fourth quarter production out of him.  But that hasn’t changed much about Salmons role.

He’s still relied on nearly heavily as he was last season, as evidenced by only a slight drop in his usage with the Bucks last season to this one (22.7 to 20.8).  And his minutes haven’t much been impacted either.  After averaging 37.6 minutes per game with the Bucks for the final 30 last year, he’s notched 35 minutes per game this season, despite being significantly less productive.

So that begs the question: What would Salmons have to do to land in Maggette’s predicament?  Walk off the court?  Gain possession and roll the ball out of bounds continuously?  Last season’s stretch run seems to have bought Salmons an incredible amount of faith, as much as any other player on the Bucks.  40, 50 and 60 game samples this season have largely resulted in an unproductive set of data regarding Salmons, but he’s continued to receive big minutes for a team that hasn’t been performing.

This probably speaks to how desperate things have been for the Bucks and how little other shooting guards on the team have stepped up.  The opportunity has been there for Chris Douglas-Roberts, but he apparently hasn’t done enough to earn his coach’s trust.  And I’m not speaking solely in terms of what’s going on on the court.  Something that John Salmons is doing each and every day is keeping him on the court for big minutes.  Coach Skiles and players on the team have spoken about this group not being prepared on a number of occasions this season.  Perhaps Salmons is taking those steps while the Bucks reserves haven’t quite figured out how to keep themselves as ready mentally and physically as their coach would prefer.

Whatever the case may be, Milwaukee’s suffered badly at the shooting guard this season as Salmons has struggled.  For now, it’s easy to look back on that 30 game sample and curse the good fortune that came with it.  But perhaps there is a silver lining.  After seeing what hasn’t worked this season, maybe the Bucks will address their depth issues and find a more productive backup guard, ready to push Salmons if he slumps again next season.  Maybe the Bucks will luck out in the lottery and find a swingman equally as capable of the scoring and distributing duties Salmons once took to so easily.  If that’s the case, this season will be the aberration.

But however you want to look at it, there’s been no comparing this season’s Bucks to last season’s.  And that starts with John Salmons.

Jeremy Schmidt writes the Milwaukee Bucks blog Bucksketball.com. Follow him on Twitter. Become a fan on Facebook (right sidebar).

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After months of injuries, underwhelming performances, failures to execute, missed shots and fourth quarter collapses, most people feel like they have a pretty good handle on this Bucks team.  But Wednesday night’s 104-98 victory over the Toronto Raptors certainly didn’t fit the profile that’s been established.

Recent gruesome losses featuring very poor fourth quarter performances were still fresh in the minds of Bucks fans when Toronto turned a 85-80 deficit into a 88-87 lead with 4:48 left in the fourth quarter.  But this time, the Bucks were able to use the same fight they had against the Bobcats and mix in enough made shots to flip the script.  35 seconds and three offensive rebounds after an Andrea Bargnani layup would put the Bucks behind, Carlos Delfino responded with a three from the corner to conclude a possession in which the Bucks went one for four with three offensive rebounds.  It wasn’t so unlike the final possession against Charlotte, but it was TOTALLY unlike that final possession, in that the Bucks found a way to finish it out.

Milwaukee would feature plenty of Drew Gooden to hold the Raptors, as Gooden’s touch from long range was alive and well, but the Bucks even mixed in an Andrew Bogut right-handed hook from the paint to keep the Raptors at bay.  Multiple players making shots when the Bucks needed them to be made?  This group didn’t resemble the Bucks of the past week.

That’s the beauty of playing Toronto though.  Milwaukee’s victory left them with a 3-0 lead over their Canadian counterparts this season.  In each game Milwaukee’s offense was able to do virtually as it pleased.  So when I say this game seemed a bit of a tease, I keep the Bucks-Raptors series this season in mind.  The long since banished to the end of the bench Corey Maggette logged a double-double in the Bucks first trip to Toronto,  a game I think of when I see Gooden score 22 points and grab 11 rebounds.  Will Gooden always get looks good enough to end up six of eight from 20-feet out?  Probably not, even though he’s been a good shooter on long two’s this season (45% from 16-23 feet).

So forgive me if I see this game as less proof of what a healthy Bucks team can do and more an indictment of just how bad Toronto is.  That said, it’s still fun to see a victory and a team that’s working hard get a reward for their efforts.

Notes

It’s done.  It has happened.  Brandon Jennings has finished the month of March with a shooting percentage better than 40%.  After a 25 points on eight of 18 shooting night, Jennings finished the month of March as a 40.9% shooter.  This marks the second month of Jennings’s career in which he’s shot better than 40%.  As the Bucks either gloriously streak towards the playoffs or humbly bow out and play out the schedule, Jennings progress is likely the most important development to pay attention to for Bucks fans.  Milwaukee’s young point guard was equal parts orchestrator and scorer for the Bucks Wednesday night, mixing seven assists in with his team high point total.  But the key for Jennings will be consistently finishing in the paint and knocking down open threes.  If he continues to progress in those two areas, he’ll be just what the Bucks need going forward.

• It was a fairly quiet night for John Salmons, he made just two shots and attempted just six, but his drive and dish game was good as ever, and his teammates rewarded his efforts.  Salmons dished out seven assists, tying Jennings for team lead on a night in which the Bucks handed out 26 helpers.  Milwaukee’s a very unselfish team and that generally doesn’t change whether they are hitting shots or missing them.  Wednesday night just happened to be one of those nights in which they were making their shots again, allowing their assist totals to rise.

• Michael Redd caught a pass on a kickout from Earl Boykins. Redd found Gooden, who made a sharp bounce pass to the corner back to Boykins who quickly kicked back out to an open Redd waiting on the left wing.  Redd let loose on a three 447 days after he last scored a point in the NBA and once again, could find a number at the end of his line in the box score, as it dropped through the net.  Redd finished two for two, scored five points and probably felt as good as anyone in the locker room at the end of the night.  Congrats Mike.

• While Gooden’s offensive contributions shouldn’t be overlooked on this one night, it’s his rebounding that may matter even more.  Gooden isn’t always going to be so threatening a weapon on offense, but his skills as a rebounder will likely be on display most every night when he’s healthy.  It’s here that the differences between he, Larry Sanders and Jon Brockman are most glaring.  Gooden’s ability to keep possessions alive offensively and close them out on defense should not be undersold.  He certainly can be an effective player in the Bucks rotation going forward, for this reason alone.

Final Thoughts

An Indiana victory leaves the Bucks still three games back for the final playoff spot.  The losses to Sacramento and Charlotte look worse with each passing day, especially when a look ahead at the Bucks schedule brings back-to-back road games with Orlando and Miami in sight.  But yes, the Bucks cannot look so far ahead.  They can only look to Indiana on Friday, the must winniest must win this season.

Jeremy Schmidt writes the Milwaukee Bucks blog Bucksketball.com. Follow him on Twitter. Become a fan on Facebook (right sidebar).

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