Milwaukee Bucks (Scott Skiles) 42-34
vs.
Chicago Bulls (Vinny Del Negro) 37-39

Date: April 6, 2010
Time: 7:00 (CST)
TV: FS Wisconsin

Matchups

Point Guard
Brandon Jennings vs. Derrick Rose

Two of the best young point guards in the East go head-to-head once again, this time, with even more at stake.  The Bucks win and they clinch a playoff spot without having to back in.  The Bulls need all the wins they can get if they really want to make the playoffs.  Jennings and Rose will have the ball in their hands all night, leading the charges.  Jennings got the best of Rose the last time these teams met, most famously in the highlight above.  We could see some changes in the Bucks offense that results in a little more Jennings, especially with Kurt Thomas starting.  Thomas does his best work a few steps outside the paint, so in theory that should result in more operating room for Jennings on drives.  We’ll see how it all shakes out though.  Containing Rose is going to be a HUGE key for the Bucks.

Advantage: Bulls

Read more…

So what lineups are the Bucks going to use now with Andrew Bogut out of commission?  Here’s a few of the lineups the Bucks have trotted out most frequently without Bogut this season.

(A thanks to BasketballValue.com for the numbers, what a great site.)

A few notes:

• Defensively, a Kurt Thomas and Ersan Ilyasova front court seems to be the Bucks best bet.  The lineup that combined the two of them with John Salmons, Jerry Stackhouse and Luke Ridnour had a defensive rating of 88.75, lowest among the seven I listed.

• Combinations involving Brandon Jennings and Ridnour typically fare well – with or without Bogut.  At least offensively.  As I was writing yesterday, the Bucks create a lot of their offense from the wings in.  When Jennings or Ridnour are on a wing, they can really make use of their ball-handling and penetration skills. In over 25 minutes together when paired with Charlie Bell, Ilyasova and Thomas, their unit was plus 38.  Imagine if Salmons stepped in for Bell on those?  Looking at these numbers, I wouldn’t be surprised to see more lineups with those two again.  I suppose that would be “going small” again.

• With a very small sample size of just 13 minutes, Ilyasova was not a disaster at center.  Playing with Stackhouse at the four (I think primarily against the Hawks) his lineup had a difference of plus 4.5 in terms of offense rating against defense rating.  Whether he could hold up against a larger front line (Boston’s perhaps) is still up in the air

• Numbers don’t tell the story of Kurt Thomas’ foul problems so much.  When the Bucks last played the Heat without Bogut, Thomas played only 15 minutes due to foul trouble.  Thomas hasn’t had any restrictions on his fouls, but now that he’ll be playing more minutes, he’ll have to be more judicious.  We’ll see how this changes his game.

• I don’t expect to see much Luc Richard Mbah a Moute at the three.  Playing him with Ilyasova and Thomas gives the Bucks a stout defensive unit, but leaves them with virtually no creativity offensively.  The only way I see that line-up having success offensively would be with Ridnour and Jennings in the back court.  That might be worth visiting.

• A wild card in this is Darnell Jackson.  He hasn’t been used at all and won’t be available for the playoffs, but he’ll probably get some minutes coming down the stretch.  Whether or not he’ll take away minutes from the Dan Gadzuric and Brezec duo remains to be seen.

• Speaking of the dynamic duo, where do they fit in the rest of the way?  Brezec hasn’t played enough with any group to have a real sample size, but we can be sure that he’s plodding and not very good.  Gadzuric has some hope, if only because he’s athletic and an okay rebounder.  The Jennings, Bell, Delfino, Ilyasova and Gadzuric unit has a good sample size of nearly a full game and has a positive differential.  If I had to guess, and it’s admittedly hard to predict coach Skiles, I’d say we see roughly 10 minutes a game from Gadzuric the rest of the way.

Can Delfino get it going with Bogut out?

Contrary to popular belief, the Bucks season is not over.  Nor does the NBA delay the start of the playoffs until Andrew Bogut is healthy.  And don’t expect a first round bye because the Bucks would have been competitive with a healthy Bogut.  No, the NBA keeps moving forward every day.  So that’s what the Bucks must do.

But how?  How can the Bucks get past an injury of this magnitude, at this juncture in the season?  Bogut has been the centerpiece for most of what the Bucks have done right, offensively and defensively, in the last two seasons.  There simply is no replacing Bogut, especially not with six games left in the regular season.  So the Bucks must find a way to remain competitive without being able to replicate everything Bogut gives them.

And naturally, that will put pressure on the remaining members of the Bucks front court.  Kurt Thomas and Ersan Ilyasova should see the most significant increases in minutes, with Thomas likely stepping in as the new starting center and Ilyasova probably seeing some more time at the five in small ball lineups.  But I’m not convinced either of them will have to take anything more unto themselves with Bogut out.  Milwaukee isn’t all of a sudden going to slide either Thomas or Ilyasova into Bogut’s spot on the offense and dump the ball into them in the post.  It’s just not their game.  I expect each to be more productive, especially Ilyasova and I’ll get to that in a minute, but I don’t expect a great deal more usage out of them.

But, as odd as this appears, I do expect more out of Carlos Delfino.

Something’s occurred to me in the last few games.  Something that explains an awful lot about why things have gone the way they have for the Bucks this season.  Something I only dove into once a reader pointed out that Brandon Jennings stands around the top of the key an awful lot.  And it’s something that completely explains why the Bucks have prospered without Michael Redd, but are being sentenced to season execution after the loss of Bogut. Read more…

• Friday night: the Bucks lose their second game in a row due to a failure to execute in the fourth quarter.  No real reason to worry.

• Saturday night: the Bucks beat the hottest team in the NBA 107-98 and panic spreads like a forest fire in a national park.

I’d say injuries are quite the game, ahem, season changer.

Potentially.

There are a lot of rumors going around about Andrew Bogut and his devastating elbow injury he suffered Friday night.  I’m not going to react to those as fact.  Until the Bucks and Bogut himself confirm the prognosis on his injury, I’ll refrain from jumping for joy or off a bridge.  That’s right, I’ll do no jumping.  You hear me, no jumping!  Not yet anyway.

With the Bogut issue being what it is, it’s hard to get as excited as a Bucks fan should be over the big win over Phoenix.

And it was a very big win.  I wouldn’t say the Bucks were reeling after two closes losses on the road to very good home teams, because I thought they actually played pretty well and the losses were more fluke than anything.  But Milwaukee certainly needs all the reassurance that they can get right now that they’re a good team.  Think of them as teenagers who’ve just hit puberty.

They think they’re on the right track, but each loss is like a zit that’s appeared out of nowhere and makes them a little unsure of how they look.  Teenagers need to be told it’s no big deal and it’ll go away before they know it, just the way the Bucks need to get past close losses and realize they won’t win every game.  A loss doesn’t mean they’ve fallen completely off track, it just means they lost one game.  The wins are reassurance, confidence boosters.  And a team that’s growing and figuring out just how good it can be needs all the confidence boosters it can get.  The wins pound home the point, “yeah, we are a good team.  We can beat anybody on any night, at any arena.”  And that’s the attitude a team wants to take into the playoffs.

Of course, teams also want to take their best player into the playoffs too.

(Whoops, I said no more Bogut talk.  That’s the last time. For a little while.) Read more…

Recap/Box Score

Another 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. Read more…