Oh, what a tease.

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.

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(H/T The Basketball Jones and Outside The NBA)

It was tough to watch the Chicago Bulls dominate the Milwaukee Bucks down the stretch last Saturday.  But hey, that’s what the Bulls do.  They are the best defensive team in the league and have the leading MVP candidate on their side.  Beating them is a tough task for any team, even one throwing everything it had at them simply to stay in the playoff race.  After that loss, it seemed like the Bucks may still be trending positively.  Giving the Bulls all they could handle seemed like a good thing, even if the offense imploded in the end again.  But that had a lot to do with that stingy Bulls defense, right?

Wrong.  When the offense stalls for the Bucks, it still has a lot more to do with the Bucks than it has to do with any other team.  Milwaukee reminded us all that much down the stretch of their 87-86 loss at the hands of the Charlotte Bobcats Monday night.

The Bucks missed their final 11 shots and failed to score over the last 3:51.  But if you’ve kept up with the Bucks this season, none of that will surprise you.  Finding someone to score late in the fourth quarter when defensive intensity picks up has been a problem for the Bucks all season.  Once reliable John Salmons has vanished, and without him, the Bucks have been lost.  Monday night, it was Brandon Jennings’ turn to take on the late game scoring responsibilities.  And his heartbreaking final 15 seconds aptly summed up his entire fourth quarter performance.

After three quarters, Jennings was eight of 15 from the field with 19 points, seven rebounds and four assists.

In the fourth quarter, Jennings made two of 12 shots, scored seven points and led the Bucks right out of the playoffs.  Do I blame him for this?  Not really.  It shouldn’t be on a 21-year-old, second year, moderately talented point guard to lift a franchise into the playoffs.  Jennings took responsibility during the game because that’s the kind of player he is.  Don’t think for a second Jennings didn’t think he was going to make each and every shot he took in that fourth quarter.  He was trying to will his team to victory, that’s a great quality to see in a young player.

Obviously his performance wasn’t on par with his mentality.  But that’s to be expected of a developing player.  The true tragedy in yet another Bucks collapse was that the team had to rely on Jennings because his fellow guards are so unreliable.  73 games into the season and Milwaukee still isn’t sure where it can go when it needs a bucket.  Forget the injuries, forget scheduling, forget the first few quarters, that’s the most damning thing about these Milwaukee Bucks.

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With Michael Redd and Drew Gooden working their way back onto the Milwaukee Bucks active roster, questions are bound to arise regarding just how minutes will be divvied up if the Bucks soon return to full health, something they haven’t had to deal with at virtually any point during this season.

But until they do, those questions are not of much concern to Scott Skiles.  At least publicly.  While his team battled through injures all season, Skiles has repeatedly refused to speculate on how he would divy up minutes upon the return of various players, from Chris Douglas-Roberts and Carlos Delfino earlier in the year to Redd and Gooden now.  Skiles words to the Journal-Sentinel Tuesday afternoon were in line with the comments he’s made throughout the season: “We’ll see what we do tomorrow night. We’ll see who’s healthy and who can go, and go from there.”

Milwaukee is not taking health for granted and is not looking ahead.  Skiles especially.  Milwaukee’s coach doesn’t seem to be worried about bruised egos or ominous acronyms.  If a player is left with nothing but a DNP-CD next to his name at the end of a game, it isn’t necessarily because that player hasn’t landed in a dog house or did something wrong, especially this season.  Having spent an entire season searching for groups that play well together, Skiles isn’t likely to break up any on court chemistry the Bucks are able to muster up at this point simply to get someone minutes every night.

So while Redd and Gooden would surely love to jump back in and pour in 30 productive minutes for the Bucks every night, don’t expect such a dramatic overhaul to happen over night.  Simply look at the case of Corey Maggette.

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The boundless hours of rehab that have finally landed Michael Redd back in Milwaukee probably aren’t comparable to the many minutes Redd spent studying how to be a professional with Ray Allen back in the early 2000s, but the symmetry is worth noting.  From start to finish, Redd’s story as a member of the Bucks, the one where a second round draft pick without three-point range becomes an All-Star and one of the league’s finest shooters, has been about hard work.

What his career hasn’t been about though, is winning basketball.  And Redd is not solely to blame for that.

By the time Redd is ready to play in a game this season, Milwaukee’s fate will have already been decided.  Even if Redd progresses quickly — he’s only going through one-on-one drills right now — and returns in two weeks, there won’t be much question as to where the Bucks are heading at that point.  In the next two weeks, Milwaukee plays eight games.  Unless the Bucks can drastically outperform their season long pace and win six or seven of those eight, it will be time to face a hard truth: there will not be any playoff games taking place in Milwaukee this season.

If that’s the case, it seems fitting that Milwaukee will be adding a player like Redd to the mix.  To be clear, that’s not a shot at Michael Redd.  The past is past.  It doesn’t help to dwell on those years lost during the prime of his career; it was more the organization’s fault than it was his.  No, I’m talking about the kind of player Redd is at this point and how he meshes with the Bucks future.  It’s fitting that Milwaukee could be playing out the stretch in one of its most disappointing seasons in recent memory with one of its only tantalizing prospects blocking shots and dunking 250 miles away, while a 31-year-old guard with no future on the Bucks rejoins the team.

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Michael Redd is getting close.

He may not be ready in a week, or even two.  It may take a month before he’s back to practicing with the whole team in a five-on-five setting, but soon enough a decision will have to be made.  Will Redd eventually be added to the active roster?  Will he be worked into the rotation?

Things could look a lot different when Milwaukee is actually faced with this situation.  The Bucks could be right in the mix for the final playoff spot, or the team could have fallen off the map, with only ping pong balls in their future.  So there probably isn’t much need to worry about Redd’ s return yet.

But with a fairly boring team in front of us, we probably will anyway.

Let’s poll it.  And leave some comments as to why you voted the way you did.  I’ll have more on this later in the week.