UPDATE: Tonight’s game has been postponed due to weather conditions in Atlanta.  It will be made up March 15th.  Tomorrow’s Bucks game at home against San Antonio will be played as scheduled.

Enemy: Hoopinion

Point Guard
Keyon Dooling vs. Mike Bibby

Dooling has far more freedom to impact games than Bibby.  It seems as though if it were practical, Atlanta would replace their starting point guard with some sort of machine that never ventured inside of the arc and only shot 3-pointers.  Milwaukee’s point guards, on the contrary, are heavily involved with the Bucks offense and have a significant hand in figuring who is getting what shots.  Dooling has only twice had fewer than five assists since stepping in for the injured Brandon Jennings. I wouldn’t expect Tuesday night to differ any for him.  In the last meeting between these teams, Dooling had 15 points and nine assists.

Advantage: Bucks Read more…

Milwaukee Bucks (Scott Skiles) 2-2

at

Atlanta Hawks (Mike Woodson) 2-2

Date: 4/28/2010
Time: 7:00 (CST)
TV: TNT/FS Wisconsin

“Most teams, the role players play better at home.”
-  Jerry Stackhouse after game four

So Stack already has me a little concerned for game five. After notably strong efforts out of Dan Gadzuric, Carlos Delfino and Kurt Thomas in their game tying win on Monday, Milwaukee will need to once again get more out of their role players than Atlanta. That’s true of any team, everyone likes to get more out of their secondary players, but it’s especially true for a team like Milwaukee that’s featuring their role players much more heavily. One could argue that Atlanta has only three or four role players they’ll trot out there (Jamal Crawford, Mike Bibby, Marvin Williams and if you want to label him as a role player, Al Horford), but Milwaukee has two main men in Brandon Jennings and John Salmons, flanked by role players. What’s nice about this is that it’s difficult to project which one will step up. What’s bad about this, is that it’s not always the case that anyone steps up. It’s tough to expect Carlos Delfino to hit another six threes, but if he can hit half of his threes and Ersan Ilyasova has another strong game, Milwaukee may not need much more than strong performances again out of Jennings and Salmons to pull this one out. Read more…

I remember walking out of the Bradley Center on March 28th feeling very good about things. Milwaukee had just defeated the Grizzlies, the day was still young after the early game, the temperature was in the 60’s and a possible successful playoff run was on the horizon.  Now, less than one month later, clouds draped the air on a cold and damp Saturday afternoon when I approached. It was almost too perfect a representation of Milwaukee’s season.

What was once so bright, had turned so dim that the light was nearly off

And then Brandon Jennings hit a three and busted out the three point monocle.

And then he did it again.

And again.

Then John Salmons got involved. When it was all said and done, Milwaukee was up 36-19 after one, the Jennings/Salmons duo was 9-10 and the brightness had officially returned to Milwaukee’s season.

Surprise seems to be the appropriate reaction, but should anyone really be shocked? Atlanta was a below average road team this season, MIlwaukee was an above average home team and Milwaukee had shot very poorly from three in the first two games. All those factors seemed to work in Milwaukee’s favor.

There was some smaller things Milwaukee did well to get themselves off first round life support — switching Luc Richard Mbah a Moute onto Josh Smith comes to mind — but remembering that they at one time used to hit open shots this season was by and large the most important thing Milwaukee did in game three.

Offense

I’ve been saying it and saying it: eventually the Bucks would start hitting some shots. All it took was getting back to the comforts of home. After three point shooting percentages that rivaled the temperatures on a normal winter day in Wisconsin, the Bucks finally found the bottom of the net on Saturday evening, hitting 10-21 3s. I actually pinpointed 10 as the number of threes the Bucks would need to hit to win game two, so I guess I was just a game early.

For all the coaching adjustments, matching up and other things that go into a playoff series, sometimes it’s the simple things that end up making the biggest difference. For the Bucks, that “little thing” was finally hitting the three at a respectable clip.

• I said this during the Daily Dime Live Chat and I’ll say it again: what a relief it must have been for the Bucks coaching staff and entire Bradley Center crowd to see Kurt Thomas’ long lost 15-foot jumper. Thomas finished 4-4 from the field. He looked good scoring eight points and grabbing 13 rebounds. Thomas and Delfino have deservedly shouldered plenty of blame for the Bucks struggles in the first two games, but it’s only appropriate to mention how Thomas’ playing his typical game played a big part in the Bucks taking game three.  Milwaukee doesn’t need Thomas to do anything outside of his comfort zone, they just need him to do things longer than he might be built for at this point. The three days off seemed to do wonders for him.  

• Yes, Brandon Jennings did cool off once again. But that didn’t mean he stopped contributing. As my first defense in this case I’d present his behind the back pass to Jerry Stackhouse after hounding Mike Bibby into a turnover. Stack finished with a dunk and senior citizens everywhere were suddenly inspired. Jennings was 5-11 (3-6 3FG) and scored 13 points to go with five assists.

• While Jennings couldn’t maintain his hot start, John Salmons did. Yet again.  The Bucks big pickup (seriously, shouldn’t he get to hold John Hammond’s executive of the year award for a few months a year) came through when Milwaukee needed him the most with 22 points on 9-11 shooting. Even better, Salmons tallied seven assists and was creating for the Bucks who can’t create so much for themselves. He’s a humanitarian that John Salmons.

Defense

If I had the power to write things on the Bucks chalk board before games I would have wrote these three words in all caps: STOP JOSH SMITH. And you know what? I would have been pleased with Milwaukee’s effort in doing just that. Unequivocally the biggest thorn in the side of the Bucks through the first two games, Smith finally was contained a bit. Smith had been feasting on offensive rebound putbacks and fast break dunks, but the Bucks weren’t giving anything easy away to him on Saturday. Sure, he still managed  nine offensive rebounds, but few of them resulted in dunks for him or points at all for the Hawks. Atlanta scored just 12 second chance points on 6-18 shooting. After shooting over 70% through the first two games, Smith finished Saturday’s game 2-12. Someone find Luc Richard Mbah a Moute’s belt and put another notch in it.

• So what’s the more accurate representation of this Hawks team? The over 50% efforts from the field they had in games one and two, or this sub-40% shooting effort they produced Saturday night? It’s probably somewhere in the middle. The key to keeping them down for Milwaukee was preventing all the easy baskets they got in games one and two. When Josh Smith was heading in for a dunk, he had Mbah a Moute, Ilyasova, Thomas and Dan Gadzuric meeting him at the rim. Defensively, Milwaukee was simply a much more confident group.

• I’d be remiss to let a nice night from Dan Gadzuric go by without pointing it out though. After many cries from the crowd for Gadzuric after Thomas struggled so badly in the first two games, Gadz saw 17 minutes and produced 10 rebounds. It’s just what he does.

Final Thoughts

I now find myself wondering, “will we ever get a good game in this series?”  The Hawks seem prone to both blowouts and doing the blowing out, but I can’t help but expect game four to be a lot closer than game three either way. Milwaukee will not continue to shoot at the clips they did and the hawks will probably find a way to put some more points on the board.  But as my final final thought, I did really enjoy something I saw from Milwaukee that I haven’t in years.

The mild-mannered Luke Ridnour holding his pose on a three to put the Bucks up 93-65 with the shot clock running down.  If you think Brandon Jennings wasn’t the rookie of the year, I get that.  But don’t try and tell me he didn’t have more of an impact on a team than any other rookie. This one started with Jennings and the monocle and ended with Ridnour holding his pose. These are not your slightly older brother’s Bucks NBA fans.

Seemingly long removed from relevance, Bibby was still relevant enough to be featured in this commercial last year.

Seven  years ago, Mike Bibby was certainly someone worth worrying about in a playoff series.  Now, in 2010, I had written him off as a probable non-factor heading into the Bucks first round series with the Hawks.  Bibby did have a meaningful impact on the last Bucks-Hawks game prior to the end of the regular season, but I assumed his short lived barrage of threes was just that: short lived.

But Bibby was back at it again in game one, scoring 19 points on 8-9 shooting (3-3 3FG).  The obvious instinct is to look towards Brandon Jennings as the culprit for Bibby’s big day.  He’s a rookie, his defensive reputation, while improving, remains up in the air and he had a big night scoring.  So perhaps Jennings was taking the night off against Bibby and doing the Bucks a disservice.

But it’s not that simple.

Bibby scored just three baskets that were really the responsibility of Jennings and only one was an egregious error on the part of Jennings.  After a missed layup by Josh Smith, Kurt Thomas grabbed the rebound and looked to outlet to Jennings.  The crafty Bibby laid in wait and picked off the pass by reading Thomas’ eyes. Bibby dribbled into the right corner and set himself up for a three. Jennings, sulking a little after the turnover, was slow to get back to Bibby and did little more than jog over to him as he was releasing his shot.  Bibby hit the three, the Hawks went up nine and the rout, as they say, was on.

But Jennings was only guarding Bibby on two more of his scores and he didn’t do a bad job.  Bibby hit a difficult shot as ball handler on a pick and roll on one.  On the other, Bibby pump faked a hard closing Jennings and saw him fly by as Bibby took a dribble and hit a shot over a helping out Jerry Stackhouse. It’s hard to be too concerned with Jennings defensive efforts there.  And that’s how a lot of Bibby’s evening went.

A 43% shooter from 16-23 feet on the season, Bibby hit 4-5 shots from 17 to 19-feet Saturday evening.  He hit a three over a leaping John Salmons off an inbound play in the corner and scored on a layup on another inbound play after a series of screens. That layup did remind me that Andrew Bogut wasn’t on the court though.

As Bibby turned the corner on Jerry Stackhouse off an Al Horford screen, Thomas was stationary was Stackhouse chased Bibby through the paint to the hoop.  Were Andrew Bogut still prowling the middle of the floor for the Bucks, this shot likely would have been erased.  Thomas simply wasn’t mobile enough to make the quick move to jump off Horford fading out towards the arc and attack Bibby at the rim.  Thomas’ mobility actually came into question a number of times against Bibby, as he isn’t really able to hedge on screens and contest shooters on the pick and roll.  When Thomas is involved in the pick and roll as the defender of the screener, he does a very good job of stopping the screener from getting a clean look on the roll, but often the result is an open jump-shot for the ball handler that Thomas can’t do much about.

It’s a tough spot, but it makes sense for the Bucks to gamble that Bibby, or often times Jamal Crawford, won’t make or take the long two.

Game one just happened to be one of those days in which Bibby got hot.  It seems unlikely he’ll be able to replicate his effort and if he does, at least the Bucks went down making one of the lesser Hawks shoot them out of it.  I think they’ll live with that.

Milwaukee Bucks (Scott Skiles) 38-30

Vs.

Atlanta Hawks (Mike Woodson) 45-24

Date: 3/22/10

Time: 7:00 (CST)

TV: FS Wisconsin

Matchups

Point Guard

Brandon Jennings vs. Mike Bibby

Two guys heading opposite ways.  Bibby was the table setter and clutch leader for the Kings in their heyday and helped get the Hawks over the hump when they were without a point guard for so many years.  But father time appears to have caught up with the former Arizona great.  Jamal Crawford has more or less usurped him as the fifth Hawk and Joe Johnson handles the play-making role often.  But Bibby still cannot be left alone when he’s out there; he’s shooting .535 from three in the month of March and nearly 40% on the season.  Jennings is shooting a respectable .412 from the field in March and a spectacular .490 from three after nearly everyone had written him off as relevant.

Advantage: Bucks Read more…