I’ve been beating the rebuild drum for quite a while.

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.

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Pictured: Every Bucks Season Ever

500 Days of Summer on girls being full of it:

Tom: Look, we don’t have to put a label on it. That’s fine. I get it. But, you know, I just… I need some consistency.
Summer: I know.
Tom: I need to know that you’re not gonna wake up in the morning and feel differently.
Summer: And I can’t give you that. Nobody can.

Tom isn’t asking her to love him. He just wants her to stop yanking him around. One minute Summer tells Tom she’s not interested in something serious. The next: kisses, hand-holding, sex. Heck, she kisses him on the street then breaks up with him.

Scott Skiles can be Summer for positions 2 through 4. Flirt a little with the steady Shaun Livingston. Have a midnight fling with Stephen Jackson. Go wild with the mysterious, foreigner Ersan Ilyasova. Bat your eyelashes at the cute boy next door, Jon Leuer. That’s fine. Some of these suitors have looked better than others at this point in the season, but it’s still too early to settle down with any quite yet.

But at the 1 and the 5, you are MARRIED to Brandon Jennings and Andrew Bogut. Flirting with Drew Gooden for an entire fourth quarter is unacceptable. He had a soul patch on the back of his head. That is not Dad-approved! Read more…

A lively Stephen Jackson against the Spurs on January 10. (AP Photo/Jeffrey Phelps)

“That’s a dumb question, because my role was the same, I just didn’t get the shots that I should get. So, I just played defense and went out there and tried to help my team. The shots didn’t come, I didn’t force them. I don’t think my role was different, that’s just how the game go.”

- Stephen Jackson after Monday’s loss when asked about his role after taking just one shot in 28 minutes

Stephen Jackson played in 761 NBA games over 11 seasons before Monday’s game. Never did he play more than 25 minutes and take one shot or less. Monday was a unique situation for one of the NBA’s notorious volume shooters. Jackson caught and released passes with serious quickness. He kept the ball moving like he was working on an assembly line. There’s some good and some bad to that.

He wasn’t a ball-stopper, which he’s been accused of being at times this season. But he wasn’t a creator either. He didn’t probe the defense with his dribble, he didn’t seem like a much of a threat to catch and shoot off a kick out, he just moved the ball along and went on his way.

It wasn’t like Jackson didn’t care. He played hard and gave a strong effort on defense. Coach Scott Skiles acknowledged as much after the game.

“I thought he was very good on Joe (Johnson) individually defensively,” Skiles said after the game. “Offensively, yeah, he just seemed to be moving the ball around, he didn’t get many opportunities.”

Have we ever known Jackson to wait for opportunities? He isn’t Andrew Bogut. He isn’t waiting on teammates to dump it down to him in the post. He’s typically the guy creating opportunities for his teammates.

But Milwaukee didn’t trade for Jackson in June hoping to get Royal Ivey.

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UPDATE: Jackson has tweeted an apology.

Per  Charles F. Gardner, Stephen Jackson will not play Friday night.

Stephen Jackson suspended for Friday night’s game vs. Knicks. Source said he missed bus to morning shootaround.

Jackson’s Twitter account had him hanging out with someone named “jones” Thursday evening, presumably Dipset rapper Jim Jones (he did that song BALLIN’ a few years ago), as his next tweet was about Dipset. No word on whether or not they picked up Juelz Santana.

Jackson was very vocal post game about his displeasure with sitting for the entire second half Tuesday in Milwaukee’s 105-95 loss to the Denver Nuggets. According to Andrew Wagner, both Jackson and Skiles downplayed his comments on Tuesday as an outburst from a competitor who doesn’t want to lose.

It’s not all bad news though. Gardner also reports that Mike Dunleavy will return to the lineup this evening, quicker than most had projected. Dunleavy’s injection into the lineup could be the shooting boon Milwaukee’s been searching for. The small forward has hit 36% of his threes this season.

Shaun Livingston will start at the two in lieu of Jackson and forward Luc Mbah a Moute, who has only played in two games this season, will again be active.

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

It’s one thing when a team is caught off guard and unprepared. Sometimes reserve players have huge games or rookies that haven’t been around the league yet show off a part of their game that the league hasn’t caught onto yet. Those situations are understandable.  It’s another thing when a team does a few things repeatedly and keeps having success with it, even when an opponent knows what’s coming.

That was the frustrating scenario the Milwaukee Bucks lived through on Tuesday night. The Denver Nuggets were hitting the outlet off made baskets. They were hitting it off misses. They were going coast to coast. They couldn’t be stopped in the first half, even though the Bucks knew it was coming.

Layups and threes. It was so simple for the Denver Nuggets  Tuesday and it wasn’t an accident. Denver averages 33.5 shots at the rim per game, the highest number in the league and it isn’t even close. Miami ranks second with just under 28.5 attempts at the rim per game.

“The percentages league wide show that’s where you win: At the rim and behind the line,” Scott Skiles said before taking on the Nuggets Tuesday night. “People are always looking for the guys that have sort of the in-between game. But the percentage show, not that they’re meaningless shots, but that it’s the shots at the rim and behind the line. They pass the ball very well and you have to get back. They penetrate very well.”

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