Phoenix Suns

107

Final Recap | Box Score

105

Milwaukee Bucks

	Drew Gooden, PF 29 MIN | 12-21 FG | 1-2 FT | 4 REB | 2 AST | 25 PTS | -7 There would not have been a come back had no one scored in the first half. Drew Gooden carried the load inside, even if he looked completely awful at times. But with Jennings sleepwalking through offensive sets most of the game, someone had to shoot. Drew Gooden is always willing. This was the first game since he’s started at center where he’s really been lit up too. Steve Nash made it a point to feed Marcin Gortat throughout the game.
	Brandon Jennings, PG 29 MIN | 1-4 FG | 0-0 FT | 5 REB | 4 AST | 3 PTS | -10 Brandon Jennings took four shots. He took one in the first half. He claimed after the game that he just wasn’t getting the looks he usually gets. He didn’t say that like someone speaking with much conviction though. Milwaukee is now 0-5 when Jennings scores less than 10 points this season. Jennings and Stephen Jackson each have one game like this under their belt this season. The plot thickens. More on this later.
	Stephen Jackson, SG 30 MIN | 4-11 FG | 2-2 FT | 2 REB | 4 AST | 12 PTS | +6 It was his first game in a while, but there was little rust on Stephen Jackson. He got his shots up and hit a couple timely ones. He also had a couple of big assists. But he’s still struggling to make shots consistently and his words after the game make it sound like he’s hardly on the same page as the organization, even if he’s constantly talking about how much he loves his teammates. His situation is incredibly messy.
	Mike Dunleavy, SF 37 MIN | 5-7 FG | 3-3 FT | 3 REB | 3 AST | 17 PTS | -2 There was a reason the Bucks found a way back in to this game. Someone had to have made some shots. Mike Dunleavy led the charge. He always looks like a great shooter and Tuesday he actually was one, knocking down five of seven from the field and four of five from three.
	Beno Udrih, PG 19 MIN | 3-6 FG | 0-0 FT | 3 REB | 4 AST | 6 PTS | +10 While Jennings appeared to take the night off, Udrih picked up some of the slack. Six points, four assists and three rebounds in just 17 minutes. The backup point guard was a big part of the Bucks second half come back.
	Larry Sanders, C 13 MIN | 1-5 FG | 0-0 FT | 3 REB | 1 AST | 2 PTS | +8 Larry Sanders helped provide some energy and chipped in a couple blocks but struggled on offense. That sentence is his career thus far.

One Thing We Saw

1. Things aren’t very pretty right now and we’re not yet one week removed from what seemed like a huge win over the Heat. Players seem disgruntled and the Bucks are heading back out on the road. A win or two could completely change the team’s outlook, but this is not a group that seems like it’s about to start ripping off wins.
2. Michael Redd. Dude did it for a while, that’s for sure. He scored five of the Suns first six baskets in the second quarter and had everyone in the Bradley Center flashing back. Good for him. He’s worked hard and it was great to see him playing at a high level offensively. He missed all four of his threes but he finished with 14 points.

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Are you worried about Jackson's influence on Jennings?

“They know how I feel,” repeated Stephen Jackson over and over again after the game against the Pistons. On who “they” were, Jackson would not elaborate, but it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that he’s talking about John Hammond, Scott Skiles and the Bucks organization at large.

The Bucks are 3-0 without Jackson. Against New York, he was suspended for missing shootaround because he overslept. He was suspended for the Lakers game because he was verbally abusing refs while playing the Bulls. Skiles chose not to play him against the Pistons. According to Jackson, this was the first time that he’s never played in an NBA game he was available to play in.

Without Jackson, the passing looks crisper and the offense looks better. Possessions aren’t wasted on Jackson heat checks. Delfino is playing better perimeter defense. And the team is stocked with better scorers, shooters and distributors. “Scott is right. We are playing well without me in the lineup,” said Jackson. “The rotation is great and as long as we’re winning. There’s nothing for nobody to complain about.”

Jackson isn’t playing well, but he isn’t a locker room cancer. The other players generally adore him. He’s the first one off the bench to high-five everyone during time-outs. He’s around and not playing well, but he’s not undermining any efforts to win. “My situation is going to get better soon,” Jackson said, “Until then, I’m going to support these guys and continue to collect my check.”

Hoopsworld recently ran a report stating the Bucks were looking to ship Jackson.

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Przybilla as a Buck. It could happen again soon.

From Alex Kennedy of Hoopsworld:

Stephen Jackson has been suspended one game for verbal abuse of an official and failure to leave the court. Incident occurred against CHI.

And things remain turbulent.

This is the second game this season Jackson will miss for disciplinary reasons. He missed the team bus to shootaround in New York and Coach Scott Skiles opted not to play him.

Jackson has apologized on Twitter.

To all my fans apologize for my actions. Its just somethings refs shouldnt say. Gotta keep my kool. Lesson learned.

In other news, I’ve obtained what I feel like is reliable information that John Hammond met with Joel Przybilla and his agent in Milwaukee on Saturday and could be close to working out some a deal. I’m now rooting for this scenario, solely so I don’t look like an idiot for reporting it.

That’s where this season currently sits for me.

Ultimately, Przybilla isn’t making or breaking the Bucks if he joins the team. He would be another big body and he would give the team a true center. But he’d be giving them one that hasn’t played in about eight months and seems fairly content to be retired.

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

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Sorry that grades aren’t as they usually are. Ian struggles with computers.

That bench was on fire. Good thing too because with out Andrew Bogut (albeit a struggling Bogut) the Bucks have very little going for them around the rim. The best they can do is run backdoor cuts, but that one-trick pony didn’t last long into the fourth quarter once shooting went cold late in the fourth.

Stephen Jackson

After only taking one shot against the Hawks, Jackson came back to take 16 shots.  They were the same old shots that he always takes: some good and some with hands in his face. Right now he’s in a battle with Shaun Livingston for minutes at shooting guard. If he keeps having  games like he had against the Rockets – where he’s finding cutters, playing tough defense and hitting shots – then he’ll inevitably win no matter what Livingston does.

Brandon Jennings

Had his fifth straight 20 point game. Jennings had fine shot selection; he took no long twos against the Rockets and was able to get into the paint against one of the better defensive point guards, Kyle Lowry.  The impetus for all Bucks victories normally rests on Jennings dominating his matchup. He was able to outscore both Lowry and Dragic combined tonight.

Ersan Ilyasova

The sole reason why the Bucks were anywhere near the Rockets in rebounding. If Bogut is out for any stretch of time, Ersan’s rebounding will be the only reliable thing the Bucks will have in the paint. Offensively, Ersan can’t play his game while Bogut is out. Gooden plays out on the wings which forces Ilyasova to play closer to the basket than he’s comfortable with

Mike Dunleavy

I don’t know about the rest of you guys, but I smiled with Dunleavy after he hit his first three since he came back from his injury. Not just because the three was huge for the Bucks, but because he was happy. And that made me happy. Hopefully this means that Dunleavy is out of his slump. That’ll be needed because the Bucks haven’t been getting much near the basket. Their hot shooting needs to continue.

Beno Udrih

Udrih had this great sequence where he faked the shot, drove, faked the pass, faked the teardrop then passed it off to Jackson.  His seven assists were a function of hot shooting while he was out there, but a lot of those open shots were setup by his penetration.

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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.

They wanted a complete player. Someone who could be relied on for some scoring punch, some assists and the sort of defense Jackson played Monday night. There was lots of talk about his ability to create shots for not only himself, but for others. We saw little of that creativity from Jackson against the Hawks. Not that it’s bad that Jackson was moving the ball. Forcing shots isn’t a great thing either. Jackson is better off swinging the ball around the perimeter than chucking contested 28-foot threes. Sometimes he’ll do that though, so it was unusual he had suddenly removed all those very Stephen Jackson specific aspects of his game.

The reasons for the sudden philosophical shift in the mercurial forward were flying around pretty quick last night. Lots of people are crying foul, saying Jackson was up to something. So far, we don’t have any evidence to indicate that’s the case. If Scott Skiles really thought a player was doing anything other than making what that player thought were the best decisions for the team, I have a hard time believing that player would have played virtually the entire fourth quarter of a game. He doesn’t often get into those kinds of games, especially in the fourth quarter of a game the team could really use.

We’ve seen two extreme sides of Jackson this season. There have been games where he’s come in and shot without conscience. In Milwaukee’s opener in Charlottes this year, hardly a moment went by when Jackson was on the court that he didn’t shoot. And in most games, when he hasn’t been shooting, he’s been looking to find teammates cutting or somewhere around the hoop. He’s taken more than his share of chances with the ball all season.

Monday he took zero chances. He played as safe as a player can play. When Brandon Jennings kicked out to him after a Milwaukee offensive rebound with the Bucks down three and 30 seconds to play, Jackson gave it up immediately when Jennings got back behind the arc and headed into the corner. Stephen Jackson, of all people, seemed to have little interest in offense with 30 seconds to play.

Jackson obviously wasn’t interested in talking about the differences in his game Monday when contrasted with his typical outings. That likely was his defense mechanisms kicking in once again. He’s been burned so many times before, it kind of seems like Jackson looks to take a shot at everyone else because he knows they’ll be coming for him. It seems like a product of coverage of him throughout this career and all that’s been written about his persona.

So as for why his game seemed so different, my guess is no better than yours. But we certainly saw a side of Jackson we’ve never seen before. If we can see a side that exists somewhere between that one and the one that shoots constantly, I think we’ll all appreciate Jackson a bit more.

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

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Atlanta Hawks

97

Final Recap | Box Score

92

Milwaukee Bucks

	Andrew Bogut, C 25 MIN | 3-10 FG | 0-0 FT | 12 REB | 4 AST | 6 PTS | 0 Offensively, Bogut isn’t where he wants to be, he isn’t where the Bucks want him to be and he isn’t where Scott Skiles wants him to be. Skiles was asked about Bogut after the game and he said he thought Bogut struggled tonight. Asked if he was concerned this far into the season that Bogut hasn’t been able to find his touch on his post-up moves and Skiles said, “A little bit.” Take that for what you will. The center’s absence late in the game did little to increase Skiles’ popularity in southeast Wisconsin.
	Brandon Jennings, PG 40 MIN | 9-22 FG | 0-0 FT | 5 REB | 11 AST | 21 PTS | -2 It can’t be all 30 point games and it can’t be all 5-20 nights for Jennings. There has to be some kind of middle. Monday night was just a little better of the middle. He shot a decent percentage, but most importantly, he was in attack mode all night and was finding teammates regularly. Jennings detractors often point to his low assist totals as a sign he’s not much of a real point guard. They didn’t have much to point to Monday.
	Stephen Jackson, SG 28 MIN | 0-1 FG | 0-0 FT | 1 REB | 2 AST | 0 PTS | -1 Maybe he was tired of hearing everyone complain about his shot-selection or his ball holding or whatever else we’ve all been complaining so much about. Whatever the reason, Jackson took just one shot on Monday night, which was a fair amount of unbelievable. It wasn’t like he wasn’t playing hard – he drew a particularly nice charge on Joe Johnson in the fourth quarter. It was strange to see him so uninvolved with the offense though. He just moved the ball quick and went on his way while Jennings, Gooden and Dunleavy did the heavy lifting in the fourth quarter. Very un-Jacksonlike. He’s a man who could stand some balance in his game now that we’ve seen both extremes. He said after the game that shots didn’t come tonight and that his role was no different. He went as far as to say a question about whether or not his role was different tonight was dumb. For the record, this is the first game in Jackson’s career that he’s played at least 25 minutes and attempted one or fewer shots. Seemed like a relevant question.
	Drew Gooden, PF 23 MIN | 4-10 FG | 4-5 FT | 6 REB | 2 AST | 13 PTS | -5 Gooden is so many things. Ridiculous. Polished. Aggressive. Complacent. Clever. Foolish. He’s all these things at once. It makes for a maddeningly frustrating player to watch and it was curious that he played so much of the fourth quarter. Yes, he has the ability to make a shot and his drives to the basket do often result in the free throws that Bogut never draws, but he’s just so damn all over the place. Despite the okay numbers, he had some costly defensive three second violations in the fourth. But hey, somehow he hit a three to tie it with a minute to go. I give up.
	Mike Dunleavy, SF 31 MIN | 6-15 FG | 5-5 FT | 3 REB | 1 AST | 17 PTS | +2 Dunleavy still didn’t hit a three. So he decided he could be useful in other ways. Instead of coming off screens behind the arc, he curled in an extra step and shot twos. His form is terrific, spin unreal and release the same every single time. But really, he needs to start making some threes too. A good time to start would have been the one he missed with Milwaukee down three and no one within five feet of him with 30 seconds to play. Also he turned it over on Milwaukee’s last important possession. Sigh.
	Ersan Ilyasova, PF 28 MIN | 3-7 FG | 4-7 FT | 11 REB | 0 AST | 10 PTS | -1 Ilyasova is very, very tough. He has to be leading the Bucks, if not the league in one handed rebounds that were tipped away from two or three other defenders. Jon Leuer has lost some playing time, a lot of playing time, lately, but be sure that Ilyasova is earning his share of what were Leuer’s minutes.

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Milwaukee Bucks

91

Final Recap | Box Score

82

Miami Heat

	Shaun Livingston, PG 39 MIN | 3-7 FG | 4-4 FT | 5 REB | 5 AST | 10 PTS | +11 One of Livingston’s biggest assets is his size, not only because it lets him post up smaller players on offense, but because Milwaukee can easily switch with him and virtually anyone else on pick and rolls. Against the Heat, with James and Chalmers and Cole and Battier all involved in the pick and roll game, it was useful to have Livingston able to defend any of them. He had another strong, multi-faceted offensive game doing a little scoring, dishing and rebounding.
	Andrew Bogut, C 32 MIN | 5-8 FG | 3-4 FT | 8 REB | 2 AST | 13 PTS | +1 Bogut’s offense is still touch and go. It’s difficult to project when he’ll play well and when he’ll be leaving hook shots a foot short. But with Luc Richard Mbah a Moute back, Milwaukee certainly looks to have their defensive tag team ready to regain the belt. The Bucks held Miami to their lowest scoring game of the season and Bogut played a huge role in that.
	Brandon Jennings, PG 35 MIN | 5-20 FG | 12-13 FT | 6 REB | 6 AST | 23 PTS | +9 Jennings wasn’t getting the same looks against Heat point guards Mario Chalmers and Norris Cole that he was getting against Iman Shumpert and Mike Bibby of the Knicks. Miami was forcing him to take more shots in the in-between area, not as many three-point looks and not as many looks in the paint. Jennings struggled to hit what three-point looks he did get, but he did his best to keep penetrating and keep feeding his teammates. He even chipped in on the glass, with no rebound being bigger than the one he grabbed late in the fourth quarter and put back in to basically ended the game.
	Stephen Jackson, SG 26 MIN | 4-13 FG | 0-0 FT | 4 REB | 1 AST | 10 PTS | +12 Jackson did not start for the second straight game, but he did play in this one. He started slow, but hit two big threes, one late in the third quarter and one to start the fourth. He’s a gambler on D and he was able to poke the ball out while helping on defense on a couple of occasions as well. He looked to pass and had a couple of pretty assists too. Jackson isn’t a lost cause, even if people have been writing him off after his latest mishap. He still has the talent to be a useful player, as he demonstrated against the Heat. And most importantly, this isn’t a guy who has quit on his teammates or anything like that. He’s still a competitor, and he’s still competing.
	Ersan Ilyasova, PF 22 MIN | 5-8 FG | 5-5 FT | 6 REB | 0 AST | 16 PTS | +7 Ilyasova came in quick for Jon Leuer and made it difficult for Scott Skiles to take him back out. He was terrific on the glass and from a competitive standpoint. This was a classic Ilyasova game, right down to the made three-pointer. It makes sense that in an ugly game, Ilyasova was one of the players to shine.

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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.

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From Eric Maroun of Hardwood Paroxysm

Eric Maroun wrote an awesome post over at Hardwood Paroxysm. It compares each player’s Usage Rate to their PER. Usage Rate is the percent of possessions a player uses while on the court. PER measures the overall statistical contribution of a player.

The Bucks chart suggests that Stephen Jackson, Beno Udrih and Tobias Harris eat up too many possession when they’re on the court. It also suggests that Jon Leuer isn’t involved in the offense enough.

I, too, made some graphs, albeit they are much less impressive. But I think they can show us a few interesting things.

A lot has been touted about the shot creators the Bucks got this offseason. It stands to reason that a team’s best creators should possess the ball most often, but do the Bucks do this:

This graph compares Usage Rate against Assist Rate. Assist Rate is the rate of assists vs possessions used. Shaun Livingston’s assist rate has been downright monstrous this season; looking even greater with the few possessions he has gotten to use.

This graph compares Usage Rate against Turnover Rate. Turnover Rate is the percentage of possessions ending in a turnover. This graph lines up well with the PER vs Usage Rate graph: Jackson, Udrih and Harris come off poorly in both. At least Udrih and Harris are somewhat redeemed by their shooting – both have True Shooting Percentage over 55 percent – and Harris is just a rookie, but Jackson has too large of an effect on the team for a someone playing less than well (to put it mildly).

So how should the Bucks deal with the Knicks tonight? It’s very simple and I’ll let another chart by Maroun do the talking.

Contain Bill Walker at all costs

Ian Segovia is not a graphic designer. He is a Bucksketball Contributor. Follow him on Twitter. Like us on Facebook

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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.”

So he and the rest of the Bucks were well aware of what the Nuggets wanted to do. Run, make layups and kick out for threes. At least it was in the game plan so the Bucks could prepare to stop it. Preparation doesn’t make perfect I guess.

The Nuggets took 75 shots on Tuesday. 58 of those shots were at the rim or behind the arc. Of those 58, they made 27, accounting for 66 of their 105 points. That’s not factoring in free throws courtesy of the Nuggets assault on the rim either. Denver made 29-37 free throws. That’s 95 points on free throws, layups and threes.

The Bucks made 28 of their combined 62 attempts at the rim and behind the arc. The 28 baskets accounted for 63 points. Milwaukee made 12-14 free throws. 85 points.

The Bucks lost by 10, appropriately enough.

Milwaukee even took 16 more shots than the Nuggets. The problem was the 29 shots the Bucks took between 3 and 23 feet from the basket. The Nuggets rarely bother with those shots. They attempted just 17 on the night. Denver knows what a good shot is and they chase those shots with conviction all game long.

“When you’re watching the Nuggets play, when an open guy is open, he gets the ball,” Skiles said after the game. “They have several guys with vision and they see people and they get the ball. So they really put the pressure on your defense to cover them individually, and then you gotta be aware and scramble out to people and contest shots. We’re not close to really understanding yet how hard we have to play and how hard we have to compete and attention to detail and a whole bunch of things like that.”

Scrambling out and matching up in transition was a huge issue for the Bucks on Tuesday. That sort of attention to detail has been a problem all season long.

“One thing we talked about this morning in shoot around was get back,” Stephen Jackson said after the game. “The coaches did say that a couple times. But for some reason they was just getting rebounds and getting out. We wasn’t able to get back. When you getting contested shots and they gettin’ layups, it’s goign to be hard to win like that. We just didn’t pay attention to detail in our scouting report.”

Skiles was pressed further in the post game. A reporter said his team “wasn’t that good to play this cool.” But Skiles brought up a valid point that gets glossed over very often.

“I wouldn’t go that far,” he said. “You’re dealing with human beings, you know? You don’t always know what it is. We have to talk to the guys, we have to try and figure out why it is that we’re doing those kinds of things. You’re right, they just ran right by us. We had several clips at halftime, you guys all saw it, where we just stood and kind of let them run right by us. And that was point number one in the game plan and obviously we failed.”

The Bucks aren’t robots, the Nuggets aren’t robots. And you can see in the above clips how frustrated the Bucks were getting. They knew it was coming, but they couldn’t figure out how to work together to stop the fast breaks. That’s what the Nuggets do. Human beings are prone to imperfection and the Bucks’ transition defense was rife with imperfection against a Nuggets team that feasted on it every chance it got.

They were simply better at doing it than the Bucks were at stopping it.

Most teams the Bucks have played this season been better at most facets of the game than the Bucks. Yes, the team is made of up individuals, but this is a results driven game. If the Bucks can’t start stopping what they know is coming, if they can’t start paying attention to detail, frankly, if they can’t start winning, this season is going to get away from them as fast as the Nuggets did.

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

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