Bucks Buzz: March 6 - Tank or No Tank?

Even though it has been a bad year for Milwaukee thus far, Mitch Pratt and Charlie Tritschler will provide you with a bi-weekly update on the Bucks ranging from recaps, links and other neat stuff.  

Quick Recap:

Monday vs. Utah: Bucks 114 Jazz 88 - 

The Bucks looked really good once again on Monday night against the visiting Utah Jazz. I happened to be #blessed enough to be there and it really didn't seem like anything special to me. It was pretty much the opposite of the Bucks' blowout losses: instead of looking up and they were down by 20+, I looked up and they were up by 25. Honestly, I'll attribute that to not really caring about what the score is at all throughout these games. I just watch players and don't care about the score.

Anyway, Homeless Ersan found a shelter for the night as he shot 13-14 from the floor on his way to 31 points and didn't play in the fourth quarter. Zaza Pachulia had another solid game. Giannis made his usual couple of highlight plays but also continues to show youth and inexperience, which is to be expected. The additions of Jeff Adrien and Ramon Sessions have proved to be great as they are role players that PROBABLY weren't promised much in the way of playing time but have earned it. 

Wednesday vs. Sacramento: Kings 116 Bucks 102 -

The tank came back strong Wednesday night against Sacramento. If you listened to our podcast from yesterday (you should), Charlie and I both made it a forgone conclusion that the Bucks were winning two straight for the first time this year. It was up there with death and taxes. But the Bucks' team defense said, "not so fast, my friend."

The Bucks allowed the Kings to get whatever they want, especially in the second and third quarters. If the Kings weren't scoring in the half court, they were at least getting to the line constantly. I mean, Ray McCallum was 7-10 last night. He shoots 36.8 percent from the field on the year. 

The Bucks were led, if you will, by Brandon Knight once again. Knight is up to averaging 17 and 5 (assists) on the year, and 20 and 6 in his last ten games. I think it's helping him to be playing off the ball a little more. 

Speaking of Adrien, he has been getting more minutes than John Henson lately, who has seemingly regressed in the past few weeks. This is pretty concerning as Henson hasn't seemed to develop any other scoring method, other than his lefty hook. The hook is effective but if it's all you can do, teams will cut it off. 

Henson's last five games: 6.0 PPG on 42 percent shooting (yikes), 36 percent from the free throw line and just 22.8 minutes per game. Something to monitor.

The concerns of the Bucks losing the tank rank, can go on hold for the next 48 hours. However, if Philly wins more than two games the rest of the way, I'd be catatonic.

Links

Have to start with a hell of a piece from Amos Barshod of Grantland, who absolutely shut it down. It's yet another feature on Bucks' rookie Giannis Antetokounmpo, but it's not just about Giannis. It's also got some tidbits about the Bucks' organizational ineptitude within. It's very in-depth and well done with several quotes that stick out in my mind. Must read.

Save Our Bucks is putting together an event to get a decent amount of Bucks fans to go down to the Arena Task Force meeting that is happening on Tuesday, March 11. Information can be found on the Facebook event page. 

An article from SLAM about Gary Neal being happy to be away from "tanking" Milwaukee. F*** Gary Neal, man. He's the one that signed here in the first place. Granted, the poor guy had no idea what he was getting into but still, be quiet. I'll say this Gary, the tank misses you.

What to watch

I touched on watching John Henson's play over the last six weeks of the season. We need to see what we've got. I hate to use lip service as a reason for Henson to be playing more than Adrien/Pachulia but he should be playing, more no matter what.

I'm conflicted in wanting the Bucks create some momentum heading into next year but I also don't see a point in going on winning streaks right now. After last night's dreadful performance, I don't think we'll be seeing any winning streaks.

What's next?

The Bucks head to the Big Easy for a showdown with Anthony Davis and the Pelicans on Friday night. Then, they return home once again to take on the Washington Wizards. The Wizards are an intriguing, young Eastern Conference team that is on the rise. Should be a loss for Milwaukee.

Bucks Buzz: Monday February 24th

Even though it has been a bad year for Milwaukee thus far, Mitch Pratt and Charlie Tritschler will provide you with a bi-weekly update on the Bucks ranging from recaps, links and other neat stuff.  

Hot Recap Takes

Thursday: Nuggets 101 Bucks 90 -   Pretty much from start to finish, Milwaukee received a beatdown again from Denver. They were outscored in the first quarter and the ball kept rolling downwards from there. Kenneth Faried had his way with Milwaukee defenders going 11/15 from the field and had 26 points taking Ersan Ilyasova's lunch money for the whole game. J.J. Hickson had a double-double with 14 points and 10 assists. Randy Foye had one as well with 12 points and 10 assists. Seven of eight Denver players had a positive PER while Milwaukee had only one player reach a zero PER with John Henson, the rest were in the negatives. Giannis Antetokounmpo filled up the box score nicely with eleven points, four rebounds and assists, three blocks and two steals. A nice game from Henson as well with 12 points and seven rebounds. But overall, a pretty putrid performance from Milwaukee.

Saturday: Pacers 110 Bucks 100 - This is one of those 'atta boy' games for the Bucks. They hung with Indiana for the whole game with an admirable comeback in the end of the game. Basically, their best players beat Milwaukee with Paul George and David West both having 30 plus points with Lance Stephenson adding 24 points. Given their struggles against big men, it was interesting to see Roy Hibbert have a marginal game with only four points going 1/9 from the field. Indiana was just too good for Milwaukee on Y2K night. As for Milwaukee, a game where you get really excited about Brandon Knight. He had 30 points and eight assists with no turnovers. He played great throughout the game and make people wonder just how high his ceiling is with Milwaukee and for his career. Jeff Adrien had a strong debut pulling down eleven rebounds off the bench. Good start to what might be his short career with Milwaukee.

Three Bucks land on Bill Simmons' Worst Contracts List 
This is a yearly column from Simmons and it was not very kind to Milwaukee. O.J. Mayo and Ersan Ilyasova definitely deserves to be there. Mayo is proving to just be a guy that wanted to cash a check and thinks it is a good excuse to be fat. Ersan knows he can mail it in and the owner will not take umbrage with his game. Milwaukee will be better place when he is off the team. Larry Sanders' addition to this is a little harsh. This has just been a bad season for Larry, but he is still worth that contract. Almost every team in the NBA would want Sanders if he was healthy because he is not as much of a problem as people like Simmons and others are making him out to be. Sanders had just started to come on with his season before breaking eye bone. He will be just fine next season. Biggest encouraging thing for Sanders which Simmons missed out on, he became a veteran leader for Giannis. If you want an example on why Mayo belongs on this list, see this Vine from K.L. Chouinard.



Links
Here the stuff on Ersan I referred to the previous paragraph. If this is true, it would be yet another red mark against Herb Kohl as an owner.

If David Kahn becomes involved with the Bucks, they should end the Save Our Bucks movement and start pleading with investors to take this team to Seattle.

For the Y2K night, the Bucks found the 'Light Em Up' video. Tim Thomas lit more up than baskets if you know what I am saying. Also where is the one with Mark Pope. We need that version.

What to watch
Milwaukee plays Philadelphia on Monday night and I feel like that could be social media's finest hour. Will people watch this game just to see how bad the effort will be from both teams? Will one team actually get blown out? Will I become legitimately concerned if the Bucks win?

Upcoming schedule
As I said, they play Philadelphia on Monday and then they play Indiana again on Thursday. Thanks NBA schedulers for two Indiana games in the span of a week, appreciate it.

Charlie.

Tapping The Keg Podcast Episode 74

Tapping The Keg podcast episode 74 gracing the airwaves with Mitch and Charlie (Hi) per usual. We get into with talking about whether Favoring tweets between the opposite sex is flirting along with discussing what a favorite is and a BuzzFeed discussion. Moving from that, we touch on Seattle's Super Bowl win plus Charlie overreacts about the NFC's dominance while both of us fan the flames on dynasty talk for Seattle. We move on to the Milwaukee Bucks where the topics include Ersan Ilyasova wanting out, LARRY SANDERS! and flu talk. Next up is whether Pau Gasol will get traded to Phoenix as well as possibly moving Danny Granger there. We finish up with Joel Embiid talking about staying another year and a recommendation for Vanderpump Rules.

PS: The audio gets a little screwy in the last 10 minutes or so. My computer was acting up. Not too bad, but just a couple random jumps.

Mitch and Charlie.  

Bucks Buzz: Monday February 3rd

Even though it has been a bad year for Milwaukee thus far, Mitch Pratt and Charlie Tritschler will provide you with a bi-weekly update on the Bucks ranging from recaps, links and other neat stuff.  

Hot Recap Takes
Friday: Magic 113 Bucks 102 - Nice fight from Milwaukee as they were down by 21 at half and started to march back in the second with a great effort from the bench from some of the unhappiest Bucks. Gary Neal whose somehow still on this basketball team had a productive night with 13 points going 50 percent from the field.  Caron Butler had 20 points with 7 of 12 shooting. It is nice to see like a white whale that Neal and Butler can come up with big performances every now and again. Also off the bench, Giannis Antetokounmpo had a big night with 15 points with seven rebounds shooting efficiently from the field. He also had a massive dunk in the fourth quarter during the Bucks comeback. Negatives, they missed 10 free throws and allowed Orlando to shoot over 50 percent from the field including a nice game from Arron Afflalo whose developing into a Bucks killer with a 21 points with five rebounds and a PER of +18.

Giannis' unreal slam. Gotta think he is in the dunk contest in under five years. (Full highlights of his night, dunk comes .57 secs in).



Saturday: Grizzlies 99 Bucks 90 - Man, the Bucks had a lead for most of the game until a bad late third quarter into an early fourth quarter. Nick Calathes fills in for an injured Mike Conley and goes for a career-high 22 points which seems ridiculous Milwaukee let happen but we will get to that in a second. Marc Gasol and Zach Randolph combined for 42 points and 16 rebounds inside which does not surprise me in the slightest with how bad they have been defending good big men. Good night from Ersan Ilyasova with 14 points and 13 rebounds. Brandon Knight had a nice night at the two guard position with 23 points, seven rebounds and six assists on 8/19 shooting. Bucks struggled with Memphis defense shooting way too many threes, shot 23 of them and they only shot 39 percent from the field. They could only compete with Memphis for about three and half quarters, and that feels just about right.

Best part of the night... Larry threw up the thumbs up again! (H/T @AnaheimAmigos) 



Nasty Nate's re-emergence as Bucks point guard
Calling a guy that looks like 'I like turtles' kid, 'Nasty' is absolutely perfect. Nate Wolters played a great deal early on in the season, and then Larry Drew sort of placed him on the bench forgetting about him as he only averaged about 13 minutes a game in January. He played well against Atlanta in a blowout, played solid against Phoenix then nearly filled up a triple-double against Orlando with eight points, nine assists and seven rebounds. It almost feels like Milwaukee needs to keep exploring the idea of having Wolters at the one and Knight at the two because that's their natural positions. Knight is not a point guard at this point of his career, and he needs to admit that to himself.  Additionally in Wolters two starts this weekend, he had one total turnover. My only worry with him is the lack of defense because Wolters is putrid at defending almost all point guards in the league.

Links
I do not have any links this week. I am sure there is good stuff out there, but nothing worth talking about it.

What to watch
Let's see if the Wolters-Knight experiment continues and what's up with John Henson's wrist as well as the return of Zaza Pachuila.

Upcoming schedule
Weird schedule for Milwaukee in the next two weeks before heading into All-Star Break. Milwaukee takes on New York at home tonight before heading to Denver for a one-game road trip on Wednesday.

Bucks Buzz: January 30 - We Have a 'Rising Star' on Our Hands

Even though it has been a bad year for Milwaukee thus far, Mitch Pratt and Charlie Tritschler will provide you with a bi-weekly update on the Bucks ranging from recaps, links and other neat stuff. 

Quick Recap:

Monday vs. Los Angeles Clippers: Clippers 114 Bucks 86 -

The Bucks looked completely listless once again, for all intents and purposes. This was mainly due to Blake Griffin getting angry after Giannis poked the ball away from him after a whistle and then got angry. Griffin scored 11 points in the last few minutes of the second quarter and essentially took the wind out of the Bucks' proverbial sails.

It's unfortunate that this keeps happening even after coach Larry Drew seems to be harping about "energy" after every game. I'd rather not harp on coach Drew, given his situation, but it's becoming more and more apparent every night that he's PROBABLY not the best coach for the Bucks going forward.

Anyway, Khris Middleton got in the starting lineup again and had a solid game with 14 points on 7-15 shooting. Ersan, however, did not. Turkish Thunder had 16 points to lead the team (!!!) but he shot just 6 of 22 from the field. He needs to get it going.

Wednesday vs. Phoenix: L Suns 126 Bucks 117 -

For what it's worth, the Bucks played with much more life on Wednesday against Phoenix than they did on Monday night against the Clippers. They continued to fight and claw against a very well coached team that is on a roll. Suns' coach Jeff Hornacek was trying to limit some of his starters' minutes being that they were in the midst of a four games in five nights stretch but when he needed to put the Bucks away, he went back to Dragic and he was tremendous in the final minutes of the game.

Ersan Ilyasova had arguably his best game this year last night, scoring 27 points on 7-15 shooting. On Monday, he had just 16 points on 6-22 shooting. It seems like Ersan is just going to shoot his way back into stride this year. For some reason, I don't mind a chucking Ilyasova. He might be missing shots but, for the most part, he takes open shots which is something a few of the Bucks can't always say.

Appropriate YouTube video: Giannis with a break away slam. You can never have too many Giannis highlights.

Links

Bucks' rookie standout, Giannis Antetokounmpo, has been named to the Rising Stars. Here is a link to an article about it on JSonline. The sky's the limit for this kid. I hope he goes down to New Orleans and scores 25 points.

This is a link to a story on Yahoo! about Doc Rivers being nice to Larry Drew because they're friends. He offers some words of encouragement for the first year coach.

Another post on SaveOurBucks.com. This time it asks who the Bucks' "Bob McGinn" is. Bob McGinn is seen almost as an "investigative" reporter when it comes to his Packer coverage. The Bucks really don't have a similar kind of reporter. My question in response is: what comes first, the chicken or the egg? No one cares about the Bucks but is that because they don't have a dogged reporter? I doubt it.

What to watch

The team's energy. It seems that this is going to be the difference between a competitive loss and a blowout loss every night. The team isn't good enough to accidentally beat anyone (as I've noted in the past) so they have to play their hardest every night to keep it close. You never want to accept losing.

What's next?

The Bucks will head to Orlando to face Tobias Harris and the Magic on Friday night. Then, they'll head up the Bible Belt to Memphis, TN and face off with the Grizzlies. The Magic game is huge for the tank as the Magic aren't that far behind in the Tank-a-thon this year. They haven't really taken the next step as many of us thought they would.

-Big Money

Bucks Buzz: January 16 - John Hammond Weighs In

Even though it has been a bad year for Milwaukee thus far, Mitch Pratt and Charlie Tritschler will provide you with a bi-weekly update on the Bucks ranging from recaps, links and other neat stuff. 

Quick Recap:

Monday at Toronto: Raptors 116 Bucks 94 -

After the Bucks played to a somewhat competitive loss (by "somewhat" I mean it wasn't as bad as you'd think it would be on paper) in Oklahoma City, the Bucks hopped on a plane toward Drake's hometown of Toronto, Ontario to play the Raptors who, the Bucks' defense, are one of the hotter teams in the Association right now. Any NBA fan knows that they're 12-6 since they traded Rudy Gay's contract to Sacramento. 

Kyle Lowry continues to play really solid basketball despite being in the midst of trade rumors himself. Lowry had 23 points and five assists against the Deer. He shot a very efficient 6-8 from the field and got to the line seven times, knocking them all down. He's a physical guard that I wouldn't mind seeing in a Bucks uniform next year as he's set to become a free agent.

See, the Raptors are in a really funky place. Basketball fans know that new GM Masai Ujiri wants to tear it down and start over but now that they'll probably win the Atlantic (Titanic) division, I say go for it. They're too good a team, especially in the East, to find themselves in the Wiggins sweepstakes by year's end, in my opinion.

For the Bucks, Ersan Ilyasova had a big game, scoring 29 points in the loss. This should help his trade value but he's got to string a few good games together to really help the Bucks.

Wednesday vs. Memphis: Grizzlies 82 Bucks 77 -

The Bucks are now 7-31 on the year. That's really bad but it's not the worst record in NBA history after 38 games. The 1997-98 Denver Nuggets (led by LaPhonso Ellis and Johnny Newman) were 2-36 after 38 games and only finished with 11 wins that year. The way things are going for the Bucks, that's where I think they might finish this year. 

Brandon Knight continues to fill it up, scoring 27 points on 10-17 shooting, but can't distribute to save his life. Knight had four assists last night but that's a little on the high end for him. This is concerning to me because Bucks GM John Hammond recently appeared on an episode of Bucks Live pregame and said the most important thing is "keeping the young core together" (!!!). He explicitly said in an article by Andrew Gruman on FSWisconsin.com: "(Knight's) a guy that can run a team, he's capable of doing that. I know he wants to get better at that."

The saving grace in that quote is that last sentence. I'm sure Knight wants to get better at it and I think he wants to be a great player. He's a film junkie, a gym rat and a high character guy (and any other cliche you'd like to use). The problem is, I don't know if he's going to ever get any better at setting his teammates up. His tunnel vision is nearly beyond repair. He's in his third season but maybe a different coach can get through to him. 

I'm not saying that I want to get rid of Knight. If the right trade comes along (perhaps landing a true PG), then by all means, don't let Knight be the guy to hold it back but I think he's got a role going forward. I feel like I've beat this to death but I really want him to be around, just in the correct role.

Appropriate YouTube video: Knights packs home a dunk in the early going last night:

Links

Here's the article referenced above on Knight being the point guard of the future for the Bucks.

This is a video of Greek basketball columnist Nikos Papaioannou talking about why last night's game was huge for the game in Greece. There were three Greek players in the game: Giannis Antetokounmpo for Milwaukee, Kosta Koufos and Nick Calathes (Greek-American, played at Florida some years back. Also, he's really, really bald for 24 years old) for Memphis.

Here is a new article on SaveOurBucks.com, I'm guessing to respond to Hammond's recent comments about the young core of guys. As always, it's well written and thought out about how the front office now needs to execute some good asset management to build around this core, something that has been lacking in the John Hammond era. Naturally, you have to wonder who exactly Hammond considers to be part of the young core. 

What to watch

I'm going to continue to monitor Larry Sanders' behavior. He's been very temperamental lately and I think he needs to really get it together and be a better leader. I'm all for having a crazy guy on the team but he needs to be on the court as much as possible. As I stated in our podcast that just went up, I don't think it's really a wins and losses "team cancer" type of mentality. He's just wired a little differently.

What's next?

The Bucks will head down to the Lonestar State for a "Texas Two-Step" as it's affectionately known. They'll be in Houston on Saturday night and then head to San Antonio for a Sunday night game against the Spurs. I highly, highly doubt they win either contest.

-Big Money