(Part I was an extremely defeatist, pessimistic view of how the 2010-2011 Bucks season will play out. In this episode, we're all about positivity. Full Disclosure: This post is a lot closer to how I really feel. If the season goes badly, I'll delete this preface I'm currently writing and pretend I believed more in the DOOM AND GLOOM portion. In other words, I'm weak and a front runner. Let's do this!)
YEAH, WE ARE THAT GOOD
The future looks so bright, I gotta wear two pairs of shades! The 2010-2011 Milwaukee Bucks are 2 Legit 2 Quit. Maybe Hammer won't hurt 'em, but Yung Buck will. No more Timbuk 3 or MC Hammer references, I promise (maybe). Honestly though, this Bucks team has more going for it than anything the early 2000s Karl, Big Dog, Ray Ray, Cassell era ever had to offer. We're talking about a team that can potentially exceed what the Bucks did in 2001 when they won the Eastern Conference Finals and lost to the Lakers in a hard-fought 7 game series (Wait, the 76ers won the 2001 Eastern Conference Finals?! There must've been a scandal! The referees must've been terrible! Oh yeah, that's right it was fixed in order to get Allen Iverson into the Finals. Tim Donaghy, if you read this, don't get whiplash from nodding your head too vigorously). The current Bucks have the ability to match up with anybody, including the Miami MommasBoys and the Los Angeles Kobes. Here's somethings to consider while you clear your May/June 2011 schedule in anticipation for the Bucks playoff run:
2010 Rookie of the Year, Brandon Jennings*: I think by law I have to put an asterisk next to phrases that are false, even if they are complete fact. Brandon WAS and IS and forever WILL BE the rightful owner of the 2010 Rookie of the Year award. You can say whatever you want negatively about this guy; he shoots a low percentage, he gambles too much, he doesn't create for teammates enough, he's too slight...blah, blah, blah it's all inconsequential. Yeah, his shooting percentage left a lot to be desired (37% aka YIKES) but really think about that. Was Jennings forced to try and create offense and take questionable shots because his team was the most offensively challenged team in the league? YES, OF COURSE! He should be lauded actually, regardless of the low percentage, because he showed GRAPEFRUITS being THE GUY on his team.
Look at a guy like Nick Anderson, talented as the day is long, destined to be a perennial All-Star at worst. He misses a few free throws in a clutch playoff situation...he becomes Cameron from 'Ferris Bueller's Day Off' in the pool scene and never recovers and is never heard from again. Anderson lacked what Jennings has in spades; a little thing called confidence in himself. Jennings knows he can ball, believes it to his core and can't be dissuaded. He can miss 100 shots in a row but it won't affect his confidence; he has the kind of short term memory that champions are made of. He shot poorly yes, but he is capable of making those shots and he knows it. It's only a matter of time when the bad luck ends, the heartbreaking layups go in and the midrange jumper falls (Seriously, a simple mathematical formula suggests that had Jennings made just 42% by having some bounces go his way, he would have scored 26 a game. Ok, so it's a biased formula I developed but still, you have to admit if his shots were getting the right bounces and momentum kicked in, he easily could've scored 26 a game). The point is, this guy is built in a mold of guys like Jordan, Bird and Magic (with less talent; don't freak out purists! I meant in mindset, that is all). He has the sheer will to improve and push himself to another level and I believe he will.
Did I mention he isn't old enough to drink? HE'S 20! At the age of 20, he lead a team of role players and castoffs (with Bogut injured) to the playoffs, not to mention a Game 7 against a heavily favored Atlanta Hawks team. How does a team lose their franchise center, have a team of castoffs and role players and still make the playoffs and make noise? BRANDON JENNINGS! That's how! Don't look too closely at the stats (look at Monta Ellis and his great stats for crying out loud; where did his team finish?); stats are misleading. Jennings was more than essential to the Bucks' success. There hasn't been a rookie PG that's had that kind of effect on a team's success (given the lack of talent) since Magic Johnson. Yeah, I went there. The Bucks played 89 games including the playoffs last season; Jennings started 89 games including the playoffs last season. He's an absolute warrior and the Bucks miss the playoffs without him. Can you imagine what this guy could do if his shots were falling? He was the number one option on a solid playoff team (a guy who couldn't even ORDER shots at a bar let alone have them fall in the hoop). This guy has no true ceiling. He could reinvent what it means to be a point guard.
Jennings finished third in ROY voting to Tyreke Evans and Stephen Curry. Jennings: 7 playoff games on a less than stellar team > Evans & Curry: watching Jennings run a playoff team on TV from their sofas. 'Nuff said.
Bo-gutty: Andrew Bogut is coming back. We won't need to watch Bogut hyping the team during the playoffs again while wearing a Brother Love style suit because he'll be too busy dominating the competition. Bogut was an all-star over Al Horford regardless of what the history books say. He's unquestionably a top 3 center when healthy (only Dwight Howard and Pau Gasol can be considered better than him). Coming out of Utah, he was the most electrifying offensive center that the league had seen in a long time and Milwaukee rewarded him with the number 1 pick in 2005. He's seen as somewhat of a disappointment for a number 1 pick (ridiculous, Kwame Brown anybody?) but a person who truly understands basketball paints a different picture. Outside of the 08-09 season where he was constantly hobbled, he has improved every year:
05-06: 9.4 PPG, 7.0 RPG, 0.8 BPG
06-07: 12.3 PPG, 8.8 RPG, 0.5 BPG
07-08: 14.3 PPG, 9.8 RPG, 1.7 BPG
09-10: 15.9 PPG, 10.2 RPG, 2.5 BPG
That's a pretty steady and encouraging incline. Centers, historically, take longer to develop and become what they should be. Just looking at these stats makes me giddy. He's improved markedly in every healthy season quite convincingly. I mean look at his blocks! He went from a guy who couldn't block shots (0.8 per game, 0.5 per game respectively in his first two seasons) to the second best shot blocker in the league last season! After his arm exploded and he missed the last part of the season, he STILL finished second in the league in blocked shots with 175. He's the second best defensive center in the league in 2010 (not just measuring blocked shots but his defense in general) and he couldn't block shots just 4 years ago. The guy is improvement personified. If he continues his pace of improvement he'll average 22.3 PPG, 13.4 RPG and 4.2 BPG before he hits 30 years old (and I don't think that these stats, outside of maybe the blocks, are a stretch). Oh yeah, HE'S ONLY 25! This guy is young and he's only improving, yet he's already the third best center in the league. So he's arguably the 2nd best defensive center in the league, a good low post scorer who has a bit of range to boot, an extremely effective passer and is probably a top 5 shot blocker. He has 20-12-5-3 written all over him as in...uh...errrr...I'm not sure we've seen a center like this before outside of flashes from Arvydas Sabonis after his knees stopped functioning and he finally made it to the NBA. I'm salivating. Not to mention, he's the unquestioned leader of this team, paired with Jennings, and he completely buys into Scott Skiles system. Skiles is an extremely good coach when his team believes in his defensive minded schemes. If Bogut continues to improve and buy into Skiles, the rest of the team follows suit.
John Hammond did and has done WORK!: Let's break down the offseason additions;
Corey Maggette: He makes me cringe. He makes everybody cringe given his past. He's an under performer and a coach killer for crying out loud! Can you blame him? Honestly, look at his former coaches: A pre-championship Doc Rivers (who won the Coach of the Year award while having Maggette but only for a his rookie year), Alvin Gentry, Dennis Johnson, Mike Dunleavy and the Artist Formerly Known as Don Nelson. Outside of a raw Rivers, Maggette had nothing from a good coaching standpoint. He spent the majority of his NBA career in the Dunleavy realm. I'm not sure how I'd act in that situation. Maggette's situation in LA was so bad, he signed with the Warriors. Fault him, if you will, for chasing money but after working under Mike Dunleavy that long you must lose a lot mentally (not irrevocably though, I believe). $9 million and Don Nelson's corpse is better than Mike Dunleavy, even if you know it's still bad. My point is the guy never had a good shot or a good situation or a good coach (outside of Mike Krzyzyzxcgvqbnrxcqnsky from Duke over a decade ago). Maggette is a prolific scorer (19.8 PPG last year) who gets to the line (a perennial weakness for Milwaukee) and can shoot 80% from the charity stripe. He's long, athletic and can basically fly on offense. If anybody can make him play defense (which he is completely built/designed to do) it's Scott Skiles and his Kool-Aid drinkin' minions.
If he doesn't pan out, we can bury him ala Starbury. His contract sucks, but it's nothing compared to Michael Redd's (nearly double Maggette's contract and at least Maggette can still play the game). He isn't exactly necessary to what we do, but he has potential to be a HUGE part of what we do. There isn't much to lose, but a fu...err...buck-ton to gain from this pickup.
The other pickups are what really gets me excited. First and foremost, Larry Sanders the Bucks first round pick. When this guy's NBA career is finished, I'd believe at this point that it turned out the way anybody can predict; energy bench guy who stuck around for 10+ years, a high flying 10/10 guy who played insanely good defense for a dynasty (fingers crossed), a guy who redefined the athletic, defensive minded, shot blocking/rebounding power forward position by hitting 40% from 3, or another Haislip. I don't know what to make of this guy, but I do know this; he could be REALLY good...like "I've never seen anybody like this!" good. If he can develop a solid post scoring game and be able to hit the 3 consistently...WOW. He'd be Rasheed Wallace with the athleticism of Shawn Kemp...wait those names don't exactly bode well unless you add the personality of Kevin Durant...if only. Even I think the previous bit I wrote is ridiculous, but a guy can dream. All nonsense aside, the guy can be damn good.
Drew Gooden has gotten a bad rap. The guy is actually pretty damn good. He can really score and rebound, which is something not exactly commonplace in recent Bucks history short of Bogut. He brings experience and ability to a team that has lacked those qualities in a PF in longer than I care to remember. How is he not a good fit? He can even play the center position (with a drop off in defense I have to admit). Not to mention the guy has spectacular facial hair, that's gotta count for something.
CDR is interesting. He was the dominant player on a dominant Final Four team (not exactly something to hang one's hat on, considering the immortal Sean May), he showed flashes on a ridiculously bad Nets team before he had fallen out of favor with Kiki Vandeweghe for his attitude (seriously, how would you act if Kiki became your coach and you were on the historically bad Nets team from 2009-10?), and has the ability to be the scoring guard off the bench we've lacked since...well...Michael Redd came off the bench. He's not a slam dunk but he's intriguing.
Keyon Dooling has been signed to replace Luke Ridnour as Jennings' backup and as you may have guessed from the (overly and sometimes ridiculously) gushy nature of this post, I love him in this position. He's a veteran who can slash and hit the 3 and basically pick up exactly where Jennings leaves off when going to the bench. Ridnour played admirably in his backup role but I think Dooling can exceed his production. Plain and simple, Dooling is and plays bigger than Ridnour against other PGs, so it's a step up defensively (Ridnour was as good at defense as Chevy Chase was at hosting a late night talk show; terrible doesn't begin to describe it).
Wait...we added and didn't subtract much of anything?: Yer Damn Right! John Salmons, Carlos Delfino, Ersan Ilyasova (gained invaluable experience/confidence in the WBC regardless of how badly he played in the final), and Luc Richard Mbah a Moute are all back and ready to be just as indispensable as last season. We gained Corey Maggette, Chris Douglas-Roberts, Drew Gooden, Keyon Dooling, Larry Sanders and EARL FREAKING BOYKINS (I would've had a paragraph for Boykins but I thought the hyperbole might get out of hand, if it hasn't already)! The right pieces are there, they really are. I don't see a weakness in this roster barring injury. We can match up big and small, we're fast, we're athletic, we're dedicated to Scott Skiles defense (Scott Skiles defense = we'll kick your ass because we work harder than you do), we have some extremely good blue chippers, Brandon Jennings is THE NEW TRUTH, and Andrew Bogut is a top 3 big man (the other two top big men played in the Finals less than two years ago, by the way). What's not to love? The Bucks are ready to make the rest of the NBA Ned Beatty in 'Deliverance'. FEAR THE DEER!
Saturday, September 18, 2010
Thursday, September 16, 2010
No Bucking Around
I'm feeling schizophrenic about the 2010 Milwaukee Bucks; with that being said I'd like both sides to weigh in.
DOOM AND GLOOM
The Milwaukee Bucks are fu...ahem...bucked up. It takes some kind of optimist to look at this roster, the ascension of the Eastern Conference as a dominant conference and the lingering questions from a promising (misleading) finish to the 2009-2010 season to even dream that these Milwaukee Bucks can make ANY playoff noise, let alone be a contender. It's going to be a cold and snowy winter in Wisconsin, so I can't blame fans for pretending that the Bucks are going to be more than a fringe playoff team at best (we need something to look forward to in this town!). However, the Bucks bandwagon lacks the four wheel drive to get anywhere in the southeastern Wisconsin snow and we'll see people leaping off en masse when the Bucks are in the Central Division cellar come February. Don't get your hopes up Brew City; the winter is long enough so don't heap more misery on yourself by thinking this Bucks team will make you proud to wear red and green. Consider this:
Overexposed/Overvalued aka HypeMachine Victims: Milwaukee finished very respectably last season. Too respectably. Think about Golden State as an 8th seed taking down the 1st seed in Dallas back in 2007. People forget that Golden State was trendy that year, they weren't elite but you had to plan for their style of play, Baron Davis was a homegrown darling, they were fun to watch and they had a perfectly constructed Don Nelson team that was designed to exploit every weakness of an overrated Dallas Mavericks team (that Nelson had constructed as well) and probably no other playoff team. Fun underdogs... it doesn't get more trendy and despite the United States' dominance in everything, true or perceived, we love an underdog! The Warriors flamed out in the next round but were still a huge success story, we've never seen a first round series play out that way. Of course after that, Golden State is highly overrated the next season, Don Nelson dies (although he manages to still move and speak), Baron's ego grows and he takes a step back and all the momentum the Warriors built in the playoffs just makes the target on their backs bigger. Do they sniff the playoffs the next year? No. The years after, up to this one? NO! They regressed every season and have comfortably been returned to turd sandwich status.
The Bucks are a bit different, but also the same. Lots of hype to end their season, trendy underdogs, a few fun young players, a small market and constructed perfectly to take down the Atlanta Hawks but probably no other playoff team. Different styles of play completely, but otherwise a similar makeup to a spunky 2007 Golden State Warriors team. They take the full strength Atlanta Hawks (overrated on a similar level to Dallas in 2007) to seven games! Next season looks as bright as 2008 did for G-State. Bologna sausage. Turd sandwich.
Atlanta was/is a pathetic team. They crapped the bed something fierce against the Magic in the second round, hell they set records with how bad they rolled over. Those Atlanta Hawks that the Bucks COULDN'T beat in seven games, have permanent handprints on their ankles from their Orlando Magic prison shower beating in round 2. In the Conference Finals, Orlando proceeded to get manhandled by a Boston Celtics team that is closer to getting AARP cards than they are to their primes.
In a nutshell, the Bucks weren't that good and they were dismissed by a bad team that was destroyed by a team that rolled over for a team that has dinner at 4pm while looking at Del Boca Vista brochures as their Jitterbug phones vibrate next to them. The Bucks only succeeded in making themselves more of a target in a conference and division that they, frankly, can't handle. Hype doesn't win basketball games. Ball don't lie.
Superstars?: Yeah, yeah, yeah things would've been different in the playoffs had Andrew Bogut been healthy. Even my pessimist side has to admit Bogut looked GREAT before his arm EXPLODED during that fateful fastbreak against the Suns. He should've been an all-star and I can type that with complete conviction. Two things really strike me though; first off why hasn't Bogut played like a beasty top 5 center in any other season outside of last? Secondly, HIS ARM EXPLODED!!! Who knows if he can come back and pick up where he left off right before the injury? The prognosis isn't exactly stellar; the Bucks front office won't give any real details on the big Aussie's recovery or lack thereof (if he was progressing nicely, the front office would mention it, they have to sell tickets but they haven't said squat). Even if he does come back, we've seen centers in this league look dominant (anybody remember Jamaal Magloire? Sigh) and turn into oatmeal the following season. Where is it written that Bogut was actually turning the corner and becoming an elite center before his injury and it wasn't just a really good stretch/season ala Magloire, Erick Dampier, Tyson Chandler, Sam Dalembert? Sigh.
Before you put Brandon Jennings on a throne, maybe you should sit on your La-Z-Boy and really think beyond the hype. Look at how Jennings started his rookie season compared to how he finished it:
November '09: 22.1 PPG (including 55 against Golden State), 42% FG, 49% 3FG, 5.6 APG, 3.8 RPG
April '10: 13.8 PPG, 37% FG, 28% 3FG, 4.5 APG, 2.6 RPG
So, he came in under the radar and nobody expected him to do anything. They let him play and didn't account for him. He scores 55 points against the defensively challenged Warriors, people start talking about him, he gets hooked up to the HypeMachine and teams plan for him. Jennings, after the Golden State game, immediately became average at best. He shot less than 36% from the field for the rest of the season...ahem...HE SHOT LESS THAN 36% FROM THE FIELD FOR THE REST OF THE SEASON!
Jennings is quick and can get to the rim without much of a problem. Great, right? WRONG! For the season he actually shot better from 3 point land than anywhere else on the floor (37.0% overall, 37.4% from 3). While 37.4% is respectable from 3, it's not exactly lights out. Consider that while you're digesting the fact that Jennings shot LESS THAN 37% within the three point arc. So, logically speaking, the closer and more high percentage Jennings' shots were, the more likely he was to miss. Couple that with the ease that he can get to the rim and the stats are quite alarming. Seriously, outside of porn, nobody has ever exceeded Brandon Jennings' ability to get to the hole without finishing.
(Last point: In his first NBA game he lead everyone to believe he was a triple-double threat with the 17-9-9 he laid on a pathetic 76ers squad. His season averages: 15-3-6...not exactly Jason Kidd. Somewhere, Kenny Anderson is feeling a little bit less lonely in this world.)
The top of the East is STRONG: Miami, Boston, Orlando, Chicago. Think they Fear the Deer? I think not.
Offseason Moves: There's no denying Milwaukee was a defensive minded team that possesed great chemistry at the end of last season. Everybody picked their spots, played good defense and worked together on both ends of the floor. Apparently, that wasn't fun. John Hammond decides, since it's the reality TV/Kardashian/trainwrecks are fun era, that we should use solid trade chips to acquire Corey Maggette. Corey "No Defense, All Offense, Bad Locker Room Presence, Coach Killer, Low Basketball IQ, $%#$&" Maggette! Genius. Are we sure Hammond isn't still working for division rival Detroit Pistons? Come on! If there was a list of 10 guys the Bucks should not acquire in the interest of team chemistry/harmony, Maggette would probably get some first place votes. Well I guess he fills a position of need being a wing with scoring ability. Oh damn it! That's right, we resigned John Salmons to be exactly that guy. Yeah, Maggette will be content taking a backseat like he was content in Golden State and Los Angeles. Yeah, and Shawn Bradley didn't get dunked on spectacularly over the course of his career. Well at least he has a reasonable contract. Wait, he's making $9 million next year?! He's a bench player that makes virtually the same as our franchise center?! Hang on, at least he's been successful elsewhere. His last two teams are teams that haven't been successful or relevant since before any current NBA player was born...and he's a bench player. Did the Bucks front office call the Magic, the Clippers or the Warriors (or Duke for that matter) to inquire about this basketball Ben Affleck? Well, at least he's athletic and can score. He's also in his 30s, injury prone and a complete ball stopper on offense. If it doesn't work out, at least he won't be around for long. What? He has three years (increases in salary every season by the way) left on his contract?! Seriously, go to Google and make sure the scrollbox pops up under the area where you type that tries to guess what your search will be and all you have to type is "Corey Ma" and the third most likely option is "Corey Maggette contract." How is he not Richard Jefferson 2.0 (minus the playoff/Finals experience and sweet tattoo that may or may not have been done by a 7 year old girl)? Horrid.
Larry Sanders, Tiny Gallon, Darington Hobson. That's our 2010 draft class. An HBO sitcom talk show host (Garry Shandling, anybody?), a guy that has a completely misleading name ("Tiny" doesn't equal huge and out of shape) and an injured guy whose name makes him sound like either a butler or an 80's B-movie response to James Bond.
Let's start with Hobson; by all accounts it sounds like this guy has the same ceiling as Al Thornton with less talent. He could be Tayshaun Prince without any of the skills that make Prince good. Jonathan Givony of DraftExpress.com:
"[about Hobson] A 6-7 combo forward with long arms and average athleticism by NBA standards,"
Wow! Dime a dozen? Yes.
All the prognosticators believe Tiny Gallon has a lot of "upside." My cousin is addicted to cocaine and can't function in society but can play a mean guitar. He has "upside." The guy showed virtually nothing in college considering his hype, regardless of how bad his college team was sans anything named Griffin. Then there was that wee little scandal that forced the guy to jump to the NBA Draft early and not develop in college like he really needed to. Certain guys out there need college; Gallon is one of them. Scott Nadler of Draftexpress.com:
DOOM AND GLOOM
The Milwaukee Bucks are fu...ahem...bucked up. It takes some kind of optimist to look at this roster, the ascension of the Eastern Conference as a dominant conference and the lingering questions from a promising (misleading) finish to the 2009-2010 season to even dream that these Milwaukee Bucks can make ANY playoff noise, let alone be a contender. It's going to be a cold and snowy winter in Wisconsin, so I can't blame fans for pretending that the Bucks are going to be more than a fringe playoff team at best (we need something to look forward to in this town!). However, the Bucks bandwagon lacks the four wheel drive to get anywhere in the southeastern Wisconsin snow and we'll see people leaping off en masse when the Bucks are in the Central Division cellar come February. Don't get your hopes up Brew City; the winter is long enough so don't heap more misery on yourself by thinking this Bucks team will make you proud to wear red and green. Consider this:
Overexposed/Overvalued aka HypeMachine Victims: Milwaukee finished very respectably last season. Too respectably. Think about Golden State as an 8th seed taking down the 1st seed in Dallas back in 2007. People forget that Golden State was trendy that year, they weren't elite but you had to plan for their style of play, Baron Davis was a homegrown darling, they were fun to watch and they had a perfectly constructed Don Nelson team that was designed to exploit every weakness of an overrated Dallas Mavericks team (that Nelson had constructed as well) and probably no other playoff team. Fun underdogs... it doesn't get more trendy and despite the United States' dominance in everything, true or perceived, we love an underdog! The Warriors flamed out in the next round but were still a huge success story, we've never seen a first round series play out that way. Of course after that, Golden State is highly overrated the next season, Don Nelson dies (although he manages to still move and speak), Baron's ego grows and he takes a step back and all the momentum the Warriors built in the playoffs just makes the target on their backs bigger. Do they sniff the playoffs the next year? No. The years after, up to this one? NO! They regressed every season and have comfortably been returned to turd sandwich status.
The Bucks are a bit different, but also the same. Lots of hype to end their season, trendy underdogs, a few fun young players, a small market and constructed perfectly to take down the Atlanta Hawks but probably no other playoff team. Different styles of play completely, but otherwise a similar makeup to a spunky 2007 Golden State Warriors team. They take the full strength Atlanta Hawks (overrated on a similar level to Dallas in 2007) to seven games! Next season looks as bright as 2008 did for G-State. Bologna sausage. Turd sandwich.
Atlanta was/is a pathetic team. They crapped the bed something fierce against the Magic in the second round, hell they set records with how bad they rolled over. Those Atlanta Hawks that the Bucks COULDN'T beat in seven games, have permanent handprints on their ankles from their Orlando Magic prison shower beating in round 2. In the Conference Finals, Orlando proceeded to get manhandled by a Boston Celtics team that is closer to getting AARP cards than they are to their primes.
In a nutshell, the Bucks weren't that good and they were dismissed by a bad team that was destroyed by a team that rolled over for a team that has dinner at 4pm while looking at Del Boca Vista brochures as their Jitterbug phones vibrate next to them. The Bucks only succeeded in making themselves more of a target in a conference and division that they, frankly, can't handle. Hype doesn't win basketball games. Ball don't lie.
Superstars?: Yeah, yeah, yeah things would've been different in the playoffs had Andrew Bogut been healthy. Even my pessimist side has to admit Bogut looked GREAT before his arm EXPLODED during that fateful fastbreak against the Suns. He should've been an all-star and I can type that with complete conviction. Two things really strike me though; first off why hasn't Bogut played like a beasty top 5 center in any other season outside of last? Secondly, HIS ARM EXPLODED!!! Who knows if he can come back and pick up where he left off right before the injury? The prognosis isn't exactly stellar; the Bucks front office won't give any real details on the big Aussie's recovery or lack thereof (if he was progressing nicely, the front office would mention it, they have to sell tickets but they haven't said squat). Even if he does come back, we've seen centers in this league look dominant (anybody remember Jamaal Magloire? Sigh) and turn into oatmeal the following season. Where is it written that Bogut was actually turning the corner and becoming an elite center before his injury and it wasn't just a really good stretch/season ala Magloire, Erick Dampier, Tyson Chandler, Sam Dalembert? Sigh.
Before you put Brandon Jennings on a throne, maybe you should sit on your La-Z-Boy and really think beyond the hype. Look at how Jennings started his rookie season compared to how he finished it:
November '09: 22.1 PPG (including 55 against Golden State), 42% FG, 49% 3FG, 5.6 APG, 3.8 RPG
April '10: 13.8 PPG, 37% FG, 28% 3FG, 4.5 APG, 2.6 RPG
So, he came in under the radar and nobody expected him to do anything. They let him play and didn't account for him. He scores 55 points against the defensively challenged Warriors, people start talking about him, he gets hooked up to the HypeMachine and teams plan for him. Jennings, after the Golden State game, immediately became average at best. He shot less than 36% from the field for the rest of the season...ahem...HE SHOT LESS THAN 36% FROM THE FIELD FOR THE REST OF THE SEASON!
Jennings is quick and can get to the rim without much of a problem. Great, right? WRONG! For the season he actually shot better from 3 point land than anywhere else on the floor (37.0% overall, 37.4% from 3). While 37.4% is respectable from 3, it's not exactly lights out. Consider that while you're digesting the fact that Jennings shot LESS THAN 37% within the three point arc. So, logically speaking, the closer and more high percentage Jennings' shots were, the more likely he was to miss. Couple that with the ease that he can get to the rim and the stats are quite alarming. Seriously, outside of porn, nobody has ever exceeded Brandon Jennings' ability to get to the hole without finishing.
(Last point: In his first NBA game he lead everyone to believe he was a triple-double threat with the 17-9-9 he laid on a pathetic 76ers squad. His season averages: 15-3-6...not exactly Jason Kidd. Somewhere, Kenny Anderson is feeling a little bit less lonely in this world.)
The top of the East is STRONG: Miami, Boston, Orlando, Chicago. Think they Fear the Deer? I think not.
Offseason Moves: There's no denying Milwaukee was a defensive minded team that possesed great chemistry at the end of last season. Everybody picked their spots, played good defense and worked together on both ends of the floor. Apparently, that wasn't fun. John Hammond decides, since it's the reality TV/Kardashian/trainwrecks are fun era, that we should use solid trade chips to acquire Corey Maggette. Corey "No Defense, All Offense, Bad Locker Room Presence, Coach Killer, Low Basketball IQ, $%#$&" Maggette! Genius. Are we sure Hammond isn't still working for division rival Detroit Pistons? Come on! If there was a list of 10 guys the Bucks should not acquire in the interest of team chemistry/harmony, Maggette would probably get some first place votes. Well I guess he fills a position of need being a wing with scoring ability. Oh damn it! That's right, we resigned John Salmons to be exactly that guy. Yeah, Maggette will be content taking a backseat like he was content in Golden State and Los Angeles. Yeah, and Shawn Bradley didn't get dunked on spectacularly over the course of his career. Well at least he has a reasonable contract. Wait, he's making $9 million next year?! He's a bench player that makes virtually the same as our franchise center?! Hang on, at least he's been successful elsewhere. His last two teams are teams that haven't been successful or relevant since before any current NBA player was born...and he's a bench player. Did the Bucks front office call the Magic, the Clippers or the Warriors (or Duke for that matter) to inquire about this basketball Ben Affleck? Well, at least he's athletic and can score. He's also in his 30s, injury prone and a complete ball stopper on offense. If it doesn't work out, at least he won't be around for long. What? He has three years (increases in salary every season by the way) left on his contract?! Seriously, go to Google and make sure the scrollbox pops up under the area where you type that tries to guess what your search will be and all you have to type is "Corey Ma" and the third most likely option is "Corey Maggette contract." How is he not Richard Jefferson 2.0 (minus the playoff/Finals experience and sweet tattoo that may or may not have been done by a 7 year old girl)? Horrid.
Larry Sanders, Tiny Gallon, Darington Hobson. That's our 2010 draft class. An HBO sitcom talk show host (Garry Shandling, anybody?), a guy that has a completely misleading name ("Tiny" doesn't equal huge and out of shape) and an injured guy whose name makes him sound like either a butler or an 80's B-movie response to James Bond.
Let's start with Hobson; by all accounts it sounds like this guy has the same ceiling as Al Thornton with less talent. He could be Tayshaun Prince without any of the skills that make Prince good. Jonathan Givony of DraftExpress.com:
"[about Hobson] A 6-7 combo forward with long arms and average athleticism by NBA standards,"
Wow! Dime a dozen? Yes.
All the prognosticators believe Tiny Gallon has a lot of "upside." My cousin is addicted to cocaine and can't function in society but can play a mean guitar. He has "upside." The guy showed virtually nothing in college considering his hype, regardless of how bad his college team was sans anything named Griffin. Then there was that wee little scandal that forced the guy to jump to the NBA Draft early and not develop in college like he really needed to. Certain guys out there need college; Gallon is one of them. Scott Nadler of Draftexpress.com:
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