Hawks 97, Bucks 92: Three Not A Magic Number
by Alex Boeder on Jan 24, 2012 12:02 AM CST
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MILWAUKEE -- Three. It's a tragic number.
For the third time this season, the Bucks attempted to win a third game in a row. And for the third time, they came up short.
The Bucks actually won the fourth quarter, 28-27, and that is an ever-important preface to everyone focusing on the final 12 minutes rather than the first 36 (which the Bucks lost 70-64). But with both Andrew Bogut and Luc Mbah a Moute glued to the bench for the entire fourth quarter, the Hawks also shot 46.7 % from the field, made 12-13 free throws, and scored all of their 27 points in the halfcourt in the final period.
Indeed, Scott Skiles stuck with Jennings/Jackson/Dunleavy/Ilyasova/Gooden for the entire fourth quarter, and while things looked peachy when Gooden drained a corner three to tie it at 88-88, Josh Smith (three to go up 91-88) and Joe Johnson (14 points in fourth quarter) closed out the Bucks in an odd final period, lowlighted by Stephen Jackson's completely blank stat line (except one foul) and Mike Dunleavy's three missed three-pointers and late turnover.
And so after winning two in a row on the road, the Bucks have now also dropped two in a row at home, once again canceling out the ups with the downs.
Three Bucks
Brandon Jennings. Added 7 points and 4 assists in the final 12 minutes while shutting out opposing point man Jeff Teague. But the fourth quarter maestro was not able to get to the line this time, and ultimately ceded fourth quarter heroics to Joe Johnson. Still, he led the team in points with 21, had one or two hands in passing lanes all night (2 steal and 2 blocks), circled through the paint with some purpose, finished a right-handed layup, and tied a season-high with 11 assists despite an off-and-on supporting cast.
Ersan Ilyasova. At his tipping best, Ilyasova went down, but with lots of fight. He pulled down 5 offensive rebounds, got to the line more than anyone (though he uncharacteristically made just 4-7 at the stripe), drew a charge, picked up 2 steals, finished with 11 rebounds overall, did not turn the ball over in 27 minutes, and while it seems like they should not, somehow these nice numbers did manage to sum up most of his game tonight.
Drew Gooden. A wild 22 minutes. It seemed like he was on the court the entire game, for better or worse. Sometimes he was a part of good things (successful no-look passes, contorting and-ones, clutch three-pointers, etc.), sometimes he was a part of bad things (missed all four of his mid-range jumpers, lost his man on defense a couple times, etc.), always he was always a part of Gooden things.
Three Numbers
0-1. Stephen Jackson entered tonight with a higher usage rate than Joe Johnson, and he finished the night shooting 0-1 for 0 points in 27 passive minutes. Meanwhile, Johnson shot 10-22 for 28 points, including 14 in the fourth quarter.
0-0. Bucks starters (Jennings/Livingston/Delfino/Mbah a Moute/Bogut) shot 0-0 from the free throw line in 120 combined minutes.
23.0 %. Dunleavy chipped in 17 points overall and 8 points in the fourth quarter, but he missed all three of his outside attempts in the final frame, and the 36.0 % career three-point shooter is down to 23.0 % from deep this season.
Three Good
Ers-On. Two straight impressive games by the Turk.
Brand-On. For the second night in a row, Jennings managed to contribute (21 points, 5 rebounds, 11 assists, 2 steals, 2 blocks) despite an uneven touch from the field (9-22).
Jennings to Bogut. A perfectly weighted Jennings pass reached a perfectly timed Bogut jump for a perfect bit of alley-oop congruity in the second quarter. Video when available.
Three Bad
Back-to-Lack. Even with relatively even distribution of minutes, and full health, the Bucks fell for the fourth straight time on the second night of a back-to-back, following the home-opening win against the Timberwolves. They have 16 more back-to-backs this season (starting with the Bulls on road and Lakers at home this weekend), which means they either have a lot of time to figure this out or they have a lot of time to not figure this out.
Houston, They Have a Problem. The Bucks have won two in a row on the road, but they have lost 11 in a row in Houston, where they visit on Wednesday.
Lost. With the loss, the Bucks are ninth in East and 4.5 games behind the Magic for the sixth spot. Sneaking their way into the final playoff spot still seems possible, but there does not appear to be room to reach any higher, with the Celtics currently occupying seventh place. And so the team is caught in a middlest of middle grounds.
That is familiar territory, but what makes this an even more difficult and distressing situation is that, with a full complement of players, promising youngsters Tobias Harris, Jon Leuer, and Larry Sanders did not play a minute tonight.
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Whatever it really means
IMO isn’t clear yet. But one thing seems clear. Whatever was driving Skiles end of game weird lineup, it seems fair to say that the team is not a happy family. Hard for a team to find itself with the ground under it experiencing seismic shocks.
RealGM mod says: “Obviously major problems in that locker room and front office.
I wouldn’t put it past Skiles to be creating an ultimatum to either fire him or trade Bogut.”
Woelfel reports one of the players asked when the trade deadline is.
Stay tuned. (If you have the stomach for it.)
Wasn't a terrible effort, IMO
1. We weren’t fielding a winning lineup at the end. Far from it.
2. We don’t have a Joe Johnson.
So I don’t draw pessimism from the loss. Just concern that the franchise has deep hidden fractures – of some kind.
Such a sucky way to
end the game after such a funish way the miami game ended.What on earth went through skiles head is beyond me and his reasons for it after the game left me gobsmacked, his rotations are usually horrible but he cost a win for them a win tonight and probably put another nail in his coffin. This team looked really happy after that miami win and could of been a huge turn of the season but not to play bogut, mbah a moute or livingston at all was a joke and if i were them i would not be pleased.
if the players talk
I’ll expect changes. If everyone maintains radio silence, front office included, then Kohl may be calling the shots. Steady on course. Pretend.
by unklchuk on Jan 24, 2012 2:18 AM CST via Android app up reply actions
Fans: cry.
http://twitter.com/WhalesLarry ...but only if you want to see someone still trying to figure Twitter out.
by Mitchell Maurer on Jan 24, 2012 7:30 AM CST up reply actions
While I am not a big supporter of Skiles and his rotations
But it’s hard to say he lost the game for them. If the group out there in the 4th got outscored badly I would tend to agree and while I also think Bogut, Luc and Livingston deserved some burn in the 4th, it might be a bit of a leap to say they would have one with those 3 in the game. Maybe Skiles gets a bonus for bench points in a game, who knows. To me Dunleavy was the big surprise though, hardly playing all year then going to 31 minutes seems kind of odd.
It is painfully obvious that we need another scorer though, whether that’s someone on the team or not who knows.
"He always plays like he's a pit bull that hasn't been fed in about a year and that you've got pork chops in your pockets and that's the basketball." Of course, he's Canadian
Well...
1. Joe Johnson “served notice” he was going to take the game from us. We didn’t put Moute on him. He took the game.
2. Jax did a credible job on Joe, but he isn’t our best. And he had no role in the offense. His stat line was flat like an ER failure. A RealGM poster (they seem well endowed with lip readers) said Jax told a Hawk: “They never pass me the ball.” Is that someone that should play and be invisible at the end?
3. Dunleavy hasn’t been able to make his outside shots. Shooting 26-28% or somesuch. He made a little progress last night, but is that someone you want taking 3 outside shots (and making none) at the end of the game?
4. Gooden was something like 1 for 6 on 3s this season. His missed 2 or 3 mid-jumpers toward the end. They were Goodenesque shots, not terrible but not what you want. Our poor offense at the end tried to go to him 2X for 3s. He made one; Dunleavy turned the ball over on the second pass.
5. Your main man, Bogut, didn’t play in the final 16 minutes.
6. On the road, Ersan, Livingston and Moute showed they were our glue guys. Only Ersan played at the end of this game. Why was our offense more varied, more aggressive, and more successful on the road? Largely because of Livingston. Who made Jennings freer and more effective? Livingston. Jennings didn’t contribute heavily at the end of this game – although he did better than the others on the floor. Who could have helped? Livingston.
7. Today is an off day. Skiles didn’t have to rest anyone.
My main point is to suggest that the guys who played at the end were not the group that was finally playing great defense. And they weren’t the group who had finally achieved an effective offense. They were a hodge-podge, and I don’t know why Skiles played a hodge-podge…
And if I knew why Skiles played a hodge-podge, I would either be unhappy with Skiles or with the current state of the team.
You know,
he might just not be a very good coach… Judging from his reaction to the Heat win, it seems doubtful that he would be knowingly rolling with sub-par lineups.
A samurai sword collection. If you can do it. I don’t know if you’re allowed.
by TwoShoesMcGooze on Jan 24, 2012 8:39 AM CST up reply actions
Skiles explanation
“We got a little bit of a hold on the game, and if you wait so long (to) bring the other guys back in, it’s kind of unfair to them at that point.”
Hmm, something tells me Bogut, Luc, etc. weren’t sitting there thinking “man, it’d be really unfair to bring us back into the game right now…”
CB is right that the bench unit that was out there wasn’t torched or anything, but I don’t find Skiles’ response a terribly satisfying answer. A number of those guys played 17 minutes straight which is hardly a regular occurrence for bench players. Bogut was not playing well, but he’s your best player and Gooden is, well, wildly unpredictable. I don’t have an issue playing some of those guys the entire fourth, but all of them?
Moute
Last nights’ 4th quarter was the exact situation why Mbah Moute is on the roster. The other squads guy is hot. Moute is the perfect matchup for him. Yeah, I know he missed a couple jumpers but if he’s not going to be out there in that situation, why the hell did we give him 18 mil for 4 years? Bogut too. He struggled, but could he have done any worse than Gooden. I understand that you ride with guys that got you to that point, but why not let your best players try to make up for a shitty performance? I am pissed at Skiles for last night.
by CHAController on Jan 24, 2012 8:52 AM CST via mobile up reply actions
Oh, and does anyone else get the feeling that the Jackson experiment isn’t going to end well? That dude is mental.
by CHAController on Jan 24, 2012 8:55 AM CST via mobile up reply actions
I don't care if he's mental
He’s sharp enough to do what’s right for Stephen Jackson. Which, really in the dog-eat-dog world of NBA hoops, is the proper first obligation.
Most likely I think is that Jax decides that the Bucks are a bad organization with a dysfunctional team. And makes all his moves with an eye toward getting out. That would be an experiment not ending well.
It also would suggest that future efforts to improve the team may both be poorly conceived and poorly received by players.
Fear The Deer becomes a fear of what the franchise will continue to do to itself. Self-inflicted.
[Anyone admire the maneuver whereby I have said I must wait to see what’s going on (thus avoiding over reaction) while also describing scenarios of gloom and perhaps doom (thus embracing over reaction). Clever, eh?]
I think what irked me
Last year and you could say the same thing for last night is that Skiles doesn’t seem to go situational much, like maybe having Luc on D, Dunleavy on O. I know the same things happemed last year and it made me wonder as a lot of other coaches seem to use that strategy. But as the poster says below we are overreacting to one game I think, which was a close loss to a pretty good team.
"He always plays like he's a pit bull that hasn't been fed in about a year and that you've got pork chops in your pockets and that's the basketball." Of course, he's Canadian
All known observers
…are overreacting. (OK, not all)
As I said, I don’t think the loss was anything to get mad about. I think the coaching at the end suggests behind-the-curtain problems of some serious kind. Billows & billows of smoke suggesting a fire someplace inside. Smoke can be misleading, but it usually means “something.”
Woelfel says the team has bad chemistry. It was supposed to be good this year. Many say Bogut is unhappy. This was his recovery year. Capn Jack tells a Hawk “they don’t pass me the ball” and his a passive aggressive game. We hoped for leadership from him. What worked in NYC and Miami is ignored. What hasn’t worked is relied on in crunch time by a stubborn, my-way coach. “Sources” say every Bucks player is on the trade table.
There are not reasons to draw conclusions, but there are reasons to think the situation “troubled.”
It wouldn’t be vintage Bucks if it wasn’t SNAFU…
Holy hell
it’s unfair to basketball players to rotate them in at any point in the game? What the fuuuuuuuuuuk? Seems to me he’s simply searching for an excuse because he knows he screwed up.
Nothing known publicly
Justifies that aberrant 4th quarter lineup.
Problems in the front office?
Problems in the clubhouse?
Problems inside Skiles’ cranium?
Stay tuned.
Overreacting?
I honestly think all you guys are overreacting just a teeny bit. It was about 3 bad minutes in the 4th quarter? Albeit, it was with a mostly 2nd string lineup, but they had played well in the quarter prior to the mini-meltdown after they were up by 4. Obviously Skiles was thinking offensively to try and go toe to toe with what Joe Johnson was doing on the other end. Bogut had been struggling all night, and his defensive presence wasn’t needed as much as it usually is because Joe was mainly shooting long 2’s or runners outside of the paint. It was one game against a really good and underrated team. Not to mention the 2nd night of a back to back after just beating the Miami friggen Heat on the road.
Well, yah but...
1. The 3 bad minutes were in crunch time. We’ve been bad offensively in crunch time (lacking a Joe Johnson). Recently on the road we used a crunch time lineup that worked. Moute, Bogut and Livingston were part of it; Duneavy and Gooden were not. Should have used that lineup last night.
2. Livingston takes pressure off Jennings. Allows him to be a major player, including in crunch time. Without Livingston or the occasionally-inspired Jax, we get the erratic, less-productive Jennings. Dunleavy is of little help to Jennings, and until his shot returns, not enough help to the team.
3. Wasn’t a terrible loss, and Joe Johnson is good enough to seize a few games by himself. But our late-game lineup did not give us our best shot.
I agree with what I said: ;)
“Nothing known publicly justifies that aberrant 4th quarter lineup”
YMMV
Guys are irritated
because he fails to adhere to coaching 101. How many other coaches stick with the 2nd unit for a tune of 17 minutes to finish the game? Maybe one player, but not the entire rotation. It’s great that the 2nd unit didn’t flop, but regardless, once their time is done, you bring in the rested STARTERS. Also, why do you have a player who has struggled and missed a ton of time be the focal point of the offense? Especially when he’s fading down the stretch! YUCK.
Long time reader, first time poster, etc
decided to post bc a place to vent is good, i think. i was having a stroke about Skiles rotations during the 4th, and being the crazy chick that screams at the TV isnt a good look for me. But, gah! I cannot wrap my head around what the hell Skiles is doing. I’ve been a fan, but maybe he’s reached his expiration date with this team.
a live possibility
Still think though that we have to wait and see if some part of the franchise is on fire, and hope they fix that. It looks like Skiles now – but it may not be him.
We should re-do the tagline
BrewHoop: A Place to Vent
http://twitter.com/WhalesLarry ...but only if you want to see someone still trying to figure Twitter out.
by Mitchell Maurer on Jan 24, 2012 10:27 AM CST up reply actions
BH venting doesn't compare
…to what’s going on a RealGM.
Where they just quoted a big chunk of the fix the offense article.
Jackson
I looked it up last night and only one other time in his career (10 years ago) has he played more than 6 or 7 minutes and taken just one shot.
I never use a big word when a diminutive word would suffice.
I said in response to the Fix the Offense article
That Jax actually played a pretty bloody decent defensive game.
But on the passing thing..I was left at the end wondering what jax had to do to get the ball. The Bucks would have at least a couple of plays for him, but I didn’t see any run.
A couple of times I saw Bogut at the top of the key gesturing to Jax to clear out to the baseline when Jax was lookin to pop forward and get an inlet pass to him in the post.
Eh who knows – unklchuk seems onto the team issues theme – will await his update.
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