I recently interviewed Bucks Assistant GM Jeff Weltman at the Cousins Center on the subject of advanced stats in the NBA -- a topic of enhanced significance since the team now employs Jon Nichols (he is the "him" in the headline) as a statistical analyst. We implore you to check out some of Jon's pre-NBA work at Orlando Pinstriped Post, Hardwood Paroxysm, and the New York Times.

Read Part I -- in which we discuss statistics and the draft, best player available versus need, the challenges of building a team in the vision of both the front office and the coaching staff, and non-traditional stats -- and then check out Part II below. Please also note that Jeff was unable to comment on specific players or address the lockout in any way (thanks, lockout).

AB: Since you started in the league (Jeff started with the Clippers in 1988), obviously analytics has grown. In your time, have you seen a resistance to embracing statistics anywhere you have been? Or have you seen -- being with a number of teams -- stances vary from team to team on stats?

JW: One hundred percent. The league is no different than any other industry, in that it is subject to trends and phases and fads. And the initial reaction to any fad is to go the other way, is to resist change. But once it has infiltrated and become part of the establishment, it becomes less threatening and people get to understand it.

What tends to happen then is people start to go overboard on it, and then there is a pullback. And I think that is kind of the cycle we have seen with analytics. And I think the next cycle we are going to say that with is technology.

I think there are going to be tremendous advances technologically, even from where we are now, to what teams are going to able to do. And I am sure you are aware of all of these different programs and services that are becoming available. And I think as those things become more accessible and understandable to all of us laymen, that they will become more accepted and more popular. And then there will probably be a pullback on that. And then something else will come along. But I think we have seen that we have seen that same sort of curve with analytics.

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BrewHoop has interviewed GM John Hammond, bounced questions off friend and television announcer Jim Paschke, gotten all philosophical with coach Scott Skiles, and chatted with players all the way from a retrospective Chris Douglas-Roberts to a bewildered Brandon Jennings. Assistant GM Jeff Weltman is a welcome addition to this company.

The foremost topic of our interview was analytics and their place in the NBA. You might know that many NBA teams now employ stats experts, but you may not have known that the Bucks are one of those teams.

Indeed, Jon Nichols, whose work had been featured on SBNation.com's very own Orlando Pinstriped Post, in addition to the charming Hardwood Paroxysm and excellent New York Times NBA blog prior to landing a job in the league, currently functions as a statistical analyst for the Bucks (Do click those three links to see some of Jon's published work --  he also created basketball-statistics.com, which, as of his NBA career, no longer exists). As Nichols is not available for interviews at this time, the Bucks set me up with Weltman, about which I had no qualms.

After all, Weltman has not only been GM John Hammond's right-hand man since following John from Detroit to Milwaukee in 2008, he is an articulate basketball thinker who wrote a series of articles as part of Scouts Inc. for ESPN.com after leaving Denver and before teaming up with Hammond in Detroit. He speaks our language, even if the timing of our interview meant he could not use many of the important words of our language.

So, what happens when you interview a high-ranking NBA executive during a lockout, and that executive cannot mention a single player by name or comment on the actual lockout?

I found out on a stewing (wind chill: 99°F) August afternoon in St. Francis, Wisconsin. Now you do too.

AB: Given the great variation in player ages, team strength of schedules, and overall competition, how integral a part of the draft process are college statistics?

JW: There was a great quote coming out of last year's MIT Sloan Conference in Boston, which I think was the fourth or fifth one (editor's note: 2011 marked the fifth conference), and it's grown significantly of course. There was a piece written... and the writer was coming to the conclusion at the end of the piece, and basically said: The honeymoon period with the analytics guys is over.

Now this position is commonplace enough where it is not an outsider looking in; it is part of the establishment. And as such, the analytics guys have been right, they have been wrong, they have differed from one another. And they have basically proven, the bloom is off the rose, so to speak.

So where does that leave us? It leaves us, in our minds, here the Bucks, with the conclusion that analytics has a strong part of our evaluation process. Is it the end-all, be-all? No, nothing is.

At the end of the day -- and I hate to always use that term but it seems like when you when you are talking about this stuff that it reverts back to that -- it's really you are scouting players, and every decision, no matter how much empirical data you apply, is going to come to some sort of gut level.

Because if you ask the medical guys, they are going to give you a gut level. If you ask the analytics guys, they are going to give you a gut level. There is nothing that can distill it enough to say, empirically, here is the right answer.  So, long way of answering your question, but in a nutshell, we view the analytics as an important part of the process, one of many layers that we try to incorporate. From sight tests, to stats, to medicals, to background work and probably most importantly, to our own scouting evaluations.

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If you want to have an enlightening conversation about the Bucks, you can't do much better than Jim Paschke. The television voice of the Bucks since 1986, Jim has seen almost a quarter century of Bucks games from his courtside seat--which in case you're counting, means he's been calling games longer than Brandon Jennings, Ersan Ilyasova and Luc Mbah a Moute have even been alive.

And thankfully for us Bucks fans, the end of a season doesn't mean Jim's on vacation. As the Bucks' engine room for all things television and video, he continues to provide constant video updates at Bucks.com with his Paschketball video blog and he's a regular on Twitter as well. Then again, you probably already knew that given how frequently we post Jim's work around these parts (I should probably list him on the editorial masthead at this point).

As we've done a couple times before, I caught up with Jim late last week via email, when he was generous enough to answer a bunch of my burning Bucks-related questions. Read on after the jump for (among other things) Jim's take on what made the 09/10 team click, Michael Redd's rehab, the draft process, and the lessons learned from the Joe Alexander experience. Thanks for your time, Jim!

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I caught up with John Hammond this afternoon and he was fairly tight-lipped on the progress of negotiations with restricted free agents Ersan Ilyasova and Ramon Sessions.  Contrary to reports we've been regularly seeing in Spain, an Ilyasova signing hasn't been finalized--but that's not to say it won't get done at some point in the near future.  Meanwhile, the Bucks had a conference call with Sessions on Thursday.

"Ersan might be in a little different position than Ramon.  We're probably a little further along in our discussions with Ersan.  But the discussions with Ramon have been positive and on-going."

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Here's the third part of our interview with Bucks GM John Hammond. Check out Part I and Part II here.  Thanks again to John for so generously providing his time last Friday.

Viewed individually, it was easy to like the three players John Hammond acquired on draft day. Richard Jefferson provided the Bucks an athletic, high-scoring forward. Joe Alexander brought athleticism and upside in spades, as well as the attitude and coachability to reach that potential.  And in the second round, Luc Richard Mbah a Moute gave the Bucks another athletic forward who prided his game on defense--a novel concept for pro basketball in Wisconsin.

Taken together however, the acquisition of three small forwards in one day begs the question of whether the Bucks would have been better off giving more weight to positional need, especially given the power forward shortage created by Yi's departure.  Not surprisingly, Hammond is unapologetic over acquiring the guys he felt were the best players available and sees his forwards' flexibility as key attributes going forward.

"Our goal is to have the best players you can possibly have.  Someone told me years ago that you are what you guard, and I think Richard Jefferson can guard multiple positions.  I think Joe can and I think Luc can.  So I think those guys are all multiple position players."

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Here's the second installment of our interview with Bucks GM John Hammond.  In Part I we covered the arduous process Hammond went through in restructuring the Bucks' front office and coaching staff as well as the aspects of his Detroit experience that he's trying to emulate in Milwaukee.  Today we'll get into the Bucks' draft process and the backstory of how the Bucks decided that Joe Alexander and Luc Richard Mbah a Moute were the guys they wanted with the 8th and 37th picks, respectively.

As we detailed yesterday, John Hammond managed to have a rather busy April and May, but all the time spent restructuring the front office and coaching ranks left plenty of work still to be done with the most important part of the organization: the roster. As has been all too customary for the Bucks over the past two decades, late June meant another trip to the lottery, but for Hammond it also meant that he had a chance to add a valuable piece to his roster.

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Last Friday I was fortunate enough to sit down with Bucks GM John Hammond, less than 24 hours after both his first draft and first trade as an NBA general manager.  Needless to say, I'd like to thank John for providing both his time and his candid, thoughtful answers. 

We'll be rolling out the content from that discussion all week, starting today with a look at John's first couple months on the job.  We'll focus on the process of hiring Scott Skiles, his goals in putting together his staff and what aspects of his Pistons' experience he hopes to emulate in Milwaukee.  But don't worry, we'll get to the Jefferson trade, the draft, and John's view of the future, too.  For more on those questions, I recommend you also check out audio from draft day and watch video from the Joe Alexander and Luc Richard Mbah a Moute press conferences.

"Right now, this isn't going to be fun.  It's going to be a lot of hard work." 

Perhaps more than anything else, that was the statement that stood out from John Hammond's first press conference as the Bucks' new general manager on April 12. Rather than giving a pep talk full of promises, Hammond instead seemed all too aware of the challenges ahead of him.  An undisciplined, defensively-indifferent team that amassed a staggering 114 losses over the previous two seasons.  No cap room likely for at least two years, with the possibility of luxury tax issues in 09/10.  And an increasingly disillusioned fan base that was losing both patience and interest.  It all led many to wonder why he'd left Detroit--a magical land of 50-win seasons and annual trips to the conference finals--in the first place.

Fast forward eleven weeks and Hammond is indeed working hard, though his energetic demeanor and general positivity suggest that he just might be having some fun, too.  Of course, the progress he's made with his roster and in revamping the organization might have something to do with that as well.  Still, when asked to descibe his GM experience thus far, Hammond takes a deep breath, as though he's barely had a chance to reflect.  After a moment of contemplation, he settles on an answer: "all-consuming and all-encompassing."

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The Bucks play host to NBA elite tonight as Chris Paul and the New Orleans Hornets come to the Bradley Center. To mark the occasion, we were lucky enough to interview Hornets.com reporter Jim Eichenhofer, who kindly offers a fresh, expert perspective on tonight's opponent. Thanks Jim!

BH: Since arriving in New Orleans, Tyson Chandler has dramatically raised his scoring, rebounding, field goal percentage, and overall effectiveness. The Bucks' point guard-center combination of Mo Williams and Andrew Bogut (affectionately dubbed Mogut) has often succeeded on individual levels this year, but they lack consistent chemistry. How have Chris Paul and Chandler coexisted so successfully, and in what areas can they improve?

JE: Paul has aided Chandler’s career turnaround by showing confidence in him since the day the center arrived in July 2006. Chandler was well on his way to being labeled a "bust" after five mostly disappointing seasons in Chicago, but he has transformed into a completely different player since being traded to the Hornets.

At the offensive end, it seems like Paul feeds Chandler for an alley-oop dunk about three times a game, often after a high pick-and-roll. According to stats I saw recently, they are the most prolific alley-oop combination in the NBA right now, by a pretty wide margin. I think a big reason this high-percentage play has worked so often is that they’ve had more than a season to learn each other’s games. Paul realizes that you only have to throw the ball somewhere in the vicinity of the hoop, and Chandler will use his 7-foot-1 stature and impressive wingspan to catch and slam.

In terms of areas where they can improve, I’m not sure what else Paul can do at this point – he’s a legit MVP candidate. Chandler still needs to refine his low-post moves, but he’s improved a lot in that area as well in the past season and a half. You have to give Byron Scott and his assistant coaches major credit for making Chandler a much more confident and effective offensive player. He averaged a career-low 5.3 points in his final season with Chicago. Two seasons later, he’s putting up 12.2 per night, the first time in his seven NBA years that he’s averaging double-figure points.

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