Tuesday Bucks Notes

by Frank Madden on Jan 14, 2008 11:16 PM CST in Daily Notes

Check out the JS recap from the Bucks' 98-87 loss in Utah last night. Our recap is here.
John Schmid at the JS has more on the economic impact of Yi Jianlian. The Peak endorsement was mentioned a while ago, but it's interesting to now see Wisconsin firms using the Bradley Center as a means of advertising to Chinese audiences. Either way, the Bucks are slowly reaping the off-court rewards of their ballsy decision to draft Yi this past June.

Rockwell's ads, displayed in waist-high Mandarin characters, are jarring enough to make local fans wonder where in the world the Bucks are playing. After all, the ads are directed at sports bars in Shanghai and factory dormitories in Guangdong.

The Bucks charge sums into six figures for what amounts to at least one cumulative minute of exposure to some 150 million Chinese per game.

"We're doing this solely to target our Chinese customers," said Rockwell spokesman John Bernaden.

This story comes just as the NBA finalized an initial $253 million investment in NBA China. ESPN, Bank of China Group Investment, Legend Holdings Limited, Li Ka Shing Foundation and China Merchants Investments now own 11% of the new venture, validating all the recent talk that NBA China could be worth over $2 billion.
The Bucks will be re-dedicating Sidney Moncrief's retired #4 on Saturday. One of the all-time Bucks greats and most underrated players of the last 25 years, Moncrief is currently a shooting coach for the Warriors.
Truman Reed at Bucks.com has a pretty cool article on what the Bucks have been doing together off the court.

"We've had some good times the last couple of days," Redd said. "We got a big win in Charlotte, then we went out the next day as a group and had some good times. We did some bowling, played some pool, and just rode our momentum and got some good vibes running through the team. Then we went out in Philly and played really well again.

"I wasn't over bowling a lot, but I heard everybody did well. I was playing pool. I ran the pool table, and nobody could beat me. I won like seven straight games. All of the guys and even the coaches played. It was just good for our team and our chemistry to get out and do something."
Charles Gardner writes Bogut's resurgence is coming at a good time while Loren Jurgenson at the Deseret Morning News writes about Bogut's return to Utah.
The latest installment of the blogger MVP/ROY voting is up over at Sixers 4 Guidos.
The Idaho Press has a story on former Nevada teammates Ramon Sessions and Nick Fazekas playing together in Tulsa. Sessions had 12 points, nine rebounds and seven assists in the 66ers' 117-92 win on Saturday. If you want to watch Sessions for yourself, the D-League plans to offer a free webcast every game for the rest of the season.
And if you want to hear how a Bulls fan working at a Blockbuster apparently got one back at Andrew Bogut, check out The Basketball Jones' latest podcast. Beware some, uh, colorful language. It's at around the 16 minute mark.
We'd like to give a shout-out to Dan Walsh and The Sportsbubbler, which is a new fan-driven Wisconsin sports site by the Journal Media. As part of that, the JS Message Boards will be moving over to the Sportsbubbler.