Monday Bucks Notes

by Alex Boeder on Jan 28, 2008 4:50 PM CST in Daily Notes Comment 0 comments

Ramon Sessions continues to impress in Tulsa. The latest: he was named D-League Performer of the Week today, thanks in part to a monster triple double against the Austin Toros. This marks the second time this season Sessions has been honored as the league's top weekly player. He first won the honor after the opening week of the season. Mo Williams, the team's $ 52 million man, leads a crop of point guards having strong seasons in the Bucks' system. Williams is arguably having a career year, and backup Royal Ivey has performed admirably off the bench and in spot-starting roles. Even Charlie Bell has heated up after a disastrous first two months of the season. It's only a matter of time before the Bucks give Sessions a shot, and count me in as excited for that day to arrive.

Sessions, on assignment from the Milwaukee Bucks, averaged 29.6 points, 8.0 rebounds and 12.3 assists while leading the Tulsa 66ers to three wins over the past week.
David Noel is also off to a strong start in his stint in the D-League. Noel is averaging 14.7 points, 4.3 rebounds, 3.7 assists, 2.0 steals, and 1.0 block, and is shooting 51.4 % from the field in three games for the 66'ers.
Jeremy from Pickaxe And Roll (check out the new, very cool blog) hosted Round 5 of the Blogger MVP/ROY Rankings, released to the public today. Here's the ballot I submitted:

MVP: 1. Chris Paul 2. LeBron James 3. Kobe Bryant 4. Dwight Howard 5. Kevin Garnett 6. Steve Nash 7. Dirk Nowitzki 8. Tim Duncan 9. Chris Bosh 10. Allen Iverson
ROY: 1. Kevin Durant 2. Al Horford 3. Juan Carlos Navarro 4. Yi Jianlian 5. Sean Williams
SI.com's Marty Burns pegs the Bucks 19th in his latest NBA Power Rankings.
Marc Stein's latest Power Rankings: Bucks are ranked 20th. Interestingly, that's the highest the Bucks have ranked on Stein's list since way back in Week 5.
And now for the downer: John Hollinger's rating system ranks the Bucks 26th.
Tom Oates of the Wisconsin State Journal writes about the correlation between winning and Michael Redd not playing (via TrueHoop).

The offensive mantras of first-year coach Larry Krystkowiak -- move the ball quickly, make the extra pass and run the offense though center Andrew Bogut -- are new to the Bucks, a perimeter-oriented, one-on-one team for years. It 's never easy for a player or team to change their ways, but the Bucks -- and Redd -- are trying.

Too often, however, the offense grinds to a halt when the ball gets to Redd on the perimeter. Instead of moving it quickly, he has a tendency to hold it while looking for an opening.
Ty at Bucks Diary also attempts to examine the odd phenomenon of Bucks success sans Michael Redd this year.

Besides which, the combined margin of victory in the four Reddless wins was a mere 17 points, and three of the wins came against teams whose combined record at tipoff was 33-69. So perhaps the team's play has not been as impressive as their record in those games might lead you to believe.
Brett at The Bratwurst tries find answers as to why the Bucks, a mediocre but not terrible team, are getting blown out so often this season.

I think it is pretty clear: the Bucks are too good to be getting blown out as often as they are. So the next question is: why is it happening?

The most obvious thing to look at is the coaching. The Bucks’ record alone shows that they have more talent than those on the "worst team" list. Take out the nine times the team simply hasn’t shown up and the Bucks are a .500 team. So the talent level isn’t the problem.