JSOnline: Open scrimmage notes
Charles Gardner offers up some of the highlights from Wednesday night's open scrimmage at the Bradley Center. The scrimmage was streamed live online, so many of you may have seen parts or all of it. If so, you know as well as anybody that it's tough to draw real conclusions. Players swapped teams sporadically, sometimes leaving one squad with two point guards and the other with zero. Stephen Jackson (back), Tobias Harris (dehydration) and Larry Sanders (dehydration) didn't play. Andrew Bogut was lined up against Jon Brockman for a stretch, with predictable results.
Still, it was the first chance to see many of the new players in something resembling live court action. Familiar faces were back doing familiar things too: Carlos Delfino hit a pair of spot-up threes late in the game and, thankfully, looks to still have a nice scoring touch.
The game was played at a pretty quick pace, but I'll stop you right here, before you start thinking the coaching staff has been listening to us. The frenetic pace was more "frightened rabbit" than "majestic cheetah." Overambitious passes were frequent--most sailed out of bounds or bounced off fingertips, although a sweet Livingston-to-Bogut connection resulted in a pretty thunderous Aussie slam. For video, check out Jim Paschke's report at Bucks.com.
More news and notes after the jump.
NBA.com: Extra down time turns out to be good for Bucks' Bogut
The best part ONLY GOOD PART of the lockout is the added time afforded to Andrew Bogut's arm. It also gave Bogut and the rest of the organization time to deal with the letdown of last season.
"Negativity spoiled our locker room last year," Bogut said, "all the way from the players to the coaches to the franchise. There was so much pressure about injuries. That's not a good environment to be in. ... I'm trying to block out as much of last season as I can. Luckily we had seven months to do that."
In his interview with NBA.com's Steve Aschburner, Bogut also muses that he would have been willing to sacrifice the $2 million he lost due to the lockout anyway if it meant "it" wouldn't have happened. We all know what "it" is. I might be willing to toss ten bucks into that pot myself.
HoopSpeak.com: Zach Attacks: The conundrum of "swag"
Zach Harper is writing a whole bunch of essays because he's just so happy the NBA is back. As he turns his eyes to the Milwaukee Bucks, Zach considers what "swag" means for a rising NBA star, and in doing so, sums up Brandon Jennings about as well as anybody has.
JSOnline: Bucks power forward Gooden gets spring back in his step
Drew Gooden has high hopes for something better in the abbreviated 66-game regular season that the Milwaukee Bucks will open Dec. 26 in Charlotte.
WSSP: Gery Woelfel on backup center options, media day
Bucks Insider Gery Woelfel discusses the few remaining issues leading up to Milwaukee's season opener.
NBA.com: NBA forges new multi-year deal with Under Armour
The NBA and Under Armour, Inc., a leading developer of branded performance apparel, footwear and accessories, on Tuesday announced a multi-year partnership. Brandon Jennings is about to get a lot more face time.