57 points equals yet another loss for Bucks

Last night Michael Redd exploded for 57 points against the Utah Jazz in one of the most prolific offensive performances in team history. My reaction: "So what?"

The Bucks still lost. You can't win with such an unbalanced attack. When one guy is dominating the shots like that, unless its Michael Jordan or Larry Bird, or someone else who is apt to mix in a little passing, then nobody else on the team gets involved. That's what happened last night (how do you score 57 points with nary an assist to your name? That's almost impossible). But the Bucks troubles go far deeper than that.

A look at the raw numbers reveals trouble everywhere. The Bucks are getting beaten in every single statistical category. I'm not kidding. All the way across the board they are, on average, doing worse than their opponents.

But what are the most glaring areas of decline? I would suggest two.

First, the Bucks are not rebounding the basketball like they did last season. I thought the Bucks might see a dropoff in rebounding, but I thought the dropoff would be attributable to the addition of PF Charlie Villanueva. Not so. Villanueva has actually improved rebounding production out of the 4 spot substantially. So its not on him. Instead the dropoff is due almost
entirely to the decline in production out of the 5 spot.

C Andrew Bogut is simply not hitting the boards with the same alacrity as last season. I didn't foresee that happening. Moving to his natural center position, and no longer competing for rebounds with former C Jamaal Magliore, I expected to see an improvement in Bogut's rebounding production. Thus far he has gone the other way. His rebounder rating is down from 26.2 to 22.5. That's maybe acceptable for a small forward; for a center its a joke. Most of Bogut's decline is due to a lack of offensive rebounding. His percentage of offensive rebounds/chance was 8.4% last year. It is 4.6% this year. At the same time his percentage of defensive rebounds/chance is holding pretty steady at around 17.9%.

What's causing this decline? This is just a theory, but I think he came back too soon. Besides offensive rebounding, his other main area of decline is defensive eFG (where he's gone from a respectable 49.3% to a ghastly 63.4%). What does this suggest? A lack of energy. After all, succeeding in those two areas is mainly a function of effort. If you're tired, or if you don't have your legs under you, the easiest places to cut corners are on the offensive boards and on your defensive covers. That may be what Bogut is doing at the moment.

The second big decline for the Bucks is jump shooting and defending the jump shot. Their eFG on jump shots has declined from around 45% last year to nearly 36% this year. Meanwhile their opponents jump shooting eFG has risen from 44.6% to 48.7%. Since the Bucks are taking and allowing about the same percentage of jump shots as last year (around 60%) it follows that their offensive production and offensive efficiency is down (from 108 pts per 100 possessions to 103 pts per 100 possessions), and their opponents is up (from 109 to 110). What's the problem here? Again, just a theory, but I would submit to you these numbers are a direct result of Coach Terry Stotts misguided attempt to instill an "up tempo" style of play.

As I suggested in an earlier post, in today's game, when you try to go up-tempo all you get for your efforts is sloppy offense and ragged defense. And that's what is happening. The Bucks haven't increased their possessions per game one iota -- it stands at 92, a glacial pace by historical standards. By trying to play faster all they have done is become far less efficient with the possessions they have. Why? Because the uptempo emphasis encourages poor shot selection and discourages disciplined half court defense. And thus we have seen the ironic consequences I foresaw. In trying to instill a running game, the Bucks are the ones getting run off the court. They're taking the first open look available, missing it far too often, and then allowing the opponent far too many open jump shot opportunities on the other end. I'll develop this idea further at a later time. This post is already way too long.