Excuses are like assholes to the Bucks

"We were a little spent emotionally and physically after the overtime loss," Milwaukee coach Terry Stotts said. "[W]e dug ourselves a hole early and couldn't get out of it."

You don't say, Terr. Well, buddy, I'm getting "a little spent" on your excuses, excuses, excuses. What do you say to Bucks fans down in Florida (like the Mequon Diesel) who paid good money to watch that garbage masquerading as professional basketball? Do those loyal Antlerheads get an "emotionally spent" refund?

And more to the point, when is Terr Bear finally going to stand up after one of these "we laid a shit in the middle of the court" performances and say something like "The level of effort and performance turned in by nearly every player on the roster tonight was unacceptable." When is he going to demand some accountability or mete out consequences when players fail to meet acceptable standards? Until he does, the team is going to believe it is alright to play the occasional half-ass game like they did last night. After all, if the coach is going to feed you ready-made rationalizations, why demand anymore of yourself?

Bucks staging a wildcat strike?

Where were the Bucks last night? Look at the Eff48 boxscore. On the Milwaukee side, I can't remember so many single digit scores. Bogut played 28 minutes and contributed so little it was like he was barely even there. On the Orlando side, I can't remember ever calculating such a high Eff48 for such an ordinary player as I did for Turkoglu. In fact, he may have the highest score I've ever calculated, period. And he's Hedo Turkoglu for god's sake.

Bucks Lottery Chances

Here's a positive note of sorts. Over on Espn.com they have a "Lottery" generator game. I guess what it does is it randomly shuffles and then displays each of the lottery teams giving each team appropriate weight (the Bucks chances of landing the No. 1 pick are currently at 12%). I played the lottery game a number of times (around 14) and the Bucks came up No. 1 on three occasions. The most frequent spot for the Bucks was 5th, then 4th, then 1st, then 3rd. I never got a 2nd, curiously enough.

Incidentally, when the Bucks pick first, Marc Stein has them picking Kevin Durant. When they pick fourth or fifth, he says its Julian Wright (except for one particular scenario where he had them taking Joakim Noah in the fifth spot). He has them picking Wright with the third spot too. Of course he notes that Wright has expressed an intention to stay in school. Great.

BucksDiary Eff48 Boxscore
81
Patterson..................................................19.86
Williams....................................................18.00
Skinner.....................................................15.99
Villanueva.................................................13.93
Bell..........................................................08.22
Redd.........................................................03.99
Bogut........................................................01.85

99
Turkoglu......................................................66.27
Ariza..........................................................34.50
Howard........................................................33.23
Dooling.........................................................22.73
Nelson..........................................................22.28
Milicic...........................................................15.99
Bogans..........................................................06.62