Bucks Diary

Monday, October 13, 2008

The Bad News Bucks go to China


If ever a team needed to stay home and work on the fundamentals, it would be your Milwaukee Bucks. But noooooooo. Thanks to Yi, the Bucks have to interrupt their crucial training camp to travel thousands of miles over seas to "promote the game".

I have constructed an "Efficiency Chart" (click here to see it) that lays out the Milwaukee Bucks team and individual performances in the first four exhibition games. The results are not pretty.

In my chart, I set out each player's "Win Score per 48 minutes", plus the Bucks offensive and defensive efficiency numbers, as well as their "Point Value over Average" (which measures how the team did when you consider the opposition's efficiency numbers).

Keep in mind when you are looking at the Win Score numbers that the numbers are completely unadjusted for position. I didn't adjust for position because I am not exactly certain where each player has played. So instead I list the average Win Scores at each position from last season, along with the player's normal positions, and allow you to translate.

If you do that, you will notice that the only Bucks who have performed above average by Win Score standards are Michael Redd and Dan Gadzuric. Every other Buck has been below average. That's frightening.

As a team, the Bucks Win Score is way below last season's NBA average of 43.6. And their Opponents' Win Score is too far above at 47.9. The "Skiles Effect" has not manifested itself on the defensive end, but its very early.

Top pick Joe Alexander has been nothing short of terrible. His Win Score is the lowest on the team thus far. He has the markings of a huge bust.

While Win Score seems to suggest the offense sucks and the defense is just mediocre, PVOA ("Point Value over Average") says the opposite. It indicates that the Bucks offense is just below average, while the defense is way below average. However, PVOA at this stage has a few weaknesses. First, the team's the Bucks played have not faced many other opponents yet in the exhibition season. Therefore their efficiency numbers are heavily influenced by their Buck games. That would tend to make the Bucks numbers look better than they actually are. Two, because each team has played a limited schedule, the "comparative value" of the numbers is limited. But, nevertheless, PVOA provides a nice indicator of relative strength.

I'll have another post on the team tomorrow morning.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home