Poll: The Elephant in the Room (Jennings/Monta Shooting %)

[LUKE23]

Before we push the panic button about BJ/ME, let's all take a deep breath.

We are 13-11, and square in playoff contention. We are not 7-17 on a 6 game losing streak.

EVERY team has its issues. You just don't hear about them because this board is, necessarily, Milwaukee-centric.

In their defense, we have virtually NO low-post game to complement them. No big guy to feed, draw a double-team, and kick back out for a clean look at a three. So BJ/ME are forced to create shots, often difficult ones because of their lack of size.

Do they take bad shots? Yes. Do I wish they were more patient? Yes. But if we can develop a post presence, the value of BJ/ME will rise significantly.

So the blame is not solely on BJ/ME - far from it IMHO.

There are several teams in the NBA that have efficient wing scorers without a good post offense option. OKC and HOU are two that come to mind off the top of my head. I don't see it as a valid excuse. These guys just can't score efficiently.

[AussieBuck]

Skiles can take a little blame for players not scoring well here given that there's little to no offense run and his lineups almost always make no sense at all offensively but the guys that you're stunned at failing were totally predicable which is kind of how some of us predicted it. Meeks, yeah I'd say he had his confidence crushed.

[ReasonablySober]

This really puts things in perspective:

http://espn.go.com/nba/story/_/page/5-o ... int-guards

You have to realize that with the no-hand-check rule and other changes to the game, it's easy to look like the star of the team when you're a pg. Even if you're a total liability more often than not, which Jennings is.

If you can't do anything else - defend well on a consistent basis, make teammates better, be efficient, etc - then being a scoring pg with mediocre efficiency or worse is the easiest role to play in the NBA nowadays. There are literally dozens of players who easily outperform Jennings right now, and there will be a few more in almost every draft.

This is why I didn't understand the comment in the SI (or wherever it was) that said the Bucks don't have a choice, that they have to re-sign him.

He's probably a league average PG right now. So if they decide to look elsewhere I don't see it as that big a deal.

[DanoMac]

Wow, based on those 3 articles throughout this thread, things could get really depressing in Milwaukee if all goes wrong. Not that things aren't depressing as it is, but wow.

It's amazing how much a 13-11 record can fool people (Herb Kohl). My God. Sick of reading all of these "ifs" regarding Jennings & Ellis' play. It's like we acquired Ellis yesterday. We've gotten a pretty damn good sample size of the results you're going to get when you play those 2 together, and it's not pretty.

I just wish they would cut their ties with Ellis sooner than later, because like Woelful said, he's losing money and value by the shot.

[upnorthfan]

OT Post boys. Wow!! I have been a one man wrecking with a company that I have done some reports for in my line of business. They owed me a few dollars and I was going to let it slide, until I found out they also owed my Broker some money. That ticked me off so I dug a little further and found out they owed a lot of people money.

So I went on one of my rants and totally took down this company, getting an email today saying they have closed their doors and no longer exists. Now, I may not get my money, and they may resurface under a new name, that's ok but that only speculation, so I don't if they will or not, but I put them in my cross hares and was relentless, to the point I called their CEO at home at 10 o'clock at night and just ripped into him like a mad man, and they shut it down.

Who ha as Al Pacino always said in Scent of a Woman

[InsideOut]

So why do you think they regress?.........................[too long to quote it all]

i get all that you said. and it accounts for some portion of it. common sense would dictate that it isnt all on the players tho. theres too many, at all ages, who have come here and immediately sucked. i mean IMMEDIATELY..... im talking like sucked bottom 5 bad in the league and immediately. levels no where even close to previous production in just their very last year wherever else they were.

then you add great shooters like how meeks time went...like doron lamb and how hes going. people get here and forget how to shoot. like cant even keep their nose above water.

something is going on. its not just the personnel. the personnel moves can be questioned and i'll stand less in the way of that then ever.... but thats not what im trying to point out here.

I think the explanation for immediately sucking is..

1). Guys like Maggette, Jackson, RJ... are knuckleheads and went from being the man, getting a green light and not having to play much D to having to play D and no longer having the green light to chuck at will. Professionals like KG and Ray Allen can deal with that while notorious knuckleheads can't and become malcontents. This is why these guys have reputations, the word cancer comes up and you see their current teams willing to trade them for our junk. These guys aren't winners and if they aren't able to play with guys who are when they will want to chuck and if you don't let them they will mentally check out and not care. Hence the immediate drop.

2). For the rookies like Meeks / Lamb it might be because they were 2nd round picks and not all that good to start with. Now they go from playing against college guys to the NBA so it makes sense where they would have a much harder time scoring. There is a reason most second round picks don’t last very long in the NBA.

Again, the big issue is that once these guy leave the Bucks they stay under their career averages. If the problem was Skiles or some Bucks curse that wouldn't be the case as once they left the Bucks their games would greatly improve. The simple explanation is Hammond is trading for guys that are getting worse and starting the downward slide. He is also trading for malcontent chuckers that don't like having to play D and not being free to gun like they once were.

[Buck You]

This offense is like being in a pickup game at the community center by my house.

[Fight the Tank]

How can something be the elephant in the room when this subject is spoken about in literally every thread?

[Max Green]

The Elephant in the room is that Ersan is the second highest paid player on the team who just signed a new big contract and had to be removed from the starting lineup because he was to fragile mentally to handle the pressure and is putting up a worst TS% then our inefficient backcourt.

[Fight the Tank]

The Elephant in the room is that Ersan is the second highest paid player on the team who just signed a new big contract and had to be removed from the starting lineup because he was to fragile mentally to handle the pressure and is putting up a worst TS% then our inefficient backcourt.

That definitely seems more elephant in the roomish than this current topic.

[LUKE23]

Ersan is a concern and a factor for sure, but even if he was around his career norms in volume/efficiency we're still no better than around 20-21 at best in offense, ballparking it.

When two players use over 50% of your possessions at near league-wide worst efficiency, that's the Elephant. Eran is more of a rabbit in comparison.

The issue here is that there is really no way to configure the offense massively different if you're starting those two guards. They are going to play the way they've always played. So the most logical thing is breaking them up. The only way I can see it changing at all is if we added a mega high volume PF that scores efficiently (see Millsap). And even then, I don't think he gets the shots he should get.

We need to split the guards up. Nothing is changing until we do.

[mattg]

More concerning than Ersan's inability to hit shots is his nonexistence as a rebounder. His primary value as a player comes from that ability. When he can't grab boards, Ersan is a total defensive liability and not even worth playing. Combined with his struggles shooting and you've got just a bad player overall. I figure his efficiency will increase over time(it already has after his awful awful start), but if it turns out that his rebounding ability was just a function of playing next to Gooden and being in a contract year, I'd be looking to deal him right away.

[Max Green]

We all know the backcourt doesn't fit and need to be split up. I find it equally concerning that the person proclaimed to be our best player last season, is being paid like a core player but has regressed to being the 4th at best big on the roster. It's not like defenses are focusing on him, he gets the majority of his shots created for him and he is still missing at an alarming rate. Our backcourt will be split up by season's end at worst, meanwhile we have Ersan signed for 5 more years.

[Baddy Chuck]

I feel like Jennings will be retained for whatever it takes which is ridiculous but thankfully I don't think if Monta opts out they try to resign him. At this point he may not opt out which would be atrocious.

[Baddy Chuck]

We all know the backcourt doesn't fit and need to be split up. I find it equally concerning that the person proclaimed to be our best player last season, is being paid like a core player but has regressed to being the 4th at best big on the roster. It's not like defenses are focusing on him, he gets the majority of his shots created for him and he is still missing at an alarming rate. Our backcourt will be split up by season's end at worst, meanwhile we have Ersan signed for 5 more years.

Yeah, honestly I'm not looking forward to the next 4 years with Ersan. I know me and you are for it, but we should really go for Gasol. He at worst is only a burden for one more season.

[blazza18]

Hey they're the highest scoring backcourt in all the NBAZZZZZZZ. What's the problem ?

[GHOSTofSIKMA]

1). Guys like Maggette, Jackson, RJ... are knuckleheads and went from being the man, getting a green light and not having to play much D to having to play D and no longer having the green light to chuck at will. Professionals like KG and Ray Allen can deal with that while notorious knuckleheads can't and become malcontents. This is why these guys have reputations, the word cancer comes up and you see their current teams willing to trade them for our junk. These guys aren't winners and if they aren't able to play with guys who are when they will want to chuck and if you don't let them they will mentally check out and not care. Hence the immediate drop.

2). For the rookies like Meeks / Lamb it might be because they were 2nd round picks and not all that good to start with. Now they go from playing against college guys to the NBA so it makes sense where they would have a much harder time scoring. There is a reason most second round picks don’t last very long in the NBA.

Again, the big issue is that once these guy leave the Bucks they stay under their career averages.

maggette, jackson, and salmons fell off a cliff and stayed down. 2 were knuckleheads... but that doesnt have sht to do with it. they were knuckleheads their whole career including playing for tough coaches before skiles or whatever other excuse you want to use.

meeks and rj improved after they left...... altho rj doesnt look as bad comparatively as he once did in his time here

jury is out on ellis, lamb, jennings, ersan, etc... but all young guys id expect them to bounce back too

sounds like a mixed bag to me. you cant easily quantify that group of players and not say there might not be a system that hobbles players....crushes their confidence or interest in the game. i say there is that factor... from what we know about skiles it makes good sense. i dont see why theres this large effort to minimize the discussion about it. we certainly didnt have this kind of discussion about stotts when the team couldnt defend..... i know that.

[JayMKE]

Unless we fall out of the playoff hunt(we won't) neither will be traded

[Baddy Chuck]

If you want to blame Skiles for those guys falling off a cliff what is their excuse when they were traded to a new team not 1 season later and still sucked?

Fact is we signed/traded for mediocre guys in the peak of their primes and time did it's thing.

Salmons played for a contract, got it, and then put it on cruise control. He was a little worse then his career norm the season after being paid, but being 30 is was to be expected that he would decline a little.

Maggette was the exact same player he always was. His stats were literally exactly the same. Skiles realized that his offense literally killed whatever chemistry the team had. He was a ball stopper like he was his entire career and Skiles decided to sit him.

Jackson was just an idiot. Between his injury, not wanting to be here and once again, him being on the wrong side of 30, a decline was inevitable. He was an EXTREMELY inefficient player in Charlotte and that carried over here. The only difference is he pouted and complained when he was here and much like Dalembert this season Skiles sat his worthless ass. And he wasn't in the wrong for doing so.

Hammond targets literally the worst type of players for the main pieces on this team.

[GHOSTofSIKMA]

keep mentioning jackson, maggette, and salmons... ignore the rest. ignore the guys who DID improve once they left. ignore the guys on the roster who are young and cant shoot until they got here. ignore the guys like ersan, harris, and jennings who are homegrown and are all over the place with their confidence levels plain as day. yeah... lets just talk about jackson, maggette, and salmons

im not defending hammond for some bunk moves. im not defending all these players. im NOT defending skiles either. hes part of the discussion. i think our coach is an epically bad offensive coach and im saying were not going to fully correct this until we get a new coach too. were shting all over our future with some of the young guys on this roster as long as we keep this guy around. i could care less about what happens with ellis... but i want a different coach before we shake the roster down again.