Redd/RJ not what they were - should have rebuilt

[REDDzone]

I'm getting the vibe that Twirl isn't a fan of the innovative "win now while rebuilding approach".

[unklchuk]

I'm no expert on the Brewers, but your description of their rise sounds about right. But isn't it true that they became very, very good at drafting talent? I see articles about how one of their front office guys is at the top of his profession.

To me, that's the difference between success and failure. Decision-makers who are very gifted at their jobs.

Much of the Bucks bad smell has come from having unprepared and/or ungifted GMs and Coaches. And officials who aspired no higher than mediocrity.

Hammond and Skiles may be gifted. It's iffy, sure, but it's possible. If they are, I don't think they need a major rebuild to bring a healthy degree of success. (Not enough success, at least initially, to satisfy those who are hungry for a solid contender, but enough success to solidify their status in Milwaukee. Enough success to build on.

So... I don't think rebuilding is the answer. I think excellence in the front office is the answer.

The gifted can follow a number of paths. The ill equipped can't stay on any path.

[coolhandluke121]

A comparison with the Brewers only strengthens my case. People wanted them to be good 3 or 4 years ago but it wasn't in the cards because the foundational talent wasn't ready to contribute. But now that they are ready to contribute, they are good enough to make Milwaukee a legit contender for a World Series berth. So then, but only then and no sooner, the Brewers went out and made the win-now moves that could get them over the hump. They put the horse before the cart. That's all I'm asking the Bucks do to - get some real top-notch foundational talent and then try to build around that. But instead the Bucks' best players are barely all-stars, and they're well over the cap with no obvious means of getting significantly better in the near future.

The Brewers were wise to trade Carlos Lee, for example. They weren't ready to compete and he would have only held them down with his exorbitant salary. The fans probably didn't like it at the time but it's not up to them, and that's as it should be. Now the Bucks have just added another Carlos Lee (RJ) to the one they already have (Redd) but the Bucks don't really have a Hardy, Fielder, Hart, Parra, or Braun because they haven't laid a foundation yet. All they have is Bogut so it's sort of like as if the Brewers went out there with two Carlos Lees and a Ben Sheets and tried to contend. Not happening without all those other guys, and in basketball it's even worse because having those guys likely prevents you from being able to improve much in the draft.

[LUKE23]

Yes, unk, the Brewers were amazing at drafting, their scouting director became the first non-GM to win the Executive of the Year for baseball. Of their current core roster of guys, Gallardo, Weeks, Hardy, Hall, Hart, Braun, Fielder, Villanueva, Parra, Sheets, were all drafted by the organization. They have drafted better than maybe every team on position players. But the Brewers have also been the benefit of an owner that was willing to drastically increase payroll (it's over tripled I believe since Mark A has bought the team) and the Bucks don't have that option.

In regards to the topic at hand, I have no problem with what they are doing. I do not agree that fans, or at least the fans that BUY TICKETS, would have been fine with a complete rebuilding plan where the team is winning 20 games a year. The RJ move rid the Bucks of two guys that didn't want to be here and got us a massive upgrade at a weak spot. The Alexander pick and Mo trade can definitely be argued either way, and will continue to be.

But the fanbase of the Bucks is casual as is. I don't think they can really survive a complete rebuild right now, either revenue-wise, or keeping the team in Milwaukee-wise (which is my biggest concern at this point in time).

[trwi7]

Villanueva were all drafted by the organization.

Just an FYI, we didn't draft Villanueva. We got him for Wayne Franklin from the Giants.

[LUKE23]

He was actually the one I was unsure on.

[unklchuk]

A combined Win Now / Win Later strategy will not rely on the draft for more than secondary improvement. As you said, the draft position will be middling or perhaps worse.

But if the Bucks now have a gifted GM and a talented Coach, they will consistently make trades that improve the team. They will successfully sell productive free agents on what the franchise is doing. They will necessarily have to run the team better than the competition runs their teams.

I'm willing to watch that effort for a season or two.

A rebuild may have some "purity" to it, but IMO it doesn't have practicality.

I'm agreeable to disagreeing...

[coolhandluke121]

A combined Win Now / Win Later strategy will not rely on the draft for more than secondary improvement. As you said, the draft position will be middling or perhaps worse.

But if the Bucks now have a gifted GM and a talented Coach, they will consistently make trades that improve the team. They will successfully sell productive free agents on what the franchise is doing. They will necessarily have to run the team better than the competition runs their teams.

I'm willing to watch that effort for a season or two.

A rebuild may have some "purity" to it, but IMO it doesn't have practicality.

I'm agreeable to disagreeing...

Naturally I hope you're right. It's just that my experience tells me it's hard to build what they had in Detroit (a great team without superstars) and it takes a lot of luck.

Of course it's a fair point to disagree on, but what I had to take exception to was when people made sarcastic, snide replies to the effect that rebuilding is so pointless that it's idiotic to even suggest it would have been the proper course of action for the Bucks. Almost all good teams have gotten where they are by hitting a home run or two in the draft, and I don't see that home run player on the Bucks. You seldom see a team without an obvious all-star amount to much.

Agreed that it would be tough to ask the fans to sit through a rebuild, but it seems the longer the Bucks put it off the more they prolong our agony. They could have initiated an all-out rebuild a few years ago, landed Horford, Conley, Oden, or Durant in 2007 and Rose, Beasley, or Mayo in 2008 and been much better off by now. I know the lottery screwed us but the Bucks should have tanked sooner and maybe things would have gone differently. They could sell-out for the next 10 years with that nucleus. Instead, we have what appears to be a pretty mediocre squad and I don't get the logic that says the fans are much happier this way.

[MilBucksBackOnTop06]

Blowing up a team is good if the players are getting old. These players are not. Not only that you don't need a superstar to win. They don't not have stars they don't have superstars but how are they sopposed to get them? Even the teams with the market is desireble doesn't guarantee it. The Lakers got Kobe like 12 years ago and Bynum was luck and skill of the draft (which the Bucks lack) and the Knicks are willing to spend anything and are in the best market and they can't do it.
Chemistry and stars are enough to win and that is what they have. The Bucks big 3 is damm good and better then alot of other teams big 3.

Let me do a Eastern list

1.Celtics
2.Pistons
3.Magic
4.Wizards
5.Philly

The Bucks big 3 would be #6 with the Hawks

Bulls are not on the list because Rose is unproven even though he is probably a sure thing, Cavs really only have a big 2 now.

If they play the right way with defense and they rebound and hustle they are close to having the talent to win and the playoffs are almost a sure thing this year imo.

What are you talking about!? LOL!!!!!!!!!!

You do blow up a team if you are not winning man! You do blow up a team if it is not working and you are not making money or the playoffs! Where do some of you get this crap!?

AND YOU DO NEED A STAR IN THE NBA TO WIN....man! Wake up! If I see one more uninformed Bucks fan say that on this forum I am gonna scream!

YES YOU DO! That should be common sense for any fan to see. On a world stage in the NBA you do need a Star or the non stars you have had better be pretty darn frickin good ass players and close to stars!

No team has won with role players but with stars who filled and knew and accepted their roles! Name me one team who won with role players! JUST ONE!?

AND DONT SAY THE PISTONS! They had stars who knew and accepted their roles with great coaches who knew what they were doing.

This basketball altruism is hogwash! Playing the 'right way' is bullcrap and another term people throw around to seem athletically pious. It is noble but misguided.

You find who you are as a team and as a player, and that is what you roll with to win big! You must accept who you are and what you are about and then dare teams to beat you with what you have.

That works in college and in High school. You can play the WINNING WAY....not the right way that wings and brings in titles . The 'right way' does not even get a team to the playoffs!

You dont win in the NBA playing 'the right way.' You win playing 'your way' whatever that is for that particular team in the playoffs! All that is a myth and can only get you so far.

The Bulls played the right way many times and made the lottery! This is not your grandfather's Bucks' or your Dad's NBA! I came to that realization when Ray Allen left here!

I am gonna jump on anyone in here who says you don't a Star and you have to play the 'right way' as if it is some big formula! It is not.

Even the Spurs have arguably the best player in the league in Tim Duncan and two very very very good if not great lower level Superstars in Parker and Ginobili and a lockdown defender in Bowen.

And they are extremely well coached with Gregg Poppovich and his staff who are now all over the league...

But they also know their roles and make you play to their strengths. We have no one like that here.
So don't give me this....again or I will have to educate you again. This infuriates me...this 'you don't need a star' shennanigans some of you utter.

Phooey.

[MilBucksBackOnTop06]

A combined Win Now / Win Later strategy will not rely on the draft for more than secondary improvement. As you said, the draft position will be middling or perhaps worse.

But if the Bucks now have a gifted GM and a talented Coach, they will consistently make trades that improve the team. They will successfully sell productive free agents on what the franchise is doing. They will necessarily have to run the team better than the competition runs their teams.

I'm willing to watch that effort for a season or two.

A rebuild may have some "purity" to it, but IMO it doesn't have practicality.

I'm agreeable to disagreeing...

Well I will agree to disagree.

I think you REBUILD THIS TEAM...NOW! Not later. Right now. When you moved Mo, you break it down. Whenever you move a PG like that, you start over.

You wait with the way the East is shaping up now with some of these teams, it will be too late and no one will give a damn.

The lower rung will pass us. You watch and see.

[paulpressey25]

They could have initiated an all-out rebuild a few years ago, landed Horford, Conley, Oden, or Durant in 2007 and Rose, Beasley, or Mayo in 2008 and been much better off by now. I know the lottery screwed us but the Bucks should have tanked sooner and maybe things would have gone differently.

The Bucks couldn't have tanked anymore than they did in 2007. The lotto screwed us. And last year I suppose they could have tanked worse, but we still would have gotten screwed by the lotto. Remember that last year we won even less games (26) than the year before but finished in the 7th slot for the lotto versus the 3rd the year earlier.

More than a tanking strategy, this team just needs some luck. To luck into a star player somewhere. We've had none the last 20-years.

[unklchuk]

If the Bucks GM and Coach are as savvy as I hope they are, the chance of the team getting lucky has gone up notably. The difference between playing a series of poor longshots vs. a series of good ones.

Is it really none? Do you mean standard stars or count-'em-on'one-hand stars? How 'bout Dandridge? Wasn't he a 4th rounder? Or even Michael Redd?

[redred9]

the Bucks have tanked and tanked and tanked. year in, year out the Bucks tank. How many more seasons exactly until Milwakee loses its franchise at this rate? The ping pong ball hasnt gone our way- well, thats life. We couldve had Jerryd Bayless to pair with Bogut with the 8th this year- then i would bet there would be a heap more optimism on this board, but we went with JA, so in some ways we make our own luck.

no more tanking

[InsideOut]

the Bucks have tanked and tanked and tanked. year in, year out the Bucks tank. How many more seasons exactly until Milwakee loses its franchise at this rate? The ping pong ball hasnt gone our way- well, thats life. We couldve had Jerryd Bayless to pair with Bogut with the 8th this year- then i would bet there would be a heap more optimism on this board, but we went with JA, so in some ways we make our own luck.

no more tanking

No, the Bucks have not tanked and tanked and tanked. Not even close in my mind. Tanking is trading everyone those any good away for cap space and draft picks. Tanking is trying to lose from day one. Tanking is sitting your franchise player for months due to a hangnail. Sure, 2 seasons ago we sat a few guys for a month at the end of the season but that was a feeble attempt at tanking. We didn't even go into tank mode until the last month of the season. We can't even tank right in my mind. And don't worry about losing the franchise...we've been irrelevant for like 16 of the past 17 years and yet the team still isn't on the brink of moving. Kohl said he will not move the Bucks and even has a plan in place if he should die. History shows you need a superstar to go far. We don't have one and the only way we are going to get one is luck in the lottery. Yes, the Pistons were the exceptions but they built that team by not giving out huge money to players like Redd and Jefferson. You can't afford roughly four 11 million dollar players (Billups, Wallace, Hamilton and Prince) and a good bench when you are going to have the likes of Redd, Bogut and Jefferson making a combined 44 million. Or look at it this way. Redd and Jefferson only make 2 million more than what the Pistons are paying Billups, Hamilton AND Prince. We just don't have the cash to bring bring in great players and the ones we have are overpaid. I see us treading water until the overpaid guys come off the books and then we can go into tank mode and rebuild. I'd rather we do it now because we aren't getting past Boston, Detroit or Cleveland in the next few years anyway. The problem is we aren't going to get anything for Redd or Jefferson due to their huge contacts. If Mo at 8.5 million brought us crap what do you think Redd at 17 million gets us? I'd say even worse crap. So we are stuck in no mans land for a few more years and then we'll see what changes after that.

[coolhandluke121]

No, the Bucks have not tanked and tanked and tanked. Not even close in my mind. Tanking is trading everyone those any good away for cap space and draft picks. Tanking is trying to lose from day one. Tanking is sitting your franchise player for months due to a hangnail. Sure, 2 seasons ago we sat a few guys for a month at the end of the season but that was a feeble attempt at tanking. We didn't even go into tank mode until the last month of the season. We can't even tank right in my mind. And don't worry about losing the franchise...we've been irrelevant for like 16 of the past 17 years and yet the team still isn't on the brink of moving. Kohl said he will not move the Bucks and even has a plan in place if he should die. History shows you need a superstar to go far. We don't have one and the only way we are going to get one is luck in the lottery. Yes, the Pistons were the exceptions but they built that team by not giving out huge money to players like Redd and Jefferson. You can't afford roughly four 11 million dollar players (Billups, Wallace, Hamilton and Prince) and a good bench when you are going to have the likes of Redd, Bogut and Jefferson making a combined 44 million. Or look at it this way. Redd and Jefferson only make 2 million more than what the Pistons are paying Billups, Hamilton AND Prince. We just don't have the cash to bring bring in great players and the ones we have are overpaid. I see us treading water until the overpaid guys come off the books and then we can go into tank mode and rebuild. I'd rather we do it now because we aren't getting past Boston, Detroit or Cleveland in the next few years anyway. The problem is we aren't going to get anything for Redd or Jefferson due to their huge contacts. If Mo at 8.5 million brought us crap what do you think Redd at 17 million gets us? I'd say even worse crap. So we are stuck in no mans land for a few more years and then we'll see what changes after that.

This is a great post - thank you for helping me clarify my original point. Good point about the Bucks having been an afterthought for 17 years, so why worry about them moving now if they haven't already?

The fact is that, in order to solve a problem you have to admit the problem exists. All the Bucks' moves under Larry Harris involved denying that the team had major flaws, and those flaws came back to bite them. Facing up to the fact that the team had no chance would have been the first step to getting better, and that would have meant trading Mo and Redd (along with some bad contracts) two years ago. Those two are supporting cast players on any good team, and most of the frustrations of Bucks fans come from trying to build the team around those two. They often held the Bucks back, and as long as the Bucks were obviously going to stink anyway (although some people denied they would stink in spite of all evidence to the contrary) why not just get rid of contracts and make sure you have the best possible odds in the lotto? I had hoped Hammond would see the logic of this, although I admit that the RJ trade was a big improvement. I just question whether it's enough to really make this team enjoyable to watch again.

[paulpressey25]

Facing up to the fact that the team had no chance would have been the first step to getting better, and that would have meant trading Mo and Redd (along with some bad contracts) two years ago. Those two are supporting cast players on any good team, and most of the frustrations of Bucks fans come from trying to build the team around those two.

This is another point where I slightly disagree. The fans here all think that we've been building the team around Redd and Mo. I think we've been building the team around Bogut, CV and Yi......and that Larry Harris figured at least one if not two of those guys would become all-stars.

In the meantime, both Redd and Mo's contracts came up and the team figured since those were the guys doing the "scoring" and connecting with the fans, they had to keep them both while Bogut/CV/Yi became front court studs.

I've long been in favor of breaking up Redd and Mo, and I was against re-signing either of them. But both dudes were second round picks. The fact we've whiffed on Bogut, CV and Yi on a relative basis is the massive mistake this team has made.

Will Bogut and to a lesser extent CV play better with unselfish guards and develop into better players? Not sure, but I hope so. And I think that's part of the reason that you haven't seen a big team blow-up just yet. Especially since they were able to convert Yi into RJ.

[BlackIce]

Blowing up a team is good if the players are getting old. These players are not. Not only that you don't need a superstar to win. They don't not have stars they don't have superstars but how are they sopposed to get them? Even the teams with the market is desireble doesn't guarantee it. The Lakers got Kobe like 12 years ago and Bynum was luck and skill of the draft (which the Bucks lack) and the Knicks are willing to spend anything and are in the best market and they can't do it.
Chemistry and stars are enough to win and that is what they have. The Bucks big 3 is damm good and better then alot of other teams big 3.

Let me do a Eastern list

1.Celtics
2.Pistons
3.Magic
4.Wizards
5.Philly

The Bucks big 3 would be #6 with the Hawks

Bulls are not on the list because Rose is unproven even though he is probably a sure thing, Cavs really only have a big 2 now.

If they play the right way with defense and they rebound and hustle they are close to having the talent to win and the playoffs are almost a sure thing this year imo.

how bout the raps?

[trwi7]

how bout the raps?

We know, they suck. We're all aware of that.

[SupremeHustle]

Coolhandluke FTW.

BUMP!

[trwi7]

If the Bucks would commit to a total win now mode by trading young guys, picks, whatever to get a star player then fans would be fine with that. If the Bucks traded away all their veterans for young guys, picks, salary relief and stressed patience amongst the fans I'm sure the fans would be fine with that. The constant stuck in mediocrity thing that the Bucks have been in for the last 20 years save for one year isn't going to bring fans through the turnstiles, however.

Whoa, I actually look smart. I'm stun.