Do we miss Mason more then we think?

[Matt Foley]

Desmond Mason will be on the Gary n Cliff show today

[GrandAdmiralDan]

I think we miss him a ton.......

Bell and Ivey are getting abused at SF at times by these bigger guys that Dez does a better job handling......Bobby is good at positional D, but Dez is better at help D.

I think if we had Dez we would have won 2 more games here the last six-weeks.....seems small, but that's a playoff spot.

That is certainly one aspect of why not having Desmond right now is problematic.

We are at times throwing lineups out there that feature all three PGs of Ivey, Mo, and Bell, forcing us to use one of them to cover a SF.

Plus, part of how we were supposed to improve this season was that Simmons would start to shake off the rust and play better (he has been, albeit at a slower rate of returning to form than I had expected and hoped for), and Bell would climb out of that abysmal shooting slump he started off the year in. Villanueva would get more on track after shaking off the rust from his injury plagued season, as well as the disappointment over losing his starting gig he assumed he was going to have this season. And Yi would improve with NBA experience.

At the time we were waiting for those things, Desmond was frequently giving us some average minutes that were helpful while weathering those situations. But then Desmond was unavailable with injury, so instead of adding those things (especially Simmons) to the equation already featuring contributions from Desmond, and achieving a net gain, that was closer to a wash. Bell and Ivey stepped up a bit, but Yi started to fall off, as did Redd and Mo in many aspects, and Villanueva remained the same wildly inconsistent guy who plenty of times provided not much help.

Because of those circumstances (as well as others mentioned) we absolutely ended up missing Desmond more than it was assumed he would be missed.

And schweig mentioned how he missed Gerald Wallace...
In retrospect, if we are going to effectively use Mo Williams as much as we are to defend SGs with either Ivey or Bell in there to defend the PG, then I would rather have tried to outbid the Bobcats for Gerald Wallace EVEN if in doing so we would have precluded ourselves from the ability to re-sign Mo (not a certainty, depending on how high we had to bid) in addition to of course not having been able to sign Desmond.

Ivey, Mo, Redd
or
Ivey, Redd, Wallace?
I'll take the latter PG, SG, SF trio.

I'd rather just be able to play Mo at PG, but he hasn't been able to play much decent defense at all, especially containing penetration at some reasonable amount, outside of probably that 5 game winning streak.

[Chuck Diesel]

GAD who was responsible for such a weak pursuit of Gerald Wallace? Was it Kohl or Harris who made off-season priority locking up Mo and Mason instead of Wallace?

[Nowak008]

Ivey, Mo, Redd
or
Ivey, Redd, Wallace?
I'll take the latter PG, SG, SF trio.

Who knew Ivey was going to step in and actually contribute? You didn't want Ivey to get a single min as long as there was no injuries before the season.

[rilamann]

Sad that it is true that this team misses one of the worst starters, if not the worst, in the NBA. Fine team construction.

Very true.

Dez is a nice ''contributor'' on a good team comming off the bench as a 7th or 8th man and probably a 9th man on a contending caliber team.

But if Dez is starting on your team and is a guy you ''depend on'' on a nightly bases to help you win games I think it says a lot (or little depending on how you look at it) about that team's front office.

But in the Bucks case I don't think much needs to be said at all.

[GrandAdmiralDan]

GAD who was responsible for such a weak pursuit of Gerald Wallace? Was it Kohl or Harris who made off-season priority locking up Mo and Mason instead of Wallace?

Wallace was someone Harris was eager to pursue, but he was given a limit to how lucrative a contract he could offer Gerald Wallace by Senator Kohl (on the specific advice of Ron Walter) and thus we did offer Wallace a contract that would have enticed him to leave Charlotte (if Charlotte had decided not to equal our offer)

[xTitan]

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Wallace was someone Harris was eager to pursue, but he was given a limit to how lucrative a contract he could offer Gerald Wallace by Senator Kohl (on the specific advice of Ron Walter) and thus we did offer Wallace a contract that would have enticed him to leave Charlotte (if Charlotte had decided not to equal our offer)

I guess its hard to believe Kohl is so stupid to constantly listen to a man who is seemingly always wrong......nothing changes until Kohl gets out...that is painfully obvious.

[GrandAdmiralDan]

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Who knew Ivey was going to step in and actually contribute? You didn't want Ivey to get a single min as long as there was no injuries before the season.

And I stand by that. Key to that is the "as long as there were no injuries" part.
I am fine with Ivey getting some minutes since Mason went down.

Prior to that, I didn't want him getting any minutes since that would have meant a 10 man rotation. Granted, for the first part of the season one could consider Charlie Bell "injured" due to how much he absolutely couldn't hit a shot to save his life. One really can't expect that Bell, considering what he did the last two season, would open the year on pace to set an all-time low in FG% in the HISTORY of the NBA.

I also was assuming that Mo would be able to used for the overwhelming majority of the PG minutes, assuming he could manage to do a decent job of defending PGs, both against penetration and against the pick and roll. The comment of mine showing Ivey playing PG is because Mo just can't seem to defend PGs any more this season, and my listing Ivey there was less of an endorsement than a recognition of the reality that we have been using Ivey for a bunch of PG minutes anyway instead of just starting Mo at PG.

Both of those circumstances are in the realm of absolute disaster, and it just isn't practical to have a contingency plan for THAT kind of worst case scenario.

[GrandAdmiralDan]

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I guess its hard to believe Kohl is so stupid to constantly listen to a man who is seemingly always wrong......nothing changes until Kohl gets out...that is painfully obvious.

Well, I agree obviously.

However, I should add that while Harris was prepared to give Wallace the largest contract possible while retaining the cap hold on Mo Williams, I am not certain he would have jettisoned Mo Williams just to be able to get Wallace. There was room to make a lucrative contract offer to Wallace while retaining the cap hold on Mo (and we could have tacked on some extra money for Wallace by getting rid of even the small cap hold that Bell carried, if push came to shove) but that kind of offer exceeded the kind of offer Harris was allowed to make to Wallace, unfortunately for us.
So instead we got Desmond Mason and Jake Voskuhl (who probably could have been had for the minimum salary in the absence of our $3 mil offer anyway, so we could have en still snagged Voskuhl or another player like him).

[Chuck Diesel]

I think it's safe to say that nothing is outside the realm of "absolute disaster" in the NBA, particularly with this franchise. You should never take a roster spot for granted. Every player from 8-14 should be a guy the coach/GM should feel confident can be produce if given minutes. If you want to save one guy for the D-league that's fine, but depth can

[GrandAdmiralDan]

I think it's safe to say that nothing is outside the realm of "absolute disaster" in the NBA, particularly with this franchise. You should never take a roster spot for granted. Every player from 8-14 should be a guy the coach/GM should feel confident can be produce if given minutes. If you want to save one guy for the D-league that's fine, but depth can

[CBUCK06]

We are a team w/o a starting caliber SF....

[Buck You]

We are a team w/o a starting caliber SF....

What? Desmond Mason and his ugly jump hook and Simmons and his unmotivated and jump shot happy playing style aren't starting caliber?? But seriously, what was Harris thinking signing Mason? He's not a good defender and he has become a black hole on offense like his long lost cousin Anthony.

[schweig]

Early returns: not until he takes it easy with all the jumpers already

[kebzach]

Early returns: not until he takes it easy with all the jumpers already

Mason brought energy last night, just not the most productive energy.