This franchise is allergic to elite defensive players

[Kerb Hohl]

http://www.nba.com/history/awards_defensiveteams.html

After an informal check, we have gone the third longest time without a player on the 1st or 2nd team all-defensive squad.

Our last one was Alvin Robertson in the 1990-1991 season. The only teams worse are the Celtics who had one in the '89-'90 season and the Clippers who have never had one.

For the sake of argument, Toronto, Vancouver/Memphis, and the Bobcats are out because they weren't in the league in '90. As for the Hornets, they've had one more recently.

Anyways, this got me to thinking. Since Robertson, have we had a single elite defensive player? I was born in '86 and like most people on this board I was a very observant sports fan in my young years but I think my memory of who would have been considered a top-flite defender on the Bucks at least probably prior to about '96.

Now to be an "elite" defender, you don't have to make the all-defensive team but you are usually going to have to be a starter or be the defensive 6th man specialist or something of that nature. I think a few of our best ones I can think of just in a real quick snap decision off the top of my head are Armon Gilliam and Michael Curry, but the problem is that both of those guys are fringe players in terms of PT. We've had a few guys on our team that were pretty good defenders earlier in their careers like Patterson and Magliore. Ervin Johnson obviously played some great defense and he would maybe take the cake.

You look at the successful teams in the past 17 years and they're either an out-of-this-world offensive squad or they have at least one elite defender on their club. There are maybe a few exceptions where they are just filled with all great team defenders and no one is really elite.

Of these good teams, they usually have one of their top 2 or 3 offensive players as an elite defender that will shut down the other teams scorer on most nights or they've got a guy like Bowen or Big Ben that are just so stout on defense that as long as they can just play smart on offense they will get the majority of PT.

Anyways, I think this is a big explanation for the fact that we've had 17 of the crappiest years a franchise can have. The one year that we were a top 10 team in the league is '01 where we were one of those cases of such a good offensive team that you go against the system.

Whenever you have a bad team you always get those sarcastic comments before a game that "such and such star player will have a guaranteed 40 tonight on us" or after the game, "it figures that we were the team to allow a career game to that scrub." I can't really think of a time as a Bucks fan who basically had the perfect year of birth to become aware of this team right when they started turning into crap in the early 90s where that wasn't the quote of the season. Obviously sometimes it is based on luck because sometimes you just don't know who is going to put the effort in on the defensive side when you draft them, but after 17 years, the excuses wear thin. Hopefully Bogut will get himself up at this level in the near future, in the meantime, we really need to look for a key starter that can become an elite defender.

[ReddManBogieMan]

Bogut and Yi are nothing to "sneeze" at.

Get it.