JS: Bucks failures come to light
Posted: Sun Apr 20, 2008 4:02 am
Grading the Bucks
Season of woe leaves Bucks with another rebuilding task
By TOM ENLUND
tenlund@journalsentinel.com
Posted: April 19, 2008
The seeds of discontent were sown fairly early in the Milwaukee Bucks' season.
While there were any number of defining moments in a 26-56 season that will go down as one of the worst in the 40-year history of the franchise, a New Year's Eve matinee in Detroit stands out as one of the first instances when cracks in the armor surfaced. And that day provided a chilling warning of the calamity that would occur in the months ahead.
The Bucks were destroyed by the Pistons that day, 114-69. It was Milwaukee's fourth straight loss and seventh in eight games, and it culminated a 4-12 December. It would go down as the Bucks' largest margin of defeat of the season.
But more significant than the numbers was the dour mood in the cramped visitors' locker room in the Palace of Auburn Hills after that 45-point flogging. Center Andrew Bogut stated that the team had been more concerned about flying to Miami - the site of the next game - that evening for New Year's Eve than it was about the game. Others around him wondered more privately about the level of commitment in the room.
The Bucks went on to win four of their next five games after the New Year's Eve Massacre, only to fall back into the rut that would carry on throughout the season.
Where and how did it all go wrong?
"You could point to the start (of the season) or to the end. . . . There are a lot of factors that came into play," Bogut said. "Some obviously can't be disclosed and (will be) kept behind closed doors, and some were on the court."
Said guard Michael Redd, "I had more fun as a rookie when I didn't play. Because we were winning."
It was a nightmarish season that cost general manager Larry Harris and coach Larry Krystkowiak their jobs, eroded the team's fan base to a new low, and led to an outcry from fans about how owner Herb Kohl has been directing the franchise.
The hope now is that things will improve under new general manager John Hammond.
Not ready
Part of the problem was that Kohl allowed himself to be held hostage by the University of Utah and hired a first-year coach before he was ready, and Krystkowiak did not shy away from taking his share of the blame.
On the other hand, this was one of the most dysfunctional groups of players to share a Bucks locker room in a long time. It was a soft group that was horribly inconsistent, did not play hard or together consistently, and underachieved badly on the court.
"In the beginning of the year there was a lot of talk about how good we were going to be, not how good we could potentially be," forward Desmond Mason said. "Early in the season, I said we're either going to be really good or really bad. There's no gray area. We had to go out and play hard every single night. There's no room for error for us, and obviously we did the latter."
Harris was generally the front man when it came to putting a public face on personnel decisions, but every move that this franchise makes - good, bad or indifferent - begins and ends with Kohl and his advisors. There should be no mistake about that.
Not "basketball" men
Who are the advisors?
In two late-season news conferences - one announcing the firing of Harris and the other introducing Hammond - Kohl identified team alternate governor Ron Walter, chief financial officer Mike Burr and vice-president of business operations John Steinmiller as the three whom he consulted with while making basketball decisions.
All are competent individuals in their own particular areas, but what many - inside the organization as well as outside - found unsettling was there was not a true "basketball" man in the group.
The contention now is that Hammond will have freedom to run the basketball operation.
Interestingly, there were few complaints last summer after Harris had re-signed free agents Mo Williams and Charlie Bell, drafted Ramon Sessions in the second round, added free agent Royal Ivey and ignored the heavy-handed tactics of first-round draft choice Yi Jianlian's handlers and traveled halfway around the world to get Yi in the fold.
The lucrative free-agent contracts presented Dan Gadzuric and Bobby Simmons in 2005, though, continued to hang heavily over the franchise.
Going into the season, the roster looked solid on paper, and optimism abounded about a return to the playoffs. A 7-4 start that included victories over Dallas, Cleveland and the Los Angeles Lakers only bolstered those hopes. But the mood quickly changed during the 4-12 December.
"It was disappointing," Bogut said. "We blew ourselves up in the off-season and then we fell flat on our face. Hopefully this off-season we'll learn from our mistakes and we won't come in and try to tell the world (how good we are).
"We're in a rebuilding process, obviously with a new GM coming in. We should take things slowly. Work hard. But we can't come in again (next season) saying, 'Oh, we're going to be a playoff contender for sure.' We need to earn that right, not just say it."
On a personal basis, these players were nice guys. They were not hell-raisers off the court and were professional and often entertaining when dealing with reporters. But this group never meshed on the court.
Chemistry lacking
Early in the season, when the players gathered after a practice or a game to raise their arms together in the air, they chanted, "One-two-three-family." As the season wore on, that somehow changed to "One-two-three-Bucks."
"The one thing that will completely turn all this around is chemistry," veteran center Jake Voskuhl said. "We have a lot of very good basketball players. I just think if we had better chemistry, we'd be marching to the playoffs right now."
Said Bogut, "There were a lot of reports of guys fighting and so on. I didn't see much of that. But could we have been closer? Definitely."
The team lacked solid lines of communication - among the players, between the coaches and players and even among the coaches.
On the court, if Player A missed Player B on a mismatch or an obvious scoring opportunity, they were not adept at relaying their concerns in a constructive manner.
No communication
Not that there was no communication at all. For example, when Denver visited the Bradley Center on Feb. 23 and the Nuggets were killing the Bucks on fast-break points in building a 23-point lead in the first half, Bogut barked at Redd during a timeout to quit jacking up quick shots and get back on defense. The Bucks went on to stage one of the more impressive come-from-behind victories of the year.
The players did not view Krystkowiak as a strong X's and O's man and did not think he reacted quickly enough to in-game situations. That was reflected in how they related to him as the season wore on. During one game, Krystkowiak was trying to convey a point to Mo Williams on the sideline, and Williams responded by only staring blankly ahead with no response. That prompted Krystkowiak to ask, "Are you with me Mo?"
Krystkowiak lost some players to a certain degree because of his handling of Redd. The pre-season message was that all players would be treated equally, but as the season wore on, some wondered if Redd wasn't getting preferential treatment when he was not benched after questionable shot selection or defensive breakdowns.
Making matters even worse was the fact Redd and Krystkowiak were not on the same page. Redd admitted after the season that there was no chemistry between them.
That was never more obvious than after a home loss to New Orleans on Feb. 13, when Redd fired up a quick and ill-advised three-point shot in the closing seconds when a two-point basket would have tied the game. Afterward, Redd laid the defeat at Krystkowiak's feet, saying the Bucks had been going for the victory and he was only following the game plan by taking a three-pointer. It would later come to light that that was not necessarily the plan.
The team did not have a strong leadership base from either the coaching staff or the players. Redd is the franchise player salary-wise but is not a rah-rah type. There were times when Redd would attempt to gather the troops and raise arms together before they took the court, only to be joined by a portion of his teammates while others wandered aimlessly in the corridor.
It was not a close-knit coaching staff.
Strange arrangement
Causing considerable consternation was the fact assistant Jarinn Akana had not been a Krystkowiak hire but instead had joined the team as part of a package deal with rookie Yi Jianlian, since Akana is associated with Yi's agents, handlers and the Chinese team. Veteran league observers viewed the arrangement as highly unusual, if not unprecedented.
Yi worked almost exclusively with Akana, even though some felt Yi could have benefited more from working with some of the more veteran assistants, such as Tony Brown, Jim Todd or Brian James. Being constantly in Akana's company alienated Yi a bit from his teammates, who got the impression Yi was being "managed."
On the court, "inconsistency" was the byword as the Bucks were done in by different things in different games. Bogut may have expressed it best after a late-season loss in Atlanta when he said the Bucks might as well just flip a coin to see if it would be the offense or the defense that would falter on any particular night.
Kohl has now assigned Hammond the task of returning the Bucks to respectability, and after what could be an active summer, the Bucks will start over next season.
Again.
