Larry Harris and Second Half Fades

[old skool]

To me, the most disappointing aspect of the last five Bucks seasons has been the tendency to fall apart in the second half of the season. Even though the Bucks have generally had tougher schedules to start the year, they have played OK early, only to fall apart or completely fall apart in the second half of the season.

The one constant through this (besides Michael Redd) has been Larry Harris. I wonder if there is something that he has done to contribute to this tendency. Some years can be excused because of bail out trades or injuries, but this year there is no such excuse - and the result remains much the same as in past years.

In some ways, this trend extends back to the last couple of George Karl teams.

Any thoughts as to what causes the Bucks to play much worse in the second half of a season than in the first half?

oLd sKool

[aboveAverage]

I would say that at the beginning of the season they always have new confidence, are willing to play team ball, and everyone buys into the coach's strategy. Then, as the season goes on, all of that is forgotten, and the true bucks emerge. It's always that first slump that gets us. We can't seem to overcome that first downfall. From there it's all downhill.

[LISTEN2JAZZ]

Good point old skool. I find myself saying every year around Christmas time, "either start tanking or get some players in that will give this team a fighting chance." When injuries occur and no trades are made to fix the depth chart, maybe the players get the message that the franchise isn't completely serious about winning, so they lose focus.

[Neapolitan Buck]

We always fell in the second halves of seasons like we did in the second halves of single games. Anyway, the fade in the second halves of the last 2 seasons are because of tanking mode, so I don't know how much significant it is. It is significant that we lose too much games when we lead in the 4th. When we were 22-36 (so when Bucks season ended in my mind, so I don't know if the stat has been updated) we had lost 17 games when we led in the 4th. With 12 of that 17 as victories (It's obvious that also good teams lose that kind of games - Boston has lost 7 of them) we would have been 34-24, 4th in the East. That's the problem.

[paulpressey25]

I think most bad NBA teams fade in the second half.....

You hit January and once you know you aren't in it, guys really start taking time off......

IMO our situation is especially noticeable because our player personel moves have been so bad. Thus we have no new players or talented rookies who really start to jell come February.

Most other teams at some point in the last 20-years have a really talented rookie or two that start contributing and allowing the team to make a run in the second half.....

[InsideOut]

I'll guess pride, heart and desire. We have none of it. In my opinion playing defense is a lot of pride, heart and desire. Sure, you need some skill but if you just go threw the motions you'll get lit up. This takes us to PP25's point. The team hits January and their 10 games under .500 so they just start to phone it in. They just quit trying and start looking for their own shots and could care less about stopping anyone. Just look at our defensive FG% these past few weeks. These guys could care less. And while LH and Redd are common denominators for this annual phenomenon...Redd is the one on the court.

[paulpressey25]

What just kills it for me is that our drafting has been so bad under Kohl for over a decade now (and Harris and Babcock are a big part of that)

For most crappy lotto teams they may not rebound in one year, but typically they have a rookie who is starting to break out and start putting up stats in Feb-April, getting people excited about his future. So these second half fades at least hold some promise to them.

With us, it's been one bustola after another.....guys who come the second half of the season we find out maybe shouldn't have even gone in the first round much less the lotto....

Shawn Respert
Tractor Traylor
Joel Przzy
Haislip
Bogut
Yi

And we'd have even more first round busts if we hadn't traded away 3 first round picks in that time frame for the right to move up in position and select Respert, Traylor and Przzy.

I include Bogut in there, because even though he's done well now, it was a huge dissapointment that it has taken him three full seasons to get where he is. But even if you want to scratch him off the list, the drafting above is why we are in this mess.

[LUKE23]

I am not willing to include Yi (and definitely not Bogut) in the bad draft section. There is no one in Yi's class that I can say will unarguably be better than him at this point, that was taken later than him. I know people will scream for Young/Thornton, I'm just not ready to say that yet. Next year I might change my tune.

Bogut, yes it's easy to say that now, but NO ONE and I mean no one was even talking about Paul/Deron as the top pick, and those are the only two guys in Bogut's class I would consider moving him for.

Bogut is fine. It took him 2.5 years, but I don't think he's going anywhere.

Yi, yes has looked bad the second half, but like I said, those taken after him all have been inconsistent as well.

The guys before those 2 I completely agree with (outside of Ford, although Ford's play changed after his rookie campaign).

[icat2000]

Huge disappointments are allowing the Chuck Brothers to perform "me-first before team-first basketball for three seasons in a row.

I pray that Management and Kohl have finally gotten the message that brand of basketball goes nowhere fast.

[paulpressey25]

Whoops...I'm not sure how I forgot TJ Ford. There we did pick the BPA...but of course we never got to see the second half of his rookie year since the career threatening injury took him down.

We'll give Yi another year....but it doesn't bode well for his potential upside if so much of his game depends on his "mental" state and whether he's "exhausted".

At some points here this past month you'd like to see some exhibition of great physical ability.....like a 12-15 rebound game or a 10-13 shooting night with some dunks and inside moves. Even Jerald Honeycutt could pull off that feat his rookie year.

Yi doesn't even have the Darko excuse Pistons fans used for two years...i.e. that their man was blocked from playing by two all-stars in Rasheed and Wallace, while the team needed to win rather than develop players. Nothing stands in front of Yi....nothing.

[icat2000]

I don't know about Yi. I'm going to follow him during the Olympics to see how he goes. Maybe a change of enivornment will do him some good. If he sucks at the Olympics, well maybe we got a problem. Certainly needs more upper body strength pronto.

[GrandAdmiralDan]

To me, the most disappointing aspect of the last five Bucks seasons has been the tendency to fall apart in the second half of the season. Even though the Bucks have generally had tougher schedules to start the year, they have played OK early, only to fall apart or completely fall apart in the second half of the season.

The one constant through this (besides Michael Redd) has been Larry Harris. I wonder if there is something that he has done to contribute to this tendency. Some years can be excused because of bail out trades or injuries, but this year there is no such excuse - and the result remains much the same as in past years.

You're totally overlooking the more important constant:
Herb Kohl, Ron Walter, and the system of cronies Kohl uses..
The constant is a terribly dysfunctional leadership structure.


As for fading down the stretch under Harris:

03-04
TJ Ford lost for the rest of the season had a huge impact on the team. Aside from the offensive impact, they could no longer contain penetration of opposing PGs. Going from TJ Ford starting with Damon Jones backing him up to Damon Jones Starting with Brevin Knight backing him up was a huge downgrade.

04-05
This team had problems right out of the gate and still hadn't recovered from the TJ Ford injury either. We had some injury issues with Kukoc and Desmond Mason (which is why he rarely dunked this season and focused on his jumpshot instead). The reason this team "faded" down the stretch was that it was obvious enough the team wasn't doing well enough that Harris was able to convince Kohl to approve of cashing in the rest of the season and making a trade to free up more cap space for the following season as well as sabotage the team's chances for success (i.e. we decided to tank) so that we could try for a better draft pick. That worked, BTW. We got the #1 pick and took Bogut. Even while retaining the cap holds on Redd and Gadz, we still had $10 mil in cap space (used on Simmons and Kukoc).

05-06
I don't know about fading "down the stretch." We started fading after the 17-11 start. Among other things, Bogut and Magloire both didn't like the coach and this had a negative impact on the team as their frustration continued throughout the season. Bobby Simmons and Dan Gadzuric were confused by their roles and their frustration grew as well.

06-07
We had problems in the early part of the season, had that brief resurgence with that 6-game winning streak (whether or not you think that style of play was sustainable is a separate debate).
We already had injury issues with Simmons for the year, and Villanueva was kind of an enigma after trying to return from injury.
And then Redd went down and we had the other absurd amount of injuries. We took it even further and joined Boston in one of the most absurd tanking efforts I've ever seen. Of course we "faded" down the stretch.


Your best case is 05-06.
But there was a mandate that the Bucks make the playoffs. Harris couldn't even consider trades during the season that would have had been looking toward the future instead of with an eye on making the playoffs.
That caused him to be even too gunshy to trade Gadzuric even though he would have been allowed to trade Gadzuric. Trading Magloire before the deadline was not an option available to Harris. He had to deal with the Herb Kohl one-year plan, which is one-year, every year.
In my personal opinion the "fading" that occurred that season had more to do with the head coach than anything else that particular year. Then again, he too was undermined by the dysfunctional nature of our power structure to a degree as the season wore on.

This 07-08 season the whole thing imploded rather quickly.
Players (Redd and Mo in particular) were buying in early to what Larry K wanted to do, but as Larry K started demonstrating instances of being in over his head, players had the "Oh great, another guy who is in over his head and probably shouldn't be a head coach in this league at this point." Players thought that trades would occur, but the GM was prohibited from making any trades. was mentioned, when the players start questioning a team's commitment to winning, that affects everything. And from there it is down hill.

[GrandAdmiralDan]

What just kills it for me is that our drafting has been so bad under Kohl for over a decade now (and Harris and Babcock are a big part of that)

For most crappy lotto teams they may not rebound in one year, but typically they have a rookie who is starting to break out and start putting up stats in Feb-April, getting people excited about his future. So these second half fades at least hold some promise to them.

With us, it's been one bustola after another.....guys who come the second half of the season we find out maybe shouldn't have even gone in the first round much less the lotto....

Shawn Respert
Tractor Traylor
Joel Przzy
Haislip
Bogut
Yi

And we'd have even more first round busts if we hadn't traded away 3 first round picks in that time frame for the right to move up in position and select Respert, Traylor and Przzy.

I include Bogut in there, because even though he's done well now, it was a huge dissapointment that it has taken him three full seasons to get where he is. But even if you want to scratch him off the list, the drafting above is why we are in this mess.

I give the Bucks a pass on Respert because who knows if the guy would have been a good player or not. He had stomach cancer that he wasn't immediately aware of, which can impact how one plays and which is why his career was so short.

Tractor Traylor comes back to Kohl because he made that pick (which required trading up) on the advice of Majerus. Maybe if Kohl had stayed out of it we would have ended up with Paul Pierce and Pat Garrity.

Przybilla has turned out to be a solid NBA player, he just got picked too high in retrospect. That one's not Kohl's fault really.
Our own pick that we traded to move up was used on Jason Collier, so no loss there. There were some players that you would have rather had around that draft position instead of Collier, but as a whole that was a terrible draft. It also cost us the #22 pick in the following draft, and as far as the player selected with that pick, Jerryl Sasser, no loss. But the next 3 players taken in that draft were Brandon Armstrong, Raul Lopez, Gerald Wallace. There were some better players taken after them too, but they never would have been real reaches with the #22 pick on draft day.

Haislip was a total bust of a pick. The Bucks plan was to hope that Amare fell to us, but if he didn't just take Haislip. Ouch. Again, not Kohl's fault this time. But who would have honestly been much better from the group of players that would have been considered with that pick?
Fred Jones, Bostjan Nachbar (only recently became a decent NBA player), Jiri Welsch, Juan Dixon, Kurtis Borchardt, Ryan Humphrey. If that's what I'm seeing on my draft board, I'm taking Haislip too. Although I might have taken Jiri Welsch at the time (seriously). It would have been a bust of a pick no matter what.

The Ford pick the following year was a no brainer, really. There was a big talent drop off after those first 8 picks. Our own pick was used on Luke Ridnour, but that pick went to the Sonics in the Ray Allen trade.

The following year our pick was gone as part of dumping Scott Williams contract. That gets blamed on Kohl. Yes, you can put some of the blame on George Karl and Ray Allen for being so gung ho about bringing in Anthony Mason, but Kohl didn't have to demand that we dump Scott Williams contract if we were to bring in Mason. Because Kohl was inflexible on that, the only trade we were able to find involved us giving up our 2004 1st round pick, which ended up being used on Josh Smith.

[Chuck Diesel]

So three out of five years under Larry Harris tanking has looked like the best option after the trading deadline.

[unklchuk]

I'm tempted to blame the fall off at the end of games and the fall off at the end of seasons on having *some* talent but no leadership. When things get serious, we've got nothing.