Andrew Kasmarek writes about Milwaukee Bucks for Morning Pickup. He sent me his latest and we felt like putting it on the blog. Feel free to follow Andrew here on Twitter.
It has been a tough start for the Milwaukee Bucks. That has become apparent to anyone whose paid attention. For the early part of the season, I cried for more Giannis “Spellcheck” Antetokounmpo. After the losing streak stretched to eleven games and both Ersan Ilyasova and Caron Butler were sidelined with injuries, the Bucks were luckily forced to give extended minutes to the Greek Freak, and he delivered in a major way.
In the streak-breaking win against Boston Saturday, Antetokounmpo played 27 minutes, for the season, he had only been averaging 16. He finished with totals of 10 points on 4/6 shooting (encouraging), with 7 rebounds (encouraging), 4 assists (very encouraging), and also was 2/3 from distance (very, very encouraging!!!). The blogs are buzzing about this guy, and they should be.
There is no denying that it turned heads a little when Milwaukee drafted him considering, no-one-knew-who-he-was/no-one-could-pronounce-his-name, and Bucks have been laughably bad in the “dealing with foreign talent[1]” category; however before the season, my Uncle Brady whom seems to run into pro athletes everywhere he goes was talking to Caron Butler at a golf outing, and relayed to me Caron was really pumped about Giannis. He said he was the real deal and would definitely surprise people.
Game-by-game, it is beginning to look like the Bucks have something special for the future with “SpellCheck”, but right now, Milwaukee is synonymous with losing. The eleven game losing streak, they put to rest on Saturday was a league worst so far, and by all accounts will probably not be Milwaukee’s worst drought this season. But there is another trend that is far more alarming for Bucks die-hards…
There is nothing worse than attending a “stinker”. As sports fans, we have all sat through one. In NBA terms, there are a couple of ways that you can fall into consistently stinking. You can both score and give up a ton of points and lose, i.e. 130-105, but in most cases, it is being hapless on offense, and losing something like 98-77. If you read either of my first two Bucks pieces, you will remember Milwaukee has been horrendously bad at offense. I mean, “Turrible” (Charles Barkley voice). If you look at their game-by-game results, you will also notice that they have been held under 80-points four different times already. I thought that number seemed particularly gaudy.
I mean call me crazy, but it should not be hard for a group of 10 professional basketball players to score 80 points in a game, right? They are paid to do it. The mean points per game average for an NBA team is right around 100 per game, and I do not think it is asking too much for the group to score three-fourths of the league average is. But unfortunately, the Bucks have proven otherwise. So with that in mind, I hit the record books to check if Milwaukee was indeed “the most susceptible team of all-time to throwing out a stinker.”
Now, I am not saying this Milwaukee team is the worst in NBA history, but given that as of now, they are on pace to be held under 80-points an unbelievable twenty times, I thought they need to be compared to some of the worst teams. Think about that, right now Milwaukee is on pace to score less then 80 in over a quarter of their games for the entire season. Remember the 2010 New Jersey Nets? They went 12-70, were the worst offensive team in the league and had different losing streaks of eleven, 10 and 18 games. Yet still were only held under 80-points in eight games all season. The 2004-05 Hawks? A team led by Antoine Walker, a rookie Josh Smith and Josh Childress, a team that was undressed 69 different times over the course of the season. They too only held under 80 just eight times.
The Cleveland Cavaliers team that went on an NBA record 26-game losing streak the year after LeBron left, did not even get held under 80 that often, only letting it happen five different times. Although it does need to be noted that they did get beat by the Lakers 112-57 somewhere along that run. That loss also happens to be the only reason why I included them in this post because aside from the quarter season-long losing streak, they actually managed 19 wins, but how do you go out and only score 57 points in 48 minutes? Cleveland should almost lose their NBA franchise for that monstrosity. But I digress…
Only two teams really can even compare to Milwaukee’s current pace and one of them is the ’97-’98 Denver Nuggets. They were led in part by LaPhonso Ellis and Johnny Walker. Two dudes I feel like I should be drinking whiskey with on a cool November afternoon while wearing sunglasses and possibly listening to some blues music, rather then watching them lead a wretched NBA squad. The Nuggets were bad. At one point they lost 23 straight games, and were the second to last in offensive efficiency. Thirteen times they were held under 80-points, and four of those time they failed to reach 70-points. At least there is good pot in Denver.
The other squad that somewhat compares is the Charlotte Bobcats of ’11-’12, they were 7-59, and had a 23-game losing streak if you did not remember. They failed to reach 80 points a staggering 13 times as well, but they did it in 66 games. We all remember laughing at this team. Gamblers loved this team, because you could undoubtedly just bet against them, and yet Charlotte’s terribleness projected over 82 games still only has them at sixteen times held under 80-points. Which would be four less then Milwaukee’s current pace.
Coming into the season, some people (me included) thought that this team was going to be a playoff team by default in the awful Eastern Conference, because of all the veterans that were in the locker room. Guys like Mayo, Butler, and Gary Neal. But what has transpired has actually been a blessing in disguise. Milwaukee is awful. Milwaukee is a bad jump shooting team, AKA the worst kind of NBA team. And now Milwaukee is headed towards the lottery.
That said, no one likes to lose eleven straight games, it hurts. And, more importantly, no one wants to watch stinky basketball. I love watching the Bucks because they are my team. I am from Wisconsin and we carry a lot of pride around here. Watching Giannis Antetokounmpo get to play at all makes me happy. Watching Giannis Antetokounmpo helping the Bucks win games makes me hopeful. And even though as Bucks fans we are all going endure a few lumps this season, I think this brand of atrocity should bring a brighter future. Even if for now we are simply the most susceptible to a stinker.
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