PG: Memphis Blues

[Ron Swanson]

I think a lot of people could excuse Bobby's defensive short-comings if he was actually giving you some additive value on offense, but that's the rub this season especially. He's shooting 76% at the rim (dunker's spot FTW) and 42% from the corners, yet the crazy volume of post-up possessions are absolutely killing the offense.

He can be effective in certain spots, but without any self-awareness or someone screaming in his ear to stop camping in the high post when Giannis and/or Brook are on the floor with him, you're getting the absolute worst version of Bobby right now and it's been a trainwreck on both sides of the ball. If the coaching staff isn't gonna get him to change, then he needs to start collecting DNP's. Gallo taking all of his minutes is probably the "lowest-hanging fruit" to improve the team now that we've fixed the defense enough, as crazy as that sounds.

Bobby has been driving me nuts all year, but I think calling for Bobby to get DNPs (at least during the regular season) is a bit too much. Partially because we just don't have enough behind him to make it work, partially because I just think Bobby can figure it out, and partially because so many of his minutes come with PC, who might be the biggest drag on the team relative to minutes played.

I think you're right on the substance, that his high post touches are some of the worst offense we have, and there's a reason we didn't see as much of it under Bud. Bobby is a guy that flourishes when he's put in the right positions, but he's clearly fallen in love with junky post offense, and he's not facing repercussions for playing so small on D. It feels like 2 rebounds are just taken out of his hands a game this year.

PC getting parked, and Crowder going back to the bench (although I'd be happy to see him parked) might do some work for perceptions of other guys in their orbit.

This is the other factor that's tanking the bench lineups for sure. I'm a Pat truther and I'll believe he's finally cooked when I see it happen in the playoffs, but you're doing the team no favors by constantly tying him and Bobby at the hip with your substitution patterns. Priority #1 for Doc has to be staggering the rotations better even without Khris, and limiting the time Bobby isn't out there with Brook to cover up for his traffic cone paint defense.

[Prez]

When Khris is back, Pat needs to be eliminated completely from the rotation. It should happen now even with Khris out, but with Khris back there's zero argument against it. Dude is 463rd this year in EPM wins out of 467 total. 5th worst in the entire league. We are giving 20+ mpg to literally one of the worst players in the league this year and you feel it every game.

[BigO]

These post-loss sections are my favorite part of Real GM. The posters who people usually ignore because of how ridiculous the posts are, feel energized.

I also feel energized because it makes me feel better about myself. There's nothing like post-loss threads to build ones ego. Trade Giannis. Giannis is the problem. He refuses to be coached. Bud was great.

There's always a home for bad ideas.

But amidst all these overreactions and bad analysis, there are some really good posts:

1) Brook, especially when Giannis is sitting, needs to post up more, and stop shooting the threes. There is a reason he isn't guarded out there. No Bucks coach has ever told Brook not to shoot so many threes or to use his post up skills.

2) The only two players who came to play last night, and who are earning the level of their salary, are Giannis and BP. Both came to play and both played well. Doc was right that the rest of them looked uninterested. PC needs to sit. Beasley needs to stop taking any threes unless they are corner threes or top of the key threes.

I'm guardedly optimistic. The Bucks weren't winning a title with Bud/McCarthy as their coach. The top players had tuned him out for very good reasons, which I have detailed many times. And Jrue was not a great fit because he can't shoot on a team lacking shooters.

Why guardedly optimistic?

1) It all comes down to two players, will Lillard play to his level and will KM be healthy? This is still a game of stars and if they play to their regular level, they have a decent shot.

2) In the playoffs, it's a slower game, teams need shot makers. With a regular Lillard, Bucks have enough to prevail.

3) Obviously the defense has to improve and I'm counting on the 30 coaches the Bucks have to come up with something.

Build ones ego? These guys get alot of money to play a game. I maybe old school but you should give every game your best effort. These guys are still kind of young. Basketball is not rocket science. It's just that certain players don't get it. Like you said all Brook wants to do is sit outside and shoot 3s. Thats all pretty much what everyone wants to do minus Giannis. Too many contested threes. Too many dumb TOs. Two different coaches and it really didn't matter.

There's not much that I disagree with here.

[nagawicka]

As far as Dame not wanting to be in Milwaukee its not like he was an innocent bystander in this. In several interviews he said his agent specifically asked him if Milwaukee was a viable option for him and he said yes. He could have easily said no. I just don't buy that was a victim in this and was traded without his consent. He agreed to Mil, however it is possible when got of the plane immediately regretted it. That is certainly as possibility.

So what? Milwaukee's name was mentioned in passing and that's it. It's not the city. It's not the personal stuff. It's not about not getting his first choice and landing in Miami. Having to deal with teh franchise's total lack of structure and a roster that basically refuses to buy into standard aka winning team ball--that's another story. That'd be demoralizing. Don't try claiming Dame "is not an innocent bystander" just b/c he has eyes and ears and knows what he's looking at and you don't like it b/c he knows basketball. Dame's trainer interview worth checking out as it sheds light into Dame's level of committment to training & focus on honing skills. And THIS?! is your go-to? that Dame must be guilty of somethign? Big Yikes on Bikes. C'mon, Dame had no option to say Yea or Nay.

[BigO]

I guess Dame doesn’t come off to me as quitting or playing half assed. He’s in a slump, he can’t get a whistle for whatever reason, and he’s frustrated. It looks like he’s far too aware of every single thing he’s doing on the court instead of just playing naturally. Could he be cooked? Sure, but then we’re telling him **** you for not being younger??? I don’t get it. Dude is engaged on the bench, he cares, this isn’t Payton.

I'm relying on Dame not being cooked. I don't think he's cooked.

But he is the ultimate veteran on this team and he spends all his time bitching about non-calls for himself. He needs to be about the team and his demeanor doesn't show that.

[fan230]

Very good analysis by the forum guys. Shows how much we care. I will add mine.

Ag was a bad coach coz he tried to impose his square peg in a round hole policy where the veterans couldn’t really play defense in his style of defense.
Now ag has gone and Doc, a much more experienced coach has improved the defense but we are still losing even more. One reason is that we are playing better teams.

But we are also being outplayed by a very short handed Memphis.

Our roster has a lot to do with this. Plus Dame has a lot to do with this.

Start with Dame. His defense is very bad. He was playing better in 2023. Since January, he has noticeably worsened. Two things have happened. One is despite trying hard, his defense continues to be bad. So he is trying to over compensate by going to Dame Time mode which essentially involves hitting long distance 3 s. With so much pressure to succeed on that front, he is failing with his 3 pointers. Note that he had much less pressure with the Blazers compared to that with that caused by the v high championship aspirations of the Bucks. Also Dame is not a creative pg; for example we saw yesterday, how well Giannis was creating beautiful assists. Dame had another major positive in his offensive game, slashing to the basket and getting called for fouls against him; that foul calling has dried up as the nba has been calling those fouls less this year.

Beas is v bad in defense. That pressure to do well on defense is also hurting his 3 point offense as he is trying too hard with 3 pointers.

Both Beas and Dame are short. That additionally hurts their defense.

Tnt guys were repeatedly saying that Bucks cannot stop any dribbling offense. This is on Dame and Beas but Pat C or even Ajj is not much better in this aspect.

Pat Bev is short, old and has not helped in defense.

Jae helps a bit but not much on defense and is bad on offense.

Jrue Javon Wes Ingles Grayson were much better on defense than our group.

If we fail on defense in almost every single possession, it puts high pressure on our offense to counter balance that.

Brook is among the league leaders on blocks. Giannis is playing at mvp level. Khris despite his injuries is a brilliant passer especially to Giannis and Khris recently had the highest 2 point percentage in the league.

So I feel with Khris returning and with Doc, we will improve. Khris will also reduce the offensive pressure put on Dame to succeed there.

Even Galinari will help I believe, with that pressure reducing aspect on offense.

It all then boils down to poa defense. Dame and Beas are our starters. I am not sure how we can improve poa defense. Ajj is not the answer as he cannot score. The only person who can play perhaps good poa defense is mjb. He should replace Beas in the starting lineup.

If we get improved poa defense with mjb, I think both Beas and Dame with less weight on their shoulders, will noticeably improve in their offense.

If mjb doesn’t work, try Livingstone or Thanasis for that matter. One of the two of our Poa defenders, has to be good.

[BUCKnation]

Yeah, pat really needs to be dumped from the rotation or at least seriously limited. The young guys may not be it but at least we might see some development.

Bobby is good in moments. He found some really nice spots when giannis got doubled last night for example. He did the same against dallas. He really just needs to stick to that and corner 3’s. He’s really killing us trying to run his own offense, which should never happen unless we run out an all bench lineup or something.

[BUCKnation]

I wouldn’t say Dame is single handedly killing us bc no one else is really providing anything besides giannis, but the constant 30% shooting from the field on high volume is insanely detrimental. The super dumb turnovers are also swinging moments in the game too.

[BigO]

I think a lot of people could excuse Bobby's defensive short-comings if he was actually giving you some additive value on offense, but that's the rub this season especially. He's shooting 76% at the rim (dunker's spot FTW) and 42% from the corners, yet the crazy volume of post-up possessions are absolutely killing the offense.

He can be effective in certain spots, but without any self-awareness or someone screaming in his ear to stop camping in the high post when Giannis and/or Brook are on the floor with him, you're getting the absolute worst version of Bobby right now and it's been a trainwreck on both sides of the ball. If the coaching staff isn't gonna get him to change, then he needs to start collecting DNP's. Gallo taking all of his minutes is probably the "lowest-hanging fruit" to improve the team now that we've fixed the defense enough, as crazy as that sounds.

Bobby has been driving me nuts all year, but I think calling for Bobby to get DNPs (at least during the regular season) is a bit too much. Partially because we just don't have enough behind him to make it work, partially because I just think Bobby can figure it out, and partially because so many of his minutes come with PC, who might be the biggest drag on the team relative to minutes played.

I think you're right on the substance, that his high post touches are some of the worst offense we have, and there's a reason we didn't see as much of it under Bud. Bobby is a guy that flourishes when he's put in the right positions, but he's clearly fallen in love with junky post offense, and he's not facing repercussions for playing so small on D. It feels like 2 rebounds are just taken out of his hands a game this year.

PC getting parked, and Crowder going back to the bench (although I'd be happy to see him parked) might do some work for perceptions of other guys in their orbit.

Again, both of these are bizarre analyses.

Bobby doesn't call his own offense. The coaches are calling specific post ups for Bobby.

You can even see it when Bucks coaches say something and they immediately go to a BP post-up. If Bobby was dictating to the rest of the team to get him the ball (pretty laughable concept), then the coach would just tell them to stop.

And Bud used BP on post ups all the time. It's a good staple for the Bucks and they'd be fools to go away from it. It's also why some teams have doubled BP in his post ups. They want the ball out of his hands. They did it again last night against him.

And criticizing BP on rebounding is strange. He is second on the team in rebounding by a large margin and plays a lot less than the starters.

As was mentioned in a story this morning, BP and Giannis seemed like the only two who came to play last night.

Criticizing BP is legitimate, but only after you spend 10 paragraphs criticizing the playing time PC and Crowder are getting.

BP is the least of the problems on this team. He's a bright spot of someone who brings it every night, is on a reasonable contract and is always available.

[Siefer]

I think a lot of people could excuse Bobby's defensive short-comings if he was actually giving you some additive value on offense, but that's the rub this season especially. He's shooting 76% at the rim (dunker's spot FTW) and 42% from the corners, yet the crazy volume of post-up possessions are absolutely killing the offense.

He can be effective in certain spots, but without any self-awareness or someone screaming in his ear to stop camping in the high post when Giannis and/or Brook are on the floor with him, you're getting the absolute worst version of Bobby right now and it's been a trainwreck on both sides of the ball. If the coaching staff isn't gonna get him to change, then he needs to start collecting DNP's. Gallo taking all of his minutes is probably the "lowest-hanging fruit" to improve the team now that we've fixed the defense enough, as crazy as that sounds.

Bobby has been driving me nuts all year, but I think calling for Bobby to get DNPs (at least during the regular season) is a bit too much. Partially because we just don't have enough behind him to make it work, partially because I just think Bobby can figure it out, and partially because so many of his minutes come with PC, who might be the biggest drag on the team relative to minutes played.

I think you're right on the substance, that his high post touches are some of the worst offense we have, and there's a reason we didn't see as much of it under Bud. Bobby is a guy that flourishes when he's put in the right positions, but he's clearly fallen in love with junky post offense, and he's not facing repercussions for playing so small on D. It feels like 2 rebounds are just taken out of his hands a game this year.

PC getting parked, and Crowder going back to the bench (although I'd be happy to see him parked) might do some work for perceptions of other guys in their orbit.

Again, both of these are bizarre analyses.

Bobby doesn't call his own offense. The coaches are calling specific post ups for Bobby.

You can even see it when Bucks coaches say something and they immediately go to a BP post-up. If Bobby was dictating to the rest of the team to get him the ball (pretty laughable concept), then the coach would just tell them to stop.

And Bud used BP on post ups all the time. It's a good staple for the Bucks and they'd be fools to go away from it. It's also why some teams have doubled BP in his post ups. They want the ball out of his hands. They did it again last night against him.

And criticizing BP on rebounding is strange. He is second on the team in rebounding by a large margin and plays a lot less than the starters.

As was mentioned in a story this morning, BP and Giannis seemed like the only two who came to play last night.

Criticizing BP is legitimate, but only after you spend 10 paragraphs criticizing the playing time PC and Crowder are getting.

BP is the least of the problems on this team. He's a bright spot of someone who brings it every night, is on a reasonable contract and is always available.

Bobby's post-ups are some of the least efficient offense we regularly run, and the numbers have improved recently! He's up to .96 PPP which is 41st percentile. I don't care who's calling for the post-ups, they're often bad offense for us, especially when they come at the expense of action involving Giannis, Dame, Midds, or open threes by good shooters.

The whataboutism is particularly strange given that I've been pretty vocal about PC and Crowder being negatives, and the primary guys I want out of the lineup. I even go out of my way to profess optimism about Bobby moving forward. I don't really get this reply, O.

[GHOSTofSIKMA]

I think a lot of people could excuse Bobby's defensive short-comings if he was actually giving you some additive value on offense, but that's the rub this season especially. He's shooting 76% at the rim (dunker's spot FTW) and 42% from the corners, yet the crazy volume of post-up possessions are absolutely killing the offense.

He can be effective in certain spots, but without any self-awareness or someone screaming in his ear to stop camping in the high post when Giannis and/or Brook are on the floor with him, you're getting the absolute worst version of Bobby right now and it's been a trainwreck on both sides of the ball. If the coaching staff isn't gonna get him to change, then he needs to start collecting DNP's. Gallo taking all of his minutes is probably the "lowest-hanging fruit" to improve the team now that we've fixed the defense enough, as crazy as that sounds.

Bobby has been driving me nuts all year, but I think calling for Bobby to get DNPs (at least during the regular season) is a bit too much. Partially because we just don't have enough behind him to make it work, partially because I just think Bobby can figure it out, and partially because so many of his minutes come with PC, who might be the biggest drag on the team relative to minutes played.

I think you're right on the substance, that his high post touches are some of the worst offense we have, and there's a reason we didn't see as much of it under Bud. Bobby is a guy that flourishes when he's put in the right positions, but he's clearly fallen in love with junky post offense, and he's not facing repercussions for playing so small on D. It feels like 2 rebounds are just taken out of his hands a game this year.

PC getting parked, and Crowder going back to the bench (although I'd be happy to see him parked) might do some work for perceptions of other guys in their orbit.

great analysis guys. we canvassed the entire league to come off bobby and nothing of value was available. makes sense we just signed gallo off the heap to try and upgrade his minutes. our front office sees what you guys and the rest of the league sees. i guess were just stuck with him as long as the contract runs unless value is added.

maybe next year we can deal him to a tanking team that needs ticket sales to corporate fans that may appreciate him but beyond that the bobby ship has sailed here.

[jute2003]

I really don't think Dame is cooked. His quicks and bounce are still obviously there. He just can't get out of his own way right now. I imagine it's a combination of personal issues, increased pressure of a perceived contender, really screwed up coaching and system situation, and personnel issues on the team. I dont know how to fix it. Hopefully someone that matters does.

I've given up hope on PatC. His athleticism is gone and that was the only thing keeping him viable.

Bobby is a **** defender who needs to be put in the perfect position to be useful. If he really had any value around the league, he needed to be sent out for a more useful player at the deadline. I really will not be surprised if old man Gallo proves to be more valuable even if he doesn't outplay his minimum salary.

The team in general needs to figure out how to give a ****. It has been an issue for years and years and there are only a couple constants on the team that have been here through all of it. Maybe that means something and maybe it's coincidence but it's **** irritating.

See you guys in a week.

[DanoMac]

FWIW, we were 35-21 in our championship season too at this exact same point

[msiris]

When Khris is back, Pat needs to be eliminated completely from the rotation. It should happen now even with Khris out, but with Khris back there's zero argument against it. Dude is 463rd this year in EPM wins out of 467 total. 5th worst in the entire league. We are giving 20+ mpg to literally one of the worst players in the league this year and you feel it every game.

I am not the Biggest Khris fan but oh my I miss watching him dribbling off his foot once in awhile instead of watching pat bringing nothing to the table.

[Dick Tate]

What to do when your best shooter can't shoot?

[Ron Swanson]

Despite all the Dame struggles, we still have him:

-15th in EPM wins added (22nd in non-adjusted EPM)
-17th in LEBRON (10th in O-LEBRON)
- 3rd in Offensive DPM/DARKO (take with a grain of salt because I don't know if they updated the spreadsheet since a month ago)

Wish we still had Raptor and updated RPM/RAPM, but if bad Lillard is still giving me Top 15-20 type impact, then I'll live with the bad stretches and bank on the idea that he didn't just forget how to shoot a basketball these last 50-days. Time will certainly tell.

[msiris]

What to do when your best shooter can't shoot?

Khris is hurt right now.

[Profound23]

What to do when your best shooter can't shoot?

Khris is hurt right now.

I was going to say "AJ Green is shooting fine to me."

[msiris]

What to do when your best shooter can't shoot?

Khris is hurt right now.

I was going to say "AJ Green is shooting fine to me."

The thing I would like to see is him not taking contested 3s and see if h has a mid range game. Same with Dame.

[paulpressey25]

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