butler to the bucks. WTF going on in milwaukee

[I-77 NORTH]

Trade bait for Rondo, book it.

 

[chrisrich91]

Trade bait for Rondo, book it.

Butler is the opposite of trade bait for Rondo. Try again.

 

[GCCSteel]

Thaddeus Young is my vote for best player...Collison right behind him. What a bad group of players.

 

[The Process God]

The Bucks' owner seems to be one of those guys that can't stand to watch his team lose. Can say I blame him. When they did win the #1 pick, all they got was Andrew Bogut and they've since lost all of the value they got for trading him.

But I hear what you are talking about with the history of #12 picks, it's been pretty bad. Is Nick Collison the best player on that list?

2013 Steven Adams, Pittsburgh – Oklahoma City Thunder
2012 Jeremy Lamb, Connecticut – Houston Rockets
2011 Alec Burks, Colorado – Utah Jazz
2010 Xavier Henry, Kansas – Memphis Grizzlies
2009 Gerald Henderson, Duke – Charlotte Bobcats
2008 Jason Thompson, Rider – Sacramento Kings
2007 Thaddeus Young, Georgia Tech – New Orleans Hornets
2006 Hilton Armstrong, Connecticut – New Orleans Hornets
2005 Yaroslav Korolev, CSKA Moscow – L.A. Clippers
2004 Robert Swift, Bakersfield HS (Calif.) – Seattle Supersonics
2003 Nick Collison, Kansas – Seattle Supersonics
2002 Melvin Ely, Fresno State – L.A. Clippers
2001 Vladimir Radmanovic, Serbia & Montenegro – Seattle Supersonics
2000 Etan Thomas, Syracuse – Dallas Mavericks
1999 Aleksandar Radojevic, Barton County CC – Toronto Raptors
1998 Michael Doleac, Utah – Orlando Magic
1997 Austin Croshere, Providence – Indiana Pacers
1996 Vitaly Potapenko, Wright State – Cleveland Cavaliers
1995 Cherokee Parks, Duke – Dallas Mavericks
1994 Khalid Reeves, Arizona – Miami HEAT
1993 George Lynch, North Carolina – L.A. Lakers

But Jim Paxson was a number 12 pick in 1979 and he has the driving force behind the Cavs winning the 2003 lottery. :gap::gap::gap::gap:

I don't know about everyone else, but I feel that, if it weren't for Grant, who probably talked Gilbert out of a quick fix that would eventually lead to mediocrity, we'd be in the same position.

We've had a clear mission as to what we were going to be doing each season these past three seasons, and that was to stockpile draft picks and young talent, lose a shit-ton of games, and keep our cap space open until the 2014 off-season where we might be able to strike it big or take on a big-time player for pennies on the dollar. This plan required no more or less than three years of tanking, but we're now left with a superstar in the making and a lot of guys who could really make some noise in the league. We also still have yet to use many draft picks, and we have yet another weapon in our cap space for the 2014 off-season. I'm glad we have a GM who at least thus far has been nothing short of amazing.

 

[Douglar]

It's a big article. Totally worth the read. (at least in September).


http://espn.go.com/blog/truehoop/post/_/id/62298/whats-up-with-the-milwaukee-bucks

Since Milwaukee struggles to recruit the kind of players who can single-handedly deliver home-court advantage in the playoffs, that leaves the Bucks with two general directions to follow. They can tread water as a league average team with the hope that, with a break or two, they can add 10-12 wins to their .500 record, join the adult table and continue to build from there. The Indiana Pacers, the former employer of Bucks assistant general manager David Morway, have deployed this strategy in recent years. The Bucks' alternative is to deliberately place themselves in a position to acquire a collection of high draft picks who could morph into an elite core -- the Oklahoma City Model, now a proper noun in the NBA.

"Guys are going to say, 'I want to be a part of this because they're winning,' or you need to be a team, like Cleveland, that gets two No. 1 picks or three or four top-five picks, and a guy says, 'I see what they have,' ” Bucks general manager John Hammond said.

The treading-water strategy needs a public relations professional. The basketball intelligentsia mocks teams that seem content to chase the No. 8 seed, especially in the East (No. 8 seeds in the West are usually pretty good and generally have legitimate aspirations to finish higher). The maxim, “If you’re not contending, you’re rebuilding,” is regarded as smart thinking. Some league executives publicly adopted another neologism -- “the treadmill of mediocrity" -- to describe what many of them see as a fatal condition. A popular notion exists that nothing short of running the table with a series of mid-first-round picks as the Pacers did, a team is a long shot to contend with this blueprint, even though there's little evidence that losing ultimately leads to winning.

 

[Tornicade]

http://espn.go.com/blog/truehoop/post/_/id/40055/does-tanking-even-work

I really think there is a lot of holes in this article. for example. the authori cites Larry bird as an example of a later lottery pick being a superstar. uh Larry Bird was drafted 6th a full season before he left College.

He also failed to include top 5 picks with finals since the premise was about contending. The Idea of a team build is to put you into a position to compete for championships.

I do believe there are several types of tanking. The Cavs Build was never based on draft slot. It valued flexibility and youth witha roster makeup that did not manufacture an proper environment for consistent winning. Injury time off for most cases were maximized. Another Aspect of the Cavs build is their coach was more focused on development overall than actual wins. This really wouldnt of cost him his job I suspect if another Coach with ties had not become available.

Cavs also didnt really on tanking for draft picks. Cavs facillitated an abundance of trades to maximize their chances of a good return on the draft. If noone they really wanted was all that was available they ahd a tendency to trade the pick for more picks down the role.. this goes in part to building a sustained pipeline of young talent.

One of the thing impacting building through the draft and the time frame of reaping that talent is teams are in a tricky position of retaining that talent or losing patience and trading one of those pieces at an underrated value. Essentially College basketball has gone to from a well tuned 4 year nba development program into a pick talent clean and develop in the NBA process.. This means alot of NBA teams are essentially Farm teams developing talent (see traditionally Sacramento, Minnesota, La Clippers, Golden State, Toronto etc.) of course various other teams fall in and out of that cycle.Needless to say you cant just bombard the draft like Cleveland did and suddenly be a year or two from contention. This really puts bottomed out teams at a disadvantage and circumvents the type of parity the NBA and alot of fans would like to see.

I really dont like the term "treadmill of mediocrity." term. its not used correctly. this would be a team that has reached its ceilings. its stars are in their prime and the team has no flexibility and limited trade value on their assets. Over the years Ive seen the Dallas Mavericks, San Antonio Spurs, Indiana Pacers, and the Memphis Gizzlies thrown into this category and all of them have competed and/or won some type of finals.

Milwaukee has rebooted their roster. They are young and they are mixing in veteran talent to their roster. The owner is hoping he has a star in there. This is refeshing and a much better route to go then their free agency dabblings or paying top dollar for guys who cant be the guy.

 

[Douglar]

I do believe there are several types of tanking. The Cavs Build was never based on draft slot. It valued flexibility and youth witha roster makeup that did not manufacture an proper environment for consistent winning. Injury time off for most cases were maximized. Another Aspect of the Cavs build is their coach was more focused on development overall than actual wins. This really wouldnt of cost him his job I suspect if another Coach with ties had not become available.

I think that's mostly right for the first two seasons of the Cavs rebuild. Last season though something changed. The Cavs started picking up veteran players in January and didn't trade away expiring talent at the trade deadline this time. I think the Cavs front office was hoping to get 30 wins last season and would have been perfectly happy with a mid lottery pick. Bennett could have still been on the board if the Cavs picked at #8.

Things really went wrong with the team after the trade deadline that were not part of the tanking plan. I think the plan was to close the season strong and start building a winning culture. Instead, it looked like a big rift opened up between some of the players and the coaching staff while the defense was not only failing to gell, it was a laughing stock. It wasn't tanking any more. It became plan old fashioned losing. My opinion is that by the time the team got to April, Gilbert was more than willing to approve a coaching change and Grant would have recommended one even if Mike Brown wasn't available.

As for the Milwaukee story, they do gloss over a lot of stuff, like the fact that Milwaukee did have a number one pick not too long ago, when they took Bogut over Chris Paul and Deron Williams, and then proceed to flub several picks in a row after that. They traded their 2006 pick for the player than used to be Magloire, then had two epic busts in Yi Jianlian (instead of Joakim Noah) and Joe Alexander (instead of Brook Lopez). They hit some good rotation players in the second round, but pretty much failed 4 years in a row with their first round pick when they had a chance to build through the draft.