From espn's Point Forward blog: I enjoyed this line in Jeremy Schmidt’s recap of the Bucks’ latest tough loss: Sometimes it seems as though Corey Maggette is hell bent on making basketball an unwatchable game. Maggette managed to be involved in 10 fouls, drawing seven and committing three. Amen.
I think there's a lesson here. Milwaukee was a borderline playoff team that spent money on free agents. Mags was a trade, but they grabbed Drew Gooden for $30 M for five years. Look where they are now. We did well with getting Dorell Wright and Lou Amundson. It's better that we trade our expiring cap space for a C or SG or someone who can help us right away than try for the big name free agent market right now.
Milwaukee has Skiles as coach. He's the coach most likely to have his players tune out, it's just a matter of time. He is ill suited to coach mature veteran players. Ideally suited to coach college ball where his act would wear thin about the time his seniors graduate. If D'Antoni were coaching Milwaukee, they'd be a terrific team. Heck, if Vinnie Del Negro were coaching Milwaukee, the record would easily be much better.
Defintely, reminds me of how the Warriors did things prior to Riley/Nellie's tenure (or Nellie's second tenure should I say)- go and make moves just to make moves and tell your fans "look we got a 20 ppg scorer and we went out and got a PF!". Meanwhile the rest of the league is laughing at you for getting such crappy players at such crappy prices. And speaking of Skiles, I remember when those moves went down not only did they seem dumb in general but I couldn't understand how any GM would think those guys are a fit with Skiles at all. Riley definitely deserves props for getting DW and Amundson. Amundson hasn't even been that good and I'm still a fan of the move- the contract is structured in such a way where even if the guy is a bust on the court it doesn't hurt us. Hes movable, hes quality depth even if he gets shut out of the rotation and hes not costing us out the nose to have around. We waited late in the off season to get him and we actually landed him and did so on a good deal. Warriors teams of old would have just settled on Troy Hudson, Mikkie Moore, [insert veteran on the brink of being cast out from the league ], etc. Oh and BTW what have the guys we dumped for Lee been doing in NY? AR is out of the rotation and already on the way out of New York. Azu looks like he won't play again this year and may never be the same guy. Turiaf starts for them it seems but still has some injury issues and it seems like he'll probably leave in FA since NYK is chronically fixated on whatever sexy free agents are out there. Udoh aint lookin too bad either. Dumping Mags is still my favorite move of the offseason though lol.
