The Next Lamb: The Milwaukee Bucks

Game 5: Milwaukee (1-3) at Boston (3-1)

Date: Wednesday, November 3

Time: 8 p.m. (Eastern)

TV: ESPN

I haven't had much of an opportunity to watch the Bucks this year. As I'm writing this, I'm keeping an eye on a replay of their 90-76 home loss to Portland last night. As I type this sentence, in fact, they're up 23-13, and they look good on both ends of the floor. The box score says they scored 27 points in the first period, which means they got just 49 the rest of the way. I have no idea what happened after such a promising start.

My only other look at Milwaukee this season was a few minutes of their 96-85 loss to Minnesota. I tuned in towards the end of that one, and most of what I saw was Brandon Jennings forcing the action and turning the ball over. That was the tail end of a nice in which the Bucks hit just over a third of their shots, however, so perhaps frustration was settling in.

Jennings, the second-year point guard, is an interesting player for me. I saw him at Summer League before his rookie season and was pretty unimpressed. He got everybody's attention by scoring 55 points on the Warriors early last year, and I personally think that one game colored everyone's opinion of him. Perhaps it's the stubborn Jonny Flynn fan in me; Jennings was a Rookie of the Year candidate, Flynn was widely panned as one of the worst starting point guards in the league. But statistically the players were pretty similar. (I'll have more on this once Flynn gets back and I write my defense of him.)

Anyway, Jennings vs. Rajon Rondo is a matchup of the only two players who have recorded triple-doubles this season (Jennings dropped 20/10/10 on Charlotte last week). Boston has the clear advantage in that matchup. A big key will be limiting Jennings' options; he's not the most patient point guard, and he'll force the action if he can't get what he's looking for right away.

Milwaukee's other big name is center Andrew Bogut. The big Aussie isn't 100% after a nasty arm injury suffered at the end of last season, but he's the first good post player the Celtics have faced this season. I don't know if Shaq is playing tonight, but Bogut isn't overly physical, so hopefully Jermaine O'Neal will be able to handle him. He's got a nice little lefty hook that he loves to use, and word is that his shooting stroke -- not great to begin with -- isn't what it was before the injury. Bogut is one of the best shotblockers in the NBA, so Boston will need to be wary of his presence on drives to the hoop. On the flip side, whoever Bogut is guarding should be open for dishoffs and offensive rebounds.

The Bucks have a bunch of wing players who do a variety of things well. John Salmons is good scorer, Carlos Delfino is having a great year shooting the three, and newly-acquired Corey Maggette excels at getting to the foul line (where he converts at a terrific rate). Reserve power forward Ersan Ilyasova is a good three-point shooter, and the starter at the four, Drew Gooden, gave KG a lot of trouble when he was with Cleveland a few years ago.

Milwaukee was tabbed by most as an up-and-coming team in the East after they took the Hawks to seven games last season (without Bogut). They haven't come together yet this year, but they have been playing very good defense. Boston pushed the pace against Detroit last night and would do well to use a similar strategy against the Bucks. Doing so would keep Milwaukee from setting its defense and force the excitable Jennings into turnovers.

Boston 98, Milwaukee 89

[recap] [box score]

I was excited for this matchup because it was my first look at Brandon Jennings, the point guard for the Bucks who hung a double-nickel on the Warriors last month, the most points by a rookie in a single game in more than 40 years. Jennings was decent, but his opposite number stole the show. Rajon Rondo did a nice job of keeping the clamps on Jennings, spent three quarters setting the table for his teammates -- my favorite was a no-look feed to Kendrick Perkins after an offensive rebound on which three Bucks defenders bit on Rondo's ball fake -- and then scored all 11 of his points in the fourth quarter, including going 5-for-7 from the free throw line. Rondo's fell one rebound short of a triple-double, adding five steals to go with 13 assists.

Kevin Garnett continued his torrid shooting, and Rasheed Wallace came up with big offensive contributions off the bench.

Marquis Daniels missed this game, and it appears it was the first of what will be quite a few more: He had thumb surgery today and the Boston Globe is reporting that Daniels will be out about eight weeks. I didn't even notice that Daniels wasn't playing, only that the Rondo-Eddie House-Ray Allen combination Doc Rivers ran out there for a while was a little odd. These are the kind of details you miss when you are watching a game at 4 in the morning, having spent the past 12 hours staring at law review articles about Christian political realism.

Losing Daniels hurts, for all the reasons that we got him in the first place: He can handle the ball and let House play the two with the second unit; he can guard both big guards and small forwards; he gives us someone other than Tony Allen to spell Ray Allen and Paul Pierce on the wing. Daniels' contributions aren't apparent from the box scores, but he'll be missed. His absence will probably cost us a game or two down the line, and Doc should be advised to ensure those losses come while Daniels is still out, rather than in the playoffs (due to Ray and Pierce being worn out from playing more minutes during the regular season in Daniels' absence).

Speaking of Tony Allen, he played for the first time all season, and picked up where he left off: Canceling out roughly every positive play he made with a negative one. Relatively early into his brief return to the court, he went up and gathered a very tough defensive rebound over two Bucks. The carom took him towards the left sideline, and while falling ever so slightly backwards, with the Bucks retreating back downcourt, he whipped a chest pass towards the Celtics basket that missed an understandably surprised Brian Scalabrine (he is, after all, a power forward, and had no reason to think that Tony would be passing him the ball) by about three feet. Tony just never looks comfortable with the rock in his hands. I'd like to be able to say that this was just rust, but I know better. It's Tony being Tony.

Next game is a TV game; Thursday on TNT at 8 p.m. Eastern against the Wizards.

Muy Beno: A quick note on Brandon Jennings. I saw him play in Summer League in Vegas, and while you could tell he had talent, he seemed like he was a ways away from being a positive contributor. Moreover, this was when all the stuff about him being brash and undisciplined was coming out. I was sitting fairly close to Bucks coach Scott Skiles and general manager John Hammond in the Vegas crowd, and Skiles -- a notoriously tough, no-nonsense guy as both a point guard and a coach -- had this look on his face the entire time that read: "This is the asshole you drafted to be my point guard?" If you could bet on stuff like Skiles performing a reverse Sprewell and strangling Jennings by season's end, I would have.

It wasn't enough to keep me from drafting Jennings late in one of my fantasy leagues, on the theory that he was going to play a lot and guys who play a lot put up decent fantasy stats (this worked very well with Oklahoma City's Russeell Westbrook last season). It was enough, however, to get me to drop Jennings before the season when I discovered that Andray Blatche would be starting the first several games for Washington while Antawn Jamison recovered injury. Jennings was quickly scooped up, and now I'm starting T.J. Ford in one of my "utility" slots on a team that is one good assist man away from being about as close to a lock as you can get in a semi-competitive league.

I overlooked a lot of things about Jennings, particularly the fact that the guy was perhaps the best point guard in his high school class, and that his modest averages (something like six points and two assist per game) in his one year playing professionally in Italy could be explained by many things: Transition to a foreign culture; playing a different style of basketball (an adjustment for any player, but particularly a point guard); the fact that European teams give sparse minutes to young guys, particularly those who they know will be jumping to the NBA soon. (Spanish phenom Ricky Rubio, the 19-year-old point guard whom the Wolves made the fifth pick in the NBA Draft this past summer, continues to make NBA mouths water despite averaging around 20 minutes, five points, and five assists in 17 games for DKV Joventut in Serie A and EuroLeaugue competition.)

Anyway, Jennings is quick and wiry, with a very mature-looking floater and a jumper that looks decent but wasn't falling last night. Moreover, he seems to have won over the Milwaukee organization. So, yeah, I was wrong about him.