Milwaukie Bucks, 12th Eastern Conference. I guess it shows how deep the eastern conference has gotten when the Milwaukie Bucks have a lot of talent on the roster. Coming off a year where they landed 8th seed, they decided to change the future of the franchise. They let Monta Ellis, the teams leading scorer and play maker, walk to the Mavericks. They let JJ Reddick walk to the clippers, they failed to resign Mike Dunleavy and traded away Brandon Jennings for Brandon Knight. However Bucks big plan was to sign Larry Sanders to an extension before the start of the season and they achieved it with a 4 year $44 million contract. Signing potential star OJ Mayo was something the bucks had wanted to do for a while, add in Caron Butler as a serviceable veteran and with Ilyisova on the outside hitting shots with Gary neal and John Henson coming of the bench, this team does have potential to make the playoffs. What they have going for them: What the Bucks having going for them is a lot of offensive power. OJ Mayo can score a lot when the balls in his hands and without a proper elite point guard, OJ mayo should see a lot of it. Ilyisova can average 20 a game when he is hitting them from long range. Gary Neal is a machine scorer of the bench and Butler was once a 20 point player. They are going to run a lot as well with the athletic team they have. Brandon Knight is in new territory and should enjoy it and play better. He will have complete faith in him from day one to become one of the better point guards in the league. Larry Sanders is also a defensive monster and apparently has upped his offensive game over the off season. What they don’t have going for them: What they don’t have going for them is they are going to be a real bad defensive team, with no real good defensive players on the perimeter with Caron Butler getting older meaning Larry Sanders is going to have to help from the weakside a lot or protect the rim, not a good recipe for someone who you need out on the court with as least amount of fouls as possible. Brandon Knight hasn’t grown into what looks like a top 15 point guard (although it’s been two years). His stats decreased from over all over the board and he is has to compete with Williams, Rondo, Wall, Irving, Rose on a nightly basis. What to expect: All you have to do is look at the roster and you can see this team has talent, it’s just going to be interesting in how they use it. Does OJ dominate the ball allowing him to put up maybe 25 a night? If he does that does Sanders get neglected and average 7 points again? This team is going to be able to put up a lot of points and I expect them to average one of the most in the Eastern Conference, but I believe the defensive end of the court needs to be touched up. Also the talent has to continue, who knows maybe these guys don’t get any better. I think this year will be more on trying to get Sanders into that Dwight Howard type player and see what they can do from there.
Posted on: Thu, 03 Oct 2013 09:37:35 +0000
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