Monday, October 6, 2008

Buried On The Depth Chart

Is anything more under the radar on the Wisconsin sports scene than the Bucks? Not only has training camp started, they had an exhibition game tonight! Yeah, they lost by 38. No, seriously, they started already. With the Brewers playing October baseball for the first time since I was 6, and the heart of the Packers/Badgers football season stealing the rest of the headlines...the Bucks are even a bigger afterthought than normal. That will happen when your team is expected to win 40 games - at very best. I'm still convinced that if they loaded the Mayflower trucks and headed to Las Vegas tomorrow, about 1,200 die hards would be pissed off: that's it. I'll let some ESPN writer provide a preview...God knows I don't follow this mess:

Nonetheless, there are just too many holes here for the Bucks to succeed with the reckless quick-fix approach that they're pursuing. The frontcourt is a mess, and if they have any injuries at all they'll be in a totally untenable situation. In the backcourt, the Bucks appear to have three backup point guards and no starters.

The sum of it all is that, basically, I don't get it. Milwaukee has capped itself out for three years and stuck itself with several midcareer players who are almost certain to decline in coming seasons, and for what? The chance to go 38-44 and get swept in the first round of the playoffs? Have they sunk so far that this is the new standard of success?

If so, they may be able to clear their lowered bar and declare victory. More likely, though, their still-numerous holes will keep them scrambling for more veteran retreads, and they'll sink deeper into salary-cap hell while losing the battle of the treadmill.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's going to be a long winter with UW, the Packers and the Bucks all sucking pretty hard. The phrase "pitchers and catchers report" in February can't come soon enough.

Anonymous said...

The NBA is dead to me.