Tuesday Bucks Notes

• The Bucks take on the Nuggets tonight at 7 pm CT at the Resch Center in Green Bay.
  
• Charles Gardner talks to Andrew Bogut's longtime friend/personal coach, Sinisa Markovic. Markovic flew to Milwaukee earlier this year at Bogut's request, worked with him this summer in Australia, and has been living with Bogut during camp. Markovic heads back to Australia tomorrow, but hopefully all that work will pay dividends.

  "He's more active defensively, and offensively we still have to do a little bit more work on it," Markovic said.
  
  Bogut has increased the range on his jump shot and displayed the ability to hit from 15 feet, which could greatly enhance his game.
  
  "He has to, it's a must," Markovic said of the improved jumper. "Otherwise, I will be back again."

  Gardner also notes that Bogut's team during scrimmages today included Mo, Redd, Mason and Yi, so we'll see if that lineup starts tomorrow night in Green Bay.
  
• Steve Sneddon writes about Ramon Sessions' adjustment to the NBA.
  
• Not that we really need much more coverage of Yi Jianlian, but Scott Venci at the Green Bay Press Gazette has a good article on Yi's preseason so far. He sheds a little more light on the decision to draft Yi and the Bucks' expectations.
  

  "Certainly, my coaching staff was on board," Harris said of the selection. "You need the support from the top down. When you make the decision to do this, with all the things that were out there, everyone needed to be on the same page.

  "On that draft night, when Senator Kohl said, 'Larry and Larry, is this the guy that you want?' We said, 'Yes, we are in this together.'"

• In an article about fundraising in college sports, Frank Fitzpatrick of the Philly Inquirer notes that Bogut donated $125,000 to the University of Utah last year.
  
• There's an interesting thread over at RealGM on Yi's name. Most people who follow the Bucks probably understand that Yi is his family name (hence it's on his jersey, like Yao), but I thought the description of "Jianlian" was of particular interest. So here's my understanding--feel free to correct me in the comments:
  
• His full name, as with many Chinese names, is three Chinese characters, so that's why you sometimes see Jianlian spelled as "Jian Lian." Some Chinese have only two characters, like Yao Ming.
  
• Effectively "Lian" is his given name, but unlike in Western cultures, the given name in China isn't used except by close relatives. So my guess is that's the reason the two characters have been combined into the single "Jianlian," since none of us would use the names Jian or Lian separately.
  
• You've probably heard some people, including Herb Kohl, refer to Yi as "Ah Lian." Adding an "Ah" to the given name is a common way of nicknaming in China, notably in Cantonese (which is spoken in the Southeast part of China where Yi is from). If you watch the Chinese news reports on Yi, they also sometimes use this nickname for him. So feel free to call Yi that if you run into him. Some Chinese fans have even taken to jokingly calling Bogut "Ah Bo" using the same logic.
  
• I also asked in that thread about the pronunciation of Jianlian, which is typically pronounced as four syllables by us Americans: Jee-Ahn Lee-Ahn. Watching some of China's games this summer, the Chinese announcers typically compressed those four syllables into about two long ones, sounding more like "Jehn-Lyehn." That's because Chinese characters are monosyllabic, but the pronunciation of "Jian" and "Lian" is simply very difficult for those of us who don't speak Chinese, hence "Jianlian" is typically pronounced phonetically by us Americans.