Friday Bucks Notes

• The Bucks are the least interesting team in the NBA. Well, at least according to Wages of Wins author Professor Dave Berri, who looked at team performance relative to mean over the past twenty years:

  At the other end of the spectrum we see four teams. Milwaukee, Boston, Cleveland, and Houston have each been the anti-Spurs. Each of these teams has been within one standard deviation of 41 wins for 16 seasons. In other words, these franchises have each only been interesting four times. I think one would argue that contending for a title is more interesting than contending for the number one pick. And of these four, Milwaukee is the only one never to contend for the title in the past twenty years (although they did consistently contend prior to this time period). Consequently, I am giving the title of “least interesting team” to the Milwaukee Bucks.

  The good news is we're on the upswing, right? Well, uh, maybe not.
  

  When we look at the rest of the roster we see three above average players: Andrew Bogut, Williams, and Redd. None of these players managed to post a WP48 (Wins Produced per 48 minutes) of 0.150 or higher in either 05-6 or 06-07. As noted in the discussing the Pareto Principle, 20% of the Association players produced 80% of the wins. From a team’s perspective, this means that your best three players tend to produce the majority of your victories.

  For the Bucks this tendency is bad news. Milwaukee’s best three players are not that great. Consequently, it’s hard to see this team becoming “interesting” in a good way in 07-08.

• Charlie Villanueva spoke yesterday to Jorge Sierra of HoopsHype. The most important part:

  How's the shoulder feeling?

  Charlie Villanueva: It's feeling great now. It's 100 percent ready. I have been playing in Milwaukee for two weeks already and it's feeling good and I'm ready to go.

• Turns out the Bucks bought out Damir Markota's contract for $385k. Without it Markota would have been owed about $687k, the minimum for a second-year player.