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| Sunday, October 13 What happened? Depends on who you ask By David Aldridge Special to ESPN.com |
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ST. FRANCIS, Wis. -- They are my favorite team to visit. No one wears their emotions on their sleeves like the Milwaukee Bucks. There is everything you could want. Very good talent, very good coaching, very good organization. And dysfunction to beat the band! They could go to the Finals, or not make the playoffs! It's all up to them. Ambition, jealousy, bitterness, success, fame, money, all played out right in front of you, with no filter. The Osbournes have nothing on the Bradley Center.
"I'm sure in each part of the world that each one of us was in (this summer), we all had some person, some situation, where we were being talked about, or somebody was laughing, or asking us what happened to the team," Ray Allen says now. "And that's embarrassing, too. You know, you have to give that explanation. Because a lot of people knew we were a good team and we were supposed to be in the playoffs." Why didn't they make the playoffs? Let us count the reasons...
"One of the things I did wrong was I just let so many things fester," Allen said. "When Glenn did something wrong, I wouldn't say anything about it. When Sam did something wrong, I wouldn't say anything about it. When George did something I didn't like, I wouldn't say anything about it ... There were times when (he and Karl) wouldn't talk to each other, because we would be so at odds with each other. And not, it might not have been his battle and my battle. It might have been, you know, the frustrations of losing, when you lose like that. You just want to practice and you want to leave." Forward Tim Thomas noticed the chill in the locker room. "It was very surprising," he said. "Coming back last year we should have all said, 'OK, let's not worry about who's an All-Star, who's averaging 20 plus, who's you know doing this, doing that. Let's just go out and win basketball games. And it went totally opposite. I mean, guys worrying about stats. Guys worrying about if I'm gonna be, you know, All-Star, if I'm gonna have this many commercials as this guy or whatever the situation may be. And it just went downhill." When asked, Allen agrees with the notion that the Bucks were selfish last season. But when asked if Robinson was being scapegoated for Milwaukee's problems by getting sent to Atlanta, he started talking not about the departure of Robinson, but reserves Darvin Ham and Mark Pope. "It was a weird kind of selfishness," Allen said. "Because I wasn't trying to shoot the ball every time. Sam wasn't trying to shoot the ball all the time. Glenn wasn't trying to do it. I mean, all these guys, we had the ability to do so many things out there on the floor. We became selfish because we didn't help each other out. We weren't team players ... we get frustrated, and then this guy says, 'This is your fault. That's your fault.' And we've got to throw that out the door." Cassell doesn't agree. "How can people say this was a selfish team?" he asked. "Ray got his shots. Glenn got his shots. You know, we had three guys that averaged over 20 points and shot a high percentage. People don't look at our shooting percentage ... We get shots, but we make the majority of our shots." It was sometime around here that Karl said in the local papers that "one of them has to go, or I have to go." But "it wasn't mad or personal; it was philosophical," Karl says now. "I had reached a point where you know, I got to change, I got to go back to what I feel comfortable inside my gut. I was walking off too many games shaking my head, saying 'How did we win?' " (For his part, Robinson responded this week in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, saying Allen was "a coward" for not saying these things to his face, and added, "He needs to work on not being so soft and quit being a little punk on the court. Just play ball and keep his mouth closed.") Caaaaan you feeel the luuuvv toniiiight?...
"I think this year, I think Ray will do a better job of playing off of Anthony Mason," Cassell said. "Because for a big guy like Mason, once you throw the ball into him, he's gonna throw it back to you. He just wants to be a part of it. He helped my game out tremendously. We had a little two-man game going, and if he's out there, we've got to use him."
Says Karl: "I think we had a false security most of the year being in first place and people were saying, well we're good, and I kept telling them, 'I don't think we're that good. I don't think we're doing the right things.' And then the injuries, what happened with the injuries was the edge that we always had offensively we lost. And so we were maybe equal offensively and we weren't good enough defensively." So changes were made. Robinson was shipped to the Hawks, and Thomas will take his place at small forward, with Toni Kukoc, acquired in the Dog Deal, taking Thomas's place on the bench. "I've always said that Timmy can be the best player in the NBA," Allen said. "He's long, he's talented, he's 6-(foot)-8½, 6-9. He can shoot the ball as well as I can. He can put the ball on the floor. He can post up. He can basically do everything out there on the floor. If he just asserts himself to the situation ... people question whether he can score the points that Glenn (did), that he left out when he was traded down to Atlanta. And I have no doubt. Even if he doesn't score 20 a game, I know he can do so much more out there on the floor."
Karl also parted ways with many of his assistants. Terry Stotts went with Robinson to Atlanta and Tim Grgurich went to Phoenix. "I've kind of joked with my staff, (that) last year I was running a democracy and I think I'm back to being more of a dictator," Karl said. "And I think this team will have more of how I want to play, than maybe how they wanted to play. And I still think a coach, a good coach compromises and develops a system around his players. But I was frustrated with how we defended last year. It drove me crazy, and I think we'll be better. I'm pretty confident we're going to be a lot better defensively." Allen says he is determined to be more of a vocal leader. Cassell says that's not necessary. "I never forget what Michael Jordan said, he made one quote, when Detroit kept beating them," Cassell said. "He said, 'I'm not gonna blame Scottie or Horace; I gotta make myself better.' There it is. That's leadership, right there. You make yourself better, people will follow you. You come back the same way, who's gonna follow you? I'm not gonna follow you. I don't need to be led. I know enough about the game. I know how to win." The Bucks won big two years ago. And they have the talent and coaching and organization to win big again. It is up to them to figure out how to deal with one another. The great thing about sports is that your next chance at redempion is usually just a day or two away. After everything that happened with his own team last season, and with what happened to his team at the World Championships, I ask Karl how he feels now. "Good, good," he said. "I mean conforming, persevering, all those, all those wonderful traits of sport that you need to do when you get knocked on your ass and you got to pick yourself up and come back and get in the marathon race of the NBA season. It's going to be fun. It's a great challenge, because we're changing and we're in a transformation period here in Milwaukee, but I think it's a transformation from a good team to trying to get back to being a championship team. "It was dismal in the summertime, but I think I got a coaching staff. I got an organization that learns from its mistakes. It's going to study its mistakes and we're going to move forward. And the decisions are a combination of good personnel decisions, very good young players, kind of changing the makeup of the team (and) giving some guys some big opportunities. Timmy Thomas and Ray Allen probably have the biggest opportunity of their lives coming up. And George Karl has a great opportunity to bounce back and get back to where he wants to be, too." David Aldridge, who covers the NBA for ESPN, is a regular contributor to ESPN.com. |
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