Milwaukee Bucks Blog - The Bob Boozer Jinx : Adrian Griffin

Why can't Journal Sentinel get the Bucks salary cap jam right?... Free Ramon Sessions

J.D. Mo — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 23:23:00 GMT

First it was columnist Michael Hunt declaring that the Bucks moves over the summer gave them near future salary cap flexibility (there isn't any). Now it's Tom Enlund in his Sunday NBA Beat column reporting that the Bucks have no salary cap flexibility or luxury tax room 2009-10 but botching the luxury tax crunch by miscalculating Charlie Villanueva by $5 million.

Why is Milwaukee's daily newspaper unable to tell its readers what the Bucks payroll issues really are?

Hunt flat out fudged things in his puffy August column. But Enlund, who's reporting is usually quite solid? I don't get it. Enlund should know the Bucks salary situation as well as he knows his own bank balance.

Enlund did start out on the right track, writing that, "As its stands, the Bucks' payroll is probably about $5 million below the luxury tax figure that is projected for the 2009-'10 season."

Enlund's close enough there. With the waiver of Austin Croshere, the current Bucks player payroll is $69.5 million with the current luxury tax threshold at $71.15 million (for every dollar a team goes over the luxury threshold, it pays a dollar in tax to the league). The NBA's salary cap and luxury threshold goes up about 3% every year. This puts the projected 2009/10 luxury tax threshold at about $74 million, or $4.5 million above Bucks 2008-09 salaries.

Enlund then says that retaining restricted free agents Ramon Sessions and Charlie Villanueva will be difficult and concludes that "all a team would have to do is offer Villanueva a deal starting at $5.1 million, knowing the Bucks would not match because it would take them over the luxury-tax figure."

What? Uh-uh. Enlund apparently forgot to account for Charlie's current $3.5 million pay. What actually happens if the Bucks match a $5.1m offer for Charlie V is that the Bucks 2009-10 player payroll rises to $69.51 million -- this season's payroll figure, nearly to the dollar. That's still $4.5 million under the projected luxury tax threshold, enough to make a deal with Sessions and avoid the luxury tax. Everyone would be back and under contract except Tyrone Lue and Damon Jones, who don't play anyway.

Enlund supposes the Bucks could trade Sessions or Charlie V (trading deadline is Feb. 19) to avoid the risk of losing them in free agency. If you've read this far, you know that the risk doesn't exist because the $5.1 million problem Enlund calculated doesn't exist.

The best way to look at this is that the Bucks could trade Charlie V away with, say Lue or Jones, and the Bucks wouldn't save all that much money. They'd still have to pay a big forward and a couple of bench players next season. If you buy that the Bucks need defensive help at power forward now with Charlie V, how does the team improve without spending money on a power forward?

If the Bucks gave both Sessions and Charlie away for dead contracts, the result would be a $65 million, ten-man roster that 1) finished somewhere around .500 and could miss this season's playoffs; and 2) allows only $9 under the luxury tax to sign next year's rookies and two or three free agents. The situation would be no more dire than the Bucks paying Ramon and Charlie, except that the Bucks would no longer have Ramon or Charlie.

Any way you look at Sessions and Villanueva's free agency, the Bucks are in line to pay some luxury tax

What should really shock Bucks fans in all this is that the Bucks are almost $11 million over the 2008-09 salary cap (the cap is $58.68 million) and very close to the luxury tax with this 18-win, 21-loss roster. This is largely due to ex-Bucks GM Larry Harris (and owner Herb Kohl) grossly overpaying Michael Redd and backup center Dan Gadzuric ($6.25m this season, $14m more over the next two). The Bucks could be stuck with Gadzooks.

Michael Redd is set to make $17 million next season. Richard Jefferson will make $14.2 million. If the cost of keeping Gadzooks, Redd and R.J. (18-21 record, Bucks fans) becomes the loss of younger players like Charlie V and Sessions for next to nothing, John Hammond will have some explaining to do to Bucks fans.

If the explanation is that coach Scott Skiles doesn't see Sessions as a point guard of the future, or if Charlie V is not in the team's plans, then trade them and make sure players or 1st round draft picks come back in the exchange.

But don't tell Bucks fans it was done to save money that won't be saved. And don't expect the Journal Sentinel to help explain it. They'll get it wrong.

Calculate a Bucks plan on your own: Here again is the Bucks salaries info at the best, most detailed, salary info resource out there, shamsports.com. Click on a player's name to get contract particulars and other details. Be sure to read Sham's Adrian Griffin bio once you're there.

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Defensive Sessions: The Bucks have been struggling to guard the three-point line and the T-Wolves took advantage of it Saturday, shooting 13-22 (59%) in the Bucks 106-104 loss. Andrew Bogut returned after missing 4 games to score 14 pts and grab 7 rebs in 27 mins (to go with 2 blocks and 2 assists) and Redd and R.J. combined for 61 pts. Yet the Bucks perimeter defense broke down repeatedly in the 4th quarter as the T-Wolves came back from a double digit deficit to win.

In the four games Bogut missed plus the T-Wolves game, opponents shot 50.5 % (50-99) on 3-pointers and made an average of 10 per game. It got worse, not better, as the week progressed. In the last three games, the Sixers, Nets and T-Wolves shot a combined 55.2% from the land of Reggie (37-67) as the Bucks dropped two out of three.

The defensive stats say that coach Skiles ought to deploy the Luke Ridnour-Ramon Sessions guard tandem more often, a case that Bucks Diary made Sunday after the T-Wolves loss. (Thanks go to PaulPressey25, moderator at the realgm.com Bucks forum, for the link).

The 2-guards that Sessions has guarded this season have shot much worse than the 2's covered by Redd -- who's allowed one more bucket per 10 shots than Ramon has. Sessions is now used almost exclusively to back Ridnour up at point guard, and the pair have been in the game together only rarely since Redd came back from injury (he missed 14 games in November). Given the Bucks problems guarding 3-point shots of late, my hunch was that the Bucks were probably defending the 3-point line better when Redd was out and Sessions was playing more.

So I spent part of the Eagles-Giants game the way any obsessive NBA blogger would: on the basketball-reference.com site, crunching Bucks opponents shooting stats. (Yeah, I'm your type Gridiron Girl). Here are the results.

Opponent 3-point %, 14 games Redd missed: 29.8 % (78-262). This would lead the NBA, defensively.

Opponent 3-point %, 25 games Redd has played: 39.1% (168-429). This would be 27th in the NBA, two removed from dead last.

That's quite a difference. On the season, Bucks opponents are shooting 35.6% (246-691) from behind the arc. That's good for 18th in the league.

In the games Redd missed (gRm), Sessions produced offensively as well: Sessions' 2008-09 gRm is 32 mpg, 15.7 ppg, 3.8 rpg, 5 apg.

Whether or not the Bucks can sign Ramon Sessions when he becomes a free agent this summer isn't really much of a question. They can and should. The idea of trading him to avoid his free agency? That's not the sort of thing an organization that wants to win sometime in the near future should even think about.doing.

Bucks (18-21) @ Wizards (7-29), 6pm, FSN

The Wiz are one of the NBA's truly bad teams, and have lost four straight since surprising the Cavs over a week ago. After the loss in Minnesota, the Bucks are due for one of their bounceback games and are at full strength (minus Malik Allen) with Bogut back in the starting lineup. This should be the game where the Bucks get their defense back on track, but with these Bucks, a fan never knows.

This is the 4th game in five for the Bucks against teams that have fired their coaches this season. The Wiz fired Eddie Jordan in November, replacing him with interim coach Ed Tapscott. Point guard Gilbert Arenas is still out rehabbing his knee and former Buck Mike James (remember him from the 2004-05 season?) starts at point for the Wiz. James was traded for Reese Gaines (who?) in the middle of that season.

Mo Williams trade: Cavaliers get their shooter - but how did the Bucks do?

J.D. Mo — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 10:56:00 GMT

Photo Illustration: Jeremy Jannene

Mo Williams had to be one happy-go-shooting point guard Wednesday after the Bucks, the Cleveland Cavaliers and Oklahoma City finalized a trade that sent Mo to the Cavs and brought point guard Luke Ridnour from OK City to the Bucks.

To make the trade happen, the Bucks sent forward Desmond Mason to OK City and accepted the final year of former Buck Damon Jones' contract at $4.5 million.

Also coming to Milwaukee is 34-year-old journeyman forward Adrian Griffin from OK City (still nameless out of Seattle). In addition to Mason, OK City receives Cavs forward-center Joe Smith, a Bucks fan favorite (2003-06) many had hoped would be coming back to Milwaukee in this trade.

Why is Mo happy? The Bucks best shooter last season leaves a lottery team where his growth as an offensive player caused rifts, and goes to a title-contending team where pushing the ball and shooting jumpshots will be a big part of his job description playing with Lebron James.

That the Bucks had to add more than Mo into this trade (Mason) and take Jones off the Cavs hands was no surprise.(See yesterday's post). The Cavs had balked at taking on Mo's 5-year $43 million contract and $8.35M salary, and needed more incentive. This trade had to get bigger in order to happen, and Bucks GM John Hammond stepped up to absorb the messy side of it, all but guaranteeing that the Bucks would be viewed as the team that got the worst end of this deal.

BUCKS: The fact that Hammond was willing give up Mason while taking Jones' contract shouldn't be interpreted as a statement that coach Scott Skiles thinks Luke Ridnour is his answer at point guard. It is, however, a statement that Hammond and Skiles could not foresee moving forward with Mo. It also says fairly loudly that Mason, never the type of game-changing small forward who delivers wins, was expendable on the Richard Jefferson Bucks. Bucks GM Hammond didn't say much in the official Bucks press release, but offered this comment to JSOnline's Charles Gardner when it was suggested that the Lebron-Mo combo could be explosive:

"At the end of the day, you have to evaluate your own situation," Hammond said. "Does it help us, first and foremost? The evaluation was that it did."

How does it help the Bucks?: Gardner didn't ask but I'll fill in.

1) The trade removes a potential headache in Mo. This is not a criticism of Mo as much as it is a recognition of bad blood that exists on the Bucks roster from previous losing seasons. It was apparent at the games that Mo no longer had much tolerance for "the Michael Redd show" and invested part of his final season as a Buck in proving to anyone who cared that he was just as prolific a scorer as Redd. Bucks fans have seen quite enough of the Mo-Redd backcourt, and Hammond and Skiles were wise not to reboot it for one more run. In Brewhoop's estimation, Mo was "the odd man out" when it became clear that Redd was staying after the Jefferson trade.

2) The trade relieves the Bucks of Mo's 5-year, $43 million contract. Ridnour is a two-year, $13M commitment. In trading Mason and Mo, the Bucks cleared out about $14.3M in salary while taking in $12.7M - an immediate $1.6M more in wiggle room under the luxury tax limit, most of which they used to sign Francisco Elson the day of the Mo trade. The Bucks remain about $2M under the luxury tax limit and could free up another $1.7M by cutting Griffin, whose salary is not guaranteed. Next year the Bucks will save $2.36M (the difference between Mo and Ridnour's salaries) but the big benefit comes in 2010, when Ridnour's contract expires and the $9.3M Mo is set to be paid becomes free and clear -- giving the Bucks some room to grow.

3) Acquiring the 27-year-old Ridnour, a point guard in Scott Skiles' image, takes Ramon Sessions out of the fire next season. Sessions, 22, is a focus of Bucks development but has only seven starts under his belt and may need some more time to grow into the starting point guard position. He may not need more time, but that's something for Skiles to sort out in preseason, knowing that he has Ridnour at his disposal and veteran Tyrone Lue behind them. And Jones, if he's allowed to suit up.

4) Ridnour could find an NBA rebirth of sorts in Milwaukee; and in Skiles, he couldn't ask for a better point guard coach. He's not a player Bucks fans have had much of a chance to see (Seattle's national NBA profile having been about as high as Milwaukee's) but Ridnour thrived early in his career as Ray Allen's backcourt mate. He started his second season in the league, as the Sonics won the Northwest Division and routed Sacremento from the playoffs before falling to the eventual champs, the Spurs. Ridnour averaged 11.5 pts, 7 asts that year, and drew comparisons to "a young Steve Nash." But Ridnour lost his starting job to Earl Watson in his fourth year, and last season played 20 minutes per game in a backup role. He was the small (his 6' 2" listing is generous), flashy point guard Sonics fans loved but knew wasn't good enough, or something like that.

Ridnour is a member of the 2006-08 Olympic Senior Men's Basketball program (33 players) and last summer Seattle tried to trade him to Atlanta for the #11 draft pick but the deal fell through (the Hawks eventually traded for Mike Bibby). He reminds me of a smaller version of Scott Skiles, who became an effective NBA point guard with Shaq in Orlando. Ridnour does like to pass and he's fun to watch, even when he's falling down trying to guard Toronto's Jose Calderon (see yesterday's post).

Today we have MiniShaQ's mix, "Lucky Luke Ridnour: Future of the Sonics" ... the "young Steve Nash" interview is at the end.

A couple of other notes: I don't know, obviously, what the roster plans are for Damon Jones or Adrian Griffin. I assume Jones won't be on the active 12-man roster (barring injury, how he could he be with three point guards already on the roster?) and may be further removed still. Trading Jones, however, may be next to impossible.

With Griffin, it's more difficult to say. The Bucks could send 2nd round draft pick Luc Mbah a Moute to the D-League (and/or Joe Alexander if he struggles) and Griffin could fill a stopgap reserve role at small forward. If they release Griffin, however, the Bucks would have $1.7M more to play with under the luxury tax limit should another trade come along or if free agent help is needed.

Whatever pans out with the Bucks new forward, you should read shamsports Adrian Griffin player bio.