Category: Uncategorized

It’s not so much that the Bucks will miss Middleton’s 18–20 points a game (they will). It’s not that they’ll miss his spacing on a team that starts 3 non-shooters (they will). It’s not that they’ll miss his team and individual defense (they will). But the Bucks are going to have a really hard time filling that 36 minutes.

Basic counting stats as well as numbers like RPM or VORP tell you Middleton is a very good player. One of the best shooting guards in the league without question. And it’s easy to look at those numbers and say “man it will suck without him.” But to measure losses like this you’ve got to focus on the trickle-down effect on the depth.

For one, Middleton offered a few more lineup possibilities on a team that had few. Khris allowed the Bucks to go small with his ability to play either wing position and get a lot more shooting on the floor. Traditionally this meant staggering Jabari/Giannis minutes, but could even mean brief spurts with Giannis at center. And when the Bucks are big, or just long, he ensures there’s someone the defense has to pay close attention to. Now Delly and Teletovic are the only established outside shooters who expected to see major minutes. It’s looking worse than last season from a spacing standpoint.

Far worse, is the replacements and potential rotations at this point. There’s no telling what the lineups will be given this injury was announced last night, but the likely outcome is the traditional guards end up being MCW and Delly. If that happens, it will be the same struggle as last season, made worse by substituting Delly for Middleton. Further, the hopes of Carter-Williams carving up bench defenders goes out the window and the second unit starts looking very weak.

The team could try and get creative by starting Teletovic. You’d probably see Parker playing more of a 3 role with Giannis at the 1. The problem of course, is who guards the other backcourt player? That lineup could work against teams with one really weak guard, but those opportunities are few. In most cases it would be a defensive disaster, but randomly they might outscore people or force coaches to adjust early.

Let’s assume the likely scenario. This means the initial downgrade with whichever guard gets pushed to a starting role (between MCW and Delly — this means we’ve got a downgrade at a starting spot because of them moving up as well as the loss of them as a bench player). This also means Vaughn, Jet, Brogdan, Ennis are all getting more playing time and likely against better players. Ennis likely figured not to play much and the rest are unknowns due to experience or age. But I think we all assume Vaughn does not look like a promising breakout candidate and Terry is not someone from whom you want to rely on getting 20 productive minutes a night.

Worse yet, the Bucks are over the cap and paying 15 players this year. So while I’m sure fans are pumped about the idea of bringing in Gary Neal as a last minute free agent add, it’s pretty unlikely they’ll find a way to make room. Couple that with the total lack of a market for trading any of their big guys (especially Monroe) and the options are bleak. There’s no way the Bucks would find someone anywhere near comparable to Middleton on the market, but it appears they won’t even find someone to upgrade at the 7th or 8th bench spot without giving up substantial assets.

If Khris is out a full 6 months, he’ll come back with 10–12 games left in the regular season. Were basketball were 100% about stats, the Bucks might drop 3–4 wins based on the Middleton injury and ripple-effect of roster shuffling. And assuming he doesn’t come back in time for a 10 game win streak, that’s likely enough to knock an already fringe playoff team back into the lottery. Since this injury is far more complex than just the boxscore effect, it could send the team into a far greater spiral. It’s a real shame to not even be into preseason and suddenly go from being a possible 5–8 seed down to potentially high in the lottery, but these sorts of results seem to always follow the Bucks.

The one hope, similar to last season, is that the team continues its future-centric mantra. The two young stars are still very young. This would be a wasted year in the sense that we’re fast approaching luxury tax territory and season tickets for the future arena won’t sell themselves, but the team still had zero title hopes this season. Hopefully they remember the lessons of previous ownership that a 1st round playoff loss does not make a difference in the end. Point being, there’s no reason to make a desperate move just to salvage 2016. This year may be painful, but let’s hope we don’t try to fix that by sacrificing future seasons.

Trying something new and randomly going to post about bars/restaurants that I either really love or really hate. Oddly enough, I’m not putting these in the “hate-love” category. I figured it best to have one section dedicated to nourishment.

First up, is a place that gets a very bad rap around town for various reasons. The Palomino.  Well, it’s pretty highly rated on most sites, but since it’s a mainstream hipster hangout, you’ll find the elitist hipsters bashing the place.  Yes, the late night crowd can be painfully annoying (but not rowdy!).  Yes, it’s dirty.  Yes, the service can be very slow.  BUT!  It’s still great.

First off, this place is Milwaukee in a nutshell.  It’s a dirty old bar on the south side of town, there are hundreds/thousands more like it.  It’s gone through a renaissance in recent years as the neighborhood has turned from old Polish ghetto to hip urban hangout.  You can get a big greasy burger with a side of something deep fried, as well as some of the better vegan grub in town.  You can listen to the Black Keys on the jukebox, as well as cheer for the Packers.  And there’s a lot of drinking going on.

My favorite part about the Palomino, is that it’s mainly soul food.  The #1 thing I miss about my short time living in Texas is the food, and this place does an admirable job of capturing the southern eats.  I dare say it’s a more realistic interpretation of southern food than the uber popular Maxie’s Southern Comfort (although, to be far, Maxie’s does try to jazz up dishes from all over the south, where Palomino sticks to the greasy staples).  They do a great burger, an admirable poboy and the brisket is pretty good considering it wasn’t smoked.  Although, I’d get it on the sandwich if you’re a real BBQ maniac.  The vegan dishes are pretty impressive.  I would actually take their tofu/seitan buffalo wings over a LOT of the wing options in town.

Oh and if it’s late at night, and you’ve had a few too many drinks, getting a basket filled with tots, mini-corn dogs, jalapeno poppers & cheese curds is pure bliss.

My only complaint?  I wish they had fried pickle chips instead of spears.  I don’t think the south has come to an agreement on which is better, and I know the spears are a bit more common… but the slices of pickles are so much more enjoyable to munch on.  You end up with like a 1.5:1 pickle to breading ration instead of like 8:1 with the spears.

I think I’m finally catching up with the rest of the geek world… I’ve been running Windows XP on my media center (not media center, 32 bit edition on a 64 bit system… yeah, I know) because I already owned the license and I didn’t know if I’d really stick with the concept.  However, we’re using it more and more and we’d like to add functionality.  So tomorrow night I should be installing Windows 7 Professional.  That’s step one.

The next goal is getting a Ceton InfiniTV 4 tuner card and dumping TiVo.  I still love the TiVo interface, but getting 4 cable streams right to my media center is too good to pass up.  Plus I’ll be able to share all the content to the xbox in the bedroom.

I already know Windows 7 will be fine, but the Ceton thing is a little scary.  They haven’t been around too long and I’m not always an early adopter on computer hardware (I’ve been playing this game too long, I want my home systems to be stable).  So since there isn’t a ton of content out there about the Ceton device, I’ll update with my experience.

For the record, I’ll be using Time Warner and replacing a TiVo HD with the Ceton/Win7.

I have a 3G and 6 months left on my contract. I upgraded to IOS4 and now my phone is unusable. Maps? Takes forever to load, crashes frequently. SMS? Same. iCal? Ditto. Not even going to get into 3rd party apps. Now I have a choice between paying double for a new phone during the contract period or spending 6 months with a crap phone. I had the same problem 10 year back when Apple shoved OSX out earlier than they should’ve. The difference then? I could go back to OS9. Today? I’m pretty much stuck. Thank, Apple.

Call it what you will, “co-sleeping” (as the local major media would say) or “drunken baby squashing” (as the conservative radio hosts call it).  Regardless, babies dying from sleeping with their parents is the story that local media is currently trying to push above all others.  Recently, a fourth baby in the Milwaukee area died while sleeping in the same bed as an adult.  Essentially, these parents either lack a sufficient crib or simply fail to use it.  The parent either rolls over onto the child or the baby simply suffocates on the pillows, blankets or other parts of the bed.  In one case, the parents admitted to consuming alcohol before taking their baby to bed.  In years past, this situation would have been lumped in as another SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome) case.  Yet, in the early part of 2010, we have made a distinct effort to make a separate issue of these incidents.

The real concern is what results from all this hysteria.  As this story continues to pick up steam, one can just feel some sort of regulation coming.  In our society, it pains us to believe that people could have such poor parenting skills that lives could be in jeopardy.  Whenever we face a social epidemic like this one, the gut reaction is to throw a lot of money at the problem.  While a great argument could be made for making this a crime, the parents will likely be portrayed as victims.  Tax dollars will almost certainly be used to create more websites, more pamphlets and more training videos.  We may not be far from a world where hospital or police/fire officials will need to come home with you from the hospital to inspect your living conditions.  Essentially, having a child will be a process similar to getting your driver license.  Yet, despite our spending, the problem will continue.  The sad reality is that these people are not mentally ready to care for another life.  Countless references already exist to help new parents avoid potential disaster.  The city and county of Milwaukee have several resources available to get a free crib.  Even the means of finding these resources, a computer with internet access, is freely available at a public library.  With all of this at our disposal, can we really call these people victims?  Why not be honest and admit that these parents negligently cared for their offspring. Research proves that sleeping in an adult bed with your newborn is dangerous.  So rather than spending millions to attempt to educate these inept parents, let’s instead spend thousands and open up a jail cell for them.