'A Meeting of 2 Dragons'

In their first sellout since the season home-opener against Chicago, a mostly full Bradley Center and 200+ million fans watching back in China saw Yi match up against Yao for the second time this season, as the Bucks fell again to the Rockets 83-91. Thoughts from last night's game:

-Chinese fans were in abundance, filling most of the upper level and cheering loudly for both Yi and Yao whenever they would make a play. Chinese media could be seen wandering the stands and taking pictures of the festivities for those back in the People's Republic of China.

At one point during an intermission the Bucks celebrated the Chinese Lunar New Year by throwing out 200 red envelopes which we determined, despite my friend's best efforts to not catch TWO that practically fell into his lap, contained: two free passes to the March 5th game against Seattle, some Bucks stickers, a pin, and a one dollar bill, which we assume has some kind of cultural logic behind its inclusion. Or maybe it was just a big middle finger to the communist government.

-Capitalizing on a mid-season nba game that was drawing 50 million more viewers worldwide than Superbowl XLII, Harley-Davidson struck some sort of deal to have the pregame introductions wrap-up with Bango tooling around the court on a Harley for 30 odd seconds as the players stood awkwardly near center court, waiting to jump the ball. The bike was also brought out again for another couple laps later in the game. Assuming the people at Harley went through the trouble of ensuring that these joy rides were done at a time when the chinese television cameras were watching, this had to be a better return on investment than the $2.7 million per commercial FOX was charging for superbowl airtime.

-In a game where the hype was understandably focused around Yi and Yao, Andrew Bogut was by far the most impressive big man on the floor. He finished with 21 pts, 5 rebs, and 4 blocks, took at least 2 charges, and pretty much dominated one of the best centers in the game, Yao. Bogut repeatedly beat Yao on the block for high precentage buckets, blocked two of the 7'6" center's shots, and generally looked the more physical of the two down low.

It continued a string of impressive games for Bogut, and will hopefully quiet some of the complaints that Bogut has only played well against mediocre competition. In a lot of ways Bogut's progress from season to season has mirrored that of Michael Redd and the way both of them continue to improve with time speaks well for the franchise's prospects going forward.

-McGrady seems to thrive against teams that don't play defense with much intensity, and so naturally he continued his trend of killing the Bucks everytime he visits Milwaukee. McGrady finished with 33pts, 11 rebs, and 6 ast and had an answer for every milwaukee run.

McGrady vs. bad defense is like being in college and going down to the gym to play pick-up games with whatever other 4 guys are waiting to get in the next game, vs. playing in your intramural basketball league with your friends. Those pick-up games are fun but guys aren't killing themselves every possesion, people may already be tired from being on the court for a few games, and the talent level and intensity of teams as a whole is lower.

In the intramural games, you're playing against 5 guys who know and have played with each other before, everyone is (in theory) fresh and rested for the game, and the intensity level is way higher. Guys are playing tough defense, rotating and helping and giving hard fouls if someone is about to get an easy look. The fact that there are refs and fouls and a scoreboard and substititions all make for a much, much more intense game than your average college-student pick-up game.

Teams are playing to win and it shows, and a guy who can do very well for himself in pick-up games at the gym can suddenly look mediocre in intramural games where teams are actually trying to stop him.


McGrady is not mediocre however, so if most nba regular season games are 'intramural' games, the milwaukee bucks are the equivalent of a thursday afternoon pick-up game where the gym is only half-full because everybody is still at class and the talent/intensity are way down, and someone like McGrady is going to have a field day. And that is what happened saturday night.

-Just before the big t-shirt toss in the 4th quater, the Bucks were about to roll out a giant artillery gun/gattling gun contraption that sure looked like it would launch t-shirts into the farthest reaches of the upper level, when the woman in black, pictured above, put the kibosh on the whole operation, pulling Bango off the fire station even as he was going through a NASA-like checkdown of the weapon and its controls. This was a great disappointment as the weapon looked like it would have beeen something to behold, and few t-shirts make it up into the 400's.