Here's a bit of fun trivia about your favorite professional basketball team: "Da Bucks" is an anagram of "suck bad."
Sure, that's mean-spirited and Milwaukee is an easy target right now, so it's probably better to hew to the facts.
The Bucks are 7-33 as they reach midseason; their current losing streak stands at nine games, which isn't even their longest of the year. They're the lowest-scoring team in the NBA. They have the worst record in the league. They're on pace to destroy the worst season record in franchise history, 20-62, which was set 20 years ago.
A fashionable opinion about the Bucks is that they're intentionally tanking the season to get the maximum number of ping-pong balls in the June draft lottery. I'm not so sure; there's just as good a chance that Milwaukee is simply as bad as it looks. And if the Bucks have decided to mail in the rest of the season, no one's told first-year coach Larry Drew, whose mien of disgust while witnessing his team's latest nonsense is a guilty pleasure of watching the games on Fox Sports Wisconsin.
Near the end of a blowout, Drew tends to bow his head while keeping his eyes turned up, still fixated on the game, as if hoping that the occluded view through his drooping lids will help filter out the horror. At such moments, the poor man looks like a demented vulture.
Drew has plenty of targets for that glare of death. Shooting guard O.J. Mayo doesn't seem to be in playing shape and has been axed from the starting lineup. Small forward Caron Butler will be 34 in a few weeks; he's old by NBA standards and plays no defense. So far, the Bucks' decision to sign center Larry Sanders to a four-year, $44 million extension appears to be another enormous personnel mistake.
Bring on the ping-pong balls.
