Dec. 6, 2011 |

Get ready for Derrick Rose, D-Wade and LeBron.

Hey, and Kobe Bryant and Kevin Durant, too.

But no Dirk and no Blake.

The Milwaukee Bucks released their shortened 66-game schedule for the 2011-’12 season Tuesday, and their fans definitely received some good news.

The Chicago Bulls and Rose, the league’s reigning most valuable player, will make two appearances at the Bradley Center, as will Dwyane Wade, LeBron James and the Miami Heat.

The Bulls will play the Bucks on a Saturday night, Feb. 4, and will return March 7. And the Heat will be at the Bradley Center twice within a two-week span, on Feb. 1 and Feb. 13.

But Bucks fans will not get a chance to see Dirk Nowitzki and the defending league champion Dallas Mavericks, and they also will miss the Los Angeles Clippers and reigning rookie of the year Blake Griffin.

Due to the lockout-shortened schedule, the Bucks will not play six Western Conference teams at home: Dallas, Houston, the Clippers, Golden State, Sacramento and Utah.

But Bryant and the new-look Lakers under coach Mike Brown will visit the Bradley Center on Jan. 28, the identical date on the original schedule released in July.

“It’s luck of the draw,” said Bucks vice president of business operations John Steinmiller. “It’s a marquee game, one our fans want to see.”

Durant and the on-the-rise Oklahoma City Thunder also will visit Milwaukee on April 9.

The original 82-game schedule is long gone, but a few remnants appear in the new four-month season.

The Bucks still will open January with a five-game Western swing, beginning in Denver on Jan. 2.

The original slate had the Bucks on the road for 12 of 16 games in January, and Milwaukee will be on the road for 11 of 17 games in the revised version. But two home games were added in January.

“Each season there will be a team that has to do that,” Bucks general manager John Hammond said of the western swing. “How often do we look at a team that is out west early and say, ‘They picked up a good road win?’

“The teams that can do that, it can propel you into a good season. If you pass that test, a lot of positives can come out of that.”

After the Bucks open 2012 in Denver, they play at Utah and Sacramento before heading to Los Angeles to face Griffin and the Clippers. The trip finishes at Phoenix on Jan. 8.

And what about opening night?

The Bucks will open at Charlotte on Dec. 26, the second day of the regular season, after five league games are played on Christmas. New Bucks players Stephen Jackson and Shaun Livingston will have a chance to go against their former team right away, while Corey Maggette will be wearing a Bobcats uniform.

It is the 27th consecutive season the Bucks are opening on the road.

And the Bucks’ home opener follows Dec. 27 against the Minnesota Timberwolves. Milwaukee will be quite familiar with the Timberwolves – now coached by Rick Adelman – as the teams also play a two-game exhibition series, including the MACC Fund game at the Bradley Center on Dec. 21.

The Bucks also will play at home Dec. 30 against the Washington Wizards.

“We’re extremely excited to have two home games during the holiday week,” Steinmiller said.

Twelve of the Bucks’ first 18 games are away from home, so it will be imperative for the Bucks to come out of training camp with a cohesive unit.

“It’s a tough start,” Hammond said. “But you say, ‘Hey, if we can come out of January still standing, we have a chance to finish the season strong.’ ”

The Bucks will have just one set of back-to-back-to-back games, with home games against Boston on March 22 and Indianapolis on March 24 and a trip to Charlotte on March 23.

The team has 20 back-to-back sets after playing 23 back-to-back games last season.

Milwaukee has just two trips of three games or more, the early swing to the west and a three-game trip that features a Leap Day matchup at Boston on Feb. 29 and stops in Atlanta on March 2 and Orlando on March 3.

The Bucks will play three Western Conference teams twice – Denver, Phoenix and Portland – and just once against the other 12 Western clubs.

Milwaukee will not travel to Oklahoma City, San Antonio, Memphis, New Orleans and Minnesota during the regular season, and they will not face the Lakers at the Staples Center.

And the Bucks have just one nationally televised game on ESPN, an April 13 matchup at Detroit, while four other games will air on NBA TV (Jan. 7 at the Clippers, March 3 at Orlando, March 22 vs. Boston and April 2 at Washington).

The Bucks will have a five-game home stand in April and will play nine of 14 games at home in the final month.

“We have Saturday games every month,” Steinmiller said. “Our weekends held up well (with the new schedule).”

The Bucks will play eight Saturday home games and three Friday dates but no Sundays.

MILWAUKEE – Ask any NBA “Lockout-ologist” to explain one of the key points of the league’s current labor negotiations, “basketball related income” (or B.R.I. if you really want to sound like you’re on the inside), and that person will explain B.R.I as revenue generated by ticket sales, TV contracts, concessions, parking and temporary stadium advertising.

But there is a whole different level of B.R.I. that gets much less media coverage than the figures impacting the hoopster millionaires and owner billionaires. Though there are fewer than 500 players in the NBA, there are tens of thousands of people across the country whose livelihoods depend on the games those fewer than 500 play.

In Milwaukee, the restaurants and bars surrounding the Bradley Center are now facing a stark reality with the prospect of the lockout wiping out a significant portion — or perhaps all — of the Bucks’ home schedule.

Wally Paget, who along with his brother and father has co-owned Buck Bradley’s on Old World Third Street since 1995, has had a tough time keeping up the morale of his staff.

“Especially now that it’s here,” Paget said of the lockout, which has already canceled the first two weeks of the season. “People didn’t think it would get here. You certainly do all you can for staff morale. They need an income to put food on their table.”

Then there are the hard numbers from the people who would know.

– Paget, who says the absence of the NBA in Milwaukee will reduce his gross revenues by 25 percent: “If the Bradley Center has about 140 dates a year, and you lose 43 Bucks dates, including preseason, you’re losing about a third of your premium nights for downtown business.”

– Peter Picciurro, manager of Miss Katie’s Diner on West Clybourn Street, which runs a shuttle to and from the Bradley Center: “An average day for us in food and drink is around $1,500. When the Bucks play, it’s around $2,200 to $3,000. That’s what would be lost.”

– Marty Petricca, an assistant manager at Major Goolsby’s, which sits a block away from the Bradley Center and is one of America’s original sports bars: “That’s 40 plus days of business out of commission for us. The Bucks are certainly a big part of what we do here.”

With the Bucks’ average attendance topping 15,000 per game last season, the team generated more than 600,000 fans arriving downtown from November until April — fans who are hungry and thirsty before and after the games are now fans who may leave their appetites and their collective millions of dollars at home this winter.

“We wouldn’t have to lay anybody off,” Picciurro said. “Everybody would be working, but not as often.”

Paget said the same thing: “It takes the same amount of crew to work the night of a Marquette game as it does the night of a Bucks game. But we’d only be able to utilize that crew two nights instead of four. It’s not so much that we would have to lay people off. We’re just coming out of the summer season, which is slow. It would be a case of us not making any new hires and the people we have working a lot less hours.”

Paget said the 1998-99 NBA lockout hit Buck Bradley’s hard because the restaurant was still in its formative years.

“We’re a lot more established now,” he said. “But there are only two other places on the block that were around in ’98. Some other owners have been asking me what it was like back then.”

Restaurants close to the Bradley Center have made some lockout contingency plans.

“We do sponsor a bunch of other teams,” Petricca said. “This helps us keep from losing more than other places.”

The Milwaukee Admirals, an American Hockey League team, still plays all its home games downtown.

“We have a great relationship with the Admirals,” Paget said. “Their fans really turn out for us. That’s different than it was in ’98.

“And the Bradley Center has tried to prepare for this as best they could. The recent five-day run of the Cirque de Soleil. That was seven shows. It wasn’t a Bucks game, but anything beats a dark building.”

As November approaches, many sports fans have already tuned out the non-news reported from the moribund NBA labor talks. But those who make a living serving burgers and beer in the areas surrounding pro hoops arenas are paying close attention to the talks in hopes of hearing some good news about their Basketball Related Income.

“You have to,” Paget said. “But it’s difficult because it’s something you can’t control.”

March 12, 2011|By Kate Fagan, INQUIRER STAFF WRITER

MILWAUKEE – Timing, among other things, was never right for the 76ers during Saturday night’s 102-74 loss to the Milwaukee Bucks at the Bradley Center.

In the second half, point guard Jrue Holiday was so early on an attempted alley-oop that its recipient, Andre Iguodala, watched curiously as the ball thudded off the backboard.

There were too many turnovers, too many points surrendered off those turnovers, and not enough shots or smart decisions made to bridge the subsequent gap.

The Sixers performance was a toxic mixture of all the things that coach Doug Collins knows doom his team: loose possessions, nonexistent defensive communication, and poor rebounding.

The Bucks lead reached 23 points by the end of the third quarter and 34 in the fourth.

The Sixers dropped to 34-32. The Bucks improved to 26-38.

On a three-pointer by Keyon Dooling with 9 minutes, 26 seconds remaining, the Bucks took an 83-61 lead. A few seconds later, Milwaukee boosted its lead to 24 points on a mid-range jumper by Earl Boykins.

Collins immediately called a timeout, but even he had to know the game was lost.

For the Bucks, Andrew Bogut finished with 17 points and nine rebounds. Lou Williams scored a team-high 16 for the Sixers.

Near the end of the first quarter, Iguodala and Jodie Meeks were engaged in a discussion over defensive rotations. Neither player was still in the game, but the two sat on the bench appearing determined to deconstruct the flaws in hopes of improving the on-court communication.

The Bucks, by the end of that quarter, had made a quartet of three-pointers. Most were wide open. Three of them came off the fingers of point guard Brandon Jennings. All of them, judging by Iguodala’s and Meeks’ discussion, could have been prevented with better rotations.

It was those long-range bombs that staked Milwaukee to its 26-25 lead at the end of the first quarter. Aside from their effort from beyond the arc (4 for 6), the Bucks finished the first quarter shooting 5 for 16 from the floor.

Bothered by the Bucks’ too-easy long-range looks, Collins also was demonstrative each time his team turned over the ball – nine times by early in the second quarter.

Two of the no-nos on Collins’ list are turnovers and poor defensive rotations. For the Sixers, the first half was filled with them.

By halftime, the Bucks were shooting well not just from three-point land, but also from everywhere on the floor. They were hitting 56.4 percent of their shots from the floor, and jogged to the locker room leading by 59-41.

The Sixers, meanwhile, were letting Milwaukee swat the ball out of their hands. At the break, they already had surrendered 21 points off their 12 turnovers, a statistic that Collins prophetically had mentioned before the game. The turnover ratio couldn’t become lopsided, he said, if the Sixers planned to win.

That statistic, points off turnovers, was in Milwaukee’s favor, 21-5, by halftime. The Sixers walked off shaking their heads, in need of some serious intermission adjustments.