Usually NBA season previews are best read in October, back when football games hardly mattered, Midnight Madness was a few weeks away, and baseball was winding down. Perhaps with the last of the offseason’s iced tea in hand, as you whiled away on a too-warm-for-the-season afternoon.

Well, pour yourself a glass of bull shot and tighten those mittens, because it’s mid-December and the NBA decided to have a season this year. As such, the exegetes at Ball Don’t Lie are previewing the 2011-12 campaign in a mad rush, as if you or we would have it any other way. So put down the shovel long enough to listen to Kelly Dwyer, Dan Devine and Eric Freeman as they break down each of the NBA’s 29 teams, plus Toronto.

This time? It’s the Milwaukee Bucks.

Kelly Dwyer’s Reasons to be Cheerful

I don’t enjoy stepping on Eric Freeman’s territory in this particular realm, right now, but I would encourage any of the 4200 Milwaukee Bucks fans that deign to tune into their team locally and the 1200 that submit to watching the crew on League Pass to listen to this terrible song while the games take place:

Of course, Christopher Cross’ “Sailing” is not a terrible song, if you have a good sense of humor and you remember that Michael Omartian was one of the leading lights behind Steely Dan’s “Katy Lied.” And any amplified measure would no doubt drown out what might be the best local announcing duo in the NBA — Jim Paschke and John McGlocklin. And without trying to attempt some forced bit of irreverence, or cult-y reference-laden write-ups, I can tell you that you can safely watch these Bucks for all the reasons Dan Devine has listed below with deserved anticipation despite what could turn out to be a sub-.500 record.

“Sailing,” and the LP that featured the song, was not a sub-.500 record. It won repeated Grammies in a year (or, at least, era) that may have produced the fines slate of recorded music our ears will ever have the pleasure to enjoy. The album sold by the boatloads, and yet nobody remembers the damned thing. Cross, as anonymous as pop stars come, couldn’t even offer a go-to name in a bid to become his generation’s Hootie. Or, at his lowest, “Schubert Dip.”

The Bucks will work anonymously, but they’ll be worth your time. And I write this with the full and on-record knowledge that TV’s Stephen Jackson will be a member of the Milwaukee Bucks basketball team for this 66-game term.

There is some melancholy in watching a newly-shorn Andrew Bogut chase whatever guard dares to enter his zone, measured by coach Scott Skiles’ smarter-than-you defense. Brandon Jennings can’t hit from outside, or ever near the rim, and yet he remains everyone’s second favorite player. Drew Gooden has worked for 39 NBA teams at this point, his contract may have been the reason the NBA skipped the first two months of the season, and yet you can’t help but not want that goofball to succeed.

I don’t mean to turn this group into the plucky cadre of achievers that basic cable loves, every word in this is not a symphony (great; now I’m paraphrasing bloody Christopher Cross), but this is a team to root for. And better? This is a team to watch. To enjoy and respect and wonder how things would have gone and how many championships would be theirs if things were slightly different.

(OK, more than “slightly.”)

The Milwaukee Bucks won’t be your novelty this year. But you will enjoy watching them. And each and every one of those 33 home games should result in a cheerful, holiday season-type smile from you.

That’s not the colors talking. That’s your love. For hoops.

Dan Devine Has Feelings about Your Team: Milwaukee Bucks

I’m so excited for you!

I can’t tell you how excited I am for the Milwaukee Bucks’ in-game entertainment crew to try to work “What’s a Lockout?” into the family-friendly experience at the Bradley Center.

If you’re unfamiliar with “What’s a Lockout?” then you are blowing it so hard that it is almost unbelievable that you still alive. It is tone-deaf extension demander/somehow still lovable people’s champ Stephen Jackson’s note-perfect hip-hopera about how a well-to-do ball-playing gentleman/Port Arthur trillionaire handles his business when basketball team owners tell him that he may not come to work. I do not want to spoil all of it, but rest assured that “wearing three different Jesus pieces” and “sounding sort of like mid-period Juvenile for a while” are definitely part of Cap’n Jack’s repertoire.

It is vulgar, it is absurd, it is pretty passable in its intended genre, and it is amazing. Of course it is; it was made by Stephen Jackson, who is also all of those things.

StackJack in Milwaukee feels like a social experiment that can go in many, many directions, and I am excited to see where the journey takes us. I wouldn’t be surprised if Jackson joined Milwaukee’s own Violent Femmes onstage at a homecoming performance to duet on “Please Do Not Go” that involved an extended breakdown in which he could freestyle the names of teammates like Larry Sanders, Jon Leuer and the always tricky Ersan Ilyasova as the crowd bopped and nodded along, unsure of what was happening.

Cheesehead Stephen Jackson. Fonzie Stephen Jackson. And, of course, Stephen Jackson treating about 231 of his closest friends to Stack’d Burger Bar, like a boss. The possibilities are endless, and potentially delicious.

I’m so worried for you!

Oh, right, the basketball part.

I’d worry that the trade that brought Jackson to Milwaukee — along with Shaun Livingston, Beno Udrih and the 19th pick in the 2011 NBA Draft, which the Bucks used to take Tobias Harris from Tennessee — doesn’t really solve the problem that Scott Skiles’ team has had for the last three seasons, which is scoring points.

In Skiles’ first two seasons in charge, the Bucks offense was bad, but not putrid — Milwaukee put up 106.7 points per 100 possessions in 2008-09 and 104.9 points-per-100 in 2009-10, according to Basketball-Reference, placing them 23rd out of 30 NBA teams in offensive efficiency both years. Last year, though, the bottom fell out.

The Bucks placed dead last in the league with a 101.6-per-100 mark. Only one Milwaukee Buck — one — hit more than 50 percent of his shots last year, but four connected at a sub-40 percent clip, including leading scorer Brandon Jennings, who struggled through a broken foot and rehab en route to shooting 39.7 percent for the year. They finished in the bottom-third of the league in all Four Factors categories on offense, including dead last in Effective Field Goal percentage, and they had the worst True Shooting percentage, too. They were between below-average and terrible at everything offensively. (Except how frequently they got their shots blocked. Fifteenth in the league there. Good ol’ mediocre.)

All that said, while Corey Maggette — who went to the Charlotte Bobcats in exchange for Jackson in the three-way draft night deal with the Bucks and Sacramento Kings — is by most metrics a more efficient and effective offensive player than Jackson, swapping Jackson for Maggette could have a couple of positive effects on the Milwaukee offense.

Jackson’s style of play isn’t likely to be confused for Steve Nash’s any time soon, but he has been a more willing passer than Maggette and a superior facilitator over the course of his career, assisting on 16.8 percent of his teams’ baskets while on the floor, compared to 13 percent for Maggette. He also uses just under a quarter of his team’s offensive possessions, whereas Maggette takes the ball a little bit more (25.7 percent). Jackson’s a slightly better long-range shooter, too, connecting at a career 33.9 percent clip, while Maggette checks in at 32.3 percent (though Maggette did hit 35.9 percent from 3-point land last season to Jackson’s 33.7 percent). These aren’t massive differences, by any stretch, but in an attack as moribund as Milwaukee’s, any potential improvements, even incremental ones, should be welcome.

The problem with all that, though, is that it’s not like Milwaukee’s offense failed because Corey Maggette stunk, or because they played Keyon Dooling and Earl Boykins behind Brandon Jennings rather than Livingston and Udrih (although that should be a bit of an upgrade). Milwaukee’s offense failed because everybody failed, including the coaches implementing it. That’s not a problem solved with one trade and one draft pick, which has me worried that bringing in Cap’n Jack, while entertaining, is ostensibly just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

I have no idea what to make of you!

I’m going to have a really hard time watching Shaun Livingston potentially play third-string point behind Jennings and Udrih. I just know it.

See, what I once called “the Livingston of my imagination” doesn’t exist, never really existed, because of false steps and sorry fate, and yet now that “the Livingston of brick-cold reality” is finally healthy and playing and sticking around, I still can’t seem to let this go. And it sucks, because it makes something that should be simple — just being happy for and proud of a guy who fought through hell to get back in the league — a little bit more complicated.

And now, he’ll be getting 10, maybe 15 minutes a game behind Jennings and Udrih, and maybe some spot minutes at the two if Mike Dunleavy has to shift up to the three for a sec and Carlos Delfino’s not available. He’ll play, and I’ll see it, and I’ll smile, and then I’ll stop, and try not to remember. Some games you always lose.

Eric Freeman’s Culture Club

The worlds of the NBA and popular culture intersect often. Actors and musicians show up at games, players cameo in their shows and movies and make appearances at their concerts. Yet the connections go deeper than these simple relationships — a work of art can often explain the situation of an NBA team. Eric Freeman’s Culture Club makes these comparisons explicit. In each installment, we’ll assign one movie, TV show, album, song, novel, short story, or filmstrip to the previewed team.

MILWAUKEE BUCKS: “Varsity Blues”

Scott Skiles can be a tough guy to play under, even when he’s at his best. He demands a lot from players on defense and isn’t always willing to loosen the reins at the other end, but he has a track record of success. The problem is that he can often get on people’s nerves after a few years, to the point where the people he’s supposed to be leading begin to tune him out. In his third season with the Bucks, we might be near that point.

In “Varsity Blues,” Coach Bud Kilmer had coached the West Canaan Coyotes for 10 times Skiles’s tenure in Milwaukee, but for the seniors on his team three (or in some cases four) years was plenty to get on their nerves. He demanded too much and gave too little in return, and the young men in blue finally cracked.

Skiles probably won’t need to leave the arena in the middle of a playoff game. But with several volatile personalities and the team coming off a disappointing years, it’s easy to see things turning badly fast if the losses pile up early. Skiles is only going to exert more control if things begin to get out of hand. After a few seasons, that approach can get tiresome.

Related: , Brandon Jennings, Beno Udrih, Drew Gooden, Keyon Dooling, Corey Maggette, Stephen Jackson, Steve Nash, Charlotte Bobcats, Milwaukee Bucks, Sacramento Kings, 2011-12 Season Previews

MILWAUKEE (AP) — Free-agent guard Mike Dunleavy Jr. was at the Milwaukee Bucks’ practice facility Friday, but had to watch the team’s first practice from courtside as he waited to sign his new deal.

The Bucks were waiting for the NBA to approve a pending trade that will send guard Keyon Dooling to the Boston Celtics before signing Dunleavy and their rookies. And with teams around the league seeking approval on contracts and trades in a post-lockout logjam, the Dooling trade still was unofficial when the team hit the court for practice.

The trade was finalized later Friday, with the Bucks sending Dooling and a protected second-round pick to the Celtics for the rights to forward/center Albert Miralles.

MILWAUKEE (AP)—Free-agent guard Mike Dunleavy Jr. was at the Milwaukee
Bucks’ practice facility Friday, but had to watch the team’s first practice from
courtside as he waited to sign his new deal.

The Bucks were waiting for the NBA to approve a pending trade that will send
guard Keyon Dooling to the Boston Celtics before signing Dunleavy and their
rookies. And with teams around the league seeking approval on contracts and
trades in a post-lockout logjam, the Dooling trade still was unofficial when the
team hit the court for practice.

“The unsigned players couldn’t go, we couldn’t sign them until Keyon’s
trade was official,” Bucks coach Scott Skiles said. “That’s all. We waited, we
waited, and figured we’d just start practice and maybe at some point they could
get going, but it just hasn’t gone through yet. So yeah, Mike will be fine
tomorrow, he’ll be ready to go.”

The trade was finalized later Friday, with the Bucks sending Dooling and a
protected second-round pick to the Celtics for the rights to forward/center
Albert Miralles.

First-round draft pick Tobias Harris, a forward from Tennessee, and
second-round pick Jon Leuer, a forward from Wisconsin, also had to watch
practice from courtside.

The Bucks also were without their main offseason acquisition for their first
post-lockout practice. Skiles said guard Stephen Jackson, who was obtained in a
three-way draft day trade, arrived in Milwaukee on Friday morning and his
physical examination didn’t get done in time for the start of practice.

“Not your typical first day,” Skiles said. “But nobody’s having a typical
first day.”

Skiles held a shorter and less intense practice than he typically would on
the first day of training camp.

“We had literally between three and five practice plans for today, based on
how many guys we were going to have,” Skiles said. “And we weren’t sure until
just a few minutes before, because we were made aware of what was going on with
Keyon’s trade, and that those guys weren’t going to be able to go until that got
put in motion. So we basically had nine guys. And tomorrow, we’ll have
everybody.”

Still, Skiles came away impressed with the way his players kept in shape.

That was a concern for every NBA team going into Friday, given that team
officials weren’t allowed to keep tabs on their players’ workout programs during
the lockout.

“It was good,” Skiles said. “I’m really pleased with the conditioning of
the guys. If we would have went through our regular first training camp
practice, which is a little more physical and longer, the guys would have gotten
through it fine.”

Skiles is looking forward to the addition of Dunleavy, who shot 46.2 percent
from the floor and 40.2 percent from 3-point range with Indiana last year.

“He’s going to be one of the best shooters, if not the best shooter, on our
team,” Skiles said. “And he can also make plays for other people. He’s a good
off the ball player, very good off the ball player with his cutting and spacing,
and he’s got a very high basketball IQ. All things we were trying to address.”

Guard Brandon Jennings said getting Dunleavy was a “big deal” for the
Bucks, who have dramatically reshaped their backcourt going into this season
with the additions of Jackson, Beno Udrih and Shaun Livingston.

“When he was out there in Indiana, he was a big key to their team,”
Jennings said. “He’s going to fit in really good here.”

Center Andrew Bogut said Dunleavy’s accuracy will add another dimension to
the Bucks.

“He’s a guy that’s got a higher basketball IQ,” Bogut said. “He’s played
for a couple of teams now. He can really shoot the basketball, which is what we
need.”

MILWAUKEE — The Milwaukee Bucks are back. Well, at least one of them was.

Guard Beno Udrih showed up to work out and shoot baskets Thursday, the first day team facilities were reopened to players as the NBA lockout heads toward an apparent resolution.

Steve Novak, a former Marquette star who most recently played for San Antonio, also was shooting at the Bucks’ facility.

If a tentative agreement between owners and players is ratified as expected, training camps could begin Dec. 9.

Bucks general manager John Hammond said the team’s front office has been filled with a sense of excitement since the deal came together.

“I think immediately, you could kind of feel that in your gut: Here we go, we’re getting ready to get started again,” Hammond said. “I think as each step progresses, that will continue.”

Restrictions on contact between team officials and players remain in place for now, but Hammond said teams are free to begin talking to agents.

“We can talk and we’re having conversations, just like I’m sure every other team is in the league,” Hammond said.

The Bucks have 12 players under contract, and Hammond pulled off what is expected to be his biggest move of the offseason before the lockout started.

Coming off a season where the Bucks generally played good defense but struggled to score, Milwaukee made a three-way trade on draft day to acquire Stephen Jackson, Udrih, guard Shaun Livingston and the rights to first-round pick Tobias Harris.

“Our roster is somewhat set, but we still have work to do,” Hammond said.

Hammond said the Bucks intend to bring back defensive stopper Luc Richard Mbah a Moute, who is a restricted free agent.

“We appreciate Luc and what he’s done for us as an organization, and what he stands for,” Hammond said. “We have every intention of bringing Luc back.”

Hammond also was looking forward to the potential pairing of Udrih and Brandon Jennings in the backcourt. But he seemed most excited about the possibility of a strong bounce-back season from injured center Andrew Bogut.

“I believe this about Andrew: Andrew’s going to come back and have a really good year,” Hammond said. “People still don’t realize that Andrew has not had an opportunity to work the last two summers.”

The Bucks are coming off a disappointing season filled with injuries, but Hammond said he isn’t concerned that a compressed NBA season will take a toll on players’ health.

“That question is probably going to be asked more about our team more than any because of what we went through last year, the injured (players) that we had,” Hammond said. “I look at that and say it was an anomaly. I’ve never been around a team that’s gone through that before and I don’t expect that to happen again. I expect us to have a good season and a healthy season.”

MILWAUKEE — The Milwaukee Bucks may not play basketball for a while but at least Bango is staying busy.

Monday, he’ll join other Bucks staff members to serve dinner for 500 people at the St. Ben’s Community Meal Program in downtown Milwaukee.

The dinner starts at 5 p.m. at St. Ben’s on North 9th Street.

A couple weeks ago, the team’s furry mascot was helping to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for needy kids in Southeastern Wisconsin.