• 
• CLASS
• JOBS
• AUTO
• HOMES

Bucks consider option after Redd injury

To purely objectify the Michael Redd situation and frame it in the current economic circumstances, think of No. 22 as that stock you kept for too long while hoping for a, um, rebound.

It’s a common sports story, waiting too late to trade a player. Now the Bucks are likely stuck with a damaged-goods, soon-to-be 30-year-old shooter whom they owe $17 million next season in the final year of his maximum contract. Except that Redd also holds an $18.3 million option for 2010-11, which he will surely exercise.

But what’s done is done for the future, so the Bucks’ only recourse is a short-term play to try and salvage what is left of the here and now.

“We either punt or go for it on fourth down,” general manager John Hammond said Monday night before the Redd-less Bucks had a whole lot of nothing going for them offensively in a seven-point home loss to Minnesota.

Translated, the cavalry isn’t coming.

Given their payroll mess, the Bucks are in no position to make a trade that might subject them to the luxury tax, not that 20-point scorers are available. If anything, Redd’s loss makes them less likely to move Charlie Villanueva and/or Ramon Sessions before the Feb. 19 trading deadline.

Their only chance is for Andrew Bogut to get healthy, tread water during the home-heavy remaining schedule and somehow hope the riff-raff directly below them at the bottom of Eastern Conference playoff order don’t get interested enough to make a run.

Is it possible?

Yes, in the sense that Chicago has completely tanked on Vinny Del Negro and New York and New Jersey are basket cases. Only Charlotte, seemingly energized after the Dallas and Phoenix trades, appears to be a legitimate threat for the No. 8 slot the Bucks precariously hold.

Is it probable?

No, given what happened against the Timberwolves. There just isn’t enough scoring, especially now that opponents free from accounting for Redd can run an extra defender at the inconsistent Richard Jefferson and Luke Ridenour. Even with sound defensive principles finally in place, the ones established by Scott Skiles while Redd missed November, consistently breaking 90 is pretty much essential for a playoff contender.

Redd was never the franchise-carrying player typically defined by a maximum contract, but the unfortunate thing about this season is that he was finally surrounded with just enough talent for the Bucks to reach .500. The chemistry was good. The defense was there. But if you can’t score . . .

As required by his job description, Skiles talked a brave game after Redd was lost for the season. Not to minimize what Redd can do, the coach said, but the Bucks have done it before without him. Well, yeah, sort of, but Skiles knows what it’s really like in the NBA.

Sometimes such a loss can provide a temporary bounce because others get energized, but how long can a team realistically sustain that kind of manufactured momentum? Timberwolves coach Kevin McHale, who has seen way too much of how the NBA works, mentioned that when he said: “Three weeks from now, that’s when it starts catching up to you.”

Said Bogut: “We can go one of two directions. We can pout about it and not expect to do much, or we can try and battle through.”

A lot of that depends on your back, mate. And the teams below you in the East. Suddenly, those are a lot of variables for a team that needed a lot of things to go right even when it was at full strength.

Michael Hunt is a sports columnist for The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.