Brett Favre is gone and he’s not coming back, the days of the Bucks’ Big Three have long been over and the Brewers have dispensed the two bright spots from an era of dismal team performance, Geoff Jenkins and Ben Sheets.
Despite the loss of a number of talented players in all three major sports over the past five years, Wisconsin has nothing to worry about. All three teams have some of the best young stars in their respective leagues, and stunningly those stars fill the exact roles of their predecessors. And they fill them more than admirably.
Brett Who?
The Favre saga has been done to death and frankly I’m tired of it. So I’ll just pose this question. Who ya got?
Quarterback A: 59.9% Completions 3899 yards 39 TDs 13 INTs 95.8 QB Rating
Quarterback B: 64.7% Completions 4434 yards 30 TDs 7 INTs 103.2 QB Rating
I’ll take Quarterback B.
Quarterback A is Brett Favre during the 1996 season when he led the Packers to a 13-3 record, their first Super Bowl victory in 29 years and won his second of three consecutive MVP awards.
Quarterback B is Aaron Rodgers last season, his second as a starter, during which he narrowly missed setting the franchise record for yards (held by Lynn Dickey) and kept pace with Drew Brees, Peyton Manning and Philip Rivers in one of the best quarterback years in the history of the NFL. Throw in the fact that he finished second in rushing yards by a quarterback with 316 (seven yards less than David Garrard) and pitched in five more touchdowns on the ground, and you’d be hard-pressed to convince me that Quarterback A played better.
Don’t get me wrong, no matter how much I hate Favre right now for going Fredo Corleone on the state of Wisconsin, he deserves all the respect in the world from Packer fans for almost single-handedly bringing the team back to relevance during his Hall-of-Fame run here, but has Rodgers done anything over the course of his career to make anyone believe that he won’t be just as, if not more, effective as Old Man River up in Minnesota? Durability may be the biggest legacy Favre left for Rodgers to live up to, but after seeing A-Rod (for lack of a better nickname) get back up after every one of the league-leading 50 sacks he endured in 2010, including a ridiculous 20 before the week five bye, who’s to say that he’s not every bit as durable?
If Ted Thompson can manage to keep Rodgers surrounded by a bona fide number one receiver (Jennings), solid complementary wideouts (the ageless Driver, Nelson and Jones) and a soon-to-be-stud tight end (Finley), all the while continuing to improve the offensive line it’s pretty safe to say we’ll see plenty more 4000 yard-30 TD-100 QB Rating years from the new green and gold signal caller.
Fear the Fawns
In 2001, led by the Big Three of Ray Allen, Glenn Robinson and Sam Cassell, the Bucks made a serious run at an NBA Championship, something rarely seen since the days of Oscar and Kareem (although Don Nelson led some great teams in the 80s). Two seasons after their heartbreaking loss in the Eastern Conference Finals to the Iverson-led Sixers all three players had been discarded for various reasons (old age, salary cap relief, Michael Redd’s emergence), and just like that a three-star team had been disassembled and a less-than-one-star team had replaced it. At the same time, General Manager Ernie Grunfeld had been replaced by the equally-incapable Larry Harris.
After suffering through five excruciating Michael Redd-led (using the term “led” generously) seasons, something changed, and, thanks to general manager John Hammond, three (four if you want to get technical, but we’ll get there in a bit) new, younger and more promising stars emerged that Bucks fans can only hope will be around for many successful years in Brew Town.
Since entering the league, Andrew Bogut has struggled to live up to expectations, but trying to prove yourself after being chosen number one overall in the 2005 draft, following Lebron James and Dwight Howard the previous two years and ahead of draftmates and now All-NBA point guards Deron Williams and Chris Paul, is a daunting task for anyone to deal with.
Something clicked in Bogut’s head this season however. It’s almost as if three games into the year, as Redd missed his first game due to injury, the Big Aussie finally said, “Ok, if he’s going to keep getting hurt I guess I’m the best player on team, time to act like it,” and he did just that. His season, and career, culminated in a 24-point 20-rebound performance at Madison Square Garden in a big EFF YOU! to Knicks “center” David Lee, who weeks before had been voted into the All-Star game over Bogut himself.
One has to believe that if not for that horrific arm injury Bogut suffered late in the season against the Phoenix Suns, the Bucks would have secured the fifth seed in the East and very possibly upset the Boston Celtics in the first round. In the end, despite missing 13 games due to injury, sportswriters rightfully named Bogut third team All-NBA and finally ushered him into the club of centers to be feared.
The second piece of the Bucks young trifecta may be a confusing one to some, so an explanation is necessary. In his second year, Luc Richard mbah Moute has proven himself to be a lockdown defender with some crafty interior moves. At the same time, Ersan Ilyasova after a short professional stint in Spain returned to the Bucks this past season and made a tremendous impact shooting threes, hitting the offensive glass and making tough running bank-shots. Now, wouldn’t it be great if these two incessant hustlers could combine their strengths to create one well-rounded basketball player. Well, who says they can’t? I call him Luc Ersan mbah Sova. He can lock down Dirk Nowitzki on one end of the floor and then come down and hit a 26-footer on the other end.
If mbah Sova can play the full 48 minutes allotted to the Bucks’ power forward position and at the same time log a few more at the 3 and the 5 spots (which is hypothetically impossible, but hey, he’s my creation) he could be a force to be reckoned with in the near future. I’ll just leave it at that for this article as mbah Sova continues to grow in my head and so the last part of the young triumvirate can receive the space he is due.
Brandon Jennings. Young Buck. BJ3. Double Nickel. The nickname and the shooting percentage might be the only two things that need a drastic upgrade by next season. In the following paragraphs I will attempt to convince anyone reading this that Brandon Jennings will be the biggest Wisconsin sports SUPERSTAR for however long he decides to remain in the state.
Scoring 55 points in just his seventh NBA game (minus the first quarter) may have placed impossibly high to reach expectations on the youngster, but to me it shows one thing; It. For lack of a better word, Brandon Jennings has It, understands It and once he learns to harness It he will be a threat to repeat that legendary performance every single night. It is what makes you think Lebron James might just score 60 points in a half some day or Dwight Howard might put up a 30-30 on a December night against the Clippers. There are a handful of guys in the league today that have It and Jennings is in elite company.
Not to take anything away from Tyreke Evans and Steph Curry who had tremendous seasons and, according to the voters, both deserved the Rookie of the Year award more than Jennings. But ask yourself; which rookie put up 29 points in a quarter against none other than Curry’s Warriors? Which Compton-born point man by way of Virginia and Italy was leading, repeat….leading, his overachieving squad into the month of May? Which level-headed 20-year-old, despite making over $2 million in salary this year is driving a Ford Edge around a blue-collar city he now calls home? The answer to those questions tells you which of the three is going to end up the true superstar.
Should we be including Jennings in the discussion with James, Howard, Durant and Wade just yet? No. He shot 37% from the floor in his rookie campaign. Will he be in that conversation three years from now? I say yes, because he has It. With a little bulk and a little better shot selection Jennings has all the makings to be one of the best guards in the league. Paul and Williams both have It to an extent, and, as evidenced by the confidence to spend a year in Italy learning the game as well as be the face of an experimental basketball venture by Under Armour, Jennings may have even more of It than the league’s two best point guards.
In short, It is a combination of passion, dedication, talent, innovation, pride and swagger. It is something you’re born with. It cannot be taught by Phil Jackson, Pat Riley or Master Splinter. It makes you great. There is much more to be said about Jennings and It, but in the interest of space I end the section with this; possibly the best visual representation I can give you of It.
Mr. Hammond, please keep this kid around.
Two Brews Please
For ten full seasons Geoff Jenkins epitomized what a Milwaukee Brewer should be. He may not be given enough credit for his contributions to the club because of the complete lack of anything resembling success that his teams achieved, but he was always the ultimate professional. Jenkins played hard every single day and played at a high level on teams that were lucky to get 60 wins some seasons. And can’t you just picture him in a different lifetime tipping back a few cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon with his shirt off in the Lambeau Field parking lot? He was a Wisconsin kind of guy. Oh, and he grew up in Southern California.
Now, turn him around the other side of the plate, give him the discipline to hit the ball the other way, surround him with some talent, replace the PBRs with shots of Patron, and presto, you have current Brewer stud Ryan Braun. I’m not telling anyone anything they don’t know by saying Ryan Braun is one of the best young hitters of all-time. Bill Schroeder can barely get through a telecast without bringing up that list of “most homeruns by a player in his first four seasons”. I’m just saying be thankful for what we have fellow Brewers fans (and for what we always had). Aside from Cardinals fans since Albert Pujols’ debut and quite possibly Braves fans in the blossoming Jason Heyward era, no one in this century has been given the opportunity to watch as good of a hitter day-in day-out. Braun simply doesn’t get fooled, doesn’t put bad swings on the ball and occasionally hits 470-foot bombs off the scoreboard in Arizona with Geoff Jenkins sitting in the crowd smiling.
Now what about that pitcher who consistently throws 95 mph to go along with a huge 12-6 curve and an effective but underused changeup? That one who came up through the Brewers organization and completed his first impressive big-league season at the age of 22, giving fans confidence that they’d have at least one strong link in the club’s pitching rotation for years to come. If you think you know who I’m talking about you’re wrong, because honestly, as I’m writing this, I am not entirely sure who I’m describing more aptly, Ben Sheets or Yovani Gallardo. The similarities are uncanny, and hopefully Yo can stay healthy longer than Sheets managed to.
No offense directed towards Sheets. In fact, he was my absolute favorite Brewer for the better part of a decade. He should have finished second in the Cy Young voting in 2004 behind Randy Johnson. It’s actually ridiculous how Roger Clemens won the award that year when Johnson posted a .900 WHIP, look it up. Unfortunately Sheets finished eighth in that award race with an equally ridiculous one vote. Not one first place vote. One TOTAL vote. 34 starts, a 2.70 ERA, 264 Ks, a 0.983 WHIP and one single Cy Young vote. Every season after that was riddled with various injuries. Eventually Sheets’ Brewer career ended after the 2008 campaign that sadly and fittingly concluded with him tearing his flexor tendon, causing him to sit out the entire 2009 MLB season.
Although Gallardo has already missed nearly an entire season due to a freak ankle injury in 2008, that doesn’t seem to be the thing most likely to prevent him from reaching elite starter status. That would be his walk totals. Gallardo’s strikeout statistics are practically as impressive as Sheets’ were at the high point of his career, but he needs to learn how to trust those nasty pitches and dare hitters to do something with them. That part of his game will develop, and once it does he can start challenging the Lincecums and Carpenters of the world.
No matter how many .500 seasons we have to deal with from the Crew, as long as Braun and Gallardo are around we will continue to hold on to the hope that maybe….just maybe this will be our year.
Now, one more thing and I gotta go. Think about it how good we actually have it Wisconsin fans. Rodgers. Bogut, mbah Sova and Jennings. Braun and Gallardo. Show me another fan base with young talent at that level and I’ll show you…..well I’ll show you my middle finger, pour a beer on your head and keep rooting religiously for all things Wisconsin.
