Milwaukee Bucks 90, Golden State Warriors 87

(unexpectedly, TJ Ford turned and whipped the ball at Troy Murphy's head a split second later. It was awesome.)

This game was important for a couple of reasons:

1) It was a revenge game, since those scum from Golden State beat the Bucks in Milwaukee last week, spoiling their undefeated season.

2) The Bucks had lost their last 17 on the road against the West. That's right, they didn't win one road game against a Western Conference team last year. Yikes.

3) The Bucks played their worst game of the year the night before (against the Clippers, in a game I didn't recap because I couldn't bring myself to write the nonsensical sentence "The Clippers are just a better team than the Bucks at this point." I'm happy for Cassell, though), and badly needed to bounce back with a good showing.

I'm working on a theory about these Bucks: They're so newly thrown together that they need games on a regular basis to keep them from forgetting how to play together. That's why their defense has been so atrocious lately. Last night, on the second night of a back-to-back, they held Golden State under 40% shooting and outrebounded them by a silly 58-42 margin. Once again, rebounding has won them a game. This truly is a new and different Bucks team.

Coach Terry Stotts continues to work with an 8-man rotation, only bringing the White Foreigner Trinity of Bogut, Kukoc, and Jiri Welsch off the bench. Again, this doesn't make much sense to me. Is Gadzuric insurance or is he on the trading block? Is Welsch really better than Chaz Bell?

Also, Coach Terry finally snuck Joe Smith into the starting lineup, with admittedly pretty good results. I'd still rather see Bogut get 20 minutes a game (especially since he went for 9 pts and 11 boards in 16 minutes last night), since he is our future, but I totally understand Stotts' desire to see more Joe Smith out there. He's clearly the best frontcourt defender they have right now.

THE BAD: The Bucks are still having problems blocking shots and forcing turnovers, two things that would help their defensive effort considerably. Like I said, it's a good thing they can rebound so well, because sloppy defense that doesn't make hustle plays or force turnovers is a recipe for disaster. I still think they'll be ok defensively with Simmons, Smith, and Magloire along the front line. They're just not there yet.