For Bucks, there are signs of life

The most ambitious team this summer so far has been the injury-prone, underachieving and eminently forgettable Milwaukee Bucks.

Which is not to say that other teams have been passive. The Knicks and Mavericks are among those to change coaches and/or management, while the Nets, Pacers, Warriors and Clippers have made a flurry of personnel moves. But none of those teams is trying to create such drastic improvement as quickly as Milwaukee. By hiring general manager John Hammond, who begot defense-first coach Scott Skiles and full-court star Richard Jefferson, the Bucks have undergone multiple defibrillations like those to a patient brought back from the dead.

The long-term prognosis is for good health. Between Jefferson and Michael Redd, the Bucks will enter next season with two of the league's top 10 scorers -- and neither one is known for putting his needs ahead of the team's. They have talent at every position, and Skiles has a track record of success at both ends of the floor.

But the rehab will be painful. "The Bucks have won 30, 40, 28 and 26 games in the last four years,'' Skiles said, listing their failures respectively. "So obviously there are some habits there that we need to change, and there's going to be some push-back initially or at some point. And we just need to deal with it how it comes.''

So how do he and Hammond undertake the conversion of a score-first team into a franchise that plays defense?

"We're starting right now,'' Skiles said. "We're in conversation with all of our guys, letting guys know what we expect -- and every guy has said, 'We don't play good enough defense. And we don't share the ball.' So I've said, 'Well, I'm glad to hear you saying that. It's going to be my job to hold you accountable to that end.' And that's where we'll start, with our accountability at the defensive end, and try to build off that.''

Hammond, the lead assistant to Pistons president Joe Dumars for seven years, recruited Detroit director of basketball operations Jeff Weltman to join him in Milwaukee as assistant GM. While they aren't trying to recreate the second coming of the Pistons, it's obvious that the core principles will prevail.

"I was brought up in the Iba system,'' said Hammond, whose career began three decades ago as an assistant coach at Nebraska with Moe Iba, son of Hall of Fame coach Hank Iba. "First and foremost, you defend with good transition defense, you defend in the half court, and on the offensive end you execute and take good shots. It's sound basketball, and the best coaches I've had a chance to be around have a similar philosophy.''

That's why, a week after his own hiring in April, Hammond recruited and signed Skiles as an available coach who lives by those values. The interesting thing is how Skiles has survived the criticisms he suffered with the Suns (1999-2002) and in the early portion of his tenure with the Bulls (who fired him last December in his fifth season) that he was too demanding of players to be an NBA head coach. The Bulls' recent collapse had less to do with Skiles' oversight than with the rumors of a roster-clearing trade for Kobe Bryant and the preseason decisions of Luol Deng and Ben Gordon to reject contract extensions, which combined to have a fragmenting effect on that young Chicago team.

Skiles will work with a Bucks roster whose starters are all younger than 30, with newly signed backup point guard Tyronn Lue serving as the oldest player in the rotation at 31. As a group they're approaching their peak, led by 29-year-old Redd and 28-year-old Jefferson.