Who's gonna win it? The Bucks?!?! The Bucks?!?

I was watching the Bucks' season opener in Orlando with Will and Jana tonight, and when I took Will upstairs to brush his teeth, pee, and read books, the Bucks were down three points in a back and forth game. After tucking him in and telling him his favorite story of the moment - the Tortoise and the Hare - I laid down and started thinking about writing a season preview for Milwaukee.

After kissing my son goodnight, I flipped the game back on and saw the Bucks down 28 to a decidedly average Magic team, apparently after being on the business end of a 28-4 run. And you know what? That's what kind of year this is going to be.

The Bucks have some guys who, individually, you think "Nice player, a team can win and get to the playoffs with him." But put them all together and you think "38-44, drafting 10th."

First of all, the coach. Larry Krystkowiak was a terrific pro for Milwaukee when we were kids, but I'll always remember him being taken off the floor on a stretcher after blowing out his knee in the playoffs against the Pistons. Sorry, but Krysto seems destined to be the next in a line of mediocre coaches to follow George Karl, a slight upgrade from Terry Stotts.

Let's start at point guard. I like Mo Williams, he takes and hits big shots, and his numbers look good, but there's something missing from his game that the big timers have. Better penetrating and passing ability? Better defense? Have a feeling he would be dynamite as a third guard on an elite team.

Michael Redd: Love him, don't care if we overpaid to keep him. In today's scoring-challenged NBA, if a guy can light it up like Redd can, you need to hang onto him. Seems to be a good person who doesn't hate playing in Milwaukee.

Charlie Bell is just a guy, no reason to have tried so hard to keep him, especially now that he's probably unhappy to be in Milwaukee. If he's playing more than 20 minutes per game we're in trouble.

Small forward: Desmond Mason and Bobby Simmons. Solid guys who should get you 10-12 per game, and you're okay if you don't need them to get you more. I like Mason as a character guy, he seems to be one of those rare truly interesting professional athletes, and he's a great dunker.

Power forward: Yi Jianlian and Charlie Villanueva. Yi is starting, ostensibly to get his energy in the game early and have another scorer coming off the bench. The cynic in me says this is a move to placate Beijing. Yi looked better than I thought tonight. In one sequence he made a contested jumper, but then let Hedo Freaking Turkoglu waltz right around him for a layup. He set a nice pick on Keyon Dooling later that the TV guys went nuts for ("those international guys are so fundamentally sound!"), but it was probably a moving screen. Jim and John then started comparing Yi to Nowitzki. Slow down there, guys, got lots of airtime to fill this season.

As for Chuck V, there was a three-minute or so stretch tonight where it seemed like he shot and missed every time he touched the ball (he finished 1-for-8 from the field). It was a performance reminiscent of Kevin Michalowski at our daily noon hoops game today ... only no one traded T.J. Ford for Kevin Michalowski. Not ready to give up on Villanueva, but the early returns ain't good.

Glad Andrew Bogut finally cut his hair. He's a decent player, will probably end up averaging close to a double-double. But he's not playing like a top pick. The three #1 overall picks preceding him were Yao Ming, LeBron James, and Dwight Howard. Have the Bucks caught a break since that coin flip in 1969?

Dan Gadzuric is fun to watch, his hustle and rawness is refreshing.

The roster is rounded out by men named Michael Ruffin, Royal Ivey, Jake Voskuhl, Awvee Story, David Noel, and Ramon Sessions, guys known only to their parents and hard core college basketball nerds like me.

The thing is, like all my other favorite teams, the Bucks play in a weak division in an inferior conference, so a seventh or eighth seed in the playoffs is not out of the realm of possibility.

The prediction: 38-44, picking 10th in June.