Shaq says Cavs are the best team he’s ever been on…at least on paper. Shaq has never been one to shy away from a juicy quote, but in touting his team, he calls Anderson Varejao “one of the top forwards in the league” and mentioned rookie Darnell Jackson by his nickname (D-Block). Um, okay. If it’s all the same, we’ll wait to see how this team fares on the court, especially in the playoffs. Did Shaq meet with the Cuyahoga County Sheriff’s Department? Shaq refused to confirm the report: “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he told The News-Herald. “Undercover officers aren’t allowed to talk about what’s going on.” Classic.

Andrew Bogut is ready for more work. Bogut is coming off a back injury that kept him out for much of the last four months of the 2008-09 season. Given his career numbers — 11.9 ppg, 8.7 rpg — he’s not a bust, but he’s certainly not what the Bucks were expecting when they took him with the #1 pick back in 2005. Milwaukee passed on Chris Paul and Deron Williams, two franchise-caliber point guards, and even Marvin Williams might be looking better right now since he’s been able to stay healthy. Bogut played in 82 games his rookie season, but since then, he has missed 27% of his team’s games and the Bucks haven’t made the postseason. This is a big year for the Aussie, who needs to prove that his contract (worth $60 million) is justified.

Stephen Jackson to the Cavs? This rumor has Jackson heading to Cleveland for Zydrunas Ilgauskas and his expiring contract. The Cavs are already loaded at the wing with LeBron, Jamario Moon and Anthony Parker, but the saga of Delonte West, might have the Cavs looking to add to the arsenal. However, it’s going to be tough to find minutes for all of these players as it stands, and Jackson isn’t one to sit quietly if he’s not getting what he believes to be appropriate playing time.

Is Gilbert Arenas changing his game? Arenas has always been a shoot-first point guard, but he only took five shots and dished out 10 assists against the Grizzlies on Tuesday. HC Flip Saunders wants him to be more aggressive, so we’re more likely to see a watered-down version of 2006 Agent Zero than some new, pass-first variety.

Nets looking to run offense through Brook Lopez. HC Lawrence Frank redesigned his offense to feature Lopez at the top of the key and at the elbows. He wants Lopez to facilitate, so expect the second-year center’s numbers to rise with all the additional touches.

The economy is really starting to take its toll on professional sports, and the NBA is no different. Bad contracts are bad even when the economy is pumping, but they really stand out in tough times like these. So I decided to look through the payrolls team-by-team to try to identify the worst contracts in the NBA. I expected to list 15-20 names, but I ended up scribbling down 68. That’s right, there are no fewer than 68 bad contracts in the NBA.

I didn’t include any of the players that are in the final year of their contracts because…well, what’s the point? They’ll be off the books in a few months anyway. Instead, I wanted to focus on those contracts that are going to haunt teams for years to come, so to be eligible, players have to have at least a year left on their current deals.

It’s tough to compare someone making superstar money to an average, everyday role player, so I split these 68 contracts up into three groups: the Overpaid Role Players, the Not-So-Super Stars and the Injury-Prones. I will rank them from least-worst to most-worst with the thinking that I wouldn’t trade the player for anyone further down the list but I would trade him for anyone previously mentioned. So, for example, if a guy is listed #7 within a particular group, I’m not trading him for anyone ranked #6-#1, but I would think seriously about moving him for a guy that is ranked #8+.

So let’s start with the role players and go from there…

(Note: In most cases, I don’t blame the player himself for his outrageous contract. The fault lies with the general manager that inked the guy to the deal. However, this rule goes out the window if the player has a history of only producing in his contract year – I’m looking at you, Tim Thomas.)

The Milwaukee Bucks’ playoff chances took a serious hit Saturday when Michael Redd went down with a knee injury.

Michael Redd has battled through some serious injuries during his pro basketball career but he has never had an injury that required surgery.

That’s why the Milwaukee Bucks guard is going through a difficult time after tearing the medial collateral and anterior cruciate ligaments in his left knee Saturday night against Sacramento.

Redd will undergo surgery in early February, although no date has been established yet.

The Bucks still have enough talent to finish in the 7th or 8th spot in the East, but they have to play with more consistency. Richard Jefferson, Charlie Villanueva and Andrew Bogut are going to have to pick up the scoring slack.

By far the most surprising score from Tuesday’s NBA action is the Bucks 100-98 win over the Spurs in San Antonio. Michael Redd led the Bucks with 25 points and 10 boards, while Andrew Bogut held down the middle with 20 points, 14 rebounds, four assists and three blocked shots. More importantly, he limited Tim Duncan to 7 of 20 shooting from the field, which helped the Bucks spring the upset.

But point guard Luke Ridnour might have been the difference in the game. He posted 21 points (on 9 of 15 shooting), six assists, five rebounds, two blocked shots and a steal, and if he didn’t outplay Tony Parker (19 points, 10 assists), then he sure negated him.

Ridnour joined the Bucks as part of the three-team trade that sent Mo Williams to the Cavs in the offseason. He’s 27, and prior to joining the Bucks, he had spent his entire career in Seattle. At the beginning of the season, new head coach Scott Skiles immediately inserted him into the starting lineup and he has responded with solid play, especially recently.

Take a look at Ridnour’s numbers from November and December:

Nov: 10.6 ppg, 4.9 apg, 38.8% FG%, 0.93 spg
Dec: 11.7 ppg, 6.2 apg, 47.7% FG%, 2.08 spg

That jump in field goal percentage is key. He cut back on the number of three pointers he’s taking (from 2.9 to 1.7) and is taking more open mid-range jumpers created off of pick-and-rolls with Bogut.

For much of November, I thought that Ramon Sessions (who is having a great year in his own right) would soon take over as the starter, but with Ridnour’s December play, I’m not so sure. Skiles is a former point guard, and he has two good, underrated options at the position. The key for Ridnour is to keep up that FG%; everyone knows that he can pass the ball.

Sessions is a free agent after the season, and on a per-minute basis he’s still way ahead of Ridnour in terms of production (PER: 16.48 vs. 13.75). Ridnour has another year on his contract. It will be interesting to see how the team handles these two players. I wouldn’t be surprised if Skiles continues to play Ridnour heavy minutes so that he can keep a lid on Sessions’ league-wide profile until the Bucks can lock him up in a long-term deal at a discount. If that’s the case, he has to be careful not to alienate Sessions so much that a rift is created between the player and the head coach. It’s a bad, bad thing when a point guard and his coach aren’t on the same page.

Regular readers might be familiar with my occasional posts — “Correcting Bill Simmons” and “Correcting Rick Reilly” — where I try to help out my better-paid, less-informed counterparts by pointing out when/where they’re wrong. This time, I’m going to tackle ESPN The Mag as a whole. I know I’m going to hear some guy at the sports bar regurgitate this “analysis” as his own opinion and I won’t have the wherewithal to call him on it.

Let’s start with everyone’s favorite blowhard — and I doubt he’d take that as an insult given his commentary stylings — Stephen A. Smith. In his “Up Front” column, he criticizes Oscar De La Hoya for not knowing when to give it up.

Help, someone! Pretty Please!

It would be really nice if someone could muster some plausible explanation as to why a fighter like Oscar De La Hoya, beyond his prime for quite a while before the Manny Pacquiao bout, still chose to step into the ring and get his brains beat out. The mismatch was so obvious that Oscar’s wife, Millie, was screaming for him to quit before he had the common sense to do it himself.

It’s really easy to knock De La Hoya after the match is over when it’s clear that he shouldn’t have fought the fight. But one quick look at the pre-fight odds (-165 Hoya / +135 Pacquiao) reveals that this fight fooled a LOT of people, not just the Golden Boy. According to the betting public, De La Hoya was the clear favorite in the fight, so why would Oscar think that he was about to step into a beatdown? The betting public clearly doesn’t know everything, but it’s a pretty good gauge of public opinion and if the public is fooled, why would De La Hoya — who has an ego of a big-time fighter — know any better?

If Smith writes this column before the fight, I’d give him props. But this is classic kick-’em-while-they’re-down writing.

Let’s move on to Mike & Mike (Golic & Greenberg) who answer “The Big Question” — if the best players in college sports don’t make any noise in the pros, what’s their legacy?

Offseason Movement: New GM John Hammond was busy this summer wheeling and dealing. Two starters from last season are gone. The Bucks traded Mo Williams to Cleveland in a three-way deal that brought Luke Ridnour from Seattle/OKC. Williams was more of a scorer, while Ridnour is definitely a pass-first point guard. The team also traded Yi Jianlian (and Bobby Simmons) to the Nets for Richard Jefferson. This move implies that the team is in “win now� mode, which makes sense given the roster.
Keep Your Eye On: Charlie Villanueva
Everyone thought that Charlie V would be one of the first Bucks to go once Hammond took over, but the team dealt Yi instead and they’re expecting V to take over at power forward. In the 31 games he started last season, he averaged 15/8, so if he can play enough defense to make new coach Scott Skiles happy, he could be in for a big year. The Bucks sure need him to break out, and there’s a good bet that he will, especially if he takes the ball to the hole more.
The Big Question: Can Scott Skiles whip this team into shape?
For the last several years, the Bucks have lacked a defensive mindset and toughness. There’s definitely enough talent to compete; a starting five of Ridnour, Michael Redd, Jefferson, Villanueva and Bogut makes for a good young core of skilled offensive players. If Skiles can get them to increase their effort on defense, the team should make a jump in the standings. It’s no sure thing that all the players will buy in; it’s just as likely that the Bucks will be looking at a losing record two months in and Skiles will have a revolt on his hands.
Outlook: Encouraging. The addition of Jefferson is a huge upgrade at small forward, which has been a weak spot for the last two seasons. The loss of Yi is a loss of potential only, as Villanueva should be able to produce better numbers from that position. Assuming good play from Redd and continued growth from Bogut, the Bucks are one of the darkhorses in the East. If Ridnour helps the team meld into a single cohesive unit offensively and Skiles can get them into the middle of the pack defensively, then the Bucks will be in business.

So I’m watching SportsCenter this morning and they’re talking about all the NBA happenings, and the SC guy (I forget his name) asked Ric Bucher about the five-year, $72.5 million contract that Andrew Bogut signed.

Bucher makes a good point that it’s probably a big number for Bogut – I estimated his value at $12.0 M – $12.5 M per season – and that the other GMs around the league are likely angry at John Hammond for skewing the pay scale for big men. He mentioned restricted free agents Emeka Okafor and Andris Biedrins as two guys that will probably look at the contract that Bogut signed and think they deserve something similar.

I don’t have a problem with these points as they are completely valid (though neither Okafor or Biedrins have the polished low post game that Bogut has).

The SC guy threw out the name “Jim McIlvaine” (referring to the absurd contract that McIlvaine signed after having accomplished nothing in the league) to which Bucher chuckled, and then replied, “More like Travis Knight.”

Both Knight and McIlvaine are poster boys for overpaid big men in the NBA. McIlvaine made almost $28 million over a career in which he averaged 2.7 points and 3.1 rebounds. For his part, Knight posted 3.4 points and 3.1 rebounds while earning more than $18 million in his career.

Both players were grossly overpaid, but neither player is even in the same league talent-wise as Andrew Bogut, who averaged 9.4 points and 7.0 rebounds as a rookie, 12.3 points and 8.8 rebounds in his sophomore season and 14.3 points and 9.7 rebounds in his third season. Does he deserve a contract that averages $14.5 million a year? Probably not. But does he deserve to be compared to Jim McIlvaine and Travis Knight? Hell no.

Truth be told, the contract is about $2 million per season more than Bogut is worth, but small market teams that haven’t won recently usually have to overpay to keep their stars. Given the 16.3 points and 11.6 rebounds that Bogut averaged after the All-Star break, along with the improvement he’s made in blocking shots (from 0.5 bpg in 2006-07 to 1.7 bpg last season), as a Bucks fan I’m happy they locked him up.

Update (8/8/08): Bogut’s base deal was for five years and $60 million. Hard-to-reach incentives bring the total possible value of the contract up to $72.5 million, so the $12 million per season estimate was right on the money. (Don’t worry, I won’t break my arm patting myself on the back. I know you were worried.)