Barb Caffrey's Blog

I’ve been in and out of the doctor’s office the last three months. I was initially diagnosed with bronchitis, then I was diagnosed with bronchitis with a sinus infection/asthma exacerbation, and now I’ve been diagnosed with walking pneumonia. Antibiotics have been prescribed.

The weather is gray, we’re anticipating snow (again), and I’ve been feeling down due to being sick for so long. (If anyone’s fought any illnesses for months, they know what I’m talking about.) Optimism is at a premium, while a whole lot of things have had to slide as I have done battle to breathe, stay alive, and do whatever I can to help my friends and clients (much less my own family).

Now, I have had a few bright spots to point out, though they mostly have to do with sports. The Milwaukee Brewers won the team Gold Glove Award for best overall defense in the National League. They also had two players win individual Gold Gloves, those being second baseman Brice Turang and right fielder Sal Frelick. (A third, center fielder Blake Perkins, was a finalist but did not win. Perkins is an extraordinarily gifted defensive outfielder, nearly as good as Lorenzo Cain and Mike Cameron, among others, and a Gold Glove seems like it’s only a matter of time for Perkins.) In fact, Turang won another award, the Platinum Glove, for being the best overall defender in the National League.

These were bright spots, along with manager Pat Murphy winning Manager of the Year and General Manager Matt Arnold winning Executive of the Year. This shows how much the Brewers team effort mattered. While they didn’t go far in the playoffs yet again, the future seems bright as the team is young and the team is hungry.

Of course, we Brewers fans have to take the good with the bad, and the bad is that All-Star closer Devin Williams was traded to the New York Yankees for a pitcher, Nestor Cortes, and a utility infielder, Caleb Durbin (considered more of a prospect), along with a reported $2M in cash. While the Brewers have several excellent relievers, none of them was as polished or as steady as Williams in my humble opinion. Williams also did many wonderful things in the Milwaukee area for charity and to promote youth baseball efforts, and while one can hope Nestor Cortes will do some of the same while in Milwaukee, that’s unknown at this time. (It also won’t have the benefit of being from a guy who spent five years in Milwaukee and knew the ins and outs of the entire community, much less the most urgent needs.)

Anyway, in addition, the Milwaukee Bucks have been playing very well lately after a horrible 2-8 start. (They had several close games in that start; they weren’t all blowouts by any means. But it still wasn’t good.) They’re now 14-9, I think, and just won the NBA Emirates Cup tournament, held in Las Vegas a few days ago. They decisively beat the Oklahoma City Thunder, one of the best defensive teams in the NBA, partly because the Bucks’ defense was outstanding and partly because the Thunder couldn’t hit much in the way of three-point shots to save their lives.

I’ve been most pleased with Damian Lillard’s performance this season, though as per usual Giannis Antetokounmpo is getting nearly all the glory. (For good reasons, mind you. Giannis is an outstanding player and may be the NBA’s best.) As I read recently in, I think, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Lillard has done something very few superstars have done and taken on a role, in his prime, to aid another superstar in Giannis in order to help the team win.

Let that soak in a bit.

Lillard is considered one of the top 75 players to ever play in the NBA, right along with Giannis. He is a brilliant scorer, he is an excellent assist-man when asked to do that, and he’s shown some gritty defense that’s been absolutely unexpected from a guy previously considered to be all-offense, all the time.

What Lillard has done reminds me of another Milwaukee Buck of many years ago, that being Oscar Robertson. Robertson was acquired in a trade from the then-Cincinnati Royals (later they became the Sacramento Kings, I think) in 1970, and without him, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and the other luminaries on the 1970-1971 Bucks would have not been able to win the NBA championship. Robertson always had dished out assists, mind you, and he was never thought of as “offense only” as Lillard was for so many years (unfairly, to my mind, in Lillard’s part). But he moderated his scoring somewhat in order to win an NBA Championship with the Milwaukee Bucks, and he was the second option, behind Jabbar, in the same way that Lillard is the second option behind Giannis.

I think it takes an extra-special mindset to do something like that. I really do. It’s hard to change your game, the one you’ve played all these years to so much success, in order to sublimate your ego for the team’s. Robertson had that mindset, and so does Lillard.

My father was a huge fan of the Bucks, as I believe I have said before, and he told me a lot about Oscar Robertson as I grew up. (I was too young to see Robertson play in his prime.) I think Dad would get a kick out of the fact that Lillard seems to be doing similar things that Robertson did back in the early 1970s, and he’d be happy that Lillard’s playing solid defense as well as dishing out assists along with scoring whenever he’s needed. (He’s averaging 25.7 points a game, 7.5 assists per game, and 4.5 rebounds a game, all excellent numbers by any standards, especially considering he’s thirty-four years old. That’s on the older side for an NBA player, and it’s older than Robertson was when Robertson decided to moderate his game after being traded to the Bucks as Robertson was thirty-two.)

Of course, Robertson and Lillard have both had the benefit of superior coaching, excellent teammates, and their own seemingly limitless energy, effort, and, to put it bluntly, brains. It takes all of that to sublimate yourself to the betterment of the team, and it’s incredibly hard to do. I applaud Lillard for doing it, as I believe he will indeed benefit from it in the long run.

Anyway, that’s it for now…I’m trying to heal up, so I can write, edit, comment, etc., more often.

I wish everyone who has read this far a Merry Christmas, a Happy New Year, a warm Winter Solstice, Merry Yuletide, and a fine celebration of life with your loved ones at this particular time of year. May the season bring you joy, peace, and magic…at least the human-type of magic a smile and honest caring brings.