Mason, Yi To Start

The big news is that Desmond Mason and Yi Jianlian will start for the Bucks in the opener, as reported in the Journal Sentinel.

Throughout the exhibition season, Krystkowiak downplayed the importance of starting. In fact, he didn't make a big deal of informing his players as to who would be starting, merely mentioning it in an off-handed way, during a drill in which the Bucks were playing defense against some of the things Orlando does on offense.

"I remember playing," Krystkowiak said. "So I understand the starting talk. But the five starters don't mean they're our best five players. It's not a horse race to see which guy started, which guy had the most effective preseason. There's been hundreds of cases where a guy just makes sense to get out there and start.

I've been pretty consistent in my support of Villanueva starting at power forward because he's the superior player as things stand right now and Yi has enough pressure to perform as it is. However, both will see similar minutes and Coach Krystkowiak seems to be going out of his way to explain Yi and Villanueva are in this together and who starts isn't of huge importance. If Yi struggles, we'll probably see that who starts becomes a little more important but at this point I'm not terribly worried about it.