When Larry Krystkowiak took over as head coach of the Bucks in mid-March, the team won its first two games and seemed poised for a final-month renaissance.

Then, reality set in.

With key players like Andrew Bogut, Charlie Villanueva and Michael Redd sidelined due to injury, the Bucks have lost 11 of 12 games, including a 104-98 setback against Indiana Wednesday night at the Bradley Center.

As the season entered its final week with nothing to look forward to but the draft lottery, we caught up with Krystkowiak at the team's training complex in St. Francis.In a small office decorated with photos of his wife, Jan, and sons Cameron, Luc and Ben, Krystkowiak talked about injuries, the draft and the effort put forth by his players.

Enjoy this Milwaukee Talks interview with Bucks coach Larry Krystkowiak:

OnMilwaukee.com: It has been just about a month since you took over as head coach and there is about a week until you reach the finish line. At this point, do you wish you had more time to keep working with these players or will you be relieved when the season is over?

LK: Under the circumstances, I figure I'd be lying if I didn't say it was a sense of relief. We've been somewhat of a wounded bunch as a team. It's been really hard on everybody mentally. Between the injuries and losing way more close games than we should. And finding a way to lose some games, the other night like New York.

It's been real disheartening. I think it's been positive to have an opportunity to coach for however many weeks I've had to get a little of that out of my system and maybe set the tone a little bit for what is going to happen in the fall. I think from my perspective, it's a bonus. Hopefully, from a player's perspective to not have the unknown over the summer and then have a coaching change and try to jump into camp.

I'm really, really excited about what lies ahead. At the same time, I'd be lying if I said I wouldn't be relieved when this chapter is over.

OMC: A lot of people probably think your life changed a lot when you moved into the head coaching job. Did it? It has always seemed to me that assistant coaches are every bit as invested in a team's success or failure as the head coach. Do the losses sting more now that you're the guy in charge?

LK: The job description expanded a little bit. Instead of being on the floor working with the players as much as I was before, I'm doing more media stuff. The time changes, but the time elements are the same. You hit it right on the head - assistants... I wasn't sleeping very much (as an assistant). I was taking it hard, too. Not a whole lot has changed in that respect.

OMC: They say that adversity reveals character. Your team has had plenty of adversity this season. What have you learned about the players?

LK: I've commented on that the last few weeks. If you watch some of our practices, with the exception of our game at Charlotte and some little lulls that we've had, I think from the outside looking in you wouldn't say ‘That's a team that quit.' We had a game we could have won at Dallas. We had the Clippers on the ropes. We had the New York game the other day. It's the old ‘would've, could've, should've.' We could have been .500 in our last 10 games or 6-6 in our last 12 pretty darned easily. It hasn't happened. But, our guys haven't quit. They've come to practice and they've given it their best. Our roster is depleted, so guys are playing a lot of minutes. It's tough to win games, but character-wise, the guys are standing up to the challenge and being professional.

OMC: Given your position, with the draft lottery looming, a lot of people assume that the organization is losing games on purpose. What do you say to people who think you are "tanking?"

LK: It's tough. Part of my goal here... I'm really looking forward to not being in these types of discussions at the end of the year. That's the challenge -- to get out of the area that we're in so that we can be talking about playoff seeding and then, hopefully, in a few years, we can be talking about advancing. But, it's baby steps right now. Right now, we're at the bottom end of the spectrum. It's not fun.

OMC: Does it upset you that people think you're losing on purpose?

LK: I get back to trying to control what I can control. I can't control what people on the outside are saying about our team and what they think about what we're doing. It's real important that I'm trying to do what's right for our franchise and players and staying committed to that goal. I'll get distracted if I start paying too much attention to what is going on outside.

OMC: Do you think the lottery system needs to be revamped? If it was not weighted the way it is, teams wouldn't be accused of tanking.

LK: No. the way it works is the way it works. Parity is important. Look at a situation like Memphis. They've got a 50 percent chance of getting one of the top two picks. Now, is it fair to have the same chance for a team that was one game out of the playoffs? If you're really trying to create parity, then I don't buy that it needs to be the same for everybody.

I think it's important to give a team a probability to get one of those picks if you've struggled as much as the teams at the bottom end of the spectrum have. Mathematically, that's the way to go.

OMC: When the season ends, will you watch the playoffs?

LK: Yes. We're going to get real active as a staff. I think there is a lot to be learned. We will do things similar to what we do during the season where you've done this team and Brian (James, an assistant) does the next one and Lester (Conner, another assistant) does the next one. I'm going to assign our staff teams to follow.

Let's say the Spurs plays somebody and they've got five days to prepare and come up with a game plan on how to beat whoever it might be. You've got to assume that people with that much preparation time and that level of success are doing something right. I'm all open for learning.

We'll look at how they are trying to beat Dallas in the semifinals and make little notes within our file of how we're scouting them not just before we play them next year, but just to say "Hey, this is a pretty good philosophy" or way to play it. We're going to be active throughout the whole playoffs as a staff trying to pick up and learn and figure out ways to beat Cleveland. How did somebody play them? It's real important to do that.

OMC: Will you do the scouting in person or in front of a flat-screen TV?

LK: Most of it will be on video. I don't even know if it's practical for us to scout games in person during the playoffs.

OMC: Video scouting has come a long way since you were a player, hasn't it?

LK: We made the most of what we had then, but it's pretty crazy. It's all broken down into offensive clips and defensive clips so you don't have to sort through the free throws and the timeouts. I've got it all right here (in the office). I come in the morning after (a game) and it's ‘OK, let's look at Orlando's offense' and then it's one clip after the next. You can get pretty specific. And we've got a group of guys who do personnel. If you want to see what somebody is doing individually, you can do that.

OMC: A number of players on your current club are eligible for free agency after the season. Are there any you think are essential to have back?

LK: Some of it is still unknown. We will have a significant amount of money in free agency to go out and target some players. Only one team is going to get a player and then it's going to trickle down and everybody is going to target their next choice. It's a little bit like recruiting (at the college level). You're kind of filling in the gaps as much as you can. At that point, you sit down and try to decide who on your current roster is on that list. I'd be kind of out of turn trying to predict what we're going to do, but I haven't been giving that too much thought. It's more about trying to focus how to get through the next week. The time will come for some meetings post-season and then we'll kind of move on to the next phase that way.

OMC: With Bobby Simmons sidelined since training camp, you went the whole season without having your full roster available. Where do you think this team would be if Simmons hadn't been out and other key guys like Michael Redd hadn't missed so much time because of injuries?

LK: That's hard to tell. It's kind of a lesson this year to not look on paper at all the preseason talk and stuff. There are so many elements that are out of your control, like injuries and breaks that go the wrong way. I'm not going to put too much credence in the "would've, could've and should've" and "What if we'd stayed healthy?"

I think it's a challenge for our staff and our players to be motivated and prove some people wrong and improve some weaknesses and take a look at what the strengths are let's let the chips fall where they may next year at the end of 82 games. Let's not try to predict or have expectations on that. It's on each of us individually. I don't really know where we would have been.

OMC: Your injury situation this year has been almost ridiculous.

LK: It affected us, no doubt.

OMC: Although the final few games may be meaningless, how much will it hurt the development of Andrew Bogut and Charlie Villanueva to miss this playing time?

LK: Charlie had to get his shoulder fixed. The doctor went in and said this wouldn't have healed without surgery. You kind of take the hand that's dealt you. I'm a firm believer that things happen for a reason. Andrew has been playing basketball for about two years straight, with the summers and his international stuff. The season is grueling. He doesn't miss many games until right at he end here. At some point, your body is going to raise it's hand and say ‘Hey, that's just about enough. It's about all I can handle.'

Next year, Charlie is going to be in a better place. Andrew is going to be in a better place. Michael (Redd) will be. We just have to focus on getting back and crossing our fingers and hopefully (the injuries) won't happen again.

OMC: Given the injuries, will you examine the strength and conditioning programs to find out if there are things that other teams are doing that you are not?

LK: I think you have to do that all the way through the organization, We need to take a look and try to make improvements, there is no doubt. I haven't had an opportunity to sit down or schedule a meeting with Tim Wilson our strength and conditioning coach, but I'll do that. I want all the players to take a good, hard look at themselves. We're going to (as coaches). If everybody just takes a look in the mirror and tries to fix what part of them might be broken, we'll be better for it.

OMC: As you work to put your imprint on this team, do you find yourself drawing inspiration from former coaches that you played under?

LK: My first flashback was actually to middle school; I was thinking about a couple coaches I had there. One was a football coach that just kind of part-timed the basketball. I respected those two guys as much as anybody.

The football coach, I just remember him being so hard-nosed and brought that element out of basketball that you could actually jump on the floor and try to knock somebody over. That was my first real connection with playing hard. That happened in like seventh grade. Then, I had a high school coach that played for the University of Montana that just happened to show up at a Class C school in Shelby, Montana. He was 6-9. I knew that he had succeeded at the division 1 learned a lot from him.

I think about those guys and coach (Mike) Montgomery (from the University of Montana) and others right down the line. It's no different, really, than growing up. You're kind of a byproduct of your parents and the people you spend time with.
In coaching, it's kind of a combination of all the people that you play for. One of the downsides of being hurt as much as I was at the end of my NBA career -- I had played in Milwaukee five years then went to Utah and played for Jerry Sloan for a year. I went to Orlando played there for a year. I went to Chicago and played for Phil (Jackson) for a year -- As hard as it was at the time to not really find any kind of roots, I was exposed to these different coaches and saw how things are done.

I didn't think about it a whole lot at the time, but I always knew I was going to coach and in the back of my mind I'd watch Del Harris or Jerry Sloan or Phil Jackson and I was making little notes.

OMC: Marquette coach Tom Crean loves to talk to coaches from other sports about motivational techniques and practice planning and things like that. Do you do that, too?

LK: Definitely. I'm all over it. I'm going to a coaching clinic later this month. You can get tiny tidbits from any coach. It might be a shooting drill that you see and go "Oh, that's cool." Then you try it and it works with your guys. Things like that help break the monotony of it, too. You don't want to do the same things over and over. I think if you're done learning, you've got problems. To me, it's a constant evolving and trying to improve.