Good coaching by Skiles to get the ball out of Gordon's hands, or force Gordon to take bad shots (which Gordon hasn't done) by crowding him. The Bulls problem remains the same, their big men are crap.
<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%"><tbody><tr class="ysptblthbody1 yspboxscore-columnheader-row" align="right"><td class="yspdetailttl player" align="left" height="18" width="17%"> Starters </td> <td class="yspdetailttl" width="4%"> </td> <td class="yspdetailttl" width="7%">Min</td> <td class="yspdetailttl" width="7%">FG</td> <td class="yspdetailttl" width="6%">3Pt</td> <td class="yspdetailttl" width="6%">FT</td> <td class="yspdetailttl" width="6%">+/-</td> <td class="yspdetailttl" width="5%">Off</td> <td class="yspdetailttl" width="5%">Reb</td> <td class="yspdetailttl" width="5%">Ast</td> <td class="yspdetailttl" width="5%">TO</td> <td class="yspdetailttl" width="5%">Stl</td> <td class="yspdetailttl" width="5%">BS</td> <td class="yspdetailttl" width="5%">BA</td> <td class="yspdetailttl" width="5%">PF</td> <td class="yspdetailttl" width="7%">Pts </td> </tr> <tr class="ysprow1" align="right"> <td class="player" align="left"> D. Rose </td> <td class="player"> G </td> <td>41:04</td> <td>7-13</td> <td>0-0</td> <td>4-4</td> <td> +6 </td> <td>1</td> <td>1</td> <td>9</td> <td>5</td> <td>4</td> <td>0</td> <td>1</td> <td>2</td> <td>18 </td> </tr> <tr class="ysprow2" align="right"> <td class="player" align="left"> B. Gordon </td> <td class="player"> G </td> <td>37:12</td> <td>8-18</td> <td>0-1</td> <td>4-5</td> <td> +2 </td> <td>0</td> <td>6</td> <td>4</td> <td>1</td> <td>1</td> <td>0</td> <td>2</td> <td>2</td> <td>20</td></tr></tbody></table>
Good games out of Rose, Gordon, Deng, and Hughes. Those four combined for 74 points...out of 90. Too bad the rest of our team sucks. Good coaching by Skiles to make the other players beat him, instead of letting Gordon choose the fate of the game. Rose/Gordon did a good job in limiting the Bucks' backcourt production. Too bad our bigs suck.
Deng finally has a game where I feel like he had an impact. Tyrus had another not bad game. What is with VDN putting Noc on guys he knows he just can't cover?
I hate to quibble, but BG played 38 minutes and was good for 5 of them. Again, bulls down double digits, the other team loses interest and focus, and BG gets space and lights it up. The other team comes back and actually plays defense and BG looks like he is forcing again. That's not "good." Good would be if BG ended up with 10 assists and created for others when he got D'd up again. He didn't, he kept jacking up shots. And then they stopped passing to him. Rose was ok, but way too many TO's. Hughes just hit a higher percentage of the shots he always takes. Deng was the only guy who you could say had a good game, and it's about time.
It's not even cover as much as outproduce. And when Noc is in a lineup with BG and Hughes and Gooden, it's almost a waste because there aren't any shots left to take at that point and you need somebody to rebound and play D.
That's not really an actual representation of what happened. Ben Gordon took 2 field goal attempts in the fourth quarter. He knew the Bucks werent' going to let him get good looks, so he passed the ball when they hit him with doubles, and didn't turn it over. Gordon isn't going to get 10 assists with our frontcourt being what it is. The other players actually have to score after Gordon passes to them for Gordon to get assists. Gordon can't work miracles.
The bulls bigs are as good at finishing as BG is at passing. Getting a good pass is just as important as being strong enough to finish. BG can't make that pass. And to be fair, there aren't a lot of guys who can. But it isn't all Gray, TT, Noah, and Gooden's fault either.
Do I love this game? No. Not just the Bulls, but basketball in general. I mean seriously people, the NBA is a multi-billion dollar set of enterprises and this is the sort of thing it produces? Seriously, this is crap, and if even people who are hard core fans think it's crap, what does the casual fan think? I'll tell you what they think... they don't think twice. They go watch something else. Yuck. You know what this league needs? 1. About half as many teams. And about half as many completely shitty players nobody cares about seeing. Seriously... get rid of the Milwaukee Bucks. Make them a team in whatever AAA sort of league you want and knock the NBA down to 16 teams. You add the 3 or 4 actually good players on the Bucks and the 3 or 4 actually good players on the Bulls, and you've got yourself a real, live team that someone might, if they thought about it, pay to watch play other similarly composed teams. 2. The end of uber-long guaranteed contracts. If a guy sucks, you should be able to cut his ass and get someone else. With half as many jobs, there will be someone else available. If Michael Redd or Andres Nocioni look like the broken down bums they look like, send em packing. Punish the team financially for a year or something, but don't make fans watch years and years of Dan Gadzuric.
Did you hear the Milwaukee announcers talk about how Redd was ~300k short of a max deal, so it was unfair to criticize him as a max year deal kind of player? It was somewhat tongue in check, but it was so absurd I wanted slap somebody. David Stern agrees with you about the length of the contracts. But there's mediocrity in football, too, even given their shorter contracts. A lot of guys just don't play the game the right way, anymore.
True enough, but it's satisfying to be able to beat on em when they don't. For that matter, it'd be nice to be able to fire owners too.
I never could understand why we never played our best players 36-42 MPG. Deng's making the big bucks so play him 'till he drops! I'd love to see us do that with Gooden and even Noah, too.
Probably has something to do with the fact that they all follow two good games up with two bad ones. Noah couldn't run the floor for 30 minutes, he still isn't in game shape. Gooden has gone completely cold. Deng has had one good game this season. Until they do it for more than two games in a row, they are all still matchup players at best.
We don't have anyone better to play, so may as well play them. No, make that we want these guys to become the 40 minute/game players, so we absolutely should play them! If Noah doesn't play himself into shape over 15 games of 40 minutes, then there's something seriously wrong with him.