I'd like to thank Kevin Pritchard and (Paul Allen's $) for assembling such a promising rookie class for our team. Bayless, Batum, Oden, Fernandez. These rooks are all exciting to watch. Pritchard built our team from scratch (Telfair, Z-Bo, Ratliff, et al.) and these past 3 drafts were so much fun as fans- it was crazy trying to keep up with the maneuvers and multi-step trades. And we get the honor to watch these young guys grow. Seeing Roy become an perenial All-Star, watching Aldridge expand his post game, witnessing Oden learn the NBA while regaining his athleticism, etc. There is so much more to observe in the coming years because our team is so young. It won't be all sunshine and rainbows; we can expect growing pains, but in the end, I think the journey will be worth it (as well as the destination, NBA Championship, hopefully).
The amazing thing about our four is not only how good they are, but how diverse their talents are. With the Gordon, Deng, Nocioni and Duhon Bulls, there was a lot of overlapping talent--two shoot-first combo guards and two small forwards. We've got a hard-driving combo guard, a traditional shooting guard, a prototypical defensive small forward and a prototypical power center. They all happened to be the Best Player Available, but they all happen to fill positions of need. Pritchard is clearly a genius, but there was a huge amount of luck involved for all these guys to fit so neatly into what we needed.
I agree... I think we are playin' our best ball of the season, and it happened to come when we have 4 of our 9 man rotation rookies, all playing around 17+mpg... its awesome... And I really like all of them.
Duhon isn't a shoot first combo. He's a pass first PG. He averaged 26.5 MPG his rookie year, but only attempted 6.0 shots per game. That comes to 8.1 FGA/36. By comparison, Sergio is currently averaging 9.2 PGA/36. Is Sergio a shoot first combo guard? Gordon is very similar to Bayless - a combo guard who is basically a SG in a PG body. But yes, I like our rookies more - much more. I think they have more updside than those Bulls rookies. Nocioni turned 25 in November of his rookie year, and is very limited physically/athletically. He's definitely a tweener. He's a banger in a 6'7" body. Our Eurorookie is two years younger and already better. The biggest difference is the Bulls didn't have any big men in that rookie class. Of course, they already had Chandler and Curry, who while already in their 4th NBA seasons were both only 22. BNM
Good point, and I've thought the same thing numerous times. It must be attributed to Nate's atrocious coaching.
Damn, the Fab Four had style and they could sure put on a show as well. Yes, I'm old enough to have seen them in concert when I was (really really) young.
