The last? Looking through Kirk's game logs, it'd be him on more then 5 occaisions; and I didn't even look through all his seasons; just scanned two of his season game logs. You may think you're on to something that lots of guys can go 7-23 in a game, but you missed the boat about guys getting 15 FTA; those guys tend to be uberstars. At least he brought something else besides 3 point shooting that game, along with games with 6,5,4, and 4 assists (21 assists, 8 TO for the series). Since Gordon's been the team's leading scorer, we've been in the playoffs 3 out of 4 seasons and took the world champs to 7 games. We've not been a playoff team without him, since the dynasty years. That'd be 4 of 5 seasons in his career. If you're really concerned about wasting cap space, you should be furious about the $20M we have invested in Hinrich and Deng, both with PER under 15 and played a combined 90 out of 162 possible games between the two of them last season.
If you're upset about $20 being spent on guys with mediocre PER's, why would you want to invest a whole bunch more on a guy who's never going to have a per above ~ 17.5? Why make the same mistake again.
That's right Hinrich was better by more than full point: 17.19 to 15.94. For all his supposed greatness, BG wasn't even in the top 50. http://insider.espn.go.com/nba/hollinger/statistics
Pretty awesome considering he had one good hammy for a couple games. Hinrich had a better PER than Rose, too, but if you had to put one on next year's squad, that's pretty easy as well.
Your 7 game sample is underwhelming. The Bulls' success is the sum of all the players. Deng missing all those games. Hinrich missing all those games. Rose's growth. Gordon's 20+ PPG and 17 PER. Hughes' desire to go where he could play. Gooden's season ending injury. And especially the trade that gave the Bulls a legit consistent 2nd scoring option. The one constant in our playoff caliber teams has been Gordon. The season he missed 10 games, we didn't make playoffs. Let's look at it another way. Why did the Bulls play Gordon 40 MPG as much as possible, considering they're likely to lose him? 1) Nobody better to play in his place 2) He could have sued if they benched him 3) They want to keep him, so they played him all he wanted 4) They wanted to prove you wrong and me right - that playing Gordon 40 MPG as often as possible is a way for him to fail or succeed. They did the same thing with Crawford, who got those minutes on a 23 win team. 5) They're utter morons. You're right and the pro basketball guys are wrong.
Right, I knew as soon as I pointed out the numbers that PER would also be tossed on the scrapheap of statistics that underrate BG...
Or how about this scenario: Seven games into the season they had nobody else. They gave up on trying to develop a totally inexperienced backcourt of Rose and Sefo, Hinrich and Hughes were hurt, and BG was pouting about coming off of the bench with his whole "Starter need to set the tone" stance. So they played BG and Hinrich was out for 30 plus games, Hughes played well for about two weeks and then reverted to form, and Sefo never found a niche offensively. So when Hinrich finally came back, it was a hell of a lot easier to ask him to be the good soldier and play the sixth man than tell BG he was going back to the bench in his contract year and risk losing him and pretty much any shot of going to the playoffs this year. It's what I would've done.
Linas Kleiza is #9 on that list with a PER of 25+. Joe Smith's playoff PER is good for #7, a smidge below Wade. Luke Walton's PER buries Hinrich. Let's trade! Some smart GM out there is going to go after those two and win a championship.
You're warm on the bolded part. If you want to make the playoffs and perhaps go deep, you play your best players. If you want to be a minor league team, you play guys for development purposes. That is what minor league teams do, you know.
So the fact that BG and Hinrich played the same games and the same players doesn't mean anything... The fact that BG had a 42 point game but still came out relatively less productive than Hinrich over the series doesn't mean anything... Keep telling yourself that.
The bulls were never going to go deep starting BG and playing him huge minutes. They lucked out getting a favorable matchup. The goal was just to make the playoffs, something the bulls weren't going to do if BG went into full get-my-numbers-contract mode.
PER doesn't measure anything meaningful over the small number of games, nor is it meaningful for a series like this. Keep telling yourself that we are in these games without 42 points from Gordon, 36 from Rose, 39 from Salmons (24 from Gordon on the average). Game 7 would have been a laugher for the Celtics if it weren't for Gordon's 17 points early in the game. I think you put in Thabo instead of Gordon and all 4 games (a sweep, get it?) would have been laughers.
Right,because that's what we are arguing, putting in an offensive stiff like Sefo. I have no problem with the bulls starting BG this year. They weren't going to do much better starting anybody else, and Hinrich is probably less of a long term solution at 2 than BG. But the bottom line is the bulls could do a lot better at the 2. The bonus is that they now know that they have a guy who can more than adequately play the sixth man, guard three positions well, and guarantee they get 48 minutes of top flight PG play. But they can still improve the team significantly by getting a more well rounded starting 2, which is true if they started Hinrich all season. BG isn't a starting 2 in any system other than this gimmick uptempo style. And this gimmick uptempo style isn't going to get the bulls anywhere because you have to play defense in the playoffs and BG still can't guard anybody good.
I keep asking you who they can put at the 2 that is better. Your answer of Salmons is a non-answer. The uptempo style and small ball is what made this a great series. The games we let Boston turn into a defensive contest were sure losses for us. Game 7 is a pretty good example. We'd be much better focusing on keeping the Rose/Gordon/Hinrich trio and finding a couple of younger Brad Miller caliber bigs, and especially one who can score inside so we're not fully reliant on outside shots or watching our guards get beat up trying to drive and draw fouls.
No, the bulls would be better if they could actually guard people and didn't have to rely solely on trying to outscore them. Nobody on the bulls is that good to begin with that they should want to try and put all their eggs in the offensive basket like that. It's going to lead to more 41-41 seasons and "exciting" first round exits. Salmons is not a non answer. He's a very viable answer and one I expect the Bulls to try next year if he and Deng and BG are all still on the roster. You seem to forget that BG was the third or fourth choice to start at the 2 this year. I can't remember if they started Hughes before he got hurt or not. Either way, while everybody says nice things about Ben, he's not the guy to be starting if you can help it and everybody in the game knows it. Oh and add Ray Allen to the list of guys who had a lot better series than BG based on PER (20+). And yes, seven games and 200+ minutes is a plenty large sample size.
The bulls were 7 games under .500 before the trade. After the trade, they became a fast paced high scoring team (106PPG). In the process, they went from 7 games under to even in 26 games. 16-10 record, .615 clip. The object of the game is to score more points than the opponent. Ray Allen isn't on the Bulls, that's a non-point. If he were, we wouldn't be talking about Gordon at the SG spot. But he's not, and at this point in their careers, I'd rather have the (just turned) 26 year old Gordon. He could well be the SG opposite Rose for another 7 years vs. a couple (maybe). It's undeniable that the Bulls have been a better team and won more games with Gordon as the starter than not. Undeniable.
Not in the last two years they haven't been. We should probably start a new thread since this all we are going to talk about all summer even if the bulls swing a trade for someone good.
