Take it with a grain of salt, but SherronShabazz at realgm posted this after the game: http://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1115472
There are lot of flawed players with big contracts. We could swap for another one. I hope Boozer was hurt and really commits to improving. Maybe the guy needs to drop some weight so he has better lift.
I don't see it. Boozer's contract is one of the four or five worst contracts in all of basketball given its length and that amount Boozer's skills have declined this year. Who are you going to trade for? Here's my list of trades that might be possible (and I don't like any of them): RASHARD LEWIS (2 years) $21,136,600; $22,699,600 Richard Jefferson (3 years) $9,248,850; $10,127,700; $11,006,600 Brandon Roy (4 years) $15,939,600; $17,454,200; $18,968,900; $20,483,500 Gilbert Arenas (3 years) $19,269,300; $20,807,900; $22,346,500 Emeka Okafur (3 years) $12,492,500; $13,490,000; $14,487,500 David Lee (5 years) $11,670,000; $12,778,900; $13,887,800; $14,996,700; $16,105,600 Richard Hamilton (doubt this is possible) (2 years) $12,500,000; $12,500,000 The only thing I can think of is some kind of 3 way with Andre Iguodala might be possible, but I doubt it.
He's movable. Hes got a huge contract but hes still actually a good player. I think his lack of success is attributed to not being a fit in Chicago's offense and obviously hes no defensive savant. Phoenix has a team option on VC which they'd be nuts to accept but it looks like they won't have much cap space if he leaves and they may be better off accepting it and swapping it for Boozer. Sarver is a cheap POS. Even so they've got enough medium sized contracts to send back several players that could really help you out. Brooks is an RFA but there are ways around that and then Childress, Frye, Warrick, Pietrus are all making 4.5-6 mil a year. Maybe squeeze a pick or two out of the deal as well (lord knows Sarver would sell them anyway). Some GSW fans have been pro Lee-for-Boozer swap. IMO Boozer is the better player so I'd do it but I don't really see why Chicago would. Lee is a shitty defender in his own right but maybe Thibs would value his intensity? Kind of a weird trade of pick and roll big men who no longer play in pick and roll systems, horrid defenders, rebounding specialists, overpaid. Unlikely to happen. Charlotte looks like a fit. They're always looking for any decent players and they've got plenty of pieces to mix and match and make a deal happen: S-Jax, Diaw, Tyrus (lol), Augustin, Henderson, picks. Orlando is in desperation mode to keep Dwight. They don't have a lot of great pieces but you could gamble and demand some 2013 and beyond picks and hope they are terrible if/when Dwight leaves and maybe it would pay off big time. Washington needs a supporting cast for Wall. Nick Young could be a nice addition (hes a FA though). I think they like Blatche but would also know hes kind of a moron and not all that, Thibs would probably hate him though. I wonder what Philly would think of an Elton Brand-Carlos Boozer swap. Brand had a bit of a resurgence last season but still a bit inferior to Boozer in general. Hes only got two more years on his deal and hes more of a guy you can dump it into and let him work one on one on the block. Also more of a shotblocker. Iggy looks to be on the way out in Philly as well. NJ is always looking to add and they'll probably have enough cap to absorb a lot of Boozer's salary. Reuniting the Deron-Boozer connection and making a decent frontline of Boozer and Brook. Terrible defense for them though lol.
I feel like if we trade Booz we need to pick up another low post option cuz then we'll just be like the team from 08 in need of a low post scorer again.
I think Boozer's here with us for the time being. He's in the second half of his prime, and with his contract and the labor situation, I can't see us getting anything for him that wouldn't create an equally unsavory set of tradeoffs. I don't want Rashard Lewis or Gilbert Arenas. I guess the crux of the situation is whether his subpar play in the second half of the season is because 1). He wasn't being used right 2). Health 3). Loss of athleticism 1 would be ideal, because it's easily fixed. 2 would be acceptable, since he'll probably get better over the offseason (until the next injury). 3 is bad news. 1 might be part of it, but I doubt it's the primary reason. His best months were when he barely had any practice with the other players, and then it progressively got worse. I think for one reason or the other, he wasn't playing at full capacity. One night I checked, and after the Kwame injury, he was getting his shot blocked twice as often. Reaching fouls, charges, and low conversion rates around the rim all point to him losing some of his lift. If he gets it back, we're fine. He'll still blow on defense, but at least he can score. If he doesn't, well......he's still better than David Lee.
Comes down to how bad you think Boozer is. I've certainly been critical of Boozer. He's a bad defender...no way around this. While he had some good offensive/rebounding games in the playoffs, he clearly wasn't the reliable 2nd option fans hoped he'd be. Thibs obviously has some issues with Boozer. This said, the idea that we should unload him for garbage strikes me as silly. Boozer isn't garbage...he's just an incomplete player. In the Thibodeau scheme, his defensive weaknesses will not be overlooked...Thibs has shown many times that he'll sit Boozer's ass with the game on the line if his focus/effort isn't what it needs to be. I'm sure that this rankles Boozer, but Thibs has all kinds of cred within the organization right now, so I wouldn't suggest that Carlos take Thibs on...he could end up back in Cleveland. My assumption is that Boozer will be back next season and probably the one after that. He'll either work to fill the holes in his game or watch his playing time, particularly in the 4th quarter, dwindle. I honestly don't have a good feel for whether Boozer can't play respectable defense or simply isn't interested in playing defense beyond snatching defensive rebounds. If it's the latter, he seriously needs a "come to Jesus" intervention because it ain't gonna fly here.
If it is the latter, wat can we possibly do? Wait and see if hes gonna make the commitment or try to send him somewhere?
Yeah, Boozer's kind of in Luol Deng territory right now. I have no confidence in his defense turning a corner. He's 29, and I'm pretty sure he's been bad at it his entire career. It's not gonna happen now. That said, if he regains some of his pep back, I think everything should be fine. If he's giving the team something close to 20/10 on good efficiency, people will shut up. His defense was terrible in December and January and nobody cared that much. Everyone on the team said he was playing hobbled in the playoffs, so I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. Boozer has a faux tough-guy act, but he seems like a good teammate, and I think he keeps himself in shape. He also seems to have a lot of pride, so I'm hoping he uses the second half of the season as motivation to re-invent himself a little bit over the summer.
Pretty much my view. Though I think people are mischaracterizing Thibs a lot these days. En route to our 62 win season, Kyle Korver (not any better a defender than Boozer) finished games.
I hear what you're saying, but Thibs' defense puts greater responsibility on the bigs than it does the perimeter defenders. For example, it's OK for a perimeter defender to get beaten as long as he gets beaten baseline....but the big's got to be there on time (and big2 has to help on big1's man). When a perimeter defender misses an assignment, it may be a basket; when a big misses, it almost always is a basket. Besides, I prefer this explanation to explain Thibs' apparent inconsistency regarding playing Boozer and Korver in crunch time. Another possibility is that he believes Korver's trying on the defensive end and Boozer isn't. In the end, I don't think Boozer is a bad overall player and in any event, I don't think he's tradeable for a player who would make the Bulls better because his stock right now is kinda down. Unlike my esteemed colleague Rosenthall, I have a little trouble completely writing Boozer's sub-par playoff performance off to injury because he had a couple "good Boozer" games in there. I'm not sure how an injury can drift in and out like that. However, I agree that Boozer's teammates seem to like and respect him which carries some weight with me. I'm kind of a defensive geek so I'll continue to criticize Boozer when I think it's warranted. This said, I'm not going to bash him or get all caught up in trade scenarios. The guy has some nice skills the Bulls desperately need and virtually all of the trade scenarios are either unrealistic or would hurt the team. He may not look like a great value right now, but he's our guy so we might as well embrace him.
Rose really needs to learn to run the pick and roll a lot better, and I think we'll see Boozer putting up numbers like in Utah. In the last game against the Heat, Boozer set picks and rolled and was open, and he never got the passes. I mean he was WIDE open. People expect Rose to make some big jump in his game, but I don't see that he really can. He's not going to shoot better or score better inside or get quicker or much stronger, etc. He'd do well to watch tape of Steve Nash, who isn't anywhere near the athlete Rose is, but knows how to use picks and really get his teammates involved.
Nice post, Denny. I actually expect that Rose will be a more accurate 3-point shooter next season 'cause that's something he'll continue to work on. I also expect him to work on becoming a more active defender. He ought to be able to get more steals for instance. But Rose and Boozer do need to get in better sync. This season, they kinda had to do it on the fly because of Boozer's pre-season injury. I'd view it as a positive if the two of them got together for a week or so this summer to work on their two-man game. If they do this they may also be able to work out when Boozer should set a hard screen versus a slip screen (he almost always slip screens). Obviously, they are two very skilled offensive players and ought to form more of a "dynamic duo" on offense than they did this season.
I'm curious to see what we find out about Thibs as a head coach in the next couple years. He had a great year, but I think there's still a lot of unknowns with him. We know he's a great strategist, but will he evolve his ability to make in-game adjustments? We know he's intense, but does he have the ability to ease the throttle when he has to? We know he's defensive oriented, but is he willing to emphasize offense when it's called for? So far, I'm encouraged by what I see. Thibs has his own way, but he's very smart and he seems married to winning, not his own pedagogy. That said, NBA coaches seem to be control-freaks by nature, and he wouldn't be the first one to sail his own ship into stormy waters.
I've thought the same thing with Nash. Even though their assist numbers aren't too far apart, I think Nash has 3x the court vision that Derrick does. Some games, instead of watching Derrick do his Barry Sanders impersonation, I'll watch the other 4 guys while the defense keys in on him. There's usually at least 1 or 2 guys standing around with no one guarding them. If Derrick can even get just a little bit better at finding those guys in rhythm before the entire defense collapses on him, a lot of our offensive worries would be erased. As others have noted, Derrick's next step is to put a softer touch on some of the rougher edges on his game. I think he'll do it, but it's a process that's taken other players quite a few years. Quite a few have never "gotten it." But Derrick seems to have it in him. He's got the competitive drive, and does not seem to have any personality defects that would get in the way of fine-tuning the nuances in his game.
By my count, he had 3 "good Boozer" games. The last game against Atlanta, and games 3 and 4 against Miami. To me, Boozer's biggest problems on offense were charging fouls and an inability to finish around the rim, very indicative of someone who's lost a step. The Atlanta game had a lot of what Denny alluded to in this thread. The defense was putting 3 guys on Rose, and Rose just hit Boozer for wide open jumpers off the pick and roll. It was pretty simple. He didn't really do much inside where he was having his problems. I was not able to watch games 3 and 4, (I'm in Budapest) but I did listen to the games and it seemed like he was having more success inside than in the past. But at most that's three games out of 16, which is pretty crappy, and not nearly enough to dismiss injury as the biggest reason for his struggles.
This. It's almost like Nash's lack of athleticism helps him in that regard. Hes become a master of slowly trickling into the lane and running circles around the heart of the defense and getting GREAT shots for himself and, perhaps even more importantly, for his teammates. You see these guys like Rose, Westbrook, Monta Ellis and they make some amazing plays slashing to the hoop with 3 defenders there and scoring anyway. Its great when it works but defenses and referees really tighten up in the playoffs and you need guys who will make the right passes and keep their teammates involved throughout the game. There's little hope for Monta ever becoming a pass-first guy but Rose and Westbrook could make that step and if they do it would take them to the next level. They don't have to be Steve Nash and its safe to say they'll never have vision like that but look at guys like Chauncey Billups, Tony Parker, Mike Bibby (back with the Kings). These guys were great players on great teams and none of them had the insane natural vision of a Nash or Chris Paul. They made the right passes though and limited turnovers.
