Seems like everyone on the team has been hurting in one way or another. Not much about Hinrich, tho he's been not so good on defense and not getting many assists on the offensive end.</p> </p>
Honestly too much team ball. The Bulls need Ben Gordon to step up and take control. It was insanely painful to watch the 76ers- BUlls game a few nights ago! They don;t capitalize at key points of teh game and miss easy shots.</p> </p> </p> Its a good thing the baby bulls always historically stat out slow, so Im not sweating it right now, but somepeople need a wake up call. Hinrich, Duhon, Deng needs to play better.</p>
Lots has been made of our crummy and inconsistent play, but I think the fundamental problem with this team is that, without a capable Wallace, we're not very strong at all. He's the only big guy we have that exerts any control over the paint. My concern at this point is that we're going to have a hard time if he (Wallace) doesn't. One thing that's not as good as last year is that PJ and Malik Allen, despite their numerous other faults, didn't get pushed around in the paint. They could hold their position, grab boards, and play fairly solid, in PJ's case, defense. Smith is an obvious offensive upgrade to PJ, but people don't seem to recognize that he's not bringing the bulk, strength or defensive position that Smith brought. If you look at Joe's career, he's never been that guy. He's closer, if you had to define him, to Darius Songaila than he is to PJ Brown. Tyrus is still a weakling who gets pushed around. He's a 3/4 type in the mold of Josh Smith (without the steady jumper at the moment) or Al Harrington (without the bulk and outside shot). Again, he's got a wealth of other talents, but being the "base" of a defense isn't one of them. He's like the Air Force... he can do a lot from the air, but to win a war you need boots on the ground- you need an Army grunt. Noah and Gray are rookies and Noc is a 6'7" 225lb guy. Deng supposedly worked on his inside game, and he can be a tenacious rebounder, but again, he didn't work on his strength much. He's pulling down rebounds when he gets into the post against other swingmen by and large. What I notice is that when he's playing against bigger and stronger guys, he gets muscled. So you put all that together and you have a recipe for getting consistently outrebounded. Our athletic guys will indeed get their share of rebounds (like Ty), but in order to actually control the rebounding battle, you need some strength and the Bulls don't seem to have much. And that seems to be a problem that's not going away. I'm pretty confident our other players will step up and perform more consistently, but I don't see how, if Wallace continues to suck it up, we are going to consistently win the rebounding battle (which is the key to winning in the NBA).</p>
