AARAAAAAAARRGHGHAAAARGHAR GHHHHHARGHHARAAARA!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Okay. Where is this team going? How is the firing of Skiles going to help anything? Call this my official the season is a wash thread. Here comes a rant loosely arranged in bullet points:

<ul>[*]Anyone who thinks the Bulls are going to land a top ranked coaching prospect is deluding themselves. Reinsdorf has a legacy here. We know what we're going to get -- another coaching prospect who may (or probably won't) work out as well as Skiles did during his tenure. As Rick Pitino said, "Larry Bird isn't walking through that door. Kevin McHale isn't walking through that door." I don't know who the coaching equivalents of Larry Bird and McHale were as players, but regardless, they're not walking through that door.
[*]I've heard some people say that perhaps this team will run more under a new coach. Oh yeah, run. That's the answer. I love the way our team finishes. There's nothing like seeing Ben Wallace or Joe Smith cutting to the hoop and throwing down viciously in transition. Or the way Ben Gordon and Hinrich push the ball, always making good decisions. And just the way Ben and Kirk finish strong, dunking or drawing fouls when the passing lanes aren't open. You know, Tyrus can even run a break with his guard like dribbling skills. And somehow I forgot about Noah: with his brilliantly soft hands -- so soft he can catch passes when they aren't on target. Lest we not forget our rookie sensation Aaron Gray, lightening quick in transition. I think he is going to redefine the role of the traditional center in the up-and-down game.

Wait. None of that is true. We only have one good finisher in transition, Tyrus, who for whatever reason doesn't bother to run the break. And we only have one good guard in transition, Duhon, and he's not good enough to be a full time long term starter.
[*]I'm not buying the idea that Ben Gordon's game is suddenly going to turn around now that we have a new coach. At the end of the day, he's a player in a contract year, who has been told both that his team isn't going to pay the luxury tax and that his fellow teammate Luol Deng is more valuable. I would be doing the exact same thing he is: volume shooting so that your next contract playing elsewhere is worth a couple of million more.
[*]How is the Skiles firing going to help? Do any of you really believe that we are a substantively better team than we have played, as Paxson has cited as his reason for firing Skiles. I tend to think the opposite: The Bulls are a mediocre team that has made some nice runs, but when push comes to shove, they've always played better than their talent. And that has shown every season in the playoffs where talent wins out.
[*]Is Sefolosha anything but a bust? The game is still moving way too fast for him. He's in his second season now, and he still looks like a lost rookie who is playing in his first twenty games.
[*]Ben Wallace. Enough said, really. What a waste of space. We should have listened to all of the fans from Detroit who were more than happy to let him go. His athletic skills have deteriorated to the point where he can no longer be a full time center, and he never had any really skills. And he gets consulted about the coaching change. Really?
[*]At the end of the day, the coaching move puts John Paxson's ass squarely on the hot seat. Paxson is going to be more reluctant to move Thomas and Sefolosha and Wallace and Noah because they're his guys and his acquisitions. To move them would be to admit defeat. Everyone should put their hopes in check for a consolidation trade. If the chances weren't bleak enough, we now have a GM who has to worry about his job security. The best case scenario is that Paxson trades some of his acquisitions for draft picks hoping to buy himself more development time; and I, for one, am not too interested in seeing this team rebuild.
[*]I have more, but just can't think of them right now. Give me another fifteen minutes.[/list]

 

Oh, and AAAAAAAAAAAARRRRGHARGHARRAGHAHARAGHARAGHARHARHAHHAHAHAHAHARGAHRAH!!!!!!!!!!!

 

The classic ARGHAHGQHRAHRARHG thread is back!

 

I actually think a running team would work on this team pretty well. The offense is 99% reliant on your perimeter players and right now, they're playing like shit. Getting them in the open floor and getting easy fast break points would help the scoring issues. Your bigs are extremely unskilled but athletic, quick, run the floor well, rebound, etc.

Granted, I have no idea how Hinrich runs the break, and that will be a big key to implementing a fast break system, having Ben Gordon as a gunner at the two and a plethora of athletic slashers at SG/SF. Ty Thomas and Nocioni would be excellent up-tempo PFs (can we get one of these guys on the Warriors please?) and at C you have Ben Wallace, Noah, Gray, which gives you a variety of different looks, all of whom are capable of altering shots and providing the key last line of defense necessary for an up-tempo defense.

The only problem is finding a coach ballsy enough to commit to an up-tempo game, there's only two in the NBA right now- Don Nelson and Mike D'Antoni, all the others do it half-assed or only do it some of the time.

I don't think Skiles could have done much more with the roster. He came in and made improvements but he plateaued with this squad and even regressed. Hes way too one dimensional to be a very successful coach these days, hes just too restricting on offense and too much of a hard-ass when dealing with the players. Works well when you've got a very young team but once they grow up thy'll be like all other NBA players and tell you to fugg off and give them their paycheck. Go to college Skiles, its perfect for you, the NBA is quickly going in the opposite direction from the Skiles, Larry Browns, Rick Carlisles, etc. If you're a coach who is very restricting on offense and relies on defense to win, you're probably not going to have a job long in today's NBA. Its just too hard to win with a strong defensive mind-set, you have to have an offense that can put up 95 ppg.

Did Skiles deserve to be fired? Not really, Paxson is just saving his own ass because he fugged up so many golden opportunities to get a stud low post scorer. Hes way too loyal to his own acquisitions, who are overrated and second options at best. He's just delaying his firing for now at the expense of Skiles. I guess they can hope for a high draft pick, but then again Paxson will either get some good-but-not-great SG or a purely defensive minded PF/C.

 

When Paxson fired Cartwright, he traded away Rose and built the roster so that Skiles had NO choice but to play Hinrich and Crawford. WHY? Because Crawford was in his contract year and Pax wanted to be sure we gave him every opportunity to prove he was worth a big contract from us and would be worth playing.

I don't see why he wouldn't want to see the same thing happen for Gordon. Volume shooting and consistent scoring isn't enough, it seems, to value the guy highly. IF he's going to stay with the team, he's got to be a PG and Hinrich the SG (or Hinrich moved for a taller guy).

Re-signing Gordon has to be one of the top three priorities for this team. The other two being re-signing Deng and addressing the post scoring issue.

The alternative is to just call it quits now for the season and Gordon. Why bother to play him at all if we're not going to re-sign him? Give the minutes to Thabo and give him that Crawford-like opportunity instead.

Both Hinrich and Gordon were dunkers/finishers in college. Maybe the move up to the NBA and bigger/faster players takes that away from them, but I seriously doubt it. Their measured capabilities (draft measurements) say that they should be quicker than most NBA players and should be able to transition their college game to the pros just fine.

Why don't they dunk in the pros? Either they're not capable or they were essentially told "guards don't dunk on this team."

Here's evidence they CAN dunk:



If they were told not to dunk, then a new coach may tell 'em "go ahead and dunk when you have the chance."

I don't want to sound like I'm riding Gordon's jock, because I'd trade him for a taller scoring guard if we could find a suitable one available. My view on him is simply that the team consistently wins when he scores consistently, and that there's no point in us not getting all we can out of the guy.