Wallace's decline doesn't show up to be quite as awful statistically as it looked on the court to me. It's noticeable on the graph, but it's not Bear Stearnsesque
Although i should point out, I cut off Wallace's data to show what he was like before coming to the Bulls. At that point the decline wasn't so obvious on the court. Hughes... well, I saw Hughes quite a bit when he was playing well, and he's a shadow of that. I just don't see what's so positive you see on the court... I see us getting our lunch eaten with him in the lead role, even moreso than before we got him.
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (MikeDC @ Mar 26 2008, 10:17 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}></div><div class='quotemain'>Although i should point out, I cut off Wallace's data to show what he was like before coming to the Bulls. At that point the decline wasn't so obvious on the court. Hughes... well, I saw Hughes quite a bit when he was playing well, and he's a shadow of that. I just don't see what's so positive you see on the court... I see us getting our lunch eaten with him in the lead role, even moreso than before we got him.</div> I see not much in the way of an offensive scheme. This means one of two things: there is a scheme and the players are not executing it well, or there isn't much of a scheme. Looks like a combination of the two, to me. Deng isn't as bad as he looks, nor is Gordon, nor is Hinrich, and especially, nor is Hughes. What I see in Hughes is a guy who looks like he runs the court in four steps while the rest of the bulls do it in ten steps. He looks really wide, wingspan, on the defensive end. On the offensive end, he's able to break down defenders and take it to the rim and finish. His basketball IQ is outstanding. He doesn't belong in the "lead" role, which is the source of his problems in Cleveland. Though I do see a back court of him and Gordon with both scoring 20+ as a real possibility. We got our lunch eaten with or without him. I don't see him as the savior of the franchise, merely a big upgrade at one of the five spots on the court. Wallace may not have declined using your rating system, but you showed his decline (at the time he joined the Bulls) quite well by simply showing how his rebounds and blocked shots dropped off from year to year over the past few.
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (JayJohnstone @ Mar 27 2008, 12:26 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}></div><div class='quotemain'>Great podcast by Doug. Paints a pretty grim picture of the Bulls organization.</div> It's pretty much back up the truck and start all over again time, imo. I just wish someone other than Pax was being given the opportunity to begin the rebuild. Larry Hughes is giving me bad Ron Mercer flashbacks, for whatever that's worth.
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Denny Crane @ Mar 27 2008, 10:26 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}></div><div class='quotemain'>Wallace may not have declined using your rating system, but you showed his decline (at the time he joined the Bulls) quite well by simply showing how his rebounds and blocked shots dropped off from year to year over the past few.</div> Yeah, If you drill down into the component parts of the rating what you see is that his defense was in steady decline but it didn't show up in the total because his offensive numbers increased enough to mask it. Why? Because Larry Brown made sure to "get him involved" and get him a couple more easy looks a game, and because it got much easier to get assists as Billups, Rip, Prince and Sheed were his teammates. So, when you put those component statistics in a context, it appears he was declining at what he was good at, and getting a slight bump in other areas owing to his coach and teammates.
