Bulls vs. Spurs coming up next. The Spurs announcers seem knowledgeable. They showed an awesome video of Rose in a Team USA jersey dribbling.
$80 million for a bench player....BRILLIANT! Makes the Ben Wallace signing look like the greatest fiscally responsible move in NBA history.
Gentle Ben is going off! This would be a HUGE win for the Bulls. Its funny. The guy they dick around with the money is the one that performs. Funny, that.
amazing how much better the bulls look when they work the ball around a little bit. Let's hope Noc doesn't come in and mess it up trying to impress his Argentinian buddies Manu and Oberto.
Derrick Rose needs to understand he is a perimeter defender. Can't sink down into the paint and leave Bonner open for three like that.
The eternal three guard lineup is great in that all three guys can handle and create passing wise, and all of them are scoring threats (Hughes less so than the other). Starting Hughes at the three is a great idea by Vinny. Takes care of a potential chemistry issue, and Hughes really does deserve to play over Ding.
Ben Wallace and Hinrich too. Gordon is leading all scorers in the game. Why focus on the distribution when the end result to this point is pretty?
Ben Gordon can't win you a game against the Spurs by himself. They make adjustments. Rose really needs to step his game up, or this is going to go in the loss column.
No on Hinrich, and Ben Wallace? BG has played the most minutes, has taken the most shots, and is a scorer. So if he isn't leading the team in scoring, he's not getting it done. And he's -13 for the night.
The Bulls can overcome a bad night from BG because he has cut down on his bad forced shots, but Hughes can still sink them. His quick 20 foot jumpers are poison if he isn't hitting them. Even a pretty good shooting night from BG isn't enough to overcome Hughes.
The Spurs are just too good. Once they saw BG was killing them, they adjusted, started meeting him with hard doubles, and left it up to the rest of the Bulls to win it for them, which they didn't. Nocioni's dumbass sequence didn't help either.
John Paxson has really created a mess, I remember a couple of year ago people were praising him after the roster he created.
Half the problem is with Jerry Reinsdorf. Paxson didn't actually sign Deng to that contract, it was Gar Forman and Jerry Reinsdorf. The Bulls tried to get Garnett, that didn't work, they liked Al Jefferson better. Grizzlies were set to send Gasol here, but Reinsdorf wouldn't sign off on it because it would put the Bulls in the luxury tax. Bulls need to just build around Rose and Gordon, and start moving contracts to make a run at guys like Amare Stoudemire in 2010.
The roster is as good as anybody's this side of LA or Boston. Rose is starting to assert himself at the top of the pecking order, Hughes is the only one in the way. Once that happens, the guys will have more defined roles and will look a lot better. As it is now, Hughes fire up a couple of quick shots, then BG thinks to himself, I better shoot it because it isn't coming back to me. Then Gooden says fuck it, if I wait out here at the top of the key, I can hit that shot. And just like that, 6 possessions are down the drain with one pass quick shots, none of them by Rose, the best option. When Deng comes back, if he and Hughes start then you can give Hughes a quick hook if he is taking bad shots by bringing in BG, who took his first shot tonight at the 8 minute mark of the first quarter. If he is going to continue to wait that long, he might as well come off of the bench.
I agree with a great deal of your post, except for the first comment. The Bulls have mediocre talent. None of our players besides Nocioni can get production regardless of what we run. It's jut not plug and play. And so it all falls on the shoulders of VDN. The Bulls have to find a way to turn their mix of players -- some of which can only play in a system, and some of which can only play going rouge -- into a cohesive unit. Right now, the Bulls have to rely on Hughes because they have no other choice. As KFE noted in an earlier post, VDN has done an admirable job of getting production out of the chucker -- many other coaches would have benched him a long time ago. Ben Gordon, for all of his quick shooting start, is having the worst dribbling season that I can remember from him. There is chaos almost every time he tries to drive with the ball. I think that'll improve once the season progresses. I don't remember Gordon being this bad at handling, though perhaps his weakness is emphasized by the fact that he's hitting his shots and the Bulls are putting him in positions where he has to create on the ball. Deng is injured now. Before he went down, he didn't struggle so much as the team was unable to put him in positions where he could be effective. Again, VDN is in a tough spot. I can only hope that he's able to find a way for Rose to be effective and still bring Deng into the mix. Hinrich is another story altogether, I'm not sure what happened to his play.
