I was looking at the Nets and it's pretty instructive to see how much better they are than us. They really shouldn’t be. I mean, you can argue it, but Devin Harris/Vince Carter is more or less equivalent to Rose/Gordon. I’d guess the Nets’ duo is better, but there’s not some huge difference I don’t think. On the other hand, Deng should clearly be better than Bobby Simmons and Jarvis Hayes. He hasn’t been. Then, up front, we’ve got Gooden and Noc, two veterans, plus Tyrus (#4 in 2006) and Noah (#9 in 2007), who have generally been outplayed by Josh Boone (#23 in 2006), Yi (#6 in 2007) and Brook Lopez (#10 in 2008), along with Eduardo Najera, who’s about as tall as Ben Gordon. Are these guys that much better, or are we just getting very little out of the talent we have?
Deng isn't playing tonight. Still a winnable game, but we haven't won a game on the road this year that wasn't on the circus trip, so that trend is more likely than not to continue.
I wasn't talking about tonight, just the fact that so far, they've got a significantly better record than us.
They're only 2 games ahead of us. We were ahead of them about a week ago before the losing streak. The one thing New Jersey has going for them is that the have a legit center in Brook Lopez who has a lot of talent. I think it is important to start Aaron Gray for now. We need a legit center, and he is the only one we have. Noah, Thomas, and Gooden are all power forwards in my book. Noah can play some center, but the other two are exclusively power forwards. Gray can probably work long term if we get a guy like Amare Stoudemire or Chris Bosh in 2010, but if not, if we have the opportunity to trade for a guy like Okafor or Kaman, we need to jump at the opportunity. I like Gordon over Carter, because Gordon seems to be able to take over a game like the best of them, at a level Carter can't quite. When Gordon goes on a scoring run, the Bulls go on a scoring run, and begin to instantly out perform the other team. Harris is substantially better than Rose right now though. Harris is a much more efficient scorer, and a bit of a better playmaker at this point, as well as a better defender. The key is for the Bulls to develop Rose into a great player, which he isn't. Rose reminds me a ton of Steve Francis right now. Their games are basically carbon copies. Rose needs to start doing the things that is needed out of the great players, the things that Lebron/Wade/Kobe do. He needs to learn how to make his teammates better, as well as show some interest and intent on becoming a great player on the defensive end. This is one of the things that is good about how Miami is coaching Michael Beasley. They didn't throw him into the fire right away and are keeping him on a tight leash. As a result, Beasley has been doing pretty well defensively as late. Of course, Beasley has been complete crap on the offensive side this year too...but that's more of an individual thing he'll need to figure out. That's okay, both Durant and Lebron were crappy offensive players their first year, and they both figured it out.
Huh... I could have sworn they'd won several more games than us. My bad. On the Nets front, I still think there ought to be a deal we can work out with them. A guy like Yi or Boone might be fairly useful to us.
I like Yi for us. Our offense revolves around getting the power forward a jumpshot, so why not get a jumpshooting big in there? Yi's playing poorly as a whole right now, but his three point shooting has been fine, which gives you hope that he could work out in our system. Not sure what we'd have to give up. Maybe a Tyrus Thomas and Thabo Sefolosha for yi trade. Then we could focus on getting a guy to just sink in the low post at center, like Kaman or Okafor. We would then have Joakim Noah, Kirk Hinrich, Andres Nocioni, and the expiring contracts of Larry Hughes and Drew Gooden to get that center. Especially with Davis asking for a trade back to the Warriors, we might be able to trade Hinrich to the Clippers. Rose/Gordon, that will be one of the best backcourts in the league for a long time. You hope Yi/Traded Big/Gray/Asik is good enough in the front court, and then the championship hopes lay in Luol Deng bouncing back, and becoming the player we paid him to be.
Since KC and Sam Smith mentioned the slow starts the bulls have come out strong in the first quarter. They are moving the ball and looking good. And yeah, the nets aren't much if any better than the bulls at this point.
I think Rose is out of his slump. He's attacking and moving the ball well. So far they are mostly doing a good job of not overdribbling.
That's why Gordon is such a special player. He goes the entire second half just taking 2 shots, then in the last 3 minutes, he makes two absolute daggers.
Um, if he couldn't do that, I don't there'd be any argument for keeping him out there that long. I don't see how that makes him special. Noc did the same thing.
Our offense sets up the power forward for jumpshots. When Thomas is making his jumpshots, he's really good offensively. When he's not, he's really bad. Bottomline, he needs to learn to hit his jumpers. Joe Smith actually would be perfect in our offense. Yi Jianlian would be an interesting prospect for our offense as well.
