Pretty much the same thing he said last time, but this time there is no starting Noc. You guys should probably prepare yourselves mentally and emotionally for BG coming off of the bench. He is still having trouble with the web formatting, Swirsky must be doing it...
I value his view. On the other hand, I value it about the same as I value his ideas of starting Deng at the 2 and Thomas at the 3. And starting Noc. All of them were ideas worthy of (little) consideration.
Sam was advocating bringing Gordon off the bench when Hinrich was out. It's pretty simple, the best player doesn't come off the bench. The best players on the Lakers, Celtics, Cavs, and Magic don't come off the bench. The best players on the Spurs, Mavericks, Suns, Blazers, Pistons, and Nuggets don't come off the bench. The only reason you bring Gordon off the bench, is if you have a guy who is better than him at his position, which we don't. We don't have anyone at any position better than Gordon. Gordon is going to start for the rest of the year, and get his minutes. The Bulls aren't going to bring their leading scorer off the bench for no logical reasoning, when he will be an unrestricted free agent in the summer. It's a different ball game this summer. If Paxson wants to be sitting here with Rose, Hinrich, Deng, Tyrus, Thabo, and Nocioni as his locked in pieces trying to rebuild, he can do that. But he won't be convincing any 2010 free agents to sign on board. I can see it now, the Bulls overpaying Drew Gooden to save some face.
He's only their best offensive player. He's about the fifth or sixth best defensive player. He's the fourth best defensive guard. And while he is a very talented shooter, he's not good enough to where his offense always makes up for his defensive deficiencies. Just prepare yourself for it, because it's coming.
I wouldn't be surprised to see it... I mean, it'd be par for the course for a team that's made mistake after mistake over the last several years.
It's not a mistake, it's making the best of the situation. BG will start guarding his positon like he did last night and the better guys will eat him up or get him in foul trouble, like they did last night. KC et al. will write stories about how BG is overmatched and maybe a switch to the bench would benefit him and the team, since he's either in foul trouble or not scoring enough to keep the team in it. And then he'll have a comment about how he just wants to win and while he'd rather start, he'll take one for the team. It'll play out over the next week or so. Rose is clearly in need of help, and you can either cater to his needs or BG's, but you can't have that sieve of a backcourt out there together for 35+ minutes a night and expect to win. Rose is the future and you don't sit him on a team that would struggle to make the playoffs anyway.
Sit Gordon and you may as well kiss a #3 draft pick, a rare pick that turned out for us, good bye. And that is exactly what I would view a benching to mean - the Bulls have no intent to re-sign him.
And if you were his agent, you'd have him paid role player money? And to be treated like dirt, on top of that.
How exactly has Gordon made life more difficult for Rose? By being a high volume, efficient scorer? That has to really hurt Rose's game. By guarding the shooting guard position, allowing Rose to guard his own position of point guard? Derrick Rose playing like crap is on Derrick Rose. Ben Gordon is not at fault for Rose's lack of hustle on defense. Ben Gordon is not responsible for Derrick Rose playing one on one with Drew Gooden during the pregame shootaround, leading to Rose's shot looking like crap. Derrick Rose is responsible for this. I think benching Rose for Hinrich if Hinrich plays well, while Rose continues to play like crap might be a good thing, as long as we move Rose back into the starting lineup for Hinrich at some point, and don't jerk him around for his entire career here. It's not like we haven't used that method with other high picks, and Gordon's defense was never as bad as Rose's. Right now, Ben Gordon is our best player, and by far. The stats say it, and a simple visual test during games say the same thing. To sit him on the bench would be completely unfair. It would send a message to players that the Bulls are about playing politics, not winning basketball, completely killing our 2010 plan. (And this is ignoring the fact that we will be a pathetic team that no one will want to come to because of the basketball talent without BG). Telling Gordon you're not going to re-sign him is a horrible move.
Is 10 mil per year role player money? I'd say it's a pretty significant role at the very least. And you're kidding about the treated like dirt part, right?
We only gave him $9 million a year, and that's if you believe the best case scenarios. Someone in the media mentioned that BG may have only been offered $45-48 million. Not bad money by any means, but I think that Gordon could quite easily find $10 million a year somewhere in the league. The players that can do what he can do get paid more than the $8-9 million that people like Sam Smith keep saying is a strong offer.
Where is the koolaid stand that you guys are all drinking from? 1. Rose is the future. 2. Rose is struggling on defense. 3. BG also struggles on defense. 4. In order to win games you need to stop the other team occasionally. 5. Since neither Rose or BG is a good defender, one of them has to sit to play a better defender next to either of them. 7. This team is completely mediocre and might make the playoffs, maybe... 8. So in order to win games you either need to sit Rose or BG for a better defender, you can't play them together. 9. See 1. 10. BG sits. It's about the team and it's about winning and it's about improving. I think it's pretty safe to say that we can be pretty sure that BG isn't going to get much better on offense or defense. Rose hopefully will get better at both. So do you try and win a few games this year or do you try and get better for the future? Even if it costs you BG, which I don't think it will, Rose is probably going to be a better offensive player than he is. He's pretty close now. BG is a better 3pt shooter, but that's it. So why not develop the guy with the better potential? When is BG going to get better?
Two years ago he was offered 5/$50 and turned it down. And he isn't going to find that this offseason.
What's with the kool-aid crap and tossing around veiled insults? Those things aren't very convincing arguments. We clearly don't like the same brand of basketball. I like a team like the Lakers, with lots of potent offensive players. You like a team full of Thabo types. I think the Lakers style team not only has the best record in the league and made the finals last year, they'd trounce a team full of Thabo types by 50 points. So this year and next and maybe next are Rose's years to grow into the studly player we think he'll be. At least we could have a very solid back court and use draft picks to shore up the front line, instead of doing the Hinrich thing (drafting yet another guard to replace one we gave away).
I like the Lakers, Orlando, Boston, Clevleand system. Tons of efficient scorers, and good interior defense and rebounding. Right now, Gordon is the only one who fits the bill on efficient scorer. Nocioni somewhat. Hinrich, maybe (too small of a sample size to judge him this season, but his career says no). Tyrus is the only one who fits the bill for the interior defense, but doesn't fit the bill for rebounding. Gooden fits the bill for rebounding, but not the defense. Presumably, Rose can fit the bill of efficient scorer in the future.
I like the lakers too, but the problem is that BG wouldn't even start for the lakers, and that any team that started BG wouldn't be as good as the lakers unless you surrounded BG with four guys better than the guys who start for the lakers. What are the chances of that? So basically to me, your argument is "I'm fine with being a mediocre 5-8th seed year in and year out" because that's the best you can hope for from a team starting BG. And I'm not fine with that. I'm not saying BG should be dumped, but if BG doesn't feel it's better to play 30 minutes off of the bench in Chicago for ~8-9 mil per year than it is to start and make 12 mil in OKC or MN and never go to the playoffs, then I am fine with him leaving. He's had plenty of time to show that he lead and carry the team offensively, and to me he hasn't shown any of that. What he's shown me is that he is a guy who shoots deep jumpers very well, but can't be counted on to defend or run an offensive and he's a guy that can be defensed and taken out of the flow by good defensive teams. And I'm not saying that Hinrich ever or even Thabo unless he vastly improves is the long term answer at SG either, just that they are better options for the development of Rose, who I think will be a better offensive and hopefully defensive player than BG very shortly. So logically, if your goal is championships, why would you try and build around BG? I guess my argument is that sometimes you have to take a step back before you can take two steps forward. And the Thabo thing is unfair because we have no idea how good he can be since he hasn't really gotten much of look yet. Although some of that is obviously his fault too.
" Kirk Hinrich: I am happy to have Kirk back, especially if he continues to come of the bench. At the beginning of the season he appeared to have at least a solid shot at returning to his 06/07 level of play. "This raises an interesting point that we probably haven't discussed here yet. Paxson came in "blessed" with a team consisting of several lotto type draft picks and had several lotto type draft choices to make on his own. He also signed Nocioni. How about grading those players? Four of those picks were "impact rookies" - guys who put up actually good NBA stats for veterans, let alone rookies. Hinrich - "Bell Curve" describes how I've seen his game develop since being drafted. He's always been a good player, smart about the game, plays both ends (or tries). The reality is that he's been just good, not great, at a few things and 06/07 would be the one and only one season where the absurd comparisons to Nash began to have some merit. Pick an excuse - he got married, he got a big contract, he bulked up in the weight room - he's simply not built upon that 06/07 season and made that his consistent level of play. Paxson went out and drafted Rose to obviously replace Kirk as the primary ballhandler and PG of the team, which should be a pretty good indication of the faith that Pax has in Kirk's ability to be Nash lite or be the PG on a championship team. Deng - when he was healthy, he wasn't the best SF in the game or close to it, but solid. Played good defense, had that automatic jumper for a while, and seemed to get to the rim and finish with an array of moves. But this is the 2nd season in a row he's been injured and when he has played, the jumper isn't so automatic and the inside moves hardly seen. He gave us a lot of hope because he was so good for being so young but I simply don't see year over year improvement or other evidence that we haven't seen the best player he can be. At one point, I believed Deng could take one more step up in his game and become one of the better SFs in the game (step up being 23-25 PPG, etc.). At this point, I'm asking a similar question: "Have we seen the best Deng can be?" And I don't mean that in a good way. Nocioni - before his plantar fasciitis, he was a gutty and fierce player who'd drive to the bucket, take charges, and otherwise was a pretty good defensive player. Since, he's turned into soemthing of a ballhog, looks really slow on the court, doesn't drive much, and has basically become a 3pt specialist. Duhon - all along many of us said he was the best pure PG on the team, and he's proving he's a quality pure NBA PG for the Knicks. I wouldn't say he ever improved his game from his first season to his last with the Bulls but rather that he was consitently steady, in spite of streaky shooting. The one thing you can say about him that you can't about the above three is that he's currently having the best season of his career. He was so good for us that Skiles often used a 3 guard set with him in it. He's no longer with the team, I mentioned already, and we got nothing for letting him walk. Instead, all 3 of the above players got hefty contract extensions. Thomas - I actually have only one beef with the guy, and that is that we wasted a #2 draft pick on him. I don't mind gambling on project players with huge upside, but I'd rather use the #2 kinds of picks on guys who are sure to contribute and use #15 picks on the gambles. I don't know where to begin to talk about him at this point. In no particular order, he's not a good defensive player, looks clueless about how to play the game of basketball in general, and there's only two things that he's shown NBA level competence at - blocking shots (and those are rare even at 3 or 4 a game) and dunking the ball. His athleticism is off the charts, but it's hardly translating into being a starting quality NBA player or even a quality reserve you can count on every game. BUST, so far. There's always the hope that the light bulb goes off and he turns into a good player, but hope doesn't win basketball games. Thabo - it feels like this is year 10 of his career with us and every year he's going to magically become a big tall PG and dazzle us with his size and skills. Instead, he's proven to be a reasonably good 2nd or 3rd string SF or at best a defensive specialist. If you get ANY points at all from him in any game he plays, it's a plus. At SF, he can at least defend and rebound. The only reason he's getting minutes for us at all is due to the terribly unbalanced roster we have, injuries to Deng and Hinrich and Hughes, and because there's nothing to lose when the other guys aren't winning on the court. Gray - I don't think he's a great player by any stretch, but for a 2nd round draft pick he's been quite good. While you can find a gem in the 2nd round (Arenas, or even Duhon), most don't last in the league for long. It remains to be seen if Gray sticks in the NBA, but so far he's shown to be big enough, really knows how to play the C position, and knows how to play the game within his limits. The downside is that all of that doesn't make up for his lack of agility and slowness of footspeed. He's probably worth a roster spot near the end of the bench for some team. That he's started for us for many games this season speaks volumes about how the team is constructed. Which leads us to Rose and Gordon. Gordon - For his entire career he's shown year over year improvement except for last season. He's currently having his best season as a pro. He's only 25 years old, so he could be a fixture for us for at least another 5. I say he's been treated like dirt because he's constantly talked down by the front office, been mentioned in trade talks / gossip nearly every season, and when it came to signing his draft picks, pegged as a one-dimensional player, given a limited role on the team, and then Paxson made signing Hinrich, Nocioni, and then Deng high priorities and seemed to only grudgingly offer Gordon the scraps that were leftover under the LT threshold. Rose - incomplete. While his rookie season may seem only marginally better than Hinrich's, you can see that he's a rare and special player while Hinrich never showed that. He's exceeded my expectations already. He's incredibly young. He's got all of Thomas' athleticism in a smaller package and already is a quality starting PG. I look forward to seeing him in 3 years and beyond when hes gorwn into the player he's ultimately going to be. I expect next season he'll be even better than this, and so on.
BG would start for the lakers in a heartbeat. He buries anyone else the Lakers have at G next to Kobe.
