Don't forget to factor in the fact that if BG is asked to guard anybody who can score, that guy usually gets 1.5 points for every point BG scores. Everybody seems to leave that out of their calculations. Berea might have gone for 35 if BG had been on him the whole game.
Thank you for pointing this out. I hate when everyone acts like it's not a big deal that he lets guys score on him a ton, because he's our teams highest scorer. But, Gordon doesn't score enough to compensate for his bad defense. Not to mention his bad defense gets are other guys into foul trouble. When guys have to rotate to help Ben contain his guy and keep them out of the lane they usually rotate late and get a dumb foul. Yes, they should recognize that they have to rotate earlier, but they shouldn't have to virtually every single possession. He needs to pull his own weight, or guess what, get pulled for someone who can. Lets not forget why Gordon was taken out of the game after just 2 minutes, Wright, not Berea, blew past him twice for 2 quick and easy baskets. It wasn't just Barea scoring on him.
But who was doing better? Hinrich? He was getting burned by Barea. He can't quite pull his weight on the offensive end. Derrick Rose? His defense on Terry was laughable, and his defense has been laughable all year. Thabo? Yes, he will get the job done defensively, but he has a lot of difficulty scoring from the shooting guard position, thus why he is primarily a three now. I'm not going to go through and re-watch the game past the Barea parts that I already did. But the Mavericks guards scored 39 points on the Bulls guards total. Rose/Gordon combined for 50. Hinrich added in 10, to make it 60. Bulls outscored the Mavericks guards 60 to 39...21 points. Take Gordon out though, and Bulls are already down to 32. Also have to take into account the efficiency difference. Gordon scored at 67.8 TS%, elitely. Hinrich? 55.6 TS%, but you have to take into account that he was wide open for almost all his shots. Take Gordon out, and there is more pressure on Hinrich. Rose was at 44 TS% which is dismal. With Gordon out, you probably have the inefficient Rose forcing more shots...so the Bulls score less efficiently as a whole, but Rose's efficiency probably decreases to less than what it was, and it was already bad. The if you subtract Gordon's offense, while adding in the improved defense argument that Denny makes a lot, is correct. Looking at the O-Rtg/D-Rtg's. With Gordon on the court, the Bulls score 110 points per 100 posessions, and the other team scores 112. -2 differential. With Hinrich on the court, the Bulls only score 105 points per 100, but give up 109. -4 differential. With Rose on the court, the Bulls only score 106 points per 100, but give up 112. -6 differential These numbers are not surprising, because when Gordon is on the court, he always plays with Ben Gordon. Rose sometimes has to play with Hinrich and Hinrich has to sometimes play with Rose, who are both inferior to Gordon, who Gordon always plays with. We know the problem on defense isn't Gordon. He closes out on shooters. That's what you ask out of your perimeter defenders. The problem is the interior defense. Thomas/Noah still cannot shut down their own man in the post, and also don't provide great help defense, despite their glossy block numbers as of late. They don't understand the rotations they are supposed to make on defense that well, which keeps them out of position for the appropriate help defense on guard penetration. Ben Gordon was part of some of the best defenses the NBA has seen in this past decade. So the solution to getting back to an elite defensive team? You and bullshooter suggest dumping Gordon in favor of Hinrich or Sefolosha. Me, Denny, and I belive MikeDC all suggest bringing back good interior defenders. When we had Wallace, Brown, Davis, Chandler, we were really good defensively. When we didn't, not so much. That, or we can bring in a guy like Amare and make a super potent offense that few teams can stop. (Right now we have the 23rd ranked offense, which is pretty bad). Our defensive flaws are on the interior. Just look at Gordon for example. When he drives to the hoop and gets stopped, how many times has it been the perimeter defender that stopped him? Almost never. It's almost always the help defense from the big men that stops that. No matter what, the Dwyane Wade's, Kobe Bryant's, Ben Gordon's, Derrick Rose's, are going to be able to blow past the perimeter defender effortlessly. When Hinrich was lauded for his great defense on Wade (he did do a good job fwiw being pesky and contesting shots), what really neutralized Wade wasn't Hinrich, it was Skiles' schemes. We had Wade running into Ben Wallace and Andres Nocioni who were setting for the charge. (Hey, have the Bulls drawn a charge this entire year?...I miss those days).
OK, let me get the logic straight again. They hide BG on some guy who might occaisionally shoot from the corner, yet the guy he guards scores 35 PPG. Count me as confused, as he must have been guarding Kobe and LeBron and anyone else who's lit us up.
Right, because if somebody other than the guy BG has been guarding has gone off on the bulls then none of the blame for any of it can be traced to BG... Denny, I know you watch some of the games, and I know you know that sometimes, but not all of the time, they put BG on nonscorers. BG is the first choice for most teams about how to attack the bulls. We've seen it over and over again. The Cavs going through Delonte West is the most painful example. The bulls have countered by switching their matchups and essentially having BG play the least capable of the 1-3 in some games, the Bobby Simmons, Shane Battier's, and Maurice Evans of the NBA. These guys are 4th or 5th options. It doesn't always end up that way, and when BG is guarding first options, the results are generally bad, like Kevin Martin taking BG out with fouls in under 4 minutes, and going for big scoring nights. Other guys score a lot too, like Al Jefferson lit up Noah. The difference is we've seen Noah make great defensive plays like when he stop Bosh cold to win the Toronto game. Have we ever seen BG do anything like that? He's not even in the games anymore at the end whenever VDN can switch him out offense for defense. BG's arguably the worst defender on the bulls, number 14. (Rose is 13 if he isn't 14.) Even as much as he can score, BG needs to take it to another level to make up for his defensive deficiencies if he is playing a scorer, especially since he can't help Rose out in any appreciable way on defense. You can't have those two guys back there and hope to stop anybody.
Yeah, but how many other Bulls have made the big defensive stops other than Noah? Not a lot. Luol Deng and sometimes Tyrus Thomas, and sometimes Joakim Noah are the only ones to really play great defense at the end of games. We keep making that defensive substitution with Hinrich/Gordon, but we keep losing close games....because we aren't getting stops. How many other Bulls are going to do this for you? <object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/nF0ay2ZeJhI&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/nF0ay2ZeJhI&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object> Tyrus Thomas is it. He did it once on a tip in. Rose, Nocioni, Hinrich, Deng...never. Rose is about 0/10 so far in his career. Somewhere around there already. You can count Larry Hughes too, but he's been exiled. The Bulls need to come up with a defensive strategy that allows Gordon to stay on the court, because we need his offense on our team. Joakim Noah and Andres Nocioni are the only two other players on the team that score in any efficient manner. Hinrich is average efficiency wise, and the rest of the team was bad. We know Gordon can be part of a great defense, so the problem obviously isn't Gordon for why we suck so much on defense. The most obvious reason for our crappy defense would probably be subbing Allen, Davis, Chandler, Wallace, Brown, Harrington, etc. out for Thomas, Noah, Gooden... We need to fix the frontcourt before we're ever good defensively again. Letting Gordon walk in free agency, and making Hinrich the the full time shooting guard wouldn't do anything to help the team. The offense would get worse without our most efficient scorer in there, and arguably, the defense could get worse, because the other team would have more fast break opportunities as a result of more missed shots.
Nope, the great thing about Rose being groomed as the end of game go to guy is that he can get to the rim and when he misses, he misses layups. By and large his shot selection has been way better than the typical BG step back, fade away flail. Arguably Rose should have gotten some foul calls too. That's one of the striking shortcomings in the BG end of game stats: he doesn't get to the line. It looks like Rose eventually will. When was that clip from? 2005-06? BG has been all down hill since his 4-7 rookie year. You need to recognize it, the rest of the league has figured him out. BG is the problem and his defense will always be a problem it seems. All we know is that if all of the rest of the guys are great defenders, it takes a special team to expose BG, but it still happened. And that team flamed out in the second round. I can't believe how hard you are clinging to one year and a second round playoff exit...
I've seen plenty of games, and I still have issue with your logic. If you put Rose on the opposing PG, then you have to match up Gordon with the SG or SF. Given that he's simply a small player, you're going to put him on the guy who's not going to post him up or shoot over him. It makes no sense to try to have him guard Kobe or Pierce - those guys will light up even the best defenders who are tall enough to give them a decent match up. The logical thing to do is to have Gordon guard the PGs and Rose the SGs, as the Bulls have done in 47 and 49 win seasons (with Hinrich instead of Rose). However, that's not how you groom Rose to be the ultimate PG he can be - you want him to be the PG at both ends, and VDN insists on it and I have no issue with it. Kevin Martin is listed at 6'7" - the only guys on the Bulls really suited to guard him are Deng and Hughes. It's not shocking that he's a quite good player who will take advantage of the mismatches the Bulls suffer. How did Sacremento do against us? Answer: lost by 21 to us, Gordon played 32 minutes and scored 20 points with 2 steals and a blocked shot and was +9 on the +/- for the game. That blocked shot is the answer to "Have we ever seen BG do anything like that?"
What blocked shot? Against Washington in the third quarter of a blowout? BG didn't score a single point in that game against Sactown while the score was within double digits. And Kevin Martin went for 27 with BG on him. BG's +9 was the 6th highest on the team that night meaning the team performed worse when he was on the court. BG was + because Martin was the only guy who showed up for the Kings: CHICAGO BULLS STARTERS MIN FGM-A 3PM-A FTM-A REB AST STL BLK TO PF +/- PTS Luol Deng, SF 34 9-15 0-0 2-2 7 0 2 0 1 2 +25 20 Tyrus Thomas, PF 31 6-10 0-0 2-6 3 10 3 3 2 0 2 +13 14 Joakim Noah, C 35 8-11 0-0 1-5 3 6 1 0 3 0 2 +19 17 Ben Gordon, SG 32 7-16 1-1 5-6 0 1 0 2 1 3 3 +9 20 Derrick Rose, PG 30 2-6 0-0 0-0 1 3 11 2 0 4 1 +16 4 BENCH MIN FGM-A 3PM-A FTM-A REB AST STL BLK TO PF +/- PTS Kirk Hinrich, PG 22 3-6 1-3 4-4 1 7 2 0 2 3 +14 11 [/code]
