Check it again Denny. After hitting his first shot against BG in the third, Allen went 0-5 for the rest of the quarter against Hinrich. It wasn't until the middle of the 4th that Allen started hitting shots again. Allen was 10-15 in the first half and losing BG consistently to the point where VDN to his credit just pulled BG to start the third. Allen was hitting shots over other guys because BG couldn't keep up with him in the first half. In the second half, at least Hinrich was on him with a hand in his face and forced him to miss some shots. Allen had a phenomenal game, but Hinrich was clearly able to slow him down for a while. He was 0-5 in the third after Hinrich took him. As far as those point totals are concerned, they are inflated by 3 overtime periods. The point you should take is that Salmons and Rose more than handled BG's absence and other guys like Miller got involved when BG didn't stop the ball movement. Rose and Salmons have shown they can consistently produce like that. Salmons had a higher TS% than BG this year. If they had continued that ball movement when BG came back, they would have maintained the lead. As for Hinrich's offense, he started out hitting his first two shots, moved the ball with 7 asts and ZERO TO's and played great D. Yeah he missed some shots, but he's not the primary scorer, and his 4-11 is still matched and is better than BG's 4-14. And when Hinrich's shot isn't falling, you still get ball movement and great D. What do you get when BG's shot isn't falling? More shots and no D. I'm not trying to say BG is complete waste. When he plays as part of an ensemble cast he is very effective like we saw two years ago. When he tries to do it alone, he kills the bulls. It's just like the difference between actually running a play at the end of games or just isolating BG.
I repeat: Hinrich was downright awful shooting the ball. He went 1-4 in Q3, 0-2 in Q4, and 1-3 in the OTs. Including the blown layup (that's where clutch comes in) and several wide open, uncontested, take all the time you need to line it up shots. Add it up and it's 16 points for Allen, 4 for Hinrich and we badly lost that matchup in Q4 and the OTs. If Hinrich's defense is good enough to make Allen go 1-5 for a brief time, it wasn't good enough for the bulk of the game Hinrich was guarding him. You check it again. Even though it didn't count because a foul was called, how about that alley-oop to Tyrus? Ball movement stops, my ass. Inflated by OT or not, those guys aren't going to contribute an extra 20 PPG on the average, night in and night out.
Denny, wake up. Any average replacement for BG is going to average ~15pts/game. The rest of the team only has to add an additional ~5 pts/game. And comparing Hinrich's and BG's shooting is ridiculous. Hinrich doesn't ever get a chance to get in a rhythm like BG does because Hinrich isn't the first option. You need to compare the shooting of Rose and Salmons, who did do a lot better. Allen scored 29 points in 22 first half minutes primarily on BG, plus his first bucket of the third on 11-16 shooting. He didn't score on Hinrich in the third except for a FT, which I think was a Technical. After they took BG off of him he scored only 22 points in 37 minutes of the second half and overtime on 7 of 16. That's a huge difference. Denny, if you can't read the boxscores, please don't reply to my posts anymore.
Roll the dice. His games played and every other stat (just about) have declined the past 3 seasons straight. It's also a gamble on Salmons, who had a career year. The guy is 30 years old and broke 10 PPG this season and last, only, in his entire career. There's no logic in losing a guy for nothing, or even for a downgrade at any of the 12 positions. You by definition are a less talented team.
It took 7 games but the Celtic's bench finally showed up. Scalabrine had a big 8 points early when the bulls were looking really effective. Rose had a solid game. He outplayed Rondo, who looked more interested in winning an oscar in this one. BG came back strong to start out, but his shooting was bad the rest of the game. He did do a good job of getting to the line and hitting FT's. As for defense, if you're looking for a positive I'd say BG did a great job of shutting down Brian Scalabrine in the second half. He also made it through the whole game without the announcers telestrating why he's a bad defender. So those are improvements. Salmons didn't have a good game. Couldn't get a call on his drives. Pretty solid D on Pierce though even with some foul trouble. Tyrus only played 16 minutes and 2 shots. His playing time makes me question if he's in the bulls future plans. Noah kept on trying. One of the big reasons the bulls lost this game was that the C's bigs did a great of rebounding and not letting Noah in particular get any put backs. I think they made a conscious effort not to help on Rose's penetration. Rose's asts suffered and Noah didn't get any easy putbacks. Miller got exploited on defense. He was too slow to double and not effective enough on offensive. Hinrich didn't add much in the first half, but his defense was still good. He did have a solid fourth with 14 points and I can't even imagine how high that would score on the Denny Crane Formula of Greatness(TM). But I'm pretty sure there's a penalty because it was Hinrich... The season turned out better than most of us thought it would halfway through the season. They gave the C's all they could handle. Bulls have a big decision or two to make this summer and it will be interesting to see how it plays out.
No penalty because it was Hinrich. I actually like him just fine, but he's a bit overpaid for a bench player. He's had big games for us before, and they're welcome obviously. They're just rare and far between.
Right, so they should overpay for a guy who's best suited to come off of the bench and they can't even keep on the court at the end of games because they have to sub in somebody to defend his guy. Sorry, I don't think the bulls overall talent drops that much if they lose him. BG's mainly a starter because the bulls didn't have anybody better at 2 for most of the year. Rose/Salmons/Deng would be better offensively and they'd be a hell of a lot better defensively. Deng staying healthy is obviously a huge if, but I'd be shocked if they could move Deng at this point, so they have to play him. BG would be great off of the bench as a change of pace, but that's up to him.
"Rose/Salmons/Deng would be better offensively" No they wouldn't. But I said I'd like to see Deng given a shot at the 4. That'd be Rose/Salmons/Deng/Gordon, which is superior at both ends to Rose/Salmons/Deng/Tyrus. You keep taking lame shots at Gordon's defense. Hinrich is a better defender, it only makes sense to use him on defensive possessions. There's the other half of the equation that you like to ignore. Hinrich gets subbed out on those offensive possessions at the end of games. It's no knock on Hinrich, there probably aren't a whole lot of guys you wouldn't sub out for Gordon if you need a basket.
Hinrich's also not a SG, so that's why BG is in. And Rose is going to be a better PG, so that's why he starts, even though the team played better with both Rose/Hinrich and Hinrich/BG. Hinrich was even going to be the starter at 2 when he hurt his hand. And any lineup with BG is inferior to any lineup without BG defensively. That's just a given. And when healthy, Deng is actually a more efficient and versatile scorer than BG, and plays a lot better off of the ball. It's just been a long time since he's been healthy.
You claim that "Rose/Salmons/Deng would be better offensively". Let's analyze this. "X + Y + Z is better than X + Y + Q, so Z > Q." Z has a PER of 14.7, Q has a PER of 17. Z is Deng, Q is Gordon. Or do we get better using Hinrich and his 13.9 PER? And that was against 2nd units that you claimed earlier this season that Gordon padded his stats against. Or is Salmons' 16 PER better than Gordon's 17? I'm not dissing Hinrich or Deng. If they can play and contribute, it's a huge plus. Deng's PER has gone from 18.7 to 17 to 14.7 the past three seasons. At 18.7, we have a gem, at 14.7 we have a guy who's less than average. How'd Gordon do when Deng had that 18.7 PER? 18.2. Yeah, yeah, PER isn't the end all of stats, cherry pick one and argue it if you must. If you think I'm riding Gordon's jock, think again. It's a bird in hand vs. 2 in the bush thing. If we lose Gordon and gain Joe Johnson, don't let the door hit you in the fannie, Ben! The point being that under any realistic scenario I don't see anyone out there that we're going to get to replace him that's better. http://www.82games.com/0809/0809CHI5.HTM Looks like the Bulls hid Gordon on PFs all season, eh?
Gordon in February against Miami in the game where Sefolosha threw the ball to Dwyane Wade so the Heat could win in regulation.
Who was the last bulls to shoot as bad as 7-23 with at least 20 attempts? It's not about how good the talent is at a specific position, it's how that player plays in the context of the team and how it translates to wins. BG scores a lot, but he's an extremely one-dimensional player and his numbers always come up short in terms of translating to wins. We've seen two years now of BG being the primary scorer and the bulls record is mediocre at best and well below .500. And for every miracle shot he hits to win a game, there are at least two others where he shoots a step back, fadeaway brick. I'm ready to try something different, and I definitely wouldn't invest a large chunk of future cap space for a guy as one-dimensional as BG.
