Basically, I see our season like this: Tyrus Thomas, Noah, and Derrick Rose are safe bets to make at least incremental improvements this year. Kirk, Brad Miller, and John Salmons are safe bets to be about like they were last year; Kirk might improve some and Salmons/Miller might get worse some. Our rookies and the end of the bench are likely to be non-factors. This doesn't add up to us being able to maintain our post-trade form since we lost Ben Gordon for nothing. (I'm one of those guys who thought BG was pretty darn good). The one caveat is if Luol Deng manages to go back to his 06-07 form, or better, then I think we have a chance. So far, I don't like the signs that this is going to happen. I know it's early, but the fact that he still seems to have nagging injuries really worries me, more than anything else. And the fact that his contract is uninsured makes me really nervous that he might end up being dead weight. 3 years of mediocre production and nagging injuries with an uninsured contract has to look like poison to other teams. And we still need to see signs that VDN has figured out how to play him with the rest of the team. This might not be so bad if one of our young guys really blows up, but it's also possible that Brad Miller might fall off a cliff due to injuries or age or John Salmons might revert back to the form he had his first 7 years in the league, both of which would leave us with big holes.
Has Rose even played this preseason? I know Thomas was out for most of the games, if not all, through Minny.
The team should be ok. I don't think the Bulls will make a big leap nor fall out of the playoffs. Your young guys have improved, and most of the other guys seem like they won't be dropping in production significantly. You also brought in some nice looking rookies and brought in Pargo too. Deng's a variable right now, but I don't think he'll be too horrible. Also, Salmons has always been a good player when starting, but off the bench he just doesn't seem to be able to be as effective. Many times with Sacramento he'd have to fill in for injured players in the starting lineup and put up good numbers.
From the little I've seen, Lou doesn't look to have a lot of lift of quickness these days. I'll grant that I'm just going off clips, reviews from people watching the games, and whatnot, but I'm just not seeing any good news. His talents are not taking anyone off the dribble or spot up shooting, and it seems like we're doing fair amounts of that. And yeah, the injury and insurance issues are growing increasingly hard to overlook. If we could trade him for something somewhat useful I'd do it in a heartbeat.
I mentioned in that new thread I'd consider trading for TMac this year. My second trade would be Deng for Marcus Camby. I’m pretty skeptical of Deng’s ability to get things together in the long run (I don’t think that’s a secret for those of you who know my posts here). If he looks OK by not great, we might look around at teams that have an obvious hole at SF and see what we can do. Being injury-riddled, Deng seems sort of a natural fit for the Clip show, since they’re still acting like Al Thornton is any good. I can’t put my finger on it, but Deng seems similar to the mold of Kamen and Brand, other relatively young, solid citizen players the Clips have given money to (and taken the injury hit on). Camby would be a salary clearing exchange for us, and yet, he might be somewhat helpful in a playoff run. We’d end up moving Salmons back to the 3, which we did ok with in the past, I suppose. And either Hinrich gets more minutes at the 2, or if we did the TMac for Kirk/Miller deal, we’ve got that position covered too. And we free up $10M in salary space to give to someone else next year. Optimistically, going into 2010, we’d be looking at: 1-Rose 2- Salmons 3-Johnson 4-Gibson 5- Noah + 2010 pick + $32M in cap space FAs: TMac, Tyrus, Camby With that sort of money, we could potentially lure a max player for $16.5M or so, still resign Tyrus if he breaks out and/or TMac if we wanted him back. Or we could bring in a solid from outside. In short, we’d have a whole lot of options.
I can't see anyone trading for Deng unless they send us back hot garbage signed for a similar length of time. Let's face it ....Bulls need a quality SF so why wouldn't they keep Deng if they had any confidence in him. Now if he stays healthy all year and reverts to form, a year from now, there could be a different story. EDIT: Here is a thought experiment. Deng or Ariza or Artest. The latter 2 went for the MLE this past off-season. That's 1/2 of what Deng is getting paid for the next 5 years. I'd cry tears of Bulls joy if we had been able to sign and trade Deng for Ariza in the off-season.
I was just coming here to post about Deng and lo and behold there is already a thread. Nice! Deng looks slow. Lumbering even. He's doing little except scoring via the mid range jump shot (and not that effectively) and perhaps a transition hoop or two. He's not adding much out there. When you watch an NBA game, it does not take long to see who the difference makers out there are. Deng looks like nothing but a very average NBA player. All that money locked up in this guy. yeeesh.
In the end, he was the most effective as a system player in the Skiles offense. The spot up shooting isn't his game at all. He lacks the handle and quickness to create for himself. He does not have a post game. He can't bury the bomb. It just really sucks that yet again we have this average player locked up long term to big money. Its a recurring theme. Every year we have our highest paid players not be all that good and certainly not worth the money.
I'm keeping my fingers crossed that Deng looks a lot better with Rose creating for him. He looked pretty good for a while with Hinrich creating for him so there's got to be some hope there. He's never been a primary option. But the point about Ariza and Artest is a good one, except that Artest would have a max deal right now if he wasn't crazy. No matter what, best case for this bulls team is a second round exit if they somehow manage to get a fourth or fifth seed. Otherwise, they'll probably go out in the first round. Worst case is 30 wins and a mediocre pick.
The Bulls best successes have been playing off the stupidity and desperation of others (well, not others, just Isaiah Thomas). But still, lightning could strike thrice.
