One quarter of the way to the fifth seed

Through a quarter of the season the contenders have separated themselves from the pack already. The Celtics, Hawks, Cavs and Magic are clearly head and shoulders above the rest. So far none of the teams in the motley group of mediocre squads fighting for chance to be best also-ran has really distinguished itself. Most have some impressive wins and hot streaks, but they've also all gone cold at some point and suffered embarrassing losses. Only 4 1/2 games separate the next nine teams. Even Philly is only 6 1/2 out of 5th place and it's probably too early to count them out. At this point only the Nets look like they are truly done, and to be honest, they are probably smart to get the jump on the rest for the most ping pong balls. In order of their records after 12/16:

5th seed: Miami. Started out 7-1, but played mostly home games. The road hasn't been nearly as good for them. Wade is probably enough to carry these guys to the playoffs, but another mediocre mid-round rookie is not what DWade needs to make his decision easier to stay in South Florida, although South Florida seems pretty convincing if you aren't worried about rising ocean levels.....

6th seed: Milwaukee. Probably the most surprising squad for anybody who doesn't know what Scott Skiles can do. When they get Redd back they could be a decent squad and I like their chances if they can avoid injuries.

7th seed: Detroit. Suffered a lot of injuries early, but surprisingly went on a 5 game win streak when BG went down, too. One of the few teams on the list to get handled by the bulls, not a good sign. Fortunately, Prince isn't coming back any time soon, which is good because they have 3 shooting guards and not a lot else. I think the plan was to move either Prince or more likely Rip at the trade deadline, but that doesn't look as likely given the injuries to both. Stuckey was great during the winning streak as the primary scorer, how will he react to being the PG when everybody is healthy?

8th seed: Charlotte. Again, not a surprise given Larry Brown's track record, even after dumping Okafor for Chandler. But they are still inconsistent and 3 games under .500. Trade for Stephen Jackson makes them a pretty solid squad and they should be around to the end if Brown doesn't keep forcing trades.

9th place: Indiana. Hard to tell if they are going anywhere. Granger is out for a while with a foot. They've had a relatively easy schedule and more home games than roadies, so I like them to fade if Granger doesn't miraculously heal.

10th place: Toronto. They've played the most games, the most road games and their PG Calderon is hurt. I'm hoping they implode before they figure it out so Bosh is on the market at the trade deadline. Otherwise, they have the talent to get into the playoffs if they play together.

11th place: Our Chicago Bulls. The Bulls have played the 2nd toughest schedule so far and more road games than home. And they've lost 2 of their top 6 to injuries for a significant amount of time and Rose missed all of the preseason. Given that, why anybody is shocked or disturbed when they get blownout by the top teams on the road is beyond me, but getting worked by Toronto was unsettling. A great start from Noah, a return to form by Deng and a surprisingly good start from the rookie Taj Gibson have been negated by slow starts from Salmons, nothing really from Miller or Pargo, and injuries to Hinrich and Thomas. With Miller starting to show something and Tyrus due back soon I think all the tears and bunched up panties are premature, but the next couple of weeks are crucial and will be telling. Winnable home games need to be won. Otherwise it's 2007-08 all over again and I'll never hear the end of "They let BG (perhaps the most overrated player in the history of fanboi's) go for nothing, bawaahhhhh!!!...." At least until they sign Joe Johnson.. ;-) ..

12th place: New York. The knicks are surprisingly frisky of late. Perhaps they heard the trade rumors and are showcasing themselves as stretch run expiring contracts. Even a blind squirrel finds a nut every once in a while. Who knows. But they are fucked if they don't get LBJ this summer.

13th place: Washington. Appropriate position for the most disappointing team in the group. Three potential allstars and they are not getting it done. Arenas can't seem to hit a free throw to win a game to save his life. I think I'd much rather get blown out in the second half than lose like they are losing. This should be a playoff team, but they need to get Arenas into mental shape to do it. But I fully expect them to come in and beat the bulls either way.

Still not dead yet: Philly. They'll make a run at the end but I don't think they make the playoffs and they'll just end up costing themselves ping pong balls.

So, please tell me some more why BG leaving is the worst thing to happen to Chicago since the glaciers showed up and blanketed the city 20,000 years ago. And who the other four playoff teams will be that the bulls should be so jealous of for a week in May.

 

I agree with most of that, the only thing I have a problem with is that signing BG and dumping Hinrich or Deng would have put the bulls on a path more directly toward contention. It wouldn't have. BG isn't a starter on a contending team. That's the lesson of the last two years. He's a starter on a team trying to scrape into the playoffs but that's it, and he's not a piece to build around at $11 mil/year. And if you subtract a guy like Deng, who can actually matchup at his position and hold his own against the best players at his position, you're taking a bigger step back than by letting BG go. And I said all along that if you can sign BG for Hinrich money, then you keep BG and move Hinrich. But to point out that BG tried to take the deal after it had been out there for 3 months is at best water under the bridge now. So it's time to move on and recognize that in the long run, the bulls are much better off not having signed BG if they weren't going to go way into the luxury tax, which I think we can agree they weren't, at least not to sign and build a team around BG.

And the bulls missing two of their top 6 does matter, because its an ensemble cast that needs to get contributions from guys 1-8 to be effective. Miller's poor performance so far has nothing to do with BG being gone, he's getting open looks and not hitting the shots. You want to point out Hinrich's stats as if he wasn't playing hurt, but Miller has dropped a lot further. Rose can still get to the rim, but his ankle issues prevented him from doing so early on. Assuming his ribs don't take him out, I think if those two guys start producing more consistently, the bulls will get back on track. Tyrus is a few days away and could help out a lot. They were 6-4 with everybody contributing, there's no reason they can't get back to that once everybody gets healthy again.

But the point of this thread was to talk about the rest of the mediocre teams and how the playoffs will shake out. And tonight's game against the knicks is a great test for both of teams.

 

Your idea of logic and mine are different. I'm interested in building a team that can contend for the title. There is no way to build a contender given salary constraints with BG starting and making $11 mil/year. I'd rather the bulls continue to get blown out and get a chance to sign a difference maker or even try and draft another one than lock up a mediocre talent like BG just so the games are more respectable in the end. The bulls will lose just as much with BG as they are now. So who cares if they lose by 5 or by 10 or by 30?

 

BG gets interviewed so he's a star? When he makes an all star game you can call him a star. Until then he's a mediocre talent. And if you want to root for a team that keeps all it's mediocre talent, you should root for the Pacers. And all of their first round playoff exits.

And if you figured it out, why do you keep coming back and complaining about the same shit. Do yourself a favor and find another team. I much prefer the bulls approach to the Pacers.

 

It should be the exact same for Deng since they were drafted together. And Hinrich's record should have been better since he was surrounded by such notable talents as Duhon and Jamal Crawford, right?

And that guy who put together the six ECF run is the same guy who didn't make the move to put them over the top. You'd think you'd be able to win more than one title in a six year run like that. And he's the same guy who thought it would be a good idea to draft Darko Milicic with the second pick ahead of Bosh, Melo and Wade. He hasn't made a good move since he was given Sheed and is living off of his rep kind of like BG is. They are perfect for each other.

 

Ive already said how I didnt understand how the Bulls record with Gordon is different from Deng since they were drafted together. And I do also agree that they shouldve one more than one title (at least made it to the finals more than the two times they did) during that 6 yr ECF run.

 

Hollinger has them 1/4 of the way to the 15th seed. http://espn.go.com/nba/hollinger/powerrankings/_/page/2
This is due to their terrible margin of points (Bulls points less opponents points).
I figure they will split the difference and coast into the 10th seed although them may need to fire VDN to accomplish that.

Yea, John Paxson....7 years into your reign of dominance....

 

I liked where this post was going right up until the point it was leveraged into another Gordon debate. I'm confident that this team would be one of the playoff seeds at the moment with Gordon here and Hinrich gone. And we'd still be in position to add a max player next year, since Gordon had attempted to accept a contract offer from the Bulls that would have had him making less than Hinrich next year. There was no trade-off (WRT Gordon) between our record this year and our ability to sign someone this Summer. Except in the sense you ignored, that most players don't want to come play for shitty teams that miss the playoffs. In that sense, the Bulls screwed themselves.

But it can't be undone, so the best we can do is figure out how to improve from here.

I have pretty serious doubts about the talent evaluation ability of the franchise, and about its desire to maximize talent, but if we're just looking at this season, I still think we probably need a trade to make the playoffs. Obviously the first four teams are in barring major injury.

For the last four positions, I look and see that the Pistons will only improve as they get two key players back. The Bobcats are ahead of us and have played fairly well since they made that trade for Stephen Jackson. Not great, but they're already ahead of us in the standings. The Heat have Wade, and look primed to make trades. The Bucks are ahead of us and it looks like Redd is really ready to play again.

So that's 8 teams. The Bulls, Raps, Wiz and Pacers are sitting on the outside looking in.

That seems like a failure of a season to me. We miss the playoffs, and we don't really do much to attract FAs. If we even end up with the ability to land one.

The only other way to succeed I can see is if we somehow manage to land Bosh this season because the Raptors just completely implode. Of course, we'll still have a fairly poorly matched team around him, but it'd be a start.

 

I don't see Charlotte making it for the simple reason that 4 teams from one division rarely make it and the Wizards are there too, and have a lot more talent. Charlotte has to play each of them 4 times right? They won't beat Orlando or Atlanta twice. And I have to think the Wizards rebound. So Charlotte is out.

On the other hand, if Toronto doesn't get it together, Boston could be the only team to make it from that division and Charlotte and Washington could both make it. But the Bosh comment is a perfect segue to the other question I've been thinking about.

 

If the 9-15 counts for Deng he's in the lead since BG sat out 5 or 6 of the Pistons wins...

 

I will say this. The Bulls have an easier schedule from here on out, so much so that they might have to try hard not to make the playoffs no matter how goofy their front office is.

They one last night even after Josh McBob beclowned pretty much the whole team.

 

Is it sad that this is probably right in guessing how many teams will be above .500 in the East. Again and again, the conference shows why it's so futile compared to the West. A 9th or 10th (hell, maybe 11th) seed in the WC could sadly land a 5th seed in the East.

 

There's lots of weird stuff going on. If the Arenas thing blows up the Wizards, that'll take them out of it, but the rest of that mess is anyone's guess.