I notice Matt grudgingly endorsing Flip, Pargo, and the 3 guard lineup the Bulls have been employing as a matter of necessity, but I'm not seeing why it's such a necessity. Ahem... didn't we trade for Hakim Warrick last month? If you add up our 96 PF/C minutes, you get Noah 12 Miller 36 Gibson 33 Total 81. Remainder - 15. Hakim Warrick played 15 minutes. No reason he couldn't play another 10-15 and have a legitimately sized lineup. Why not give * Warrick 10 more minutes * Law 20 more minutes * Flip 15 less minutes * Pargo 15 less minutes Add it up, and it'd be a pretty significant swing in favor of big, athletic players and away from undersized 3 guard chucking lineups. Warrick seems like much more of a 3 to me in any case. He's a poor rebounding and very slight, but super athletic and long. Stick him on a perimeter player and he can at least cause the guy some problems in a one-on-one setting. Playing him at PF gives him an unfavorable size match up plus makes his inability to play team defense that much more of a deficiency. Especially with (if?) Noah on his way back and healthy, I'd expect it's the best use of our talent to move in that direction anyway. Noah can take up some of Miller/Taj's minutes to be sure, but really we ought be playing Warrick at the 3 and Flip less no matter what.
I don't think Warick has the lateral quickness to play the 3. Or the perimeter game on offense. He's basically tyrus without all of the hype or yelling or pouting or potential. Tyrus wasn't a 3 either. They both need to get in the weight room or they are destined to be backups for the duration of their careers.
Dude looks nothing if not quick. Defensively more is usually expected of your bigs on defense. They have to know, moreso than your perimeter guys, when to go and help, when to man up, and when to break for rebounds. Your wings obviously have to know this too, but a little bit less so. Since they’re generally further away from the basket, their job is more often to simply stay in front of their guy. Not always, of course, and they still have to switch, fight through screens, crash the boards, and so forth, but as a general rule, a bigger percentage of their defensive responsibility is manning up on their guy. I tend to think that if you took away some of the complicated stuff from Hakim’s plate, we’d get a better result. Offensively, he's not a perimeter guy, but he can hit a jumper. Especially if we actually set him up to score, he'd be fine. If he's playing with guys like Miller anyway, no big deal... you just invert things a bit.
Vinny seems to be doing the same thing with Warrick that he did with Thomas. Many Bulls fans are saying and have said, there is not reason why Warrick/Thomas doesn't get more time! Well obviously there has to be reasons why. We may not agree with the reasons once we find out about them, but Vinny has his reasons. JJ has started to produce. Why not play him more?
