Sam Smith: Omer Asik is coming

The Bulls also reached agreement on a deal with big man Omer Asik of Turkey. Asik will play for Turkey in the World Championships and will not be with the team until then. The Bulls are quietly optimistic about Asik and believe he can be a high level reserve behind Joakim Noah, which reduces their concern about adding another big man.


http://www.nba.com/bulls/news/smith_korver_100709.html

 

sham's take:

The paragraph sounds more optimistic about Asik than I am. Asik may be a good backup one day, but it's a day that hasn't arrived yet. When Asik was drafted, he was done so on the distinct understanding that he needed to significantly improve his offense, and yet he simply hasn't done this. Last year in the Euroleague, Asik averaged 8.9 points, 6.0 rebounds and 1.4 blocks in 21.7 minutes per game, confirming his abilities as a near-7 footer rebounding and shotblocker. He also shot 61% from the field, which looks nice. But he did these things only because of baskets born out of offensive rebounding, good guard play to set him up, or opportunistic looks from broken plays. Asik can't create a damn thing for himself; this would be fine if he was good at anything other than the dunk. As it is, he's just sort of there.

Worse still, Asik shot 36% from the line. And it was no fluke, for he also shot 43% from there in the Turkish league. He was at only 35% before a 6-6 performance in his final game before injury.

The injury in question was a broken collarbone, and it ended Asik's season in early December. He is back to full health now, hence his summer time schedule of national team player; however, it's the second major injury Asik has had in the two years we've owned him. His 2008-09 was similarly abridged by torn knee ligaments that kept him on the shelf for several months, and the amount of downtime he's had because of the two injuries have limited both his court time and practice time. Because of that, Asik has not improved much. And because of that, I do not expect him to feature much next year.

http://www.chicagonow.com/blogs/chi...-vladimir-veremeenko-then-came-omer-asik.html

 

Safe to say, his contract won't send us into the luxury tax.

 

What? No love for Bargaric?