The bulls played hard for about two minutes. Boozer followed up his best game with a bad one. Team looks tired and mentally lazy. Shouldn't be the dog days already.
Yeah, the whole reason this game was even close is Boozer was refusing to close out on the perimeter. That's not going to work on Jamison. Thibodeau should have ditched his rotation earlier and gone with the Noah and no pf lineup, but I understand why he would want to stay the course and try to build consistency. I think we have to start talking of Derrick Rose as a legitimate MVP candidate. I'm not certain if there's been a better player than him this young season. It's not going to James; Durant has struggled early; and Kobe doesn't quite have the legs to back it up anymore. Maybe Dwight Howard. But I think it's easier for a guard to win it. And if a guard wins it, it may go to Rose.
Right now, Deron Williams probably wins it. Or Chris Paul, at least before Rose. Amare's been a stud this season as well.
Chris Paul's scoring is way off. I think he's out of the running. Amare will be in contention if he (and the Knicks) keep it up -- but I get the feeling he's not a media darling either. Next closest is Williams, whose production is comparable to Rose. I'm not sure he's a closer like Rose, though, and he doesn't have half as many ESPN highlights as Rose. That shouldn't matter, but I feel like it does. I think Rose is in front in an off year, no homer.
Williams is averaging 20/10 as a PG on a team in a tougher conference with a better record and who lost Boozer and Korver (and Mathews).
Yeah, here's the thing with Utah. If the media gives the award to Williams (whose numbers are very comparable to Rose) they also have to give COY to Sloan. Otherwise it's an affront. I think there's tons of politics at play with these types of awards (Malone over Jordan), and most of politics favors Rose. If you gave me the choice of which of the two point guards I liked better I'd say "yes please." They're both killin' players who deserve a championship.
Rose has an average TS%, and he's not the defender other MVP candidates are. He's just all-star level, he needs to work a bit more. This is not a perfect, but much better indicator of who's in the MVP discussion. http://www.basketball-reference.com/play-index/tiny.cgi?id=xLCSo Basically Chris Paul so far, although it is early.
I havent seen many games of Williams and Paul (both of who I love) but Rose is the reason why we've won so many games. You cant say that he hasnt brought us back to get us close enough to win late. He's a legitimate closer that has helped in some of our late wins.
