Ah, but what about the thing you don't want to worry about -- the competition in playoffs, when teams have an opportunity to game plan for our weaknesses? I'm _inclined_ to think that we could handle it, Thibs could handle it, most importantly, Derrick could handle it. But, it is a weak spot that can be manipulated to our opponent's advantage... But I'm sold that Omer and Taj as the anchor for our second unit are more important that even a relatively significant upgrade at SG. If only mr. JJ could join them in that delicious defensive effectiveness as a second unit. For now, it requires Deng to pull double duty.
Bogans, playing the way he has the last month or so, isn't a weakness opponents can exploit because you can't ignore him outside. Brewer is a different story, but he doesn't hang out much on the perimeter. Just to be clear: - Improving our 5th offensive option (with no loss on D) isn't worth much to me. - Bringing in someone at SG who would move Noah to the 5th offensive option is certainly worth something, but not any of our young bigs. - Bringing in someone who would make Deng the 4th offensive option would interest me, but I don't see that player out there to be had.
Noah a fifth option? Do you mean scoring wise? He's pretty integral to our offense when he's out there. But the problem is, can you rely on Bogans in the playoffs to do this? I mean, I'm content not to have a perfect team...I guess I'm just learning to value what Taj and Omer bring, and would reluctantly surrender for any kind of improvement elsewhere.
I think we (you, me everyone here) deserve a little more credit than this. None of us want or wanted to bash Bogans, it was called for. A player can shoot poorly for a period and that doesn't mean they are a bad shooter, and I think we all understand that. But Bogans was committing a hoard of crappy trunovers and playing shitty defense. He doesn't look like the same player out there over this past month. I think Good Hope hit it on the head: Can you count on Bogans to play like this in the playoffs? And if he goes into a shooting funk will the rest of his game similarly suffer? I'm happy that Bogans is playing well and it makes for a good story. I just wish I could feel secure in the fact that he will at least play good D and not make turnovers in the playoffs.
I think I agree with your take. Improving the 5th offensive option doesn't improve the team a great deal. I think, part of the reason that me and a couple of other posters here have been riding OJ Mayo's jock, despite his weak play, is that the has shown the ability to make Deng a 4th option. OJ was set for stardome after his rookie season, and his second season wasn't bad either. His game is so refined for a relatively young player in the league. Getting back to the original point of this post, he's about as purse and versatile shooting guard as you're going to find. He can hit for range, defend, drive, pass and create. The only problem (and huge problem) with Mayo is that for whatever ever reason he's sucked this past season. I think it's safe to say he may be struggling off the court. But if you can have him for a song and a dime, like it seems like you can, don't you take a chance on a player like that and hope the change of scenery is all that he needs?
I'll try to answer a few things here: - When Noah returns, I see him as the 4th scoring option (I said offensive option, but I meant scoring...I agree that Noah is incredibly important to the offense beyond his scoring due to his offensive rebounding and passing). - We all want a perfect team and I'm no exception...but let's face it, you can't just wish and make it so. If you gut your depth to improve your starting 5, you remain imperfect because your bench is weakened. Nothin's free. - I find the "Can we trust Bogans to play as well as in the playoffs as he has for the past 20 games?" a bit of an odd question when your alternative is to bring a new guy in who may or may not fit in well with this very good team. Every decision (including the decision not to make a change) carries with it an element of risk. As fans, we can scream for whatever we happen to be hot on at the moment, but we aren't held responsible for the results...in fact, many fans will hammer a team for a decision that goes bad even if they insisted that the team make that decision. - On Mayo, he hasn't sucked this season IMO...he's been what he is, but the Grizz have decided that they have a better chance of winning with him not starting. He's become their Ben Gordon...a scoring spark off the bench, but not the complete player they had hoped he would be. The Grizz are either stupid or they're right...I'm not sure which. The problem I have is that, because I'm not sure whether the Grizz are right or wrong, I'm not willing to bet the farm that they're wrong, particularly considering the price they're currently asking for Mayo. The Bulls are contenders right damn now...as is. They might be able to improve their chances this season with a trade, but given the uncertainty of trades, they might just as easily hurt their chances. I don't know and you don't know. If they make no moves this season and the MLE stays, the Bulls can make a genuine and longer-term move to solidify their SG situation. At this moment and based on the reasonable trade alternatives I've seen (those that the other team might actually agree to), I'm inclined to stay with the team we have and take our chances.
As far as I can tell, what you're saying is what John Paxson said on the radio today at ESPN. What's odd about wondering whether we can trust Bogans? I'm not sure I do, although I've been seduced by his very cool voice into trusting him more than I did. But you're right to ask in return, who is out there that you would trust more, and for whom you would sacrifice the kind of defensive strength of our second unit that we have right now because of KT, Omer and Taj. And I think Paxson and Forman are right to tread cautiously through this storm. Derrick Rose has become a monster NBA player before our eyes and their eyes. I bet sooner than they hoped. There's enough flux that I would err on the side of caution and stick with what we've got. Johnson can go, Scalabrine too. And the pick. Maybe one of Korver, Bogans or Brewer, depending on the quality of the return....Taj or Omer, no. For Mayo, I might send on the Charlotte pick and Johnson and perhaps Brewer? I'd be conflicted though, and I would guess that Memphis would feel like we were low-balling them.
My take is that Mayo's issue in Memphis is they run a 3 man game on one side of the court with Gay, ZBo, and Gasol. Mike Conolly Jr. sets them up fairly well. Mayo's a Wade type of SG - really effective with the ball in his hands at the top of the key, with the ability to create his own shot. He's a good fit for us because Rose can take a breather every 5 plays and let Mayo do his thing. Or if Rose is having an off night or is facing serious pressure like the Warriors game, there's at least someone who can make the opponent pay for that strategy. Speaking of strategy... Bogans makes 0.9 3pt shots a game. My strategy against the Bulls in a playoff scenario would be a mix of zone defense, aggressive double team of Rose, or let my SG stand around and take a breather on defense. With the zone, I'd have my wings pressuring Rose as much as possible, and I'd be thrilled to see Bogans be the guy trying to win games against me. If you watched the Celtics games against us, Ray Allen basically did stand around and got a breather on defense. In the November game (we lost), he went 9-12 for 25 points. In the December game, he went 5-12 for 14 points. In a January game, we won but Boston was missing KG; Allen went 7-13 for 19 points. He averaged about 3 PPG over his season average against us. Dwyane Wade gets the same kind of rest. In a January 3 point victory at home against the Heat (minus LeBron), Wade scored 33 points on 10-20 shooting. 100 year old Vince Carter went 8-17 for 22 points in a near 30 point loss at home to the Magic. The good news is we only have to face JRich from now on. I'm looking at our competition in likely playoff match ups here. In spite of his "better" offense, Bogans has scored 10+ points in a game this season just 4 times. There's a HUGE difference between shooting a very few shots at a high % and scoring. On defense, opposing SGs have a 15.2 PER against, slightly worse than average. He gives us a 7.3 PER in comparison. This differential is one of the worst in the league for a starter, and certainly among the worst on the Bulls. Compared to Brewer who gives us 14.5 PER and opponents SGs have just a 12.5 PER against him (excellent), and who's scored 10+ for us 9 times. I don't dislike Bogans, he clearly brings some chemistry and is a good guy. He is a career end of the bench player, and I have no expectations he's anything but. And he's not proven that notion to be wrong. FWIW
That 0.9 makes from the arc number is a fooler since Bogans doesn't play big minutes. For the season, Bogans has 1.9 makes from 3 per 36 minutes, which ranks him behind only Korver's 2.5. In the last 20 games when Bogans has shot 49% from the arc, he's made 2.8 long ones per 36. Are those numbers from 82 Games? According to the site, they last updated their data on 1/19...a month ago. I don't know that they'd be a whole lot different, but Jeez, those guys are getting lazy. I used to like that site, but with that sort of timeliness, it's pretty much worthless.
For reference http://www.basketball-reference.com/leagues/NBA_2011_leaders.html I don't equate shooting with scoring, Bogans scores just 8 PPG per 36, and as an opposing coach, his 8 PPG wouldn't scare me into wanting to guard him. Don't get me wrong, though. I'm thoroughly enjoying the Bulls' success. I just want the best chance to follow regular season success with playoffs success.
I doubt a month is going to change things very much. On the other hand, there are a few problems I've never gotten very satisfactory answers to with counterpart PER and +/- as well. With counterpart PER, you have to be careful because its computed by assigning everyone a position in a five man unit, not actually watching film on who they guard. It's usually accurate, but to get a good feel of how accurate it is, you ought to look at the 5 man units as well. Like Korver, when he's on court with Deng, is listed as the SG. With Brewer, he's listed as the SF. In either case, though, he's probably playing opponent SF on defense. This also reminds me that I've never gotten an answer on how they do their play by play computation. If you look at a play by play or think of how substitutions work in an NBA game, you need to be careful in assigning the right +/- stats for a player. For instance, if you look at 5:28 left in the first half of the Rookie/Soph game last night. Cousins fouls. James Harden goes to the line. Stephen Curry and Wes Matthews are replaced by JRue Holiday and Brandon Jennings after Harden's first shot. Then Harden makes the second shot. By rights, Curry and Matthews should be "-1" even though they've left the game, and Holiday and Jennings should be "0". I've spot checked the totals a couple times, and it seems that the calculation misses this, and assigns responsibility to for the foul shot point scored to the guys who just entered the game, not the guys who were responsible for the defensive lapse that resulted in the foul shot. Over the course of a game, of course, this can produce lots of misleading results.
I agree DC, but... Bogans starts Q1 and Q3, and surely the opposing SGs in that case are the starters of opposing teams.
I have the feeling we will not make any major deals. Maybe a minor one for SG depth for the playoffs. Noah's scoring and passing added to this time will be important.
This one's for Mike, but if anyone else is a stats guru, feel free to take a crack at it. Stats taken from basketballvalue.com. 2-year adjusted +/- Lee -1.96 standard error 3.06 Bogans -2.87 standard error 2.93 What does this tell me about the value of Lee over Bogans?
Lee is a point of winning margin a game more valuable than Bogans over a 48 minute period. Which doesn't seem like a lot, but it's not based on total points, it's based on margin of victory. The Bulls average +6 (they score 98.4 and give up 92.4 per game). If you look at margin of victory on BBR, the Bulls are currently 4th. Heat 7.8 Spurs 7.1 Celtics 6.7 Bulls 6 Lakers 5.9 Magic 5.8 So if you theoretically replace 20 minutes of Bogans with 20 minutes of Lee, you'd get about an extra .41 MOV to tack on the Bulls, other things being equal. Of course, that's strictly interpreting the stats.... could be that the current APM over/understimates their contributions
Code: Player -----> Lee Bogans Mayo Period 2yr 1yr 2yr 1yr 2yr 1yr 2010-2011 -1.96 -0.28 Rockets -2.87 -5.61 Bulls -6.11 -6.95 Griz 2010 Plyffs -4.72 -5.85 Spurs 2009-2010 -1.17 -0.7 Nets -3.53 -4.74 Spurs -4.67 -10.58 Griz 2009 Plyffs -1.58 -1.34 Magic 2008-2009 -0.24 -1.15 Magic -0.05 -2.85 Mgc, MI 1.21 -1.7 Griz I went through and compared all of these guys, and was pretty amazed that Mayo came out so poorly. I know he's been on bad teams, but that's only part of the story. The Nets team Lee was on was horrible, and he still came out looking pretty decent. They were bad, but better when he played vs. when his other teammates played. Mayo is almost the exact opposite in the sense that he was also on a bad team, but relative to his teammates, his team seemed to play better without him. A simple way to think about it is that Randolph/Gay/Conley/Gasol performs much better with Sam Young or Tony Allen than with Mayo. Seems pretty odd...
I also think it's interesting to track the difference between Bogans and Lee. My interpretation is basically In 2008-2009, Lee was a rookie and Bogans was his more experienced teammate. The Magic probably noticed that rookie Lee played about the same, and perhaps a bit better than Bogans. So they fired him off to the Bucks for Tyronn Lue around this time 3 years ago. The next year, the Magic traded Lee to the Nets, who were terrible, and Bogans signed with the Spurs, who were very good. Despite being very bad, The Nets only lost by a little bit with Lee on the floor. The Spurs were very good, but demonstrably not as good with Bogans as their other options. That's pretty much what we see with the Bulls as well. On the other hand, Lee has moved on to a middling team that happens to be stacked with a really elite player at his position who he rarely sees the floor with, so there's not much movement in Lee's numbers either
Thanks, Mike. I think I get the basic idea, though I thought the adjustment kind of eliminated (or at least muffled) the quality of the team you played on. I'm not a Mayo fan, but those stats are still head-scratchers. Just a word here to others. I don't think anyone's saying that the adjusted +/- stat is anything definitive when comparing players...just one more thing to look at.
