Keith, I don’t think that you’ll be getting many of these, so you might want to save this one…maybe even buy a frame or something. You came to the Bulls this past summer, signing for about $400,000 over the league minimum and about 1/3 of the amount that your fellow new Bulls’ shooting guards, Kyle Korver and Ronnie Brewer, were getting. Although new Bulls Head Coach Tom Thibodeau was a fan dating back to your brief time together in Houston, most observers figured that you’d be nothing more than veteran depth on a young team that while improved, wasn’t expected to make any kind of loud noise on the 2010-11 NBA scene. Of course, you worked hard to prepare yourself for the coming season, same as always, and play whatever role coach Thibs wanted you to play. Since you’d been around the NBA block a time or two, you knew about Chicago and its fans. Great sports town, love their teams and have a particular fondness for “blue collar” type players who may not be the most talented, but give it their all when they’re out there…definitely your kind of fans. The Trouble “Starts” Late September comes around and you find that Brewer is still suffering from the hamstring injury he suffered last season. As a result, Thibs puts you in the starting preseason lineup and you’re absolutely shooting lights out…over 50% for field goals and a kinda crazy 50% on 3-pointers. Your preseason true shooting percentage, one of those new high-tech scoring efficiency stats, is an absolutely ridiculous 70%, by far the best on the team…hell, it was probably some kind of world record. Yeah, you didn’t score a lot, but Thibs didn’t really want you to. Besides, how many points are you gonna to score when you only take 3 or 4 shots a game? All in all, things had started off very, very nicely. The regular season begins and Brewer’s still not ready so Thibs keeps you in the starting lineup. Your team, who most experts pick as the 4th or 5th best in the Eastern Conference, faces a positively brutal early schedule…damn near all playoff teams and most of ‘em on the road. Big-money free agent forward Carlos Boozer busted his hand and will miss the first month…great. In early December, the Bulls are barely above .500 and it appears that you wasted all of your shooting mojo on the preseason. You’re shooting an anemic 37% from the field, and as the starting squad’s designated spot-up 3-point specialist, you’re converting a pathetic 26% from the arc. Brewer’s back and he’s playing more minutes than you, but he’s taken exactly one three-point shot for the season and apparently this isn’t what Thibodeau wants from his starting shooting guard. Korver’s shooting well, but it seems that the only thing that makes Thibs sicker to his stomach than watching Kyle Korver try to defend opposing guards is watching a tired Kyle Korver try to defend guards…so he limits Korver’s minutes and keeps trotting you out there with the starting unit. The natives are getting restless and looking for someone to blame. For an increasing number of Bulls’ fans, you’re that someone. Your poor shooting and low scoring numbers are clearly among the reasons they’ve pinned a “Kick Me” sign on your backside, but the fact that you’re a starter seems to be what the fans and media just can’t get over. And yeah, I was one of ‘em. You deserved a lot of the criticism. I mean, you truly were playing poorly on offense. Still, we were kind of silly to put so much emphasis on the fact that you got to have your name and college announced at the beginning of games. The truth was that you were a sub who just so happened to play his minutes at the beginning of each half. Everything Changes…Well, Not Everything It was December 4th, you were coming off a loss to the Celtics the previous night and hosted the Houston Rockets. The Bulls blew a lead, but came back to win in overtime. You had an OK game, scoring 6 points on only 3 shots in your typical 16 minutes. It wasn’t pretty, but having lost 5 of your last 8 and 3 of your last 4, it was just good to get the W. Even being the blame-magnet you had become, no one could fault you for failing to see that your team was about to go on one of the most improbable runs in the history of Chicago sports. The Rockets win was the start of a 7-game winning streak that the team built into a 14-2 stretch. Early in the new year, we looked up to find that the Bulls had pretty much locked up the NBA’s Central Division. The team was back where we thought they should be. Fans were more or less content and the media was writing nice things, particularly about Thibodeau and the team’s freshly-minted superstar Derrick Rose. Maybe it was because all the newfound Bulls’ love was being directed elsewhere, but you got none of it. Instead, this was when the hypothetical “How good would the Bulls be if they only had a real starting shooting guard instead of Bogans?” gained what would become an enduring popularity. Nobody seemed to notice that you had re-discovered your shooting touch during the team’s year-end turnaround…probably because you were still only scoring 4-6 points a night. Losses at New Jersey and Philly calmed folks down a bit, but then the team got crazy. We all know the rest of the story. Beginning with that early-December OT victory over Houston, the team went an incredible 53-12 to finish with 62 wins, best in the league. In the process, the Bulls were THE story of the 2010-11 NBA season, Rose became a lock for the MVP award, Thibs started clearing a place on the mantle for his Coach of the Year trophy and even long-time whipping boy Luol Deng was being mentioned for postseason defensive honors. Alas, while it’s a great time to be a Bull, if you’re into acclaim from your fandom, it’s still not that great to be Keith Bogans. Sorry Man, You Did OK Last summer, the announcement of your signing pretty much elicited a group yawn. Those who had heard of you knew you were a classic NBA journeyman…a defensive specialist who seldom made mistakes, could hit your share of open 3s and was a positive veteran presence in the locker room. You’ve been pretty much as advertised and the fans might have embraced you if not for Thibodeau sticking in the starting lineup. In any case, once you became the starter you stayed there, starting all 82 regular season games. Like the Bulls, your season can be divided into two parts…the 17 games before that Houston overtime win and the 65 games after it. In those last 65 games, you quietly were a positive force on defense and even put up some pretty nice offensive numbers. You didn’t score much (4.4 points per game), but you had a very good reason…you didn’t shoot much (3.6 shots per game). Keeping in mind that you only averaged 17 minutes per game over those last 65, it seems fair to point out that you actually averaged a more respectable 9.4 points per-36 minutes. Even including those awful first 17 games, while you didn’t score much, you were very efficient and pretty darn accurate. Your 38.0% from the three-point line was 3rd on the team behind only Korver and C.J. Watson and well above the league average of 35.8%. Your effective field goal percentage of 55% was second only to center Omer Asik (and damn near all of his shots were dunks) and only Joakim Noah and Korver posted a better “true shooting percentage” than your 56%. Oh yeah, your 1.0 turnovers per-36 minutes were the lowest on the team. Regardless of what the fans and media say, given the nature of the Bulls roster, the team needed you to have a good season and you did. Were you a critical reason for the Bulls’ surprising success? No, but you did contribute both by what you did (defense and accurate shooting) and what you didn’t do (take stupid or forced shots, turn the ball over or miss games). So I apologize for what I said about you early in the season…you’re a pro and you’ve given us the best you have. And while just about everyone continues to look forward to the day that you’re no longer starting for the Bulls, here’s hoping that come June, you’ve got some new jewelry to wear. No one can take that away from you. Tom Nossem
Nice work Tom. You've provided the most accurate write up on Bogans's season that I've seen and I agree with the above statement. But can we all agree that "How good would this team be with a shooting guard?" is a completely reasonable question, and if Bogans lets us down in the playoffs we all get to punch Paxson in the nuts for deciding not to trade for Lee. It's not Bogans's fault, it's management . . . and no one is claiming otherwise. I don't trust Bogans though. He has shown that if you frustrate him on offense or play physical it's reflected in his ability to get stops on the defensive end. He's the weak link if this team fails.
Great article. SST - I'm glad we didn't trade Omer for C. Lee or someone comparable. In the playoffs, I think his defense will be more valuable than a marginal upgrade at SG. If he's hitting his three point shots, then Bogans satisfies the "do no harm" principle well enough, and I'd rather not trade Omer's unusually good interior defense for an average SG.
OK, now that we've survived that first game, I'll respond to this one. First, I respect Doug as a writer. As you may know, I'm now a contributor to his Bulls Confidential site. I frequently disagree with Doug. I don't consider him to be any more of an infallible source than I do the writers for the Trib or Sun-Times. I disagree with them too. As you more than most should understand, when I disagree with them, I think I'm right and they're wrong. I had my "Bogans Epiphany" in February. I began defending him and have caught rations of shit from two message boards. I'm completely OK with this. Again, as you should well know, taking an unpopular position you believe in is going to draw fire. Goes with the territory of having a mind of your own. Everyone loves Thibs and many think he's a basketball genius. Thibs likes Bogans as a starter. Fans and media almost unanimously think Bogans sucks. How do we rectify this? We say that Thibodeau is great but has a blind spot with regard to Bogans. Bullshit. Thibs knows exactly what he's doing and why. Thibodeau "knows his personnel" and so he knows that Bogans is his best combination of defense and 3-point shooting. Given the limitations of his roster, this is what he wants starting the first and third quarters of games. That's why Bogans starts and plays his record-setting-low 17 mpg. It's fine to want a better SG to start for the Bulls since I agree that he probably wouldn't start on any other team, but no other team has "backup" SGs of the quality of Korver and Brewer. Face it, this SG by committee thing the Bulls have going is odd, but it has worked. Beating up on Bogans is easy and stupid. Whether you do it or Thonus does it. Thibodeau wants Bogans to play good defense, make a reasonably high percentage of his shots (almost all 3s) and find the open man (he's 10th among PGs for assist %). Bottom line is that Bogans is delivering what his head coach wants him to. You can use other numbers to degrade his contributions, but when you do it, you're exposing an agenda that is unrelated to winning.
I don't think he's awful, but I don't think he's the quality of player who should be playing 17 minutes on a championship contender. He's not a lock down defender like Bruce Bowen (he doesn't score as well as Bowen either). I want the Bulls to win, of course, but I think it can be done a lot easier if they're more able to sprint out to leads in Q1 and hold them and increase them in Q3. It's clearly a tougher proposition in the playoffs. Today he was +/- of -11. That's a lot to ask the rest of the team to make up for during the rest of the game. As I see it, the team's point differential is key to winning (of course). We were #2 in the league at 7.3, which is great. The thing is, did we often have close games and only increase our lead during the foulfests that occur at the end of games, or did we have 15 points leads and gave back 8 while resting our starters? I prefer the latter is all.
Would Rose have become Rose this season if he had Dwayne Wade packing down with him at shooting guard? How you answer this question, IM0 , goes a long way to explaining. Keith.Bogans and the 3 headed monster of our SG position. This is not to suggest that Bogans is the final solution. He is not. But we need a complementary role playing wing man to Rose. In the spirit of Bogans. Except better.
Its a good part of rthe reason why Memphis lost the title game.in Derricks sole season at Memphis. CDR was the man and Derrick had been too deferential before he was put on the spot to win it. Calipari played the accepted idiom and bullshit politics of College Hoops. And it cost him a title Derrick gave it a good nudge though and came bloody close. The point is that no one puts Baby in a corner
Why wouldn't he have had the same season if we had a better SG? Jordan didn't become a lesser player when he played with Pip.
Denny m'boy, it depends on who the shooting guard was If the shooting guard was Wade - No. Derrick stays as boy wonder. If the shooting guard was Joe Johnson .No. Derrick stays a little less as boy wonder but isn't MVP which leads us to best record in the league. If the shooting guard was JJ Redick .Yes. Derrick would have fully transcended as he did and we would have ended up a 65 win team IMO. My point is - is that we needed to have this season with the itch we can't scratch at shooting guard so that someone who stood next to Rose in the backcourt was of much lesser stature so as to let the light shine in and have the photosynthesis thing do its thing. I'm with you though m'boy .....now that he's this incendiary being we need to upgrade the support structure. Y'know protect the investment and all that Which is why another tough big wing body who can defend and shoot the 3 ( Battier ) and another tough interior big to replace Uncle Kurt ( Collison ) are the absolute priorities to leave our window well and truly open for a while before we have to re-tool around Derrick , Joakim and Luol.
I assume this a factoring the future right. BC Omer isn't playing this year in the playoffs in any really tough series for us. (note: he may play a bit more against the Magic.) C. Lee would be nice.
Interesting thing about Omer... Last regular season game, Omer was in and you could hear Thibs screaming at him at the top of his lungs. "Omer get up there" when Omer was around the basket and his man was at the FT line. "Omer double team" when the ball went to a guy in the post. That sort of thing. It was one play and Brandon Wright ended up scoring on a tough shot. Thibs called time out and Omer never was put back in the game. http://espn.go.com/nba/playbyplay?gameId=310413004&period=0 6:33 Brandan Wright makes 11-foot jumper (Sasha Vujacic assists) 30-39 6:22 Chicago full timeout 6:22 30-39 Carlos Boozer enters the game for Taj Gibson 6:22 30-39 Luol Deng enters the game for Omer Asik
I saw that in action. Omer was sagging off his man in the middle of the lane and was a half second away from a defensive three-second call . . . hence the "get up there." Omer wasn't guarding his man close enough and was about to get whistled. Thibs then had to scream at him to double trap in the post. Team defense is tough and Omer is a rookie. I wouldn't expect him to get a whole lot of burn except out of a series against Orlando and maybe the Lakers, for matchup reasons. Such is life.
