Post game 2 team analysis

I know it's only two games, but the Bulls struggled to beat the Lakers minus Bynum , and having Odom might have lifted the Lakers to victory.

Then we got our asses handed to us by GSW. WTF?

I am beginning to dislike Thibs' coaching style, particularly on offense. Somehow he's taken a beast of a player in Boozer and turned him into a not-so-good player. He's been good everywhere else, with different coaches. Either he's done (I seriously doubt it) or it's the offensive scheme.

Deng plays like an old man but is effective in spurts. Yet GSW ran out to a big lead by doubling Boozer with Deng's man. I think they figured out that Deng isn't going to beat you, and they're right. To make things worse, Noah is such a non-threat on offense they can triple team Boozer, and they did that enough. Or at least they put their best defensive big on him.

Rip got easy baskets posting up the smaller GSW guards, yet he was on the bench early for a defensive player when we needed even more offense to keep up with the W's athletic scorers.

What's with the funky lineups? The Bulls had Boozer, Gibson, and Asik all in the game at the same time. None of those guys are wings, ball handlers, or effective at manufacturing shots.

Asik has looked really bad so far this year. He's big enough to get rebounds by default, but the ball goes through his hands and out of bounds on good passes to him too many times.

Taj's 5 points and 9 boards are no substitute for what Boozer should be giving us. Puhleeze.

Teams are learning to force the ball from Rose's hands. He needs to learn to take the two or three defenders guarding him out of the play altogether. The rest of the team needs to learn to score 4 on 2. And when the defense rotates away from Rose, he needs to get the ball and score; he's open!

There's a lesson for us in how Jackson prepared the Ws. When Curry went out with the ankle problem, we rushed Ellis like they rushed Rose. Ellis got the ball to a scoring threat, David Lee, at the free throw line where he turned and had a drive, a pass to cutters, or an open shot. Doing this with Noah isn't anywhere near as effective since they'll let him shoot the outside shot all day.

Our bench is anemic. 5 points from them in the first half, and since they played most of the 2nd half they did score, but it was garbage time points.

What Thibs did that was right was to play Rose and Watson together. Two competent ball handlers on the floor. But Rip was really good early on, until he was benched. Better than .500 from the field with 4 assists. He's not Bogans-end-of-the-bench quality, but he's getting Bogans quantity minutes.

Hey Thibs - put our best players out there and let them play.

 

Easy there feisty. Your questions all seem legit to me. But I think all of the issues are derived from the fact that the players are both out of shape or are adjusting to the speed of NBA games. Boozer, Asik and Rip look like they aren't in game shape yet. Gibson is in shape but he seems like he's adjusting to the speed of games. Korver seems out of rhythm. These things will get better as the Bulls get more practice and game time.

Do you remember the Knicks massacre of the Bulls on November 11, 2010, and then the followup loss on Christmas day. The November 11 game was the one where Thibs left the bench in even though the Bulls were closing at the end and the fans starting chanting for Derrick Rose. I remember being pissed at the end of those games because I thought that Thibs had messed up the game plan by doubling the Knicks' bigs down low, leaving the Knicks' backcourt open for easy threes. It turns out that I was wrong, and the Bulls just needed to improve on their defense execution and rotations, which they did by February.

It's going to take a couple of months for this team to round into shape. Let's just chill for a bit and see what we have before we try to make firm evaluations.

 

ya, basically no training camp, very little practice.

 

What, GSW got more training camp and practice than we did? Outrage!

 

Good analysis, Denny.

Yeah, these first two games haven't gone exactly the way I envisioned them. If what we've seen is what we're going to get, might as well begin preparing the torches for the inevitable storming of the gates.

However, like others, I think I'll keep my powder dry for at least a couple weeks.

 

My post was inspired by watching the games. Recently, I'm seeing similar kinds of sentiments on a number of Bulls' fan sites.

Maybe the Bulls need an assistant coach who can do the X's and O's thing. I look at the talent in the starting lineup and there's no excuse for us being uncompetitive in any game. It's so good that we can have 2 or 3 of them playing with the 2nd unit while the others get their rest.

Subbing them all out for a completely different 5, then bringing in Deng (he's way overplayed) when there's zero offense isn't smart basketball.

I actually like Thibs and I'm glad he's here. I just want to see the X's and O's on the offensive end take advantage of what the players can do. We're mostly doing that on the defensive end, but the league is becoming full of teams with more than one prolific scorer (GSW has 3) that defense isn't going to stop. We're not an old team, and we have some athleticism. We sometimes are going to have to keep up by matching them shot for shot vs. getting stops and being unable to make our shots to catch up.

I do think it's entirely possible to turn a superstar into a goat. Take Wade and tell him to stand in the corner waiting for a pass to take 3pt shots and he's going to suck. The smart thing is to put the ball in his hands plenty and let him do his thing in his comfort zone.