The last sentence is probably true. We'll have no way of knowing how far the Bulls are away from a championship unless they beat the Heat. I'm not sure what that's going to take from him. As to your comparisons, I think Deng has been remarkably consistent across seasons. I agree that Boozer is worse; I just hope the Bulls can make up for it by using him better. I view Dunleavy as quite a bit better than Korver and Brewer. Dunleavy is quick enough to play both swing positions and is great on the boards. Dunleavy, unlike both Korver and Brewer, will be able to get his shot off in the playoffs too. He's just a better option. That was a really nice off season signing. I'm not convinced CJ Watson is near as good as I thought he was when he was a Bull. I wouldn't be that surprised if Teague is better than him by the end of the season. Omer will definitely be missed but this version of Gibson looks much improved, right? In other news, Bill Simmons believes the Bulls will be the best regular season team this year, which I would take as reassuring that I'm not crazy, if I trusted him to be not trolling for clicks.
By what measure is Deng the same as 3 seasons ago? PER 15.5 -> 15.1 (down) OWS 4.7 -> 3.0 (down) DWS 5.2 -> 3.3 (down) WS/48 .149 -> .105 (down) PPG 17.4 -> 16.5 (down) FG% .460 -> .426 (down) 3PT% .345 -> .322 (down) AST 2.8 -> 3.0 (up) REB 5.8 -> 6.3 (up) STL 1.0 -> 1.1 (up)
CJ Watson started 25 games for us the season Rose was hobbled and then finally hurt his knee. He put up a 13.3 PER for us, and we had the best record in the league with him starting nearly half the games (OK, 40%, whatever). I like Teague, but seriously, I doubt he could play half the games in place of Rose and we'd win so consistently. Our current backup PG hasn't had a 13.3 PER since 2008-09. Taj had a 16.9 PER that season. That's a very good PER for a bench player. I'm not expecting better than that. Better than last season, sure.
