Courtesy NBC Sports http://probasketballtalk.nbcsports....gos-never-ending-story-plus-thursdays-recaps/ What I didn’t understand at the time was that pride (the emotion, not the MMA organization) can be a very fickle thing. It’s not always an admirable quality to have. That’s what makes watching the Chicago Bulls hard. You know they won’t quit. This is a prideful basketball team, and it would be almost easier to accept their failures if they were the result of poor effort. But they aren’t, and they won’t be. The circumstances have not changed this at all. The crushing Derrick Rose injury, Luol Deng and Jimmy Butler being banged up, management providing a warm blanket instead of actually putting out fires – it’s just another day in Chicago. But how bad is it this time? Poor Taj Gibson sounded legitimately excited about the prospect of having “another body” when the Bulls signed D.J. Augustin this week. No one should have to be excited for D.J. Augustin. And really, no one should be excited to watch the Bulls right now, either. I don’t watch Chicago in hopes of seeing good basketball anymore, even if there’s a good chance of it. I watch Chicago in hopes that the basketball gods will grant them mercy. It’s just not fun anymore. Great performances by Joakim Noah, which come quite regularly, can’t be appreciated without the nagging feeling that they’re being wasted. Watching Tony Snell, a guy who probably wouldn’t even sniff the court if Thibodeau had his way, play a game-high 41 minutes is cruel and unusual. There isn’t even any schadenfreude to be had here like there is in, say, New York. Chicago’s wounds aren’t really self-inflicted, especially if you’re willing to separate management from the coach and the team, which seems to have already been done internally. And really, the Bulls still represent a lot of the ideals we want our basketball teams to: they defend, they play smart, and they’re tough. But in spite of those things, it’s hard to classify the Bulls as anything but a beaten team right now. It’s easy to focus on when Rose will come back and pin hopes on that, but not many are considering what he’ll actually come back to. How drained will this roster and Thibodeau be from just trying to stay afloat? How much more deterioration, both in terms of relationships and personnel, can the Bulls suffer through in the mean time? Will management tap out, trade Deng and possibly others for future assets and live to fight another day? Will it be Thibodeau who sees the writing on the wall and moves on, spurring a restructuring of the roster under someone else’s vision?
I watch the Bulls with interest because I want to see Snell grow and Teague start to look like an NBA player and to see Lu matching the best year of his career and to see Jimmy turn into the starting SG we all expect him to be, and so on.
The Bulls are in a particularly tough situation this season. They're a very veteran team constructed to compete for a title. Under these unexpected circumstances, they just don't have many high-potential young players to give playing time. Butler showed signs last season and this season (when healthy) that he can be a legit NBA starter. When healthy this season, he's been pretty good, though very inconsistent. It's a damn shame that he's missed 11 of the teams' 25 games. Snell has shown flashes, which is more than I expected at this point. The jury remains out on whether Snell is a legit NBA player. From my perspective, this season should provide Snell with all the opportunity he can handle. It would be great if he could show himself worthy of being part of the team's long-term thinking. Teague's been kind of shockingly awful. I didn't see this coming. Thibodeau won't play him unless he absolutely must. It took Augustin no time at all to pass Teague on the depth chart. Alas, despite the semi-hopelessness of this Bulls' season, this won't be Teague's development year on the Bulls roster...it'll be his Iowa Energy year.
Teague has been an unmitigated disaster. I wouldn't count him out on the season just yet though. Projecting player development makes idiots of us all a good deal of the time.
I've given up on Teague. There is just no indication that he has an NBA game. He can't shoot, can't run a team, has stage fright every time he steps on the court. He was the 29th pick in a weak draft. Move on. Over the years I've come to appreciate that the players who are good tend to exhibit their goodness sooner rather than later. You knew Amare was good his first year. Ditto Kobe, Dwight, Lebron, Monte, etc. There are exceptions to this rule, but I think it generally holds true. And then there's also the difference between "needs some work" and "just plain awful." Jeff Teague didn't blossom until his third year, but his PER his first two years was 11.0 and 14.6. That's at least playable. After a year and a half our Teague is still trying to crack zero. Edit: I double checked and it now appears with his recent hot streak Marquis' PER now has a positive sign in front of it.....0.17. Way to go, big fella!
Marquis isn't as old, yet, as his brother was when he was a rookie. My patience would end next season if he's not putting up a 10 PER.
It was very much up in the air whether the team would pick up their option on Teague for next season, but they did...you seem to be in sync with Bulls management on this one.
