Is he done? He's been seriously meh since November. Thibs has cut his PT to 23 minutes the last two games. His PER has fallen to a shade above 11. I'm no fan of Hinrich for his play. I'm not a fan of this kind of play from our starting SF. The good news is Brooks is playing extremely well and finishing games without killing our defense. His scoring AND shooting are superior to Dunleavy at this point. E'Twan Moore looks terrific. He deserves more minutes. Kirk should watch games with his goggles off.
I'm fine with Dunleavy. They don't want him to do much besides hit 3s when he's open and not do dumb stuff while he's on the court...he's done this fairly well. He's made 47% of his 3-pointers since November and has the lowest # of turnovers per 36 minutes among the starters. As for his PER, it's very difficult for a wing who takes few shots to have much of a PER. The 34 year old version of Dunleavy is a pretty good fit for what this Bulls team needs at the SF position. A 5-8 year younger version of Dunleavy would be damn near perfect. The Bulls problem is Snell/McDermott. They're getting nothing positive from these two. Even 12 replacement-level minutes per game would be helpful, but they're not getting close to this.
If Dunleavy were the perfect fit, he wouldn't see his minutes cut to 22. He wasn't brought here to start, and he is. That's a failure to get us a starting quality SF or SG (SG so Jimmy could play SF full time).
Yeah, it ain't a perfect world. Agree that Dunleavy was brought to the Bulls to be a backup. Deng's exit changed things. The disappointments that are Snell and McDermott has changed things again. All I'm saying is that so far this season the Bulls have been very good and Dunleavy has done a good job in the low-usage facilitating wing role. I don't see him as a problem. I see Snell/McDermott as a problem. E'Twuan Moore is being given some run right now and I'm all for it. Thibodeau should try to see what his reserves have and what they lack between now and the mid-Feb trade deadline.
Dunleavy is fine as a 5th starter. Never makes a mistake, knows when he's not, and does a good job of getting himself shots in the flow of the offense. I agree with Transplant that the bigger problem is Snell and McDermott. I'm guessing the Bulls worked on the assumption that at least one of them would bloom into a rotational player this year. Doesn't look like it's going to happen. Snell's gone 13 games without scoring a point. Ouch! I think the biggest reason his minutes have gone down is because the team's recebt success with its small ball lineups, not because of anything he's done wrong.
You make my point well. Small ball lineups with this roster are most successful. Not just successful but running up big leads and the score.
You must be thinking of a different thread or a point you had intended to make at some unspecified future time. Your posts in this thread weren't about the wonders of small ball...just sayin'.
The Bulls finished with a 19-5 run behind the lineup of Rose, Butler, Noah, Gasol, and Mirotic. The usual go to guys weren't out there, and I don't think we missed Dunleavy one bit. Those guys being Kirk, Taj, and even Brooks. The game was tied with 2:05 left. The only mistake we made was playing you know who at SG guarding the guy with the beard who flops a lot.
Thank God Denny. You never said the name of the "you know who SG that was guarding the with the beard who flops a lot." That is bad luck.