We've heard this sort of exhortation voiced for several years. Now, it seems like the Bulls' only desperate hope. I'm kind of at a loss on this year's team. Depending on your agenda, I suppose you could blame Bulls' management, Thibodeau or any of a number of players for the team's sorry state of affairs right now. Is the regular season irrelevant? I don't know, but I've decided that I'm going to "go with the program" and wait 'til the playoffs. If I can control my emotions, I won't go off on any of the principals between now and April. Of course, I reserve the right to change my mind if circumstances significantly change or if my self-control significantly erodes. With all this said, Derrick Rose needs to play much better than he has. Thibodeau has allowed Rose to pretty much do whatever he wants to on the court. A lot of this has been ugly. The common refrain for this season has been "the Bulls can't win without a healthy Derrick Rose." Rose looks healthy, but not necessarily recovered. To be kind, he hasn't been very good. It's been said that Pau Gasol has been reborn with the Bulls. The facts don't bear this out, but nonetheless Gasol is the Eastern Conference starting center. I absolutely hate watching him trying to play defense. Thibodeau never let Boozer be the last line of his defense, but inexplicably, he has allowed Gasol to be that last line. As a result, Gasol has been a more detrimental defender than Boozer was...Jeez. As mentioned, conventional logic was that the Bulls' prospects depended on Rose's health. Well, if Noah's knees are truly never going to be the same, the Bulls have no chance. Dunleavy's clearly more valuable than many of us thought. Still, if Thibodeau isn't going to play Snell or McDermott, the Bulls are going to need to trade for a wing. This will involve trading a big and that will leave a hole. Damn shame.
Good post. The regular season isn't irrelevant, but you do have to be a good team when playoffs come around. Is this a good team, or is it just a bunch of good players that poorly fit together? Pau is fine. Last man back and look at his block stats. The problem is you need him to outscore his opponent and he doesn't do that night in and night out. More importantly, he gets no weak side help if Noah is out by the 3pt line guarding a PF who can shoot outside. I've repeatedly observed that teams with youthful Cs kill us - Pau isn't stopping those guys 1-on-1. Rose used to look like a scoring PG. Now he looks like a jump shooting SG. Win now, win now, win now. But he's building his skill set for soon (not now). In a couple years, he's going to be a deadly 3pt shooter and still have that great inside game. He never had the prototypical PG skills (like Curry). They banked on drafting a slow and unathletic PF and turning him into a SF. The guy simply has sucked every bit as much as Adam Morrison, and may not turn out to be any better from what we've seen. His inability to contribute when healthy, then the injury, and now he's healthy again, has made the loss of Dunleavy and our terribly unbalanced roster blatantly obvious. Dunleavy is 8 feet tall. Adding him to the two 7 footers gave us a really tall front line. He's not very good, but at least he's more agile than Taj or Mirotic at SF. Not only is having him out forcing us to realize how badly we needed McBuckets to come through, it's forcing us to play the terrible Kirk Hinrich way too many minutes. We added a rookie PF with a lot of potential when we really don't have the minutes to play him. At MLE kind of money that could have been used on a guy who'd contribute more than 15 minutes a game. Kirk is playing too many minutes. Did I say that? The guy is struggling to keep his PER over 7 at this point, and I bet it goes lower. He's not even as good as Bogans was (in the same role) and he doesn't play defense well anymore either. We're playing 4 on 5 or worse for huge chunks of the game. The second unit has sucked since the season started. Thibs can't make the guys put the ball in the basket. More later.
The difference is that Boozer could guard opposing 4s, albeit poorly. Gasol simply can't guard 4s. Especially in this era of the stretch 4 where the guy on D needs to close out on shooters quickly. I don't see what choice Thibs has if he's playing Gasol. I guess giving McDermott a few minutes wouldn't hurt. If he plays like he did the first month of the season, those will be losing minutes for the Bulls. Agree regarding Rose. Rose, for better or worse, is the franchise. If Thibs goes up against him, especially with management not having his back on most issues to begin with, he'll be gone in a heartbeat. Assuming Rose keeps playing like this the rest of his career, the right move is to bench him and move on. Thibs isn't allowed to pick his assistant coaches though and play guys the minutes he would like, I'm pretty sure we would not allowed to bench Rose for any extended period of time.
As for Gasol, this is another story of Cap Space coming back to bite you. The Bulls didn't go into this off season thinking they needed a 4/5. They had Noah, Gibson and probably Mirotic. Cap Space Melo derby didn't go their way, so they "had" to use it on Gasol. Now, the Bulls have the starting All-Star for a song of a contract. But.... die hard watchers of this franchise know that Gasol's addidtion and Rose's sucky return has pretty much blown up what Thibs has built here the last few seasons.
When I say 4 on 5, I mean this. And I've written it over and over that I see nobody guarding Kirk when he's out there on many plays.
Also, we're likely to be seeing McBuckets sent to the McD League. So much for NBA ready. We actually need him to be.
This is silly. Hinrich is in the offball corner where it takes two passes to get the ball to him. He doesn't need to be actively defended. I assume that Butler (not in frame) is near the top of the key and one pass away from Rose so he does need to be actively defended. This said, when it comes to scoring, Hinrich has been dropping off for several years and I believe is now officially in sucks out loud territory.
They don't leave anyone else like that. Except Noah, who is often surprised at how open he is for that shot of his. Kirk's guy isn't sagging off him, he's not guarding him at all and is double teaming a player who is an actual offensive threat. His defender isn't even on the same side (right) of the court. One pass away, the defender should be denying a pass to him. But why? They want the guy with the ~7 PER to take as many shots as possible. Statistically, Kirk is the worst player in the league. Bar none. I don't know why you'd expect us to win games pkaying him 30 or more minutes a game.
Y'know what? This isn't worth the effort. As I said, when it comes to scoring, Kirk is very, very bad. I also hate seeing him play big minutes.
I don't think there should be a stigma about playing in the D league. He'd be better off getting 25 minutes a night playing basketball than riding the pine and practicing every now and then. The Bulls are a veteran team trying to win a title. There are no development minutes.
That's a pretty deep sentiment and I think you're right. Free agency is way more tricky than even the draft. It's not enough to get a good player on a value contract; you need to get a player that works with your roster as well . . . which is perhaps why Pau Gasol was so readily available this off season. His athletic limitations make him tough to integrate. Maybe what separates San Antonio's front office is not its ability to find draft day steals but it's ability to integrate its home-grown talent with free agents. As to the general attempt to place blame Transplant mentions in his OP, I really get the feeling the struggles thus far have been tied to the roster tuning out Thibs. I don't place blame on anyone for the current state of things. The regression of Rose and Noah haven't helped anything. But you can win in the NBA in January and February on effort alone. A third-tier team would be putting up a better record with Thibs as its coach if its roster was receptive. As I mentioned in the other thread, I don't think you can make personnel decisions when you're having this type of season. I certainly wouldn't move Gibson until you had a better idea of what you have in Pau after a coaching change, not to mention what Noah looks like next season. Rookies seem to struggle the most when a coach loses his roster. They need the structure to make the transition to the NBA. I'm reading less into Doug McDermott's early struggles than I would otherwise, especially considering the injury.
They'll send him down when they have time off for the all star break. He's still potentially needed if there are injuries or other absence.
??? They'll add a body, no? Do they have to wait for the AS break to do it? My guess is that McDermott ain't goin' anywhere.
What I read is the Bulls don't generally use D League, and they're waiting for a lull in the schedule to send him down. Following in Teagues footsteps?
It seems that the fairly innocuous quote that started all the McDermott to D-league talk is: So now I get the AS game connection. IMO, it would have been better if Thibodeau had said nothing.
