Hinrich made a bad play in the 4th. I forget the specifics of it. His play down the stretch wasn't that good overall. To give him credit, he played with heart and made a few shots.
Very true, McDoug was 8/17 but he had 3 or 4 shots that rolled around the rim and fell off, not to mention the three drives in the first half where he was blatantly slammed to the floor but he didn't get a call. Hopefully Thibs can find a way to keep giving him minutes over the last 20 games, he has no problem finding 25 minutes for Hinrich.
Hinrich just can't play with the pace this team needs. The roster has so many weapons now it just needs a point guard to get them into their sets. Having KH run point with the lineup of McDermott, Snell, Mirotic and Noah is like taking a dump on a birthday cake.
That's a great point, I don't know how many times I noticed tonight that the rest of the team is up the floor on offense, while Kirk is barely getting the ball over 1/2 court and there's 10 seconds left on the shot clock. And there are so many times that the defense gets a stop and a quick outlet pass to Kirk, and he just slowly walks the ball upcourt instead of pushing the pace. Again, anyone who knows me knows that I've been a long-time Kirk supporter, even when most fans couldn't understand what he brought to this team in the past. But this is a totally different roster, GarPax has put together a team that can run and finish and shoot 3's, and Kirk just doesn't fit in with a team like that.
Kirk tries hard in the 4th to play effective basketball. He just gets gassed running the floor with our guys. I don't know why he's so slow, his change of direction speed is slow, he can't run the break anymore. I prefer him over Marquis "wet blanket" Teague.
The Pacers always seem to play us tough. I don't think they like us. I think tonight was McDermott's most encouraging game as a Bull. Not particularly efficient, but I think it's really encouraging that he was able to be a high usage player in non-garbage time. Judging by the highlights it didn't look like he was doing anything that wasn't already in his wheelhouse.
Transplant, I hear what you're saying. There weren't a ton of plays you could point to and say, "there, Hinrich's mistake cost them a possession" like we've been able to in other recent games. My problem is, why was it so hard for the team to get open shots in his second stint? Did you see the full court trap that the Pacers used? I haven't seen a team try to do that in not-end-of-game situations since the early '90s. You look at those Noah-Mirotic-McDermott-Snell/Moore lineups -- those are four guys who can, handle, pass, and with the exception of Noah, shoot from range. That's a lineup built to run and gun.
To be clear, I wasn't saying Hinrich played well. It's just that when he's singled out as a problem in a 14-point loss where he happened to be +1, well, you might want to check yourself is all.
I'm not sure why, Brooks has a better PER, a higher Ast% and a lower TO% than Watson this season, so it seems like generally speaking Brooks would be the better choice this season.
