He did. And Snell did a solid job as well in the 2nd half and played pretty solid D throughout. He fills in well in the Jimmy Butler role if needed. Nice bounce back win for the Bulls after a rough night ... fought through some bad shooting. Sadly, I didn't see much out there to convince me that Rose and Noah are ready to lead this team to a NBA championship.
Snell holds Wade to 9 points, the first time since Game #2 of the season he was held under 10 when playing at least 15 minutes. 4/20 (.200) is his worst shooting night of the season. Very good game on the boards for Taj, 10+ rebounds for only the 8th time in 59 games but 8 defensive rebounds were big (and his most in a game since Dec 15) Pau 16/15. Ho hum. Niko's back to back 3's were the daggers, the game was over at that point. Dunleavy got hot in the 3rd to help lead the comeback, he and Niko 7 steals between them accounted for 1/2 of Miami's turnovers.
On defense yeah, but Jimmy scores much easier than Snell, that's for sure. Noah looked good for about 2-3 weeks, but the last several game he's been close to horrible. If Taj is healthy and will play D like he did until this season, he should be getting minutes ahead of Noah. As should Niko, obviously, because if Noah isn't playing great help defense and rebounding, he's worthless. If Rose is going to help this team, it looks like it's going to only be on defense. He refuses to stop shooting 3's, and he doesn't seem real interested in penetrating and either shooting the 12-15 footer or kicking to the open man if he draws a defender. We have enough offense, Pau, Butler, Niko and Brooks can all get their own shots, and MDJ and Snell are very good at shooting open, spot-up 3's if someone else creates for them. And Taj is efficient in the low post as long as he doesn't force things against a double-team and looks to find the open man when he doesn't have the advantage.
I agree that those are solid players and are a pretty solid team, but that isn't a NBA Champion. They need Rose and Noah at a close to elite level to be a true contender. Otherwise its a solid squad, but its not going all the way, IMO. Maybe if it was Pau in his prime and Niko 2 years from now.
Like these thoughts, Bullsville. One of Pau/Noah paired with one of Taj/Niko really seems like the best way to split up the frontcourt, but it hasn't really happened all season. It's getting harder to be optimistic about the Rose we hoped we would have for the postseason. Lots of turnovers, lot's of 3's, 3 games left in the season. We'll see. He does look pretty springy out there, but he hasn't seemed to put it together all season. Should we be holding out hope that he's been sandbagging the whole season? I still like Snell as a backup wing to platoon with Dunleavy. He doesn't hurt us when we have to play him big minutes and he gives you dimensions that DunVP doesn't. When we played the Wiz last year Beal ran circles around Dunleavy when he had to switch on to him. Snell on the other hand has given him huge problems when he's guarded him.
I think Snell's defense has taken a step up the last few games, leading into the matchup against Wade. He's starting to use his length and speed to jam people. You wouldn't normally put a wing who has struggled as much as Snell has in the high upside category, but I think he might be an exception. He may have a very gradual learning curve, but little by little he seems to be improving at all facets of the game.
I think he's always had a high ceiling as a defender. I remember one of the stats being thrown around at draft time is that in college his opponent shot 29% when he was guarding them one-on-one. Even when he was playing terribly otherwise his man defense was pretty good. I remember we had to bring him in with DJ in last year's playoffs because he was getting eaten alive by Andre Miller's post ups, and he did a very good job on him too. He's not a possession generator the way Jimmy or Chris Paul is, but he has the ability to stay with someone and disrupt their rhythm on offense the way Shane Battier does.
The hype surrounding him at draft time was he would be groomed to be a 3D guy. His defense in college was good, his shot was good. He also has long arms which help with defense and rebounding.
http://www.chicagonow.com/chicago-bulls-confidential/2015/03/tony-snells-future-impact/ A nice piece on Snell, with comments by the readers that are good, too.
C'mon, you know better. Dunleavy's a low-usage 3-point shooting specialist. Low-usage three-point shooting specialists are seldom consistent on a game-to-game basis. Korver's a good comp for Dunleavy, though Korver's the best 3-point shooter ever and Dunleavy's just a very good 3-point shooter. Korver's results also are somewhat volatile.
When he's very good, we win easily. When he's not, we don't (obviously). It isn't hard to find a guy who can be very good more frequently. And DunVP could be the role player we expected him to be when we got him. 3pt specialist.
Good comparison. Korver points this season: 0-9 25 10-19 41 20-29 7 MDJ points this season: 0-9 35 10-19 16 20-29 9 MDJ is actually a lot more likely to get you 20 on a given night, 15% of the time this season compared to 9.6% of the time for Korver. Dun is more likely to score less than 10, but he's also twice as likely to play less than 30 minutes (Korver plays 30+ minutes almost twice as often as MDJ, 76.7% of games to 40% for MDJ). I wouldn't have guessed that Korver has scored in single-digits in more than 1/3 of his games this season. Korver doesn't score a lot more than MDJ per minute (13.5 to 11.8 per/36). Their other numbers are close enough to be splitting hairs one way or the other. Like you said, the big difference is that Korver is 6th all-time in 3pt% (.432), MDJ is 112th (.376). However, that completely reverses in the playoffs - MDJ is at .423 in 5.7 att per 36, Korver is at .386 in 6.1 att per 36.
Dun is more likely to score less than 10, but he's also twice as likely to play less than 30 minutes (Korver plays 30+ minutes almost twice as often as MDJ, 76.7% of games to 40% for MDJ). Korver doesn't score a lot more than MDJ per minute (13.5 to 11.8 per/36).
He's also really likely to score 5 or less points. He did that 23 times. Advanced stats don't mean squat here. 5 points or less from our starting SF 23 times.
Ya, as I said in the sixer thread, he needs to be a lot more aggressive on offense from here on out if we are going to have any chance of winning.
