Ben Gordon Has One Foot Out the Door?

You've got to stop with this elite level stuff, BG isn't anywhere near elite. And I love how you left Hinrich off the list. His 56.9 TS% doesn't make BG's look so impressive after all, does it, especially since it was higher than BG's three games ago...

 

Kirk Hinrich was having a very good year scoring the ball efficiently early on. I left Hinrich off because he isn't relevant to the discussion. We only had him for the first week and a half or so.

Gordon is scoring at a great efficiency, with good volume. I don't remember Hinrich being higher than Gordon any point during this season. Larry Hughes was for a day or two, but then he went back to classic Larry Hughes in the past week and killed his scoring efficiency. You can't ignore the fact that Gordon is not only our greatest volume scorer, but also our most efficient scorer, and is doing it at a great level of efficiency. You also can't ignore how low his teammate's efficiency is, which plays a role in assist number deflation for Ben Gordon.

 

Obviously it'd be somewhat dependent on what personnel particular teams have. Which also makes your "point me" thing kind of a "hiding BG" gimmick itself. You claim to be a fan, go out and watch a bunch of games. Simmons isn't a very good defender either after a myriad of injuries, so I don't see why they'd try to stick him on a really quick guy. Were you upset when Gordon was covering Chauncy Billups and they were "hiding" Rose on Dahntay Jones a few games back?

First, I don't see Gordon getting beaten some tremendous amount, but second, yeah, the best perimeter guys routinely do get beaten. It's not like every good scorer in the NBA routinely guys 10-30 against the Spurs or Celtics. And when teams get shut down, it's largely because of team defense.

Which, strangely enough, can be great even if your individual defenders are only ok and some of them are bad. So why would you compromise your offense, which is much more dependent on individual talent, to try and accomplish a goal that 1) won't be accomplished any way and 2) can be accomplished without that compromise.

I don't think you increase Thabo's output by putting him in the starting lineup. I'm not saying dump him... I'd be pretty happy if he were playing Hughes' minutes and Hughes were playing for the Clippers.

Just going to squarely disagree there. It starts inside. There's not a team in the league where good perimeter defense covers up bad interior defense (bad in the absolute sense... bad interior defense tends to dominate even good perimeter defense). On the other hand, if you look at pretty much every good defensive team ever (with the possible exception of the second Bulls threepeat), it starts with a bunch of really bad-ass interior defenders who cover their position and cover the perimeter players (because they routinely get beat).

Except he is. The stats you cited are all kind of crazy. A/TO for guys with usage rates that high? That's sort of a tortured stat, don't you think? Where does one look that up (I tried on 82games and couldn't find it)?

What I did see is that his usage rate for this season hasn't put him amongst the league leaders. This season or any going back to 2004-2005. His rookie year when he was doing what you seem to want him to do, which is nothing but come off the bench and shoot. Usage rate, in general, seems to be a pretty misunderstood stat to me, by the way. It's pretty highly correlated to the teammates you have and what they're doing. High usage != inefficient!

If Ben were as likely to shoot 5-15 as he is 10-17, then his total field goal percentage would be 47%. Is that really something to complain about? Most teams would be pretty happy to have a shooting guard shoot 47%

The only thing I see completely consistent with Gordon is he's 4th amongst active players in 3 point shooting percentage. This year he's getting to the line, he's getting assists, he's not a foul machine or turnover machine. In short, by pretty much every statistical measure I've seen, he's been very good. In my ratings, he's the 7th best SG this season. factor in age and salary and he's still in the top 10 as far as guys I'd want going forward (Carter and Allen rate ahead of him, but I'd take Gordon going forward since they're much older and more expensive. He rates ahead of Manu, but I'd still take Manu just on subjective valuing. He rates ahead of OJ Mayo, Rodney Stuckey and Kevin Martin, but I think I'd trade Ben for any of those guys based on their youth and upside). But at the end of the day, that still puts Gordon in the top 1/3 of SGs.

They year they went to the conference finals with Johnson he got hurt and didn't play in the conference finals. He'd posted an 18.7 PER in the playoffs up to that point. That year they were 17th in defensive rating according to Basketball-reference. They swept the Grizz in the first round and beat the Mavs 4-1 in the second round with Johnson playing.

The next year, with Bell, they were 16th in defensive rating through the season. Bell posted a 12.1 PER in the playoffs. To get to the conference finals where they lost to the Mavs in 6, they beat the Lakers and Clippers in 7 games each.

All in all, it does seem to me that they had a tougher time getting to the conference finals with Bell than they did with Johnson. They really could have used another offensive threat, and had they had him the first year, they might have gotten further.

Because I don't see how any of this stuff follows. I think we Bulls fans typically often look at our overall weakness and blaming it on our positions of relative strength. Our backcourt is our strength. We're weak because
1) Tyrus and Noah haven't met expectations (which might have been too high to begin with... I've been saying for two seasons now we needed a better interior defender in addition to those guys).
2) Deng has played significantly below his capabilities.
3) We lost Hinrich, who if he were playing at his traditional levels, would be better than Hughes and Thabo.

If we solved those three problems, we'd be well above .500. And they've got very little to do with Gordon.

Really. These things are all pretty glaring issues. Now I agree that Gordon's not going to make the all-Defense team, but the hyper focus on him, to the extreme that he's the only reason we win or the primary cause of our losing, is pretty far off the mark. He's playing well and being used correctly.

Solve the obvious problems, and if we're still .500, then I'll start buying it.

 

Have you watched any Thunder? We'd be about as bad as that.

 

I disagree, nobody is debating these guys because there is a consensus, they aren't getting it done.

 

That's kind of the exception that proves the rule, isn't it? I see your points and they are all valid, but I feel like they are a glass is half full argument for BG. I'm not trying to argue that BG is a bad player or the sole cause of the bulls problems, just that he isn't special and that he is a partly responsible and his offense is a crutch for a developing bulls team.

Tonight is a perfect example. BG played 20 minutes in the first half, 3-8 for 7 points and 5 TO's to 1 ast and didn't get to the line. Vinnie left him in the whole first half waiting for the BG run. There's no consistency and he struggles against good teams. He didn't even get his patented BG run in this one with the bulls down double digits. But he tears it up against Memphis, Washington, and Charlotte, three teams that might not win 60 games between them. BG is a mirage in a historically weak nba, which is fine for a team looking to make the 8th seed and sell tickets. But it isn't the way to build a champion.

 

Dude The Bulls were in the game throughout when he was in there. They got destroyed from the moment (almost literally) he left the game. And, ya know, the Celtics are 25-2 for a reason. Anyway, the assertion that he only does well against bad teams doesn't seem accurate to me. I went through and compiled his stats vs good and bad teams (winning records vs losing) and we get:

Code:

FGA	FG%	3p%	PTS	RB	AST	TO	MP
 15.9 	48%	42%	 21.71 	 3.14 	 3.71 	 2.64 	 35.4 
 15.6 	42%	39%	 19.42 	 3.33 	 3.92 	 2.17 	 37.3

Those two lines are virtually indistinguishable to me, but to save everyone the suspense, Ben seems to shoot 6% better against winning teams. He turns it over slightly more, but it doesn't seem to be a big difference. He doesn't seem to shoot much differently on the whole. 15-16 shots to get 20-21 points is a fairly efficient rate.

Even if it weren't so, I'm not pining for MJ back. I mean, I'd love to have a young MJ, but the idea that we have to have a SG that singlehandedly dominates everyone... or else he must suck... seems to the opposite of where this team needs to go to succeed.

 

Sorry, but last night is a perfect example of what I am talking about. Take a look at the game flow.
No, the bulls were not in it throughout. BG did absolutely nothing in the first quarter and the bulls fell behind by double digits. He stayed on the floor when the second team came in and made their run. So either BG is impotent against first teamers and competent against second teamers (which is what I've been saying for a while) offensively, or just not a factor. And then look at what Ray Allen did, who BG was guarding. It's not pretty. The same thing happened in the third quarter as the first and Vinny threw in the towel. In his three stints BG was -17 against the starters and +9 against the bench. His specific matchup, Ray Allen dominated him. And throw in a 5:1 TO/Ast ratio and hopefully you can get an idea of what I am talking about. BG is a talented offensive guy, but he isn't the answer.

 

Let's see.

In Gordon's first stint, he (and the rest of the Bulls starters) was -11. Rose, Gray and Gordon checked out, replaced with Noc, Noah and Hughes. The Celtics starters stayed in, and the Bulls (with Gordon) held even against them.

Eventually Tony Allen and Glen Davis replaced Pierce and KG. No change. Not sure where you're counting this since the Celtics still had their starting backcourt in.

Gordon was sitting to start the second quarter. When he came in, he did run off 5 points and the Bulls went on a positive run before the Celtics starters came back in. From that point forward, vs. the Celtics starters, the Bulls with Gordon were +1 (The Bulls were down 39-40 when the Celtics starters came in, they tied 51-51 when Gordon left).

In the 3rd quarter he was -7 with the other starters as the Celts came out and demolished them.

So you've got two stints with Ben on the Bulls where the Bulls starters vs. the Celtics starters was a mismatch for the Celtics.
And you've got two stints with Ben and Bulls backups vs. Celtics starters where the Bulls held even.

So... it's the other Bulls starters that ought to be benched, right?

 

Or Ben says screw it and just does it on his own instead of trying to run plays like when the first team is in.

 

What is the problem with Ben Gordon playing great basketball again?