Terrible handling by (I believe, sorry can't remember well) Salmons at the end. That was pathetic. Although in fairness to the Bulls, they got a bit unfortunate with two huge buzzer-beating Wade triples. That's not really his game and you guys were short handed. You gave an amazing effort, and the Heat aren't going anywhere either anytime soon. You can take solice in that.
Wow. Hard to fault the Bulls on this one. I didn't think coming in the Bulls had much of a chance, they played hard, but in the end came up short. Wade gets my MVP vote. On to the Bullies... Gordon was automatic from downtown. 8/11 from deep and 14/23 fgs overall for 42 points. Had some to's, but he was the main reason they were in this one. Rose played solid. 23 points with 9 rebounds. Took a lot of shots tho, and didn't shoot a great percentage at only 9/25. Made good decisions offensively (how the stats show him only having 3 assists has to be incorrect), defensively tried to guard the un-gaurdable, but I don't even think Iowan-Wade stopper himself could slow down #3 tonight. Noah with a very solid 10 and 15. Still drives me crazy that shoots his free throws with a sideways rotation! Salmons should have expected that Wade would be streaking in. He did that same thing to him earlier. Overall, i liked his effort tho. I also liked the end game matchup for Salmons, just didn't work out. I thought Tyrus was taken out of the game(especially mentally) early. Lost his cool as he tossed his mouthpiece at the ref resulting in a tech. Still needs some major work on some sort of post up game. If Gooden can make a career out of having a simple fade away jumper, why can't Tyrus? I blame Thorpe for not teaching him this at IMG. Hopefully the Bulls realize this wasn't as terrible a loss as it could have been. The Charlotte loss, for example, was ten times worse. Miller did what he could, grabbed 10 boards, but I wished he could have contributed more offensively. Jermaine O'Neal is a shell of what he was. I think the Bulls could have used Tim Thomas tonight (but for whatever reason, I don't think Deng would have helped, maybe I've lost all faith in Luol) I'll even give Vinny a tiny bit of credit as he called a great late game play that freed up Salmons for an "and one" and he tried throwing some different defenses at Wade (try is the key word here) Hopefully the Bulls can bounce back.
I love it, after scoring all those points Gordon was still just a +1 for the night. That pretty much sums him up.
No it doesn't. All it shows is that he played big minutes in a close game. If Vinny would have put the ball in Ben's hands for the last play, we might be talking about a 129-127 Bulls victory, in which Gordon outscored Wade 45 to 44.
More likely, we'd be talking about the third OT after a bad fade away force from BG and why didn't VDN put the ball in Rose's hands, or in Salmons hands. ...
BS. +1 is +1 no matter how hard you rationalize it. Wade was +20 and the exact same amount of time as Gordon, Moon was +13 and played 40min, Haslem was +12 at 40min, Beasely was +12, etc. You can play big minutes and be productive. Gordon, Rose, Salmons were not. Which is why today no one is giving them more then a mention while talking about D-Wade being MVP.
Gordon busted his ass, you don't have to skewer him. It isn't like the Heat were shutting down the Bulls.
Usually the guys on the winning team have the better +/- stats. But even just looking at that +1, the thing is, if the NBA for whatever reason, decided to only count minutes that Gordon was in the game as being official....Bulls win the game.
That's nice. If we give Kirk the bulk of Gordon's minutes, we lose by a significant margin in regulation last night.
Awesome you can predict the outcome of things that never have happened! Again, BS. Kirk was +13 and was clearly on the losing team. I never said Kirk should get more minutes. Though if he did the it would of helped more then it hurt considering he was +13 for the time he did have. Ben Gordon scored 40 plus points in a basketball game and is so terrible in other aspects of the game he can only manage a +1 for the night. Like I said before, that sums him up perfectly: A one sided player who should never play more then 25 minutes a night and most certainly come off the bench.
I don't think you really understand +/-. You can be the greatest basketball player in the world, have a fantastic game in which you play every minute of a game and lose it, and you get a negative +/-. +/- has WAAAAAAAYYYYYY too much noise to it to point to one game and make conclusions like you are drawing.
It doesn't take a +/- system to tell me that he is a one sided payer that should never log a lot of minutes unless you're willing to pay the consequences...I have eyes and that's all I need. And also, in this particular game the guy he was supposed to be guarding for more then half the game scored 48. No +/- needed to know that ain't good.
+/- is useful within the one game to see certain things. Kirk's +13 is because he and the 2nd unit drubbed their 2nd unit. Miami's bench players were -11, -7, -12, and -10. On the other hand, our starters got drubbed. Rose -12, Noah -12, Salmons -6. Gordon's +1 would indicate he played with the 2nd unit and the 1st unit, which he obviously did due to all the minutes he played (as you pointed out). It's pretty obvious that a guy like Wade can go off on anyone for 40+ - the guy is an MVP candidate and one of the league's very best. It's also obvious that without Gordon's 43 points, this game wouldn't have been close.
Actually the game was close throughout and would have been at the end if somebody could have played any effective defense on Wade. Wade wasn't hitting tough shots. The difference to me is that Wade makes the players around him better directly every night. BG only makes the players around him better indirectly when he is hot. Wade had 4x the number of assists BG had, and I'd say Wade has the weaker supporting cast. And as far as the +/- goes there is a pretty strong correllation between guys who play 90% of the minutes and what the +/- would indicate about their play. BG's Adjusted +/- isn't good either.
So I guess my point is, take out BG and all his scoring, and replace him with an OK offensive player who can play D on Wade and they would have lost a close game... kind of like how they lost a close game. BG just makes it more entertaining, by hitting threes and letting everybody blow by him for dunks.
I don't think it would have been a close game. Wade blows by everyone for dunks. Perhaps there are one or two guys in the league who could have clamped down on him and turned it into a close game... which makes them quite a rarity.
Gordon is #2 on the team in net production, behind only Brad Miller, who has a very small sample size. http://www.82games.com/0809/0809CHI.HTM We should live with the consequences.
How many of you guys were big fans of MJ and watched the Bulls play a lot during those years? Or who watch a lot of non-Bulls games?
