1. Ben Gordon, attack the basket. He makes Jamal Crawford look like Bonzi Wells these days. 2. End the Deng as a post-up player experiment for the season. Make it a project in the off-season to get another 10 lbs of muscle on him so he doesn't get pushed around. Bring him out more on offense for more of the same kind of screens and curls he hit relentlessly last year and get Tyrus closer to the basket more where he can dunk it, get fouled, or get a lob. 3. More Duhon until Kirk snaps out of his funk, and more Kirk for Gordon unless he shows some balls driving to the basket. 4. More Smith at the 4 and Noc at the 3 if Deng's not playing well. 5. Consistent role and minutes for Noah as Wallace's backup. I don't care if Noah thinks he's a 4 or not; given the rest of our roster, this is where he needs to be.</p> 6. I thought about maybe swapping Deng and Thomas' defensive roles but thought better of it. Put Thomas on the more athletic guy and let Deng guard the slower guy. I don't know that this will work because, as noted, Deng's not that strong and might get pushed around too much, and Thomas has a tendency to not get back to his man when he leaves to double (as the Bulls defense frequently requires). This will be especially bad the more athletic and strong shooting an oppoent Thomas is supposed to be guarding. Defense largely hasn't been our problem so on second thought its probably best not to monkey around with this too much.</p>
How about people in Chicago stop overrating the Gordon/Hinrich/Deng combo, and trade 1 or 2 of them in a package to get a bigtime offensive player? If it were possible to get rid of Ben Wallace that would be a plus too. Hes been garbage this season and hes only going to get worse. He will never have an offensive game, and within the next couple years his defense will start declining more too. I say you guys need a MUCH more efficiant backcourt especially at PG. Hinrich is turning it over 3 times per game with only 5 assists? thats terrible for a starter. The only way this team gets better is if they package Deng and Hinrich for a superstar, or trade Gordon in a package to get someone. This team is inconsistant in every way possible, except that they almost always lose.</p>
The best way to improve Bulls is to send <u>Deng, Thomas and Noah</u> to the Nets for <u>Jefferson and Collins</u>. Of course we'd be very reluctant to ship Jefferson to conference opponent, but we'll deal with it somehow. Our loss is your gain, bulls. </p>
I was actually thinking of what could be done within the current roster. If we're going to talk about rebuilding, I actually think the Bulls could position themselves fairly well with a couple of moves.</p> Wallace must be traded for an expiring contract. If something else needs to be thrown in to get this done, then it needs to be. Ben Gordon must be traded for an expiring contract and draft pick(s). Otherwise his $12.2M cap hold will kill any FA options. If these 1 and 2 can be accomplished, it sets the stage for the Bulls to have something close to $14M in cap space if the cap goes up at the same rate it has been. And we'd have Hinrich, Deng, Nocioni, Noah, Thomas, Thabo, Smith, Griffin, Gray, Curry, and our 08 pick. Maybe a pick if we get something from trading Gordon that we don't have to give up to unload Wallace.</p> That's a workable set of guys and assets to rebuild with. I'd also be willing to move Thomas and Thabo because I simply don't think either one of them is going to pan out as a top flight player and I'd rather have a shot to do that.</p> </p>
Any major restructuring of the roster requires that Paxson be relieved of his job as he doesn't have the stones to do such a thing with his guys.</p>
<font size="1">The Bulls should trade Gordon/Joe Smith/Joakim Noah for Jermaine O'neal and filler</font></p> <font size="1">PG-Chris Duhon/Kirk Hinrich </font></p> <font size="1">SG-Kirk Hinrich/Thabo Sefolosha</font></p> <font size="1">SF-Luol Deng/Andres Nocioni/Adrian Griffin</font></p> <font size="1">PF-Jermaine O'neal/Tyrus Thomas</font></p> <font size="1">C-Ben Wallace/Jermaine O'neal</font></p>
I dunno about O'Neal. He's making about $7M more than Wallace will and would probably bust our (self-imposed) financial structure.</p>
Theres not a whole lot they can do now. They had the opportunity to get KG, JO, Gasol, Randolph, Ray Allen, Shard, J-Rich but Paxson didn't want to give up they players he drafted. I agree with Answer_AI, the Bulls have had some of the most overrated players in the league recently, none of whom will ever be legit stars, they could have gotten a superstar for them but they waited too long. Now the team is terrible, the players that were once of high value have shown that they're not worth jack, and no great stars are available.</p> Hope for Beasley, then agian Paxson will probably pass on him for the best defensive minded big man like he did Aldridge, Hawes, Al Jefferson, etc.</p>
