Luol Deng: Top 5 Player in the League?

"I'll be shooting threes next year,'' he says. "I didn't shoot so many because I was trying to get the strength back in my wrist because I had the surgery on it the summer before. And I felt we had so many guys on the team last year who could do that and I never felt I needed to.''</p>

"For GB this summer I'm playing the 1, 2 and 3, so I'm really loving the fact that I'm handling the ball so much,'' he says. "Drawing fouls is going to be a big factor, and so is improving my three-point range and playing in the post. I'm great at moving without the ball, but I'm talking about the last five seconds when you get the ball in your hands or you get the ball in an iso -- those kinds of things I have to improve on, because that's what great players do.''</p>

Don't confuse his humility with an absence of confidence or ambition. Deng maintains he can become a top-five player, the type who leads his team to the championship.</p>

"Some people, they don't believe so, but for me I have to believe that,'' he says. "I work hard to try to be the best. I'm not afraid to say it because that's what I play basketball for. To be that player is something that I want to be.</p>

</p><hr width="100%" size="2" />Link

</p>

</p><hr width="100%" size="2" />I never really thought about Luol Deng being a top 5 player. Never thought that was what his drive was to be, to be the best player in the league, and a legend. It always seemed like he was perfectly content being a good, but not great player. But he seems to be getting more intense and intense...maybe its because he can feel a championship is close by.

This is going to be huge for the Bulls. They have two players absolutely posessed by the game. We already knew that Ben was devoured by the beast a long time ago, with his progress spreadsheets...and marked improvements in reasonable time and all. Ben wants to be the best player in the game as well.</p>

The great thing is that both guys LOVE playing with each other, and have shown that they are willing to defer to each other so a chemistry clash should never come up. As long as both keep working hard, and pan out into top 10 players ,its hard to not see the Bulls win at least one championship with this group, if not more. HOpefully this puts to rest the myth that you need a low post big to win championships. </p>

</p>

</p>

</p>

 

Top 5 player? LOL, NO!

 

Dont see Loul ever becomming a top 20 player let alone top 5.

 

He's one of the top three players on the Bulls.

 

It's refreshing to see that attitude from a player. Big Luol Deng fan.</p>

 

What did Piatkowski say after they bumped heads? DENG! - Mark Jackson

 

i'm pullin for him. personally, i think he could be a top 20. top 5 is a reach, tho.</p>

he's got a good mindset, tho. </p>

 

#5? No...I can't see that one happening.

 

Everyone seems to be sleeping majorly on Ben Gordon. I think he will breakout much larger than Deng this coming year. The guy has been at the Berto center since about 2 weeks after we got eliminated from the playoffs. He isn't being distracted with Team USA or Team Britain training camps. He is just working hard everyday. The guy keeps spreadsheets to keep track of his progress for goodness sake.</p>

All the focus seems to be on Tyrus and Luol. If other teams just come out focusing on Luol/Tyrus right away next year, and leave single coverage on Ben, he is going to burn them big time, and be player of the month for November, probably dropping 50 on the Bucks in the third game of the season. </p>

 

Deng could become #1 on the Bulls, but I can't see him becoming top 5 in the league, he would have to improve soooo much, it not very likely that this will happen. But it's good to see he is comited and wants to be one of the best, that's the best type of player...

 

Here's Deng's list of things that need to be improved:</p>

1. Add a 3 point shot. Seems to be in progress</p>

2. Better man-to-man defense. It's not awful or anything, but he's not a stopper most of the time.</p>

3. To really be a top 5 player as a 3, I think he's got to be the sort of guy who can sometimes bring the ball up court and maybe dish 4+ assists per game. </p>

 

How many NBA players THINK they are top 5 players?

 

The thing about Luol is that he's a hard worker. So you have to imagine that he's going to be working hard on it. I'm not completely sold on Luol as a top 5 player in the league. He seems like a second fiddle to me, and hopefully him trying to be the first option doesn't hurt the Bulls.</p>

The only guy I can see being a top 5 player on the Bulls is Ben Gordon. He is just one of the best scorers in the league, and one of the hardest workers (harder worker than Deng). Everyone is sleeping on him. He's not off fiddling around in Britain like Deng, no Gordon has been out at the Berto working on his game nonstop, with coaches' care since the beginning of June. He is going to come out hot. </p>

I think part of Ben becoming a top 5 player is for him to be the point guard. He has that creative ability that Kirk and Duhon do not. His decision making isn't always the best, but just being in the role of chief ball handler should help improved. I'd feel a lot better with the ball in Gordon's hands than in Deng's hands, thats for sure. Deng is the guy who dropped his TS% by 2 in the Pistons series when Gordon was doubled, and Deng was called upon to create for himself against single coverage (Gordon's TS% only dropped .1 fwiw). </p>

I would say Ben gets 25 PPG 5 APG 4 RPG and Deng gets 20 PPG 8 rebounds 3 assists next year.</p>

</p>

 

Ben Gordon will never be a top 5 player in the league, either.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Chicago Tribune)</div><div class='quotemain'><span class="main"><span class="spacing"><span class="highlight">Gordon</span> was a little boy digging up worms from his mother's garden and dissecting them, she figured he one day would become a surgeon. Actually, <span class="highlight">Gordon</span> says now, he was examining the dirt and rocks. "I wanted to study the earth," he says with a laugh. "I wanted to become an ecologist." Didn't matter. "Just have a plan, Ben," his mother would say. "Just have a plan." When he was in high school and the letters started pouring in like crazy, colleges begging him to come play basketball, <span class="highlight">Gordon</span> sat his mother down. "Mom, if I were to go pro someday, I could make a lot of money,' " he told her. "What do you think about that?" Ingrid, his older sister by seven years, overheard the conversation and jumped in. "Always have a Plan B, Ben," she suggested. Not long after <span class="highlight">Gordon</span> arrived at the University of Connecticut and became a star, it was clear that he could indeed earn a lot of money as a high pick in the NBA draft. So he told his mother, "When I make it, Mom, I'm going to spoil you." And just as sure as her son's jump shot, Yvonne <span class="highlight">Gordon</span> replied, "Just have a Plan B, Ben." Finally, the moment was at hand. The family was sitting at a table in the Theater at Madison Square Garden on the day of the 2004 NBA draft, in which the Bulls would select <span class="highlight">Gordon</span> with the third overall pick. "The anticipation was just so crazy," Ingrid recalled. So as they waited for his name to be called, she did what came naturally. She leaned over to her little brother and whispered in his ear. "Just have a Plan B, Ben," she said. "You never know." Man of the house Ben <span class="highlight">Gordon</span> is never without a plan. At home in Northbrook, where he lives with childhood friends Imran John and Calvin <span class="highlight">Roach</span>, he keeps track of his goals on a detailed spreadsheet. It isn't enough to want to become an NBA All-Star&mdash;that's too vague. It's a science, really, one <span class="highlight">Gordon</span> refers to as "measurable progress in reasonable time." There is a specific list of what he must accomplish each day as a way of measuring himself against those goals, and every week he asks himself, "Where did I fall short?" To that end, he hits the gym. And not just for practice and shootarounds, or even a regular off-season regimen, but every single day, sometimes twice a day, sometimes the night of a game in which he scored 20 points but his shot wasn't quite right. "He won't even go on vacation because he just feels weird not working on his game," <span class="highlight">Roach</span> says. "Like everyone else will pass him by if he's not doing what he should be doing. He just feels unbelievably careless if he doesn't take advantage of it." Nobody seems to know exactly when or how this attitude was created. "We always say Ben was born an old man," Yvonne <span class="highlight">Gordon</span> says. "When he was little, he'd see teenagers smoking and he'd say, 'Don't they know that's bad for their health?' Just like a grown person." As a boy growing up in Mt. Vernon, N.Y., about a 25-minute train ride from Manhattan, Ben would wear suits to church each Sunday. And unlike most little boys, he didn't mind dressing up. "I'd get the suits from J.C. Penney," Yvonne recalls, "but they had to be well-cut and fit him nice. He always had to look good." <span class="highlight">Gordon</span> says that "maturity and respectability," as well as an appreciation for good grooming and the finer things, comes in large part from being the only male in a house with four women&mdash;his mother, sister, grandmother Avis <span class="highlight">Gordon</span> and maternal aunt Judith Joseph, as well as a female cousin. And though he attributes any number of positive traits to their influence, it clearly gnawed at him. "I didn't have a male figure to show me the ropes, to show me how to be a man," <span class="highlight">Gordon</span> says now. "I had a lot of love, and they instilled a lot of good values in me. But I had to learn how to be a man myself." Athletic gifts sprout Gordon's parents were born in Jamaica and were living in London with other family members when their relationship dissolved. "I was pregnant with Ben and was scared at first to go to a new country," Yvonne recalls. "But I had two sisters who decided to go, and I wanted to start a new life. I wanted to go to America where the grass was greener. I remember I said, 'Process the papers.' " When Ben was 10 months old the family settled in with Yvonne's mother, who bought a home in Mt. Vernon. Though Ben would occasionally speak to his father by telephone in London and still does, they had little contact. "The last time I saw him, I was going into my senior year in high school," he says. "He's never seen me play in person. We talked about it last summer, but he always has scheduling problems. Maybe someday he'll come see me." In Mt. Vernon, Ben's athletic gifts sprouted as dramatically as the flowers in Yvonne's garden, but with no evidence of their roots. Not even Ben is sure how and why he fell in love with basketball. "Nobody in my family played any sports at all," he says. "It was almost like the game chose me." Yvonne doesn't recall when Ben began playing the game, but she does remember "he started bouncing this ball" when he was about 8 years old. By the time he was 10, she knew it went with a hoop to throw it through, so Ben got one of those for the garage. When he wasn't shooting on his own, he would cross 8th Avenue and look for a game. "I'd look over there and there's little Ben playing with these grown men," Ingrid says. "We weren't sports fanatics. It went over our heads what he was doing. We thought, 'Good, he's interested in a hobby. He won't get into trouble.' That's all we cared about." Trouble, though, was unlikely for one of Yvonne Gordon's children. If Ingrid or Ben stepped out of line at all, "then my sister, my mother, everyone intervened," Yvonne says. "There were rules and regulations. They had to be supervised. If I couldn't take them to the park, then they didn't go out." But Yvonne still worried until a remark Ben made when he was 16 eased her mind. "One day my sister and I were talking about being in a single-parent house," she says. "Ben heard us and he said, 'Mom, I didn't know we were living in a single-parent house.' He thought we were living a normal life, and it meant so much for me to hear him say that. "It was not a plan of mine to end up on my own. My parents were married for 35 years. I never wanted my kids to feel rejected. That was a great concern of mine." 'A blessing in disguise' <span class="highlight">Gordon</span> says doing well in school and behaving properly was "instilled in me from birth" and there was simply no question about him getting mixed up with the bad kids on the block. The only blemish of any kind on his record was a regrettable incident that occurred when he was in college. A female student slapped him in the face, he slapped her back and both ended up being charged, <span class="highlight">Gordon</span> with third-degree assault and disorderly conduct and the woman with disorderly conduct. <span class="highlight">Gordon</span> performed 30 hours of community service, and after he was drafted by the Bulls he told the Tribune: "It's something that I learned from. I'm not embarrassed that it happened. It was kind of a blessing in disguise because it was serious. But I learned from it and moved on." <span class="highlight">Roach</span> echoed those thoughts. "That definitely bothered him," he says. "It was a bad situation, but he learned a lot from it. It opened his mind up that he needed to be more selective with people he surrounded himself with and the situations he's in." <span class="highlight">Roach</span> and Imran John were next-door neighbors who lived three blocks away from <span class="highlight">Gordon</span> in Mt. Vernon. "We grew up in a neighborhood where, if you wanted to get into trouble, trouble was definitely there to be found," <span class="highlight">Roach</span> says. "But you made a choice and lived the life you wanted to live, and with Ben there was no doubt. Everyone knew how focused he was, the goals he set out to accomplish and people just kind of left him alone. It was like 'Why even bother?' Everyone wanted to see him do well." The obsessive streak began almost immediately in terms of basketball. "Ben would never participate in any other extracurricular activity, even tag," <span class="highlight">Roach</span> says. "We'd say, 'We're tired of basketball, let's play something else,' and Ben would go, 'OK, I'm going home now,' and go shoot on his own." And shoot he would, at all hours. "It would be 1 at night," his grandmother recalls, "and I'd say, 'Ben, you're waking up the neighbors. Stop bouncing that ball.' " In high school he would wake up at 5 a.m. to work out on his own before class. "You'd be hard-pressed to find a kid any age as disciplined as Ben growing up," <span class="highlight">Roach</span> says. "Everything he did, he was goal-oriented. He just wanted it that bad, and it wasn't about being rich or famous. If that's all that drives you, you're not going to get too far." The red Hummer For <span class="highlight">Gordon</span>, it was and still is clear what he had in mind. "I just want to make my mom and grandma happy," he says. When the Bulls drafted him, the first thing he did was tell his mother she could quit her job with IBM, for whom she worked as a secretary for 15 years. He told her to look for a new house, then he surprised her with a new car. "I'd always ask her what kind of car she wanted, and she said a red Hummer," <span class="highlight">Gordon</span> says. "I was like, 'Where did you get that from?' but it was the first car I bought." He gave Ingrid explicit instructions. She was to pick up Yvonne at the airport, where she was returning from a trip to Jamaica, and give her the keys to the new car in the driveway. But first she was to dial his number and hand their mother the phone so he could hear her reaction. A friend videotaped it just to make sure. "She never took her seat belt off," Ingrid recalls. "She was dumbfounded, speechless." Since then, <span class="highlight">Gordon</span> has showered the women in his life with gifts&mdash;an '07 Cadillac and college tuition for Ingrid, jewelry for Mom, a house for one aunt and cars for others, shopping sprees for everyone. He is also paying to gut their old house and have it refurbished as a day-care center Ingrid will run. "They deserve it," <span class="highlight">Gordon</span> says. "They've been there all the way for me." Taking care of them comes naturally. To this day, his mother says, when they are visiting and Ben comes home at night, "he has to check to make sure everyone is home safe and in their rooms." It's nothing new. He laughingly recalls how he once tried to chase away a prospective suitor of Ingrid's when he was 13. "This guy liked my sister and was always saying stuff to her," <span class="highlight">Gordon</span> says. "He wasn't doing anything wrong, he just got on my nerves. So one day I got a baseball bat to scare him off. I can't believe I did that." When the family is in town, Ingrid, her husband Aldean and their twin boys, Isaiah and Amir, 14 months, stay in a nearby hotel so everyone can sleep. But they all get together during the day for cooking, laughing and for Yvonne's making of Ben's traditional pregame peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. "They definitely taste better when she makes them," he says, smiling. "It's a great feeling when they come. I always have my best games when my family is in town, for some reason." No entourage for him For <span class="highlight">Roach</span> and John, Gordon's family is their family as well. "These are kids who grew up around the block," Yvonne says. "Having them here was the best choice Ben could have made. These guys are not going to become a distraction for him." Much to the contrary, when <span class="highlight">Gordon</span> asked <span class="highlight">Roach</span> to join him in Chicago, <span class="highlight">Roach</span> accepted only under the condition that he would finish college here, which he did, at DePaul last spring. He now works as an equities analyst for a Chicago company. John came to work as Gordon's personal assistant last summer to replace a college friend who left to work on his master's. "A lot of people see me and think I'm just hanging around, but Ben wouldn't have that," John says. "I work pretty much every day. And no question he's the boss." "They're definitely not an entourage," <span class="highlight">Gordon</span> says. "It wouldn't work if it was. I was never somebody who attracted people who liked to hang on. Even when I was growing up, I always had a tight-knit group of people who I trusted around me, people with similar traits." Just 24, <span class="highlight">Gordon</span> looks like a well-dressed young executive when he goes to each Bulls game. "I always looked at guys like Michael [Jordan] and Magic Johnson and how he handles himself off the court now, being a businessman," <span class="highlight">Gordon</span> says. "Image is important. You never know who's watching. &hellip; Also, my mom likes to see me dressed well. She always says there's a time and place for everything, so she appreciates how I handle myself." NBA riches or not, Yvonne <span class="highlight">Gordon</span> would also appreciate her son with a college degree, which <span class="highlight">Gordon</span> plans to earn. "I'm not sure if I want to finish my degree in economics or start something else, like business or marketing," he says. "I definitely want to own my own business. I've been trying to read a lot more about real estate. I want to have a suit line for athletes. "There's a lot more I want to do. I don't want to do something just to pass time, I want to find something I'm passionate about and try to work as hard at it as I do playing basketball." Just as long as you have a plan, Ben, the voices echo. As long as you have a plan.</div></span></span></p>

http://chicagosports.chicagotribune.com/sp...bulls-headlines</p>

As long as he doesn't lose his passion, I think he will be a top 5 player. </p>

 

Did you make this thread about Luol Deng just to talk about Ben Gordon being a top 5 player?

 

Luol Deng was #1 on SI's players ready to break out to stardom list.</p>

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'>Deng has improved steadily in each of his first three seasons. The lanky forward impressed in 2006-07 by ranking in the top 30 in scoring, rebounding and field goal percentage, and he burst onto the national scene with a huge performance in the Bulls' first-round series victory over the Heat.</div></p>

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/multimedi.../content.1.html</p>

</p>

Kind of brings out the ineptitude of SI.</p>

Ben Gordon definitely outplayed Deng in the Heat series.</p>

The list on a whole is pretty bad. They have the stat stuffing small forwards Josh Smith/Gerald Wallace on there. Al...Zach Randolph Part Deux...Jefferson. Tyson Chandler is on there. How many years has he been in the league so far? The sad part is the SI writer seems to think Chandler can develop an offensive game still. </p>

The real sad part is how they have Monta Ellis over Gordon on their list. </p>

Gordon should at the LOWEST be #3 on that list behind Deng/Deron. Not being on the list at all is a complete joke.</p>

He is way too slept on, and you can bet on it the idiot media will come out and act like they knwe Gordon was going to play tremendous once it happens this year, when EVERY SINGLE PERSON IN THE MEDIA has completely disregarded him. </p>

 

Why don't you just make a mancrush on Ben Gordon thread?

 

No, its just disgusting with the media's ineptitude.</p>

The Luol Deng hype is out of control. Every media outlet is feeding to it on and on. </p>

Ben Gordon has been the leader of the Bulls the last three years, and will most likely be for the 4th in a row. </p>

How are we supposed to depend on Luol Deng? The guy that can't hit a shot in the 4th quarter. The same guy who missed all his game winner attempts, causing us to lose games against teams like Memphis. Luol Deng is being made into this guy on the verge of being a superstar, when he's clearly not, and not even the best player on his own team. </p>