Nate made $1.146mil last season. He'll make $2.016mil this season. The Bulls could have re-signed either Robinson or Belinelli with their taxpayer's mid-level exception, but chose Dunleavy instead. All 3 are known primarily as offensive players and can play 2 positions. With Rose's return, the Bulls are already 3 deep at PG (4 deep if they sign Goudelock). Dunleavy makes them 4 deep at SG (Butler, Dunleavy, Hinrich and Snell) and 3 deep at SF (Deng, Butler and Dunleavy). For me, Dunleavy's the right choice for a Rose-led team.
That's one way to look at it. Another is we're 1 deep with guys who can create their own shot and score. We could have been 2 deep. And we likely need to be more than 2 deep, ultimately.
Hehe, we've been doing this "why it might be good/why it might be bad" thing for a while now. One thing that does concern me is, when Rose is on the bench, who is the "go-to guy"...who do you go to when the offensive play has broken down and the shot clock is running out, that is, who's going to save a dying possession by getting up a reasonable shot attempt? Maybe this is the same as your "creator," though when I think of "creator" I think of a player who can beat a defender off the dribble, and some great go-to guys haven't been off-the-dribble geniuses (Bird and R. Allen come to mind). Just for grins, I looked at 82.games to see who took a lot of shots when the clock was running out (21+ seconds) and how they did (82games.com uses eFG%). Not surprisingly, most players suck when they have to take these often forced shots. Even Robinson was bad...20% of his shots were with the shot clock running out and he posted a 18.2% eFG in these situations. Rose in his MVP season had a 38.9% eFG with 21+ seconds on the shot clock, which is very good. Butler was interesting last season in these situations. 18% of his shots were taken with the shot clock running out, and he had a remarkable 50% success rate. This checks with my recollection of Butler making a lot of late-clock baskets. Maybe he'll be that go-to guy. I don't know. At least based on 2012-13, your boy Hinrich's a decidedly bad candidate for go-to guy...14% of his shot attempts were with the shot clock running out and he didn't make any of them.
I'm sure I sound like a broken record: it's Teague. I'm not saying that I necessarily think Teague will be a go-to guy as much as it appears that Gar thinks he's going to be that guy. The Bulls had the opportunity to sign Nate and instead decided to allocate that money on Dunleavy. The Bulls had the opportunity to sign JLIII, a poor man's Nate in many ways, and he went for the vet min to Utah. The Bulls don't seem to be in any rush to sign Goudelock. Those are three guys who can create their own shot and score with some (at least limited) success when nonthing else is available. At this point, we have to assume that Gar is okay with Teague playing a substantially larger role this upcoming seaosn, right? Gar had a ton of opportunities to bring in more depth for the role/position.
The pattern of play I saw in games with Rose healthy is he either took over games and the scoring load, or tried to get the rest of the team involved with a lot less success. It's too much to ask of him to take over all the games all the time. You need someone to make the rest of the team look good when he's taking his two defenders way out of the play. The playoff pattern of play I saw with Rose was they double and triple teamed him with great effect. Sure, he could pass the ball to Noah, but Noah received the ball out past the top of the key, and that's not a good place to start your offense. So if they want to take the ball out of Rose's hands, a guy like Nate would be a great asset. Get him the ball and let him work on the guys not guarding Rose. A lot easier than this year with LeBron guarding him.
