Thibs is towards the end of the list when it comes to things preventing the Bulls from winning a NBA Championship right now. He's one of the main assets IMO.
According to current Vegas futures odds, the Bulls are #3 favorites in the East and about #7th or #8th overall to win the NBA title. http://www.vegasinsider.com/nba/odds/futures/ http://www.betvega.com/odds-to-win-nba-championship/
@transplant & kukoc4ever, My point is not that Dunleavy is a bad player, only that Forman has put together a very good team on paper, 1-9 with his exception. You basically have five allstars (Noah, Gasol, Butler, Rose, Mirotic); two guys who are elite if flawed bench guys (Gibson, Brooks) and a young athletic two-way wing, in Snell. All of those archtypes seem to consistently come in handy during the playoffs. I'm not sure Dunleavy's abilities and skills fill the type of niche you point toward as leading to playoff success. I guess my broader point is that there's a ton of talent on the roster, 1-9. This doesn't mean everything. Injuries and team composition will probably dictate how far this roster can make it. But I do think it makes this season different than others of recent vintage.
We're about to find out, as it looks like we're going to have a fully healthy roster this postseason. At PF/C, he has a championship winning vet who was an All-Star, top-10 in the league in PER, top-5 in the league in rebounds and blocked shots, and leads the league in double-doubles. Plus the reigning Defensive Player of the Year, 1st-Team All-NBA Center. At SG, he has an All-Star who is an All-Defensive team level defender. At PG, he has a former MVP who, in his last game against CLE put up 30 points and 7 assists. At SF, he has " a solid, low-usage vet glue guy IMO. He's also our best three point shooter this season that takes significant attempts. He's 13th overall in the entire NBA. He's decent on the defensive glass. He's a long defender." On the bench, he has a PF who last year's runner up for 6th Man of the Year. He has a SF/PF who led the NBA in 4th quarter scoring in March, and has scored 23 or more in 8 of his last 15 games. 25 or more in 6 of his last 15. Who stepped up in the absence of Rose and Butler to lead the team in scoring in their 15 March games, putting up 20.8 pts and 7.6 rebounds plus 7.3 FTA/game on a .578 TS% in only 30.8 minutes per game. 24.3 pts and 8.9 reb per 36. His backup SG/SF who has put up better numbers than his starting SF since Feb 1, 11.0 points on 44.1% 3pt shooting (taking 4.6 a game) with a .608 TS% and .586 eFG%. And a backup PG who has the 2nd best Net Rating on the club (behind Niko), including a team 107.2 Off Rtg when he's on the floor (best on the team) for the season. A .539 TS% who shouldn't be needed for more than 10-15 minutes per game if Rose is healthy. With a roster like that, I'd expect an elite coach to produce elite results in the playoffs. I sure hope Thibs proves himself to be an elite playoff coach. I sure hope he can make the game-to-game adjustments that are crucial in winning a best-of-7 playoff series. I sure hope he gives the most minutes to the most effective players, whether or not they are the ones with the longest tenure in the league.
Hey bullshitville, Is Noah going to be 1st team all-nba and DPOY again? Someone is living in fantasy land and it's not me. And those smilies are laughing at you, not with you. Clown.
Excellent, outstanding post SST. I would just say that I don't have a problem with Dunleavy as your 9th man. By the time you get very far into the playoffs, you're basically running an 8-man rotation for the majority of your minutes, your 9th man might get 15-18 minutes at most. I don't have a problem with MDJ starting and getting Bogans minutes, playing the first 8 minutes of each half and nothing more. Not adjusting for exact team-by-team matchups, I'd go something like this: C - Noah 32, Gasol 16 PF - Gasol 16, Niko 20, Taj 12 SF - Duleavy 16, Snell 20, Niko 12 SG - Butler 38, Snell 10 PG - Rose 34, Brooks 14 If Snell struggles, I'd give Taj more minutes with Niko playing SF on offense and Taj guarding SF on defense. But Snell's play over the last two months reminds me so much of Butler's 2nd season - where he finally got minutes when Deng was hurt and he became a player during that year's playoffs - that I'm confident Snell will continue to earn his minutes. Jimmy's 2nd year numbers were almost identical to Snell's numbers this season. If Snell can give us the 11.8 pts/36 on 40.5% 3pt shooting that Jimmy gave us that postseason, I'd love to see him play 30 minutes.
I guess a person has no choice but to resort to name-calling when their only basketball point is "GarPax sucks!!!!"
Noah since February 1st: 30.5 minutes, 7.0 minutes, 10.3 rebounds, 6.1 assists He is certainly rounding back into All-NBA form as he gets healthy, I can't wait to see what he does in the playoffs. Noah per36 since February 1st: 8.3 points, 12.2 rebounds, 7.2 assists Noah per36 as 1st-Team All-NBA Center: 12.9 points, 11.5 rebounds, 5.5 assists Damn, that's pretty close. His scoring his down, of course I'm sure that has nothing to do with the fact that this season he is playing with a top-20 NBA scorer instead of the immortal Carlos Boozer.
According to current Vegas futures odds, the Bulls are #3 favorites in the East and about #7th or #8th overall to win the NBA title. http://www.vegasinsider.com/nba/odds/futures/ http://www.betvega.com/odds-to-win-nba-championship/ Assuming these are efficient markets, all relevant information is priced in.
There is (or was) a lot of talent but these Bulls seem snake bit. There is 1 MVP level player, but that was over 3 years ago. He isn't right now. There is a all-NBA 1st team level player, but that was last season. Not even an all-star this season and his knee and new role with Gasol and Rose on the team have robbed him of this level of production. We had a starter in the all-star game this season, which is remarkable, but he is 34 and IMO isn't at a state where he can carry a winning NBA team (look at when Rose/Butler/Taj were out). We have a guy that finished 2nd in 6MOY last season, but he won't this season. On the bright side, Jimmy Butler is an all-star level player and Niko has introduced a dynamic to the team that is promising / interesting. But, Lebron and his superteam lurks on the horizon. They are the odds-on to win the east and the title. The Hawks are rated ahead of the Bulls odds-wise as well. The Bulls are the #3 favorites to come out of the east and the #7-#8 favorites to win the title. That seems about right based on what I've seen this year. If we could have Rose from 4 years ago and Noah from last year, well, that would be a beautiful thing. But that's not what we have.
1 - Again, last time a healthy Rose faced Cleveland, he put up 30/7. If he's healthy in the playoffs, why can't he play at that level? 2 - Again, over the last two months, Noah is back producing at his 1st-Team All-NBA level. If he's healthy, why can't he play at that level? 3 - Nobody is expecting Pau to carry this team. In the 3 games since Jimmy came back, the Bulls have had 2 players besides Pau giving them 20+ points per game. 4 - Taj won't be 2nd in 6th Man of the Year voting, but if he's healthy, why can't he play at the same level he did last season? (This may turn out to be irrelevant, since coming back from injury he's getting less than 20 minutes/game, and that includes one game where Noah was out and Taj started and played 31:36, and the NYK game where Taj played the entire 4th quarters becuase the starters sat out all of garbage time. The three non-blowouts with Noah/Pau/Niko healthy, he's only played 14:23 per game). What happened in November, December and January means very, very little once the playoffs start. Jimmy and Pau being All-Stars this season wouldn't mean squat if their per36 numbers had taken a nosedive after the All-Star game. But thankfully, they've been quite consistent all year: Jimmy: Pre - 18.6 pts, 5.3 reb, 2.9 ast, .581 TS% Post - 19.5 pts, 6.4 reb, 3.2 ast, .595 TS% Pau: Pre - 18.9 pts, 12.4 reb, 3.1 ast, .551 TS% Post - 20.7 pts, 12.1 reb, 2.4 ast, .558 TS% And again, over the last two months Noah is back to his All-NBA level play of last season: Noah per36 since February 1st: 8.3 points, 12.2 rebounds, 7.2 assists Noah per36 as 1st-Team All-NBA Center: 12.9 points, 11.5 rebounds, 5.5 assists I do agree that if Rose isn't healthy, those Vegas odds sound about right as to where I would rank the teams. Vegas odds are nice to look at, but let's face it they are set to ensure that the house makes money. They can tell you what teams gamblers think will be the most successful, whatever that is worth. They are fairly accuarate at gauging where the betting public's money will go, but if they get it wrong... they just change the odds. You want to vastly improve the Bulls' Vegas odds of winning the championship? Go bet $50 million on them to win it all and watch how fast their odds drop.
Nah, calling a fool a fool is appropriate in your case. You're so schizoid. At the beginning of the season, you called Thibs one of the top few coaches in the league. Now you call him "thidiot" - which is resorting to name calling. Your posts are just full of "facts" that are trivial to refute, but it's boring to bother anymore. The only thing intelligent about your posts or you as a poster is how you insult other people and their intelligence. You saw a snippet of a quote from Thibs out of context in a game recap yesterday and ran with it. In context, it was something entirely different than you claimed. You put the nausea into ad nauseum in a lengthy post about your misinterpretation of it, and even wrote about it on your personal blog. A layperson like me took 3 minutes to google the full quote and found an article by a a writer who's a real pro and who was likely in the locker room and at the post game press conference when Thibs spoke about his rotation for the playoffs. K4E has taken your poor logic apart multiple times. He's a gentleman, I'm fine with speaking the truth.
That's why I wrote "assuming the market is efficient." If "smart money" thought that the odds were out of whack, that 50 million would have already been placed on the Bulls and the odds already updated. The Bulls are the #3 favorites to come out of the East. The Cavs and Hawks are considered more likely to win the East. Spin away, but spin won't change that.
I met this guy named Kenny White a dwq rimwa. He's an elite sabermatrician. He showed me some of the many notebooks he keeps on all sports. He has two claims to fame. First, he is THE guy who (does or did) sets the initial Vegas odds for all the casinos. Second, he is the guy that helped bust Tim Donaghy through his investigative work. The odds were initially set very accurately. I take a #3 favorite to come out of the east to be a pretty good indication of our chances. It is true that the betting public have moved the lines, but there's a lot to be said for the collective intelligence of the masses voting with their dollars like this. http://www.reviewjournal.com/sports/oddsmakers-new-line-helping-nba White is aiming to provide the NBA with accurate information on which games might have been compromised by Donaghy and how gamblers profited. "I'm going to report to the NBA first and give them a chance to go over the data," said White, who hopes soon to make his findings public. He said he has discovered a 20-2 trend in games officiated by Donaghy and that the point spread moved 1 1/2 points or more in 20 percent of Donaghy's games. But simply looking at the opening and closing line is not enough, because a game could open at 7, move to 8 1/2 and close at 7. "There are reports out there about games moving 1 1/2 points or more, and maybe they are moving, but they're not the most important games," White said. "It looks like (Donaghy) has been able to manipulate the point total and manipulate how many free throws were shot." Donaghy's games ranked fourth in the NBA in most total points (201.2 per game), and part of White's research includes comparing every official's tendencies. Depending on whose line is used, different trends can be found. The timing of certain wagers is also critical to White's analysis.
Interesting bits of information. ESPN ranks the front offices. Bulls #9. Big foam finger #9. http://espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/12541459/nba-front-office-rankings-2015 ESPN ranks the team presidents and GM. Bulls are #14. Big foam finger #14. That's GarPaxDorf for you. http://espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/12555148/2015-front-office-rankings-top-executives ESPN ranks the coaches. Thibs #5 behind Pops, Budenholzer, Kerr, and Carlisle. Fire Thidiot! http://espn.go.com/losangeles/nba/story/_/id/12561256/2015-front-office-rankings-top-coaches
At the start of the season he was defending DPOY, etc. You can't fault the coach for playing him over the untested rookie Mirotic. Is he going to be DPOY again? Is he going to make 1st team all-nba? You tell me. Peoples' expectations at the start and reality seem to be two very different things.
