I haven't watched any Bulls games this year, but I was watching some HL's from last nights Nets-Bulls games and it show Taj Gibson doing some positive things. I liked him coming out of USC to be a solid contributor and looking at his stats thus far this year, he's exactly that. So Bulls fans, is he going to be that #1 big man off the bench for this team in the future? It seems like he plays within himself and doesn't try and be something he's not. How's his D? To me he's looking like a good pick up at #26 overall, just wanted feedback from the guys who have seen him all year.
Coming into the season, the team was hyping James Johnson, and "oh yeah, this guy Gibson might contribute." According to basketball-reference, he's got a 13.9 PER.
According to YaoPau, who has the time on his hands to calculate such things, they've picked up their play over the second half of the year. That seems about right to me. Our young guys have increasingly picked it up as the season has gone on. Which is great, given how terrible our older guys have been.
If we land a quality big man in the off season, he will be a valuable back up in the seasons to come.
yeah but PER rewards stats guys and guys who play a lot of minutes and are volume scorers. Not valuable glue guys who come off the bench and play smart basketball with their less than all-star/starter level talents. I mean Shane Battier's PER is 11.2, but you wouldn't find a single GM who wouldn't love to add him to their roster. I don't foresee Taj having a killer PER or even huge numbers, but I expect he'll take good shots, work the boards and hopefully play pesky D that makes opposing bigman work for their points. And most importantly play smart basketball. Does he do that? I'll have to catch a few Bulls games to see I guess.
He averages near a double double. You'd think his PER would be better than 13.9. I don't think Battier is the defender he was 2-3 seasons ago. His defensive win shares have declined from ~4.5 to ~2.0. His PER the past two seasons are the worst two of his career. Indicative of a decline, it looks to me. FWIW
His PER is where it is including all the double-doubles. I'm sure Kobe had a remarkable PER for the period he had all those 40 point games bunched together, too.
Gibson's played way above expectations. And it brings up an interesting question of where do the bulls look to improve the most next year. The have two holes, PF and SG. I'd say SG is the bigger hole, but I think the bulls would be better served to get an upgrade at PF in terms of balancing the team to play off of Rose. At SG they need a better shooter than Hinrich who can still play good defense. Hinrich can go back to being the backup at both positions. Taj sounds like he'd be able to handle being the first big off of the bench. All of a sudden that's a pretty deep starting 7. They still need some athleticism at the 2/3.
