How do we like the last few games? I've noticed several of the same things BullsBlogger has: Of course, the coach looks better when the players play better, but we've talked a lot about Thibs' early growing pains/getting his feet wet/adjusting to head coaching approach. Tenatively, I see progress in the areas I wanted to see progress, and that's good, is it not?
So far, I don't have too many complaints about Thibs. My biggest concern is his longevity. He really seems like a super-intense ocd workaholic. This is a very informal observation, but coaches who jump up and down on the sidelines don't seem to have as much longevity as guys who just sit there and take in the game.
I'm not feeling any differently than I did about Thibodeau a week ago, or a couple of weeks before that for that matter. He's a rookie coach, and coaching like a rookie coach, which is fine. I'm still happy with where he's at. His substitutions are almost all responsive, meaning he doesn't seem to be proactively making moves on where his team is at, but instead is putting his starters in when the opposing team is playing its starters, etc. That will have to chance at some point, but you can tell he doesn't trust in his team yet, which would be expected. I like the offense and defense he's implemented, at least what we've seen of it. The bench is bad, but they've had even less time to gel than the starters. We really will not know where the Bulls are at until months after Boozer comes back. They're a work in progress and I'm not sure there's any way to expedite the process. Of more concern to me is that I worry that the team's roster still has fundamental flaws, similar but not as we've seen in previous seasons. Internal development and an emphasis from Thibodeau on working inside-out has solved our post problems, even without Boozer. But we don't have enough true guards. Bogans was a great acquisition and I wouldn't mind seeing him playing reserve point guard. CJ Watson has up till this point only been trouble, and Brewer just isn't a guard. I don't put the blame wholly on Paxson in this regard, he didn't really have many options this off season. A player like Chris Duhon, though, and all of his .5 pts and 3.5 a that he's contributed this season for the magic, would do a lot to solidify our bench.
I am actually a little more skeptical. They NY game was a non-issue, but he played Deng 38 of the first 40 minutes against the Warriors. Does anybody have any idea why? They were up by 20+ the entire game. The only thing I can think of is that Deng wasn't playing that hard, but why reward a guy for that with more minutes? Is JJ that bad all of a sudden? It was the same setup as last year when they blew that huge lead against Sacramento. If the NBA is a league of runs, why would you leave Deng and Rose to a lesser extent out there to rack up big minutes. The warriors eventually did go on a run, but the bulls were up by almost 40 when it started.
I was thinking the same thing. You know, you had two essentially rookie coaches battling it out. After the game Keith Smart said something along the lines of "I thought they didn't have enough energy to make a run, but wanted to leave them in their to see if I was wrong," (i.e., I fucked up.) And Thibodeau said "I probably should have taken my starters out but GS can be explosive," (i.e., I fucked up.) Thibodeau's comments bothered me, especially, because you've got to have more faith in your players and bench or you're never going to make it through a full NBA season. But whatever, that will come with time. This was shortly after the NY debacle and he was scared of making the same mistake twice.
I don't really see the beef with Thibs on these issues. The Warriors did go on a run that cut the lead from near 40 to near 20. Before that, I was scratching my head over why he had not just Deng but all the starters (or 4 of them) in the game with a 30 point lead. After seeing Detroit blow a 20 point lead in a quarter and a half, and the Knicks nearly squander an 18 point lead, it's not unreasonable to assume two things: 1) Teams can build a big lead against us or run up the score in spurts 2) No lead is safe
I am fine with Thibs so far. I like the way that he has shortened the rotation. He played Scalabrine last night, but only because it was the second game of a back-to-back and Taj was not giving us any offense whatsoever! Well on the flip side, Scalabrine didn't either.
