I have a hunch we will get killed up front again! Should be interesting to see how Gordon handles Carter. We should probably put Deng on Carter, and then put Gordon on Simmons or whatever small forward they have starting. Gordon has had a lot of trouble covering Carter in the past.
This team is frustratingly schizophrenic. Just when I've pretty much concluded their hopeless, they bust out Tyrus and Noah for monster games. Carter had his way, but Gordon scored enough to make it not matter, with some unexpectedly solid frontcourt play.
The two problems in tonight game were Deng/Gooden. Vinny would bring them in in pairs, and whenever they were in, they would get killed. Carter completely dominated Deng, and Brooke Lopez scored most of his points with Gooden on him. The one exception was when Vinny brought them back in at the end of the game and it didn't matter because Rose and Gordon were so good. But Vinny still had to bring Deng out before the game was over because Deng made like 5 bonehead plays in the final 2 minutes of the game. The first quarter was horrible. Deng was so bad at guarding Carter and Gooden wasn't providing the help defense, they Derrick Rose and Ben Gordon ended up having to guard Carter one what you would think would be a double team, but Deng would get lost, and be no one in sight. Rose/Gordon actually did a pretty good job on Harris/Simmons. Simmons had 9 of his points really early in the first because of the Deng/Gooden defensive confusion that they caused, which left Simmons wide open for three. But Gordon got him locked down pretty well, making Simmons miss almost all of his shots form there. Harris had a poor shooting night going 6-18 and held him to under 50 TS%.
It turned out Vince couldn't guard BG. I don't think BG guarded Vince more than in a couple of transition situations. I'm kind of surprised NJ tried that. Vince has never been known as much of a defender.
Deng supposedly has the flu. Surprisingly enough, I saw a couple of the times where Gordon was sticking on Carter and he did a really nice job of sticking in front of him and keeping him out of the post (which Carter tried to do both times he got the matchup). Deng... I dunno, he seems to need to be in tip top shape to have a good game. It's one of the things that's really been bugging me.
This, too, goes back to BG. Deng has to guard the bigger more athletic players so they can hide BG. Deng on Vince is somewhat of a mismatch. So is Deng on Kobe, Joe Johnson, etc... I'm pretty Deng on Bobby Simmons standing in the corner would have come out more in the bulls favor.
Ben Gordon has really turned into a complete defender. He plays great positional defense, keeping himself between the man and the basket. Runs his guys into help defense before they get to the rim, contests every shot. He's also adopted a technique that I've seen Hinrich use in past years, which is where the defender gets beat off the dribble, but still defends in a way that completely frustrates the offensive player. You are going to still have problems with a player like Carter who can post Gordon up (I don't think it was Gordon, I think it was Rose, where Carter just did a little hook shot over Rose for the easy score, could have easily been Gordon), but the shooting guards who actually have post skills to take advantage are very few, and almost non-existent, and even the ones who do posess these skills aren't exactly that good. There is no Michael Jordan that Ben has to guard. I think it just goes back to 2006-2007 from two sets of games. The final game of the season, against New Jersey, when Kidd/Carter, a freakish backcourt that no longer exists, kept posting Gordon up (and Hinrich). Then in the playoffs, when Chauncey Billups would post Gordon up (even though Billups didn't really produce more than he usually does). Since then, there has been that reputation that Ben constantly gets posted up by shooting guards, even though it almost never happens, because most guards don't know how to post up very well.
Blah... so what. You were pointing out too that you were surprised the Nets hard Vince chasing Gordon. It's what NBA teams do except in the very rare occasions they have a truly great two way player.
At the same time, obviously the Bulls weren't aiming for that matchup. Saying he did fine in a couple sets doesn't mean he ought to be doing it all the time. There's entirely too much focus on Gordon, both positive and negative.
Also, I noticed that Ben Gordon is absolutely killing other players with his offense this year, even when not scoring. That is that the opposing shooting guards are getting tired chasing Gordon around. This was really noticeable with O.J. Mayo. Mayo's only decent stretch was when Gordon was out of the game, as he could relax on defense.
