ZoomSlowik

QUOTE (SleepyWhiteSox @ Jan 14, 2009 -> 10:09 PM) Why don't more people want pax fired? I think a lot of people do, this roster is one giant clusterf***.

Derek Lowe is a MUCH better pitcher in Dodger Stadium than he is on the road. His ERA outside of Dodger Stadium last year was 4.42. Over the last 3 years he's 25-15 with an ERA of 2.95 in LA and 17-18 with an ERA of 4.24 on the road. Granted Turner Field isn't a launching pad, but it isn't as forgiving as Dodger Stadium either. I really think that's going to turn out to be an awful deal.

I really don't see the Bulls improving significantly (as in more than 40 wins) until they find a legit big man, someone that can get at least 12-8 while shooting at least 48% from the floor and be at least decent on defense (before someone says it, that's not Gooden). That's easier said then done though...

There's a difference between the dribble-drive-motion and the 7 seconds or less system that D'Antoni runs. The former is based around having players that can successfully drive to the basket and either finish himself, find the big man on a lob when the defense collapses, or passing it back out to the perimeter when the next player either drives himself or takes an open jumper. The Bulls sort of run that now but poorly, basically they set a pick for Rose (officially the DDR doesn't use picks, it relies on spacing) and if he doesn't get to the basket it gets kicked out to someone that generally shoots a jumper. As constructed they can't run it particularly well because Rose is their only consistently effective driver and Gordon is their only guy that can consistently hit outside jumpers, ideally you have at least two guards that can do both (ie Harris and Carter in New Jersey). D'Antoni's system is different, it's predecated on playing at a fast pace and shooting a large number of threes. Ideally the team gets an open look within the first 7 seconds of the shot clock and forces the other team into mistakes by playing at their pace. To run it at maximum efficiency you need a solid PG that can be dominant in transition, create good shots for himself and others in the halfcourt and ideally hit 3's, at least two wing players that hit a high percentage from outside, an athletic and versatile forward that has SF skills but can also defend the other team's PF, and an athletic big man that can run the floor and get some easy baskets. Rose and Gordon are pretty good fits, but they'd need to change their roster quite a bit at the forward spots. I don't really think Callipari and the dribble-drive-motion is going to solve the problem since the roster is horribly flawed, but then again it'd be hard to be worse than Del Negro.

It only makes sense if Hinrich or Nocioni is involved so we get some extra money off the cap for 2010. You can't really depend on O'Neal to be anything more than a monster expiring contract with his injury history.

I really didn't realize I was doing THAT well.

Good god, they made Marcin Gortat look like Pau Gasol...

The Bulls are just terrible defensively. Soooo many open 3's. That and their offense hasn't done a thing, you know you're in trouble when Joakim Noah is your leading scorer on the day.

QUOTE (knightni @ Dec 29, 2008 -> 11:00 AM) We'll do it the old-fashioned way. Make lists, draft the 5 guys in the first 5 picks. Yeah, if you do that you have to make sure you set the league to allow commish roster editting though, otherwise it's a major pain in the ass fixing things when one or more people inevitably forget to set their draft lists.

Eh, Mayo can be a decent defender at times, but the effort isn't always there. He didn't exactly put up a lot of resistence against Kobe their last game and Gordon lit him up the last time they played. The stats Slav posted would tell you he's been pretty average.

QUOTE (nitetrain8601 @ Dec 23, 2008 -> 07:10 PM) I actually like Rose. Would've preferred OJ, but Rose is pretty darn nice. You really have a thing for guys that do nothing but hit jumpshots.

I have yet to see Hill play this season (that'll change tonight thanks to the regional sports networks we get), though on paper he looks amazing. I wasn't overly impressed when I saw him early last season, but it looks like he's gotten a lot better. Yes, a large part of the reason I want Lawal is his ridiculous early stats and what I saw him do against PSU. I realize he's not going to be THAT good against real teams, but it was still encouraging to see a guy with his athleticism and length dropping in numerous baby hooks and a couple of turnaround jumpers (yes, I realize his stroke is generally a disaster), especially in his first year as a go-to guy inside. Now if he's still struggling that much against real big men in late February/March that's another story, but for now I'm fairly intrigued. The fact that the Bulls appear to be in position to be a late lottery/mid-first round team also plays a major factor, it'll probably be tough to find guys with higher upside and/or the probability of good early production at that spot.

QUOTE (fathom @ Dec 23, 2008 -> 11:20 AM) Why does he interest many of you on here, as he's a less skilled version of Tyrus Thomas? That's not possible, Tyrus would actually have to have some skills for that to be true. Lawal is still a work in progress, but he at least actually has some touch around the basket, something Tyrus has yet to display. I wouldn't take him in the top-5, but after that this draft isn't exactly deep on superior options. I wouldn't complain about any of Jordan Hill, Greg Monroe, or Lawal.

QUOTE (nitetrain8601 @ Dec 22, 2008 -> 02:46 PM) Funny considering how NBA players themselves post there and executives view RealGM. In fact, aren't you still a teenager. I digress, but you should still get those eyes checked. He's playing great defense this year. His first year he sucked. Second year, he sucked with a few improvements. Third year he was mediocre, 5th year became average and this year he has become above average. Um, no, he was not average at all last year, in fact his previous several years were better statistically (so were the whole team's, possibly because they had credible defensive big men to back them up). Last year he allowed 23.1 points per 48 minutes at a 19.2 PER at SG, and a 19.7 PER while lining up as a PG. That's pretty bad. If you're going to use suspect statistics to back up your point, at least stay consistent in their use or check them if you're going to continue the argument.

PER can definitely be mis-leading in small sample sizes (as in less than a full season, even then it can be a little off), one category can grossly tilt the rating one way or the other. Just look at the vaunted Gordon defensive PER, he's still allowing opposing SG's to score 19.7 point/48 minutes on 16.8 attempts, a total that's comparable to that of Thomas (20.4 at PF) and Noah (20.3), two guys that are allowing very high PER's and contribute to the Bulls having arguably the worst frontcourt in the league. The Bulls are simply a bad all-around defensive team, that's why they're allowing almost 103 points per game.

QUOTE (Steve9347 @ Dec 18, 2008 -> 03:21 PM) I'm well aware of your desire to get Lawal, I like him too. Luckily he's projected in the late lottery at the moment.

QUOTE (rangercal @ Dec 17, 2008 -> 11:05 PM) kind of what I was thinking to. It would be nice to grab someone like Derozen if he slips that far. I would hope he stays another year the way he's played thus far, he needs to develop his game quite a bit.

Honestly, unless we get lucky again I don't see a whole lot of difference between say #7 and #15 in this draft, at least at this point it seems to be personal preference after Griffin.

QUOTE (DBAHO @ Dec 17, 2008 -> 02:34 PM) I think long - term, the Bulls either need to trade him, or start him at the 4, and have a center who can actually play in the low post. Drew Gooden's not going to get the job done there. Having an actual center that can bang with real post players would certainly help, he's still a horribly flawed player though. He's a great athlete, but he has virtually no offensive abilities. He's a poor shooter (thus far only Ryan Westbrook has hit a lower percentage of 2-point jumpers on the season, and he was still comfortably below average last year) and yet he still insists on shooting from the FT area/top of the key fairly often, and he also struggles to finish around the basket when he doesn't have an uncontested dunk (he's also among the worst in the league in FG% in the basket area). Typically when he does have one of his good games he gets 3 or 4 dunks and/or hits a couple of jumpers, both of which happened last night. He can be useful as a defensive oriented player if he cuts the low percentage jumpers significantly and focus on getting more attempts at the rim (maybe he can draw more fouls even if he doesn't finish), but even that will take some work, and the chances of him becoming a good offensive are slim since it would require exponential improvement. Unfortunately the team didn't move him when he still had a high value, supposedly he's been on the block for a while and the Bulls have received little interest.

QUOTE (DBAHO @ Dec 17, 2008 -> 02:12 PM) I think TT is the type of player who can take the Bulls to the next level, and with his play over the past couple of games, I think Del Negro has realized that now, even with their issues so far. Considering his inconsistent nature and the fact that they still lost to an awful team last night I have a hard time buying that.

I wasn't as pissed about the Noah pick because it was later in the draft and my expectations were a bit lower. Yes, I preferred Hawes, but figured that Noah's D would off-set a lot of his scoring ability. Oops. The Thomas pick is another story though. If I weren't an admin on TalkBulls I might have been suspended after the draft.

QUOTE (Jordan4life @ Dec 15, 2008 -> 11:04 PM) They weren't a title threat when they had those 4 all-star caliber players, either. No matter how much Steve Nash continues to whine about the trades. If not for the Johnson injury they may well have beaten the Spurs in the 2005 playoffs (the Spurs won 4-1, but every game was within 10 points). Things went similarly in 07 and 08, the games were very close but the Suns didn't have enough to finish the games off. The Spurs haven't exactly blown them out with regularity, though they obviously won the majority of the games. If they had kept him instead of stupidly signing Q for that much money and adding Marcus Banks, things are DRASTICALLY different. Johnson has become a pretty dangerous scorer in Atlanta, imagine what he could do if he had Nash getting him open instead of having to carry his team. There's a very sizeable difference between him and guys like Barbosa and Bell. Then add in basically giving away 1st round picks that could have infused some serious low-cost talent to bolster their depth so they wouldn't have had to run Nash and Marion into the ground and things look pretty damn good. They were already one of the top handful of teams in the league even after selling off Johnson on the cheap. Even forgetting about Johnson and the draft picks that turned into Deng, Rondo and Rudy Fernandez, they were playing a fair amount better with Marion instead of Shaq, and Richardson would have been a great fit with D'Antoni. Obviously they did a lot of things right to get to that level in the first place, but since then things haven't gone particularly well. And by the way, this further solidifies my title as king of the thread-jacking rant that no one really cares about.

QUOTE (Jordan4life @ Dec 15, 2008 -> 11:01 PM) I still don't consider any frontcourt that features Amare and Shaq, even Shaq at this stage in his career, a mess. Flawed? I can roll with that. But hardly a mess. The pile of crap that we've called a frontcourt the last three years or so is what I call a mess. Robin Lopez has the size/athleticism to develop into a pretty solid backup, IMO. He's already shown brief flashes. Dudley was playing pretty well in a limited amount of time for the Bobcats. But, yeah, he is more of a SF (atleast from a size standpoint). So will see how they'll work him in. For all the flak Shaq gets now, the guy is averaging 15.5/8.5/1.5/60% in less than 28 MPG (that doesn't include the 23 and 12 he went for tonight). Heck, his FT% is even up. Isn't helping them win games? Last I checked, they weren't 5-18. They're 15-10 in an ultra competitive conference. And he's been a big reason for that. Killed their team? You mean the team that got their asses waxed by the Spurs every May? The team that couldn't even reach the finals one time? The Suns of 2005-first half of 2008 were very entertaining and fun to watch. But they couldn't win anything when it counted. They tried something different with Shaq last year and it didn't work. Oh, well. Shaq is still very much an impact player. He's just not what he was at his peak. And that's to be expected. Shaq or not, the Suns in a year or two were going to have to pretty much start over with Amare as the focal point anyway. Yeah, Shaq is killing their team. They changed their entire philosophy for a guy that is their third best player (well, at this point probably 4th with Richardson on the roster) and doesn't even play 30 minutes a game. They've never been a good defensive team, but at least before they could run and gun teams to death and win games 110-100 with regularity, now they have an average scoring margin of 0.4. They went from a team that consistently won high 50's/low 60' team to a team that'll struggle to crack 50 with Shaq. Even before the deal last year they were 38-16, which is an over .700 clip. The Suns used to be an exciting, highly competitive team, now they're highly ordinary. They still have Nash and Amare so they're not a total joke, but despite having two guys that are consistent All-Stars at high demand positions they're not particularly good. Before they at least gave the decent teams a run for their money and if not for some bad luck (Johnson getting hurt, the Stoudemire suspension) they may have been able to make a lot more noise, now they're probably not even making it out of the first round. They could have been far better off as a franchise, Shaq was just the last nail in the coffin.

QUOTE (Palehosefan @ Dec 15, 2008 -> 01:10 PM) Phoenix and Dallas just don't seem to "get it". I thought it was Christmas when I actually heard someone wanted Shaq. Then to give up an expiring contract with a good player attached? Just crazy. I love this old Bill Simmons' article about how Phoenix has been one of the more mis-managed teams in the league thanks to their attempts to avoid the luxury tax at all costs and how it affected their roster since they came to prominence (though they did find a couple of goofy ways to add salary). They found a way to turn a roster with 4 All-Star caliber players into a merely competent team that wasn't/isn't a real title threat when all is said and done. The End of the "Critically Acclaimed" Suns

The Suns' frontcourt is nowhere near as bad as the Bulls' frontcourt, but it's not exactly taking them anywhere either. As Steve said, Amare is an elite scorer but a mediocre defender at best. He can be a major building block for a team, but adding an old, out of shape plodder next to him that sits out most back-to-backs isn't doing him any favors. Because of Shaq they basically have to play at a slower pace even though they're a subpar defensive team and still have the horses to push the pace. He's putting up numbers, but isn't helping them win games. Plus they really only go 3-deep with actual post players, so when Shaq does sit out they're forced to go small. That's a problem when he can't handle heavy minutes anymore (playing about 28 a game in Phoenix) and can go down at any minute with his lack of conditioning and injury history. Robin Lopez doesn't really have the experience or the talent to be counted on for heavy minutes, so they're probably better off playing Barnes as a PF, which is a scary thought. Dudley is a marginal player at best, and is really more of a SF. Basically they killed their team when they picked up Shaq, it's clear that he's nowhere near an impact player anymore and now they're stuck with trying to adjust their approach to try to make him useful. Granted his deal expires after next season, but so does Nash's contract and Amare can opt out, meaning that they may need a total overhaul and can't compete in the interim. That sure sounds like a mess to me. Their one saving grace is that if they play their cards right and don't move Amare (their one good, young piece) they can add a sizeable contract in 2010 and still potentially retain Amare and Nash with Richardson still there for another year if they're willing to go well into luxury tax territory (though they haven't in the past).