ZoomSlowik

Lottery pick yes, he clearly has talent, and I'm not terribly impressed with this draft so I could even buy top-5. Answer to all of the Bulls problems, no. Not sure where the passing thing comes from though, I've watched a handful of USC games and seen one pass I'd consider impressive. I also haven't seen anything that shows that he's as explosive as Iguodala, though he's definitely above average.

There are plenty of other SG's out there that are still the team's primary scorers that distribute the ball a lot more and are a lot more efficient with the ball. Plus that's not the point, the problem is people (including you) are casting him as a PG, which he clearly isn't. If he's going to play SG and constantly jack up shots without worrying about the rest of the team, fine, he can go ahead and be Jamal Crawford. Otherwise, he'll need to improve in those aspects, and for our purposes that'd be pretty important given the presence of Hughes and Gordon at the moment (unless we feel like modeling ourselves after the Knicks I guess). Last thing I'm going to throw in on that, an article Balta posted on talkbulls: Real value of OJ Mayo and Eric Gordon Here's a little highlight: "When we turn to Win Score - a metric that can tell us something about lighting up a box score — we see little reason to be optimistic about Gordon or Mayo. Entering Sunday’s action, Gordon had posted a 6.7 Win Score per 40 minutes (WS40) played. Mayo has a mark of 6.0. When we look at all shooting guards drafted out of college between 1991 and 2006 (and who played at least some significant minutes in the NBA), we see an average WS40 of 8.7 the last year the player played college basketball. In other words, Gordon and Mayo are far below average. To put “far below average” in perspective, here are the shooting guards with a WS40 below 7.0 (again from 1991 to 2006): Kareem Rush, Kirk Snyder, Toby Bailey, Tony Dumas, Lawrence Moten, Courtney Alexander, Ed Gray, DeJuan Wheat, Chris Smith, Jimmy King, Felipe Lopez, Larry Hughes, and Jamal Crawford." So yeah, he puts up decent stats but doesn't really help you all that much, as I've been saying. It's also important to note he plays 36 minutes a game while putting up these stats, which makes them look better than someone like Rose that plays under 30. There's a very good chance he'll put up a shooting percentage below 40% next year with a 3 point percentage closer to 30 than 40 given the sizeable difference between the college 3 and the pro 3.

QUOTE(nitetrain8601 @ Mar 24, 2008 -> 12:31 AM) Ben Gordon and OJ Mayo are in no way comparable. They play completely and I mean completely different games. And you cannot compare college stats to NBA stats. There's way less spacing in college and Tim Floyd's offensive system has really crippled Mayo's game. Everyone on USC tries to go 1 on 5 and that's why they never played like a team. And Kansas State isn't really inferior. They have Michael Beasley who many considered the best player in his high school class along with Bill Walker who many considered better than OJ Mayo. Let's get this straight, Mayo was never asked to create at USC. He was asked to purely score by Tim Floyd and he embraced that role. Floyd has said so before and continues to praise OJ on his work ethic and leadership. I'd take any of the other guys you mentioned over Hinrich as a starting PG. Hinrich can't shoot and he's terrible at creating for others. His best asset which was defense, has been lost. He brings nothing to the table unless you call dribbling out 15 seconds of the clock, driving, and then kicking it out to the opposing team good. Riiiight, two off-guards that shoot a lot, don't create for others, and turn it over at a high rate are totally not comparable. I guess the guys that write the profiles at NBAdraft.net agree with that comparison for no particular reason. About the only real difference is that Gordon shoots more 3's because he is a bit more effective at it, and I guess Mayo does a lot less of the ball (though that's probably more of an experience thing). If anything Gordon was more productive in college at distributing the ball, and he actually played off the ball a lot with Taliek Brown playing the point. You're ripping on Hinrich for holding the ball too long, but what exactly does Mayo do that's so different? Does he not dominate the ball and then try to do something at the end of every shot clock? At least when Kirk does it someone might hit an open jumper, Mayo the best you can hope for is a contested shot the majority of the time. That's not exactly a new thing at USC either, he's been doing that basically his whole career. And yes, USC is better than K-State, that team is totally sub-par outside of Beasley and Walker (who's pretty streaky, and was only considered an elite prospect before the ACL injury). USC has another potential 1st rounder with Jefferson, a solid college big man with Gibson, and two other reasonably capable guards with Hackett and Lewis. Despite that it all basically comes down to whether Mayo converts at a decent rate or not. They were actually a better team last year with Young, Pruitt (2.41 AST/TO ratio in the same system by the way), and Stewart in the backcourt and without Jefferson, which is pretty weird given all the hype with Mayo. I'm still trying to get how you can logically say that a guy with a negative assist/TO ratio in college in any way creates more shots for teammates effectively than a guy that consistently averages over 6 assists in the pros at a ratio well over 2:1. Maybe somewhere down the road he can get better with improved decision making, but he's nowhere close to that now and is always going to create for himself first. Hinrich isn't a great PG by any stretch of the imagination, but at least he actually tries to pass the ball more than 10% of the time. You have the same problem with Hughes and Gordon, they're both always going to look for their shot first, which hurts the offensive flow even worse than Hinrich's over-dribbling. Mayo is going to be an above average scorer, but without drastic improvements to his decision making and passing abilities he's going to end up being a guy that puts up great stats but hurts your team in the long run like Stephon Marbury or Jamal Crawford. Realistically there isn't that much difference between him and Larry Hughes, which isn't exactly a good thing given his shooting percentages and the records of the various teams on his resume and the fact that Cleveland essentially gave him away.

QUOTE(Rowand44 @ Mar 24, 2008 -> 08:42 AM) Westbrook is a pretty brutal pg at this point(definitely not his position) but as you said the raw talent is pretty nuts there. Problem is that I'd prefer to not have another shorter sg. Yeah, he's more of a developmental prospect.

QUOTE(DBAH0 @ Mar 23, 2008 -> 09:03 PM) This is the problem I see though. I don't know if TT is going to have a role with the Bulls after this season (especially if they hire Rick Carlisle) So if he leaves, they need a replacement. And in the draft there's not many PG's. Augustin is too small, Rose and Bayliss will go top 5. The only guy I can see who would make sense is Darren Collison from UCLA, who's got great speed and is very good defensively, but he's slated to go around 15 at this point. Well, Bayless is actually generally considered a combo guard, at least at this point in his development. From what I've seen I have a little more faith in him being an effective scoring PG than either Mayo or Gordon, though he has the same turnover problems and forces things too often as well. Russell Westbrook is the only other name that you didn't list. In terms of raw tools he may even be the equal of Rose, he's very quick, is an explosive leaper and has good size. The problem is he's considerably less polished as a PG and doesn't have a particularly good jumper. The smart money would say he can go back and improve his stock by playing the point next year, but even if Collison leaves and he doesn't super-frosh Jrue Holliday could hold back his development anyways. It might not be a bad idea to snag him and keep Hinrich around another year, that way at worst he's a defensive stopper off the bench while he picks up some of the nuances. That should be kind of a last resort though. I kinda doubt they'll trade Tyrus in the off-season. They already had numerous opportunites to deal him when he had much higher value, now they'd probably struggle to get good value for him. I'd imagine they'll keep him and Noah around and hope that they'll both progress, even if there are flaws with that approach.

QUOTE(SoxFan1 @ Mar 23, 2008 -> 07:01 PM) Stephen Curry is incredible. You've gotta think his NBA stock is soaring right now. Depends on how tall he really is. I've seen everything from 6'0" to 6'3". Whatever it really is, it's a bit small for a 2-guard, though the guy can definitely play.

I don't want OJ Mayo anywhere near this team, right now he's basically Ben Gordon with a weaker jumpshot and isn't quite as awful defensively. He goes 1 on 5 with regularity and very rarely creates anything for his teammates. A 44 FG% and a 3.3/3.5 Ast/TO ratio bodes very poorly for the NBA. He'll score points, but that's about all he'll do, and rather inefficiently at that. That makes it hard to win, as shown by USC's 20-10 record and 1st round loss to an inferior team. He's an especially suspect fit if Hughes and/or Gordon is still here next year, since all of them are shoot-first players and none of them can distribute the ball and create for others with any kind of efficency. Even with Hinrich's drop-off in play he has an Ast/TO ratio well north of 2, which is more than you can say for any of them (yeah, I know, Hughes is at about 2.1/1 with the Bulls. That's a pretty small sample size.). I'm not saying Hinrich is the long time answer at PG since he appears to have forgetten how to hit 3's and defend, but it's clearly not any of those guys.

That "offensive foul" was definitely a bad call, I didn't see anything else that blatantly awful though. Bottom line is you have to seal the deal, they didn't execute at all on offense at the end and they let Collison go right by them twice in the clutch.

Man, it's been ugly, but it's pretty freakin' amazing that Love and Collison are the only Bruins showing up on offense and they're still winning.

Didn't the Bulls used to have a good perimeter defense? The Pacers were 13-26 from behind the arc, that's a killer.

Wow, Calipari would really need to find a different offensive system, either that or the Bulls would need to totally overhaul their roster. Kind of hard to run the Dribble Drive Motion offense with a bunch of guys that can't drive.

I don't ever see him being a dominant low post player, but Noah is a decent piece that could be a good glue guy on a solid team. Of course that assumes that all of the other pieces are taken care of, which they're clearly not. As for the draft commentary, a legit center would fill a need , but this draft isn't exactly full of them (Basically just Lopez, MAYBE Griffin or Speights, but they're both PF's right now. Please no Thabeet or Hibbert, and Jordan's too raw for our needs.) and the organization probably won't want another young big guy that they have to find minutes for. They could just as easily grab a PG to groom behind Hinrich for a year or two (or trade Hinrich), or possibly one of those combo guards depending on what they do with Hughes/Gordon. Actually, there aren't a whole lot of perfect fits for the Bulls in general since they have decent but not stellar young players at basically every position.

So, I fixed the rosters to the best of my knowledge. Please point out any keeper issues that I missed.

I can fix stuff with the commish edit feature later, it's just more of a pain in the ass for me (I doubt I do that tonight by the way).

Easily the best defensive effort I've seen from K-State all year. I thought USC was a mortal lock for 80 against them given their good efficiency and KSU's propensity for allowing big totals, but they really stepped up.

QUOTE(AssHatSoxFan @ Mar 18, 2008 -> 02:46 PM) We still need DBAHO!!!!!!!! I'm aware. I just sent him another PM, I figure by late Thursday/early Friday I'll start looking for a replacement if I don't hear from him.

I hate to be a pain in the ass, but with his triceps problem I no longer intend to keep John Lackey. I have replaced him in the post with Joe Nathan. Yes, I realize that'll probably screw things up, but tough luck.

For me personally it's just absorbing as much useful information as possible, which means ESPN. Between the one-stop statistics, the articles (obviously I pick and choose), and Sportscenter that's an awful lot of stuff. Some of the message board members definitely contribute as well, though just like ESPN you have to filter it a bit.

Right, Tyrus' 0 points and 4 rebounds in 17 minutes was why they were winning. Come on, him not being in had nothing to do with it, they simply got killed on the perimeter. 18 of the 40 points came on long jumpers, and a bunch more came at the line. Those kind of things happen with a bad team, and Tyrus wasn't going to change that. Those kind of things also happen a lot more often when the other team's starters are on the floor, something Tyrus generally doesn't face. This team is seriously annoying though. There don't appear to be a whole lot of long term answers on the roster.

I tend to go with a fair amount of chalk and then some really crazy stuff so... St Joe's in the Sweet 16 Nova over Clemson (Clemson's FT shooting scares me in a close game) USC in the Sweet 16 (though I have a feeling Mayo will throw it away in the clutch) Gonzaga in the Elite 8 Marquette over Stanford Western Kentucky over Drake Baylor over Purdue

I hate myself for picking all high seeds, but I really don't like most of the 2-5 teams. I got UNC, Kansas, Texas, and UCLA. UCLA over Kansas in the final.

QUOTE(GoSox05 @ Mar 14, 2008 -> 11:59 AM) I joined, but the time on yahoo shows 6:30 PDT. Is that pacific time? Yeah, my bad, draft in a little over an hour.

Just a reminder, draft in a little over an hour.

Northwestern basketball got screwed in the seeding.

Update... Need two more players guys. Please...