Mirotic hitting the rookie wall

[bullslas]

The biggest problem with Thibs, he doesn't make changes or adjustments. Look at the WAS series last year.

For once the Bulls have a player who's a matchup hell for the opposing team. He needs to build him for the playoffs.

Who's going to guard him? Niko has a quick first step. He plays solid defense, yes against WAS he can't really hold is own on defense, but neither can the other 3 bigs. Niko would be a matchup issue and one of the bigs will need to run around and defend him.

Hopefully he plays a bit more today. Pau can't play 38 minutes and come back on Tuesday. Pau needs 32 mpg.

[Trm3]

Thibs is the greatest coach of all time at being blamed for things.

I had lunch with both Thibs and Van Gundy in Dallas yesterday. Thibs made two things clear to me and Jeff:

(1) The Chicago Bulls front office is nefariously planting stories with the press to undermine his authority in an attempt to run him out of town.

(2) He HATES Mirotic and his stupid beard. Paraphrasing on memory but it was something like, "I want to get this hairy euro-trash where he breathes! I want him DEAD! I want his family DEAD! I want his house burned to the GROUND! I wanna go there in the middle of the night and I wanna PISS ON HIS ASHES!"

Just paraphrasing?

[JeremyB0001]

I thought it was a joke when I saw a reference in the game thread to a thread about Niko getting entitlement minutes. That was naive. I should have known better. The notion is so insane that it's hard to know how to respond but a few thoughts in particular leap out to me.

First, the thought that Niko's minutes have somehow become entrenched defies reality. His minutes have been jerked around more that perhaps anyone else on the team. How many other quality NBA rotation players can you name who have had eight games this season playing eight or fewer minutes? That generally happens to scrubs, not good rotation players vying for rookie of the year. The only player on the Bulls with more sub-eight-minute outings is Snell, who's tenth on the team with a 9 PER; by comparison, Niko is fourth on the team with a 17.1 PER.

There also seems to be an odd attempt to distort Niko's play to make it look worse. First, there's the arbitrary focus on his worst month of the season, while shoving aside his better numbers in other months. Since when do we rejigger the rotations on a monthly basis depending on how well each player has been doing over the past dozen or so games? No one does that because it would lead to terrible rotations. Then there's the strange emphasis on Niko's poor shooting in January at the expense of most everything else. Traditionally, you don't bench good shooters due to a short-term shooting slump. It tends to be the opposite - people tell the shooter to keep taking shots and shoot his way out of the slump. Moreover, Niko has done all sorts of excellent things in January that are ignored by the tunnel vision that focuses entirely on his shooting. He's passed well, kept his turnovers low, and spaced the floor. He has a +4.8 plus-minus for the month. That's better than Taj (+1.4), Pau (-3.1), and Jo (-2.7).

Edit add: I forgot perhaps the most important part about Niko's January numbers, which is that he's getting to the line 6.5 times per 36 minutes. That's a big reason that, despite his woeful shooting percentages for January, his true shooting percentage during this shooting slump is still higher than true shooting percentages posted by Hinrich and Noah on the season.

What's probably the most staggering is the hypocrisy of making Niko earn his minutes, and trying to hold him accountable for bad stretches, but not applying that standard to anyone else on the team. Derrick's scoring has been as inefficient over his last 780 minutes as Niko's has been over his past 230 minutes. Where is the thread calling for an end to his entitlement minutes? Kirk's PER is 7.8. Yes, 7.8. He's the only player in the NBA with over 1,000 and a PER that bad. His minutes are the epitome of harmful entitlement minutes. How could anyone keep a straight face while holding him up as someone who has earned minutes more so than Niko? Snell's PER is 9.0. Where's the outrage over the big minutes that he's suddenly receiving? Jo's true shooting percentage is an execrable 47.6%. That ranks 277 out of 311 NBA players with at least 400 minutes. And yet, he needs to play over 30 minutes a game to ensure that Niko is out of the rotation? You can't come up with a bigger double standard than this.

[JeremyB0001]

Sorry, double post.

[jacoby1us]

He should be starting.
The entire team has hit a freaking wall, this is a collective effort to make everyone better. This team is in a serious funk, especially at home. We have to address this NOW.

[Mbrahv0528]

I thought it was a joke when I saw a reference in the game thread to a thread about Niko getting entitlement minutes. That was naive. I should have known better. The notion is so insane that it's hard to know how to respond but a few thoughts in particular leap out to me.

First, the thought that Niko's minutes have somehow become entrenched defies reality. His minutes have been jerked around more that perhaps anyone else on the team. How many other quality NBA rotation players can you name who have had eight games this season playing eight or fewer minutes? That generally happens to scrubs, not good rotation players vying for rookie of the year. The only player on the Bulls with more sub-eight-minute outings is Snell, who's tenth on the team with a 9 PER; by comparison, Niko is fourth on the team with a 17.1 PER.

There also seems to be an odd attempt to distort Niko's play to make it look worse. First, there's the arbitrary focus on his worst month of the season, while shoving aside his better numbers in other months. Since when do we rejigger the rotations on a monthly basis depending on how well each player has been doing over the past dozen or so games? No one does that because it would lead to terrible rotations. Then there's the strange emphasis on Niko's poor shooting in January at the expense of most everything else. Traditionally, you don't bench good shooters due to a short-term shooting slump. It tends to be the opposite - people tell the shooter to keep taking shots and shoot his way out of the slump. Moreover, Niko has done all sorts of excellent things in January that are ignored by the tunnel vision that focuses entirely on his shooting. He's passed well, kept his turnovers low, and spaced the floor. He has a +4.8 plus-minus for the month. That's better than Taj (+1.4), Pau (-3.1), and Jo (-2.7).

Edit add: I forgot perhaps the most important part about Niko's January numbers, which is that he's getting to the line 6.5 times per 36 minutes. That's a big reason that, despite his woeful shooting percentages for January, his true shooting percentage during this shooting slump is still higher than true shooting percentages posted by Hinrich and Noah on the season.

What's probably the most staggering is the hypocrisy of making Niko earn his minutes, and trying to hold him accountable for bad stretches, but not applying that standard to anyone else on the team. Derrick's scoring has been as inefficient over his last 780 minutes as Niko's has been over his past 230 minutes. Where is the thread calling for an end to his entitlement minutes? Kirk's PER is 7.8. Yes, 7.8. He's the only player in the NBA with over 1,000 and a PER that bad. His minutes are the epitome of harmful entitlement minutes. How could anyone keep a straight face while holding him up as someone who has earned minutes more so than Niko? Snell's PER is 9.0. Where's the outrage over the big minutes that he's suddenly receiving? Jo's true shooting percentage is an execrable 47.6%. That ranks 277 out of 311 NBA players with at least 400 minutes. And yet, he needs to play over 30 minutes a game to ensure that Niko is out of the rotation? You can't come up with a bigger double standard than this.

You sir just won the thread. Good **** post, could not have said it better myself.

[GetBuLLish]

The only player unarguably and unjustifiably getting entitlement minutes is Noah.

You could also argue Hinrich, but we'll see if it continues when Dunleavy gets back.

[malcrk]

making up storylines as a mod is one of the worst things i've seen happen to disccussion based communities. IT won't **** kill you to just use actual stats. Someone just might disagree with you. And then you can ban them anyways.

[umfan83]

The only player unarguably and unjustifiably getting entitlement minutes is Noah.

You could also argue Hinrich, but we'll see if it continues when Dunleavy gets back.

You can only argue Hinrich? Granted it'd be nice to have a defensive PG to alternate backup minutes with Brooks, but if you look at Brooks as the backup PG, I think Snell and Moore have both significantly outplayed Hinrich as backup SG. The fact that Hinrich plays 25 minutes a game despite baffling incompetence most nights is beyond me, and the first time I really agreed with Thibs haters on anything.

I really don't know my way around Advanced NBA stats like I do baseball, but looking at the numbers, Moore has 0.4 total Win Shares in 225 minutes. Hinrich has 0.8 Win Shares in 1066 minutes. Half the WS in 20% of the minutes. Snell has 75% of the WS in less than half the minutes.

Hinrich has a 7.68 PER, Moore a 10.21 and Snell 9.09. All 3 of them are pretty bad but Hinrichs is the worst, and hes getting 25% more minutes then both of them combined. And Hinrich is not contributing defensively like he used to, in fact hes pretty mediocre on a good day.

He's a bad bad bad player that would have trouble cracking any other rotation in the league. On the Bulls he's essentially fighting Taj for 6th man designation.

[MC3]

http://probasketballtalk.nbcsports.com/ ... ng-on-him/

[musiqsoulchild]

making up storylines as a mod is one of the worst things i've seen happen to disccussion based communities. IT won't **** kill you to just use actual stats. Someone just might disagree with you. And then you can ban them anyways.

1) There are worse things than making up storylines

2) Thats not how this board is modded.

3) Nikola broke through the "rookie wall" yesterday, Irritatingly enough, it was he himself who had painstakingly (and painfully, for those of us watching) built this wall in the first place.

"Niko...shoot". Thats all that needs to be said when he gets the ball.

[BeatDaCavs420]

http://probasketballtalk.nbcsports.com/2015/01/28/nikola-mirotics-unique-style-rewarding-bulls-for-waiting-on-him/

This article tho

[sco]

http://probasketballtalk.nbcsports.com/2015/01/28/nikola-mirotics-unique-style-rewarding-bulls-for-waiting-on-him/

Nice article.

I know we debate whether Niko can play SF, but from an offensive responsibility perspective, is there any difference between SF and Stretch PF (which Thibs has called him before)? Defensively, there is a difference in that he will need to guard guys away from the basket.

[coldfish]

I thought it was a joke when I saw a reference in the game thread to a thread about Niko getting entitlement minutes. That was naive. I should have known better. The notion is so insane that it's hard to know how to respond but a few thoughts in particular leap out to me.

First, the thought that Niko's minutes have somehow become entrenched defies reality. His minutes have been jerked around more that perhaps anyone else on the team. How many other quality NBA rotation players can you name who have had eight games this season playing eight or fewer minutes? That generally happens to scrubs, not good rotation players vying for rookie of the year. The only player on the Bulls with more sub-eight-minute outings is Snell, who's tenth on the team with a 9 PER; by comparison, Niko is fourth on the team with a 17.1 PER.

There also seems to be an odd attempt to distort Niko's play to make it look worse. First, there's the arbitrary focus on his worst month of the season, while shoving aside his better numbers in other months. Since when do we rejigger the rotations on a monthly basis depending on how well each player has been doing over the past dozen or so games? No one does that because it would lead to terrible rotations. Then there's the strange emphasis on Niko's poor shooting in January at the expense of most everything else. Traditionally, you don't bench good shooters due to a short-term shooting slump. It tends to be the opposite - people tell the shooter to keep taking shots and shoot his way out of the slump. Moreover, Niko has done all sorts of excellent things in January that are ignored by the tunnel vision that focuses entirely on his shooting. He's passed well, kept his turnovers low, and spaced the floor. He has a +4.8 plus-minus for the month. That's better than Taj (+1.4), Pau (-3.1), and Jo (-2.7).

Edit add: I forgot perhaps the most important part about Niko's January numbers, which is that he's getting to the line 6.5 times per 36 minutes. That's a big reason that, despite his woeful shooting percentages for January, his true shooting percentage during this shooting slump is still higher than true shooting percentages posted by Hinrich and Noah on the season.

What's probably the most staggering is the hypocrisy of making Niko earn his minutes, and trying to hold him accountable for bad stretches, but not applying that standard to anyone else on the team. Derrick's scoring has been as inefficient over his last 780 minutes as Niko's has been over his past 230 minutes. Where is the thread calling for an end to his entitlement minutes? Kirk's PER is 7.8. Yes, 7.8. He's the only player in the NBA with over 1,000 and a PER that bad. His minutes are the epitome of harmful entitlement minutes. How could anyone keep a straight face while holding him up as someone who has earned minutes more so than Niko? Snell's PER is 9.0. Where's the outrage over the big minutes that he's suddenly receiving? Jo's true shooting percentage is an execrable 47.6%. That ranks 277 out of 311 NBA players with at least 400 minutes. And yet, he needs to play over 30 minutes a game to ensure that Niko is out of the rotation? You can't come up with a bigger double standard than this.

It needs to be kept in mind that Kirk Hinrich is fighting with Tony Snell for minutes. Derrick Rose is fighting with Aaron Brooks for minutes. Even when Kirk and Derrick are struggling, its fair to wonder if it still isn't wise to stick with Derrick and Kirk.

Mirotic is fighting with players much better than him for minutes. When Mirotic is on an extended poor streak yet still getting more than a small handful of filler minutes, its fair to say he is getting rookie entitlement/developmental minutes. If this were the playoffs and Mirotic had been playing like he has for the past month, he would get less than 10mpg.

In general, I question the wisdom of doing that. What I don't know is how many times Thibs has told Mirotic not to do that pump fake and drive or tried to work on his defensive positioning. I assume its a lot but if it has become an incessant thing where Mirotic just isn't listening, cutting his minutes might be a good way to get his attention. If Thibs really hasn't pushed it then its not fair to pull Mirotic yet.

And just to note: Kirk has been poor for a while. When Dunleavey comes back, Kirk should just be getting spot minutes at the 2. If he doesn't, then shame on Thibodeau and I will be right next to everyone else complaining about the vet entitlement minutes being given to him. This is being discussed at length in many threads.

[musiqsoulchild]

I thought it was a joke when I saw a reference in the game thread to a thread about Niko getting entitlement minutes. That was naive. I should have known better. The notion is so insane that it's hard to know how to respond but a few thoughts in particular leap out to me.

First, the thought that Niko's minutes have somehow become entrenched defies reality. His minutes have been jerked around more that perhaps anyone else on the team. How many other quality NBA rotation players can you name who have had eight games this season playing eight or fewer minutes? That generally happens to scrubs, not good rotation players vying for rookie of the year. The only player on the Bulls with more sub-eight-minute outings is Snell, who's tenth on the team with a 9 PER; by comparison, Niko is fourth on the team with a 17.1 PER.

There also seems to be an odd attempt to distort Niko's play to make it look worse. First, there's the arbitrary focus on his worst month of the season, while shoving aside his better numbers in other months. Since when do we rejigger the rotations on a monthly basis depending on how well each player has been doing over the past dozen or so games? No one does that because it would lead to terrible rotations. Then there's the strange emphasis on Niko's poor shooting in January at the expense of most everything else. Traditionally, you don't bench good shooters due to a short-term shooting slump. It tends to be the opposite - people tell the shooter to keep taking shots and shoot his way out of the slump. Moreover, Niko has done all sorts of excellent things in January that are ignored by the tunnel vision that focuses entirely on his shooting. He's passed well, kept his turnovers low, and spaced the floor. He has a +4.8 plus-minus for the month. That's better than Taj (+1.4), Pau (-3.1), and Jo (-2.7).

Edit add: I forgot perhaps the most important part about Niko's January numbers, which is that he's getting to the line 6.5 times per 36 minutes. That's a big reason that, despite his woeful shooting percentages for January, his true shooting percentage during this shooting slump is still higher than true shooting percentages posted by Hinrich and Noah on the season.

What's probably the most staggering is the hypocrisy of making Niko earn his minutes, and trying to hold him accountable for bad stretches, but not applying that standard to anyone else on the team. Derrick's scoring has been as inefficient over his last 780 minutes as Niko's has been over his past 230 minutes. Where is the thread calling for an end to his entitlement minutes? Kirk's PER is 7.8. Yes, 7.8. He's the only player in the NBA with over 1,000 and a PER that bad. His minutes are the epitome of harmful entitlement minutes. How could anyone keep a straight face while holding him up as someone who has earned minutes more so than Niko? Snell's PER is 9.0. Where's the outrage over the big minutes that he's suddenly receiving? Jo's true shooting percentage is an execrable 47.6%. That ranks 277 out of 311 NBA players with at least 400 minutes. And yet, he needs to play over 30 minutes a game to ensure that Niko is out of the rotation? You can't come up with a bigger double standard than this.

It needs to be kept in mind that Kirk Hinrich is fighting with Tony Snell for minutes. Derrick Rose is fighting with Aaron Brooks for minutes. Even when Kirk and Derrick are struggling, its fair to wonder if it still isn't wise to stick with Derrick and Kirk.

Mirotic is fighting with players much better than him for minutes. When Mirotic is on an extended poor streak yet still getting more than a small handful of filler minutes, its fair to say he is getting rookie entitlement/developmental minutes. If this were the playoffs and Mirotic had been playing like he has for the past month, he would get less than 10mpg.

In general, I question the wisdom of doing that. What I don't know is how many times Thibs has told Mirotic not to do that pump fake and drive or tried to work on his defensive positioning. I assume its a lot but if it has become an incessant thing where Mirotic just isn't listening, cutting his minutes might be a good way to get his attention. If Thibs really hasn't pushed it then its not fair to pull Mirotic yet.

And just to note: Kirk has been poor for a while. When Dunleavey comes back, Kirk should just be getting spot minutes at the 2. If he doesn't, then shame on Thibodeau and I will be right next to everyone else complaining about the vet entitlement minutes being given to him. This is being discussed at length in many threads.

Niko isnt better than anyone else on the team at PF and C. Ignore Cameron and Nazr.

Niko is better than Doug, Snell, Moore and Kirk at SF. He is also better than an injured, DNP-CD Dunleavy.

And Niko therefore should get minutes at SF. This is simple. Sure he will mess up on the defensive end of things and make a boneheaded play on offense....but his man sticks to him. Niko's shooting presence demands honest defense.

That itself is enough to warrant him getting more minutes at SF.

[coldfish]

Niko isnt better than anyone else on the team at PF and C. Ignore Cameron and Nazr.

Niko is better than Doug, Snell, Moore and Kirk at SF. He is also better than an injured, DNP-CD Dunleavy.

And Niko therefore should get minutes at SF. This is simple. Sure he will mess up on the defensive end of things and make a boneheaded play on offense....but his man sticks to him. Niko's shooting presence demands honest defense.

That itself is enough to warrant him getting more minutes at SF.

Mirotic's slide corresponds with when he started to get SF minutes. People brought this up as a possibility. This is a new guy who is struggling with the nuances of his base position (PF). Taking up practice time to put him at SF and likely confuse him with the completely different defensive responsibilities has a cost.

This is likely why Thibs refused to put him at SF for quite some time. You are setting a rookie up to fail if you throw too much at them.

I'm old school though. Its always been my experience that you get the most out of people in the long term by being demanding of them. Kirk Hinrich is an old dog and you aren't teaching him any new tricks (or how to shoot). There is no point to having a development discussion about Kirk.

Mirotic has a ton of potential to be a great player if he learns the nuances of playing the game the right way. Just throwing him out there for the sake of getting minutes while he is playing those minutes incorrectly is not necessarily the best way to develop him. I realize that most people disagree with me on this (and Thibs).

[musiqsoulchild]

Niko isnt better than anyone else on the team at PF and C. Ignore Cameron and Nazr.

Niko is better than Doug, Snell, Moore and Kirk at SF. He is also better than an injured, DNP-CD Dunleavy.

And Niko therefore should get minutes at SF. This is simple. Sure he will mess up on the defensive end of things and make a boneheaded play on offense....but his man sticks to him. Niko's shooting presence demands honest defense.

That itself is enough to warrant him getting more minutes at SF.

Mirotic's slide corresponds with when he started to get SF minutes. People brought this up as a possibility. This is a new guy who is struggling with the nuances of his base position (PF). Taking up practice time to put him at SF and likely confuse him with the completely different defensive responsibilities has a cost.

This is likely why Thibs refused to put him at SF for quite some time. You are setting a rookie up to fail if you throw too much at them.

I'm old school though. Its always been my experience that you get the most out of people in the long term by being demanding of them. Kirk Hinrich is an old dog and you aren't teaching him any new tricks (or how to shoot). There is no point to having a development discussion about Kirk.

Mirotic has a ton of potential to be a great player if he learns the nuances of playing the game the right way. Just throwing him out there for the sake of getting minutes while he is playing those minutes incorrectly is not necessarily the best way to develop him. I realize that most people disagree with me on this (and Thibs).

Fair enough.

He does make a really high percentage of dumb mistakes, but there is a LOT of good in there as well. Maybe a taskmaster is what he needs.

His confrontation with the coach in Real about playing time and an increased role in the offense should be a warning to everyone. People dont change that much after a certain age. Niko is still impressionable enough and eager enough that maybe now is Thibs time to prepare him for a long and hallowed career as a Bull.

And as a professional.

[coldfish]

Fair enough.

He does make a really high percentage of dumb mistakes, but there is a LOT of good in there as well. Maybe a taskmaster is what he needs.

His confrontation with the coach in Real about playing time and an increased role in the offense should be a warning to everyone. People dont change that much after a certain age. Niko is still impressionable enough and eager enough that maybe now is Thibs time to prepare him for a long and hallowed career as a Bull.

And as a professional.

That's basically where I am at. Mirotic minus the mistakes is a fantastic player. That said, after a while of playing the same way, a guy gets set in his ways and much harder to change. The best time to get a guy into good baseline habits is when they are new and young. That way, with a strong base they will be able to maximize their potential in the long term. We are seeing the benefits of this now with Butler and Taj. I have even seen some signs from Snell lately.

This won't be popular, but I wonder how good Derrick could have been if he didn't have Vinny del Negro as his first coach. Rose has some bad habits that he falls back into quite regularly that might have been able to be corrected early in his career by a demanding yet intelligent coach.

[JeremyB0001]

Mirotic is fighting with players much better than him for minutes. When Mirotic is on an extended poor streak yet still getting more than a small handful of filler minutes, its fair to say he is getting rookie entitlement/developmental minutes. If this were the playoffs and Mirotic had been playing like he has for the past month, he would get less than 10mpg.

I would agree with you if Taj and Noah were playing as well as last year, if Pau didn't kill us so much defensively, and if it were actually the playoffs, not the regular season. Then, you would have a case where Niko would be the worst of the four by a substantial margin and we would be maxing out minutes to squeeze out every last win. But none of those things are true. There's no huge gap between Mirotic and the other three big men. Not with Noah and Taj's struggles and Zach Lowe jumping on the "Why doesn't Pau seem as good as his stats?" bandwagon this week. Moreover, there's no reason to max out the minutes of our best players midway through the season. Teams wisely save that for the playoffs. I can't see the harm in employing a four-man front court rotation; it's probably more common than a three-man rotation. And I certainly can't see any harm in playing Taj, Noah, and Pau between 25 and 30 minutes per game during the regular season. That's enough minutes to have a huge impact on the game, yet few enough minutes that they will be well rested and less likely to suffer injuries.

[McBulls]

Fair enough.

He does make a really high percentage of dumb mistakes, but there is a LOT of good in there as well. Maybe a taskmaster is what he needs.

His confrontation with the coach in Real about playing time and an increased role in the offense should be a warning to everyone. People dont change that much after a certain age. Niko is still impressionable enough and eager enough that maybe now is Thibs time to prepare him for a long and hallowed career as a Bull.

And as a professional.

That's basically where I am at. Mirotic minus the mistakes is a fantastic player. That said, after a while of playing the same way, a guy gets set in his ways and much harder to change. The best time to get a guy into good baseline habits is when they are new and young. That way, with a strong base they will be able to maximize their potential in the long term. We are seeing the benefits of this now with Butler and Taj. I have even seen some signs from Snell lately.

This won't be popular, but I wonder how good Derrick could have been if he didn't have Vinny del Negro as his first coach. Rose has some bad habits that he falls back into quite regularly that might have been able to be corrected early in his career by a demanding yet intelligent coach.

As a lifelong teacher, recent father and former basketball coach I must say there is a limit to what can be learned by watching. At some point those who are passively involved in learning simply stop paying attention. This goes double for students who are highly talented.

There is no justification for treating a highly accomplished player like Mirotic like he was a 19 year old fresh out of college. Rose was not treated to 10 mpg in his rookie year, and neither should Mirotic. The hard truth is that Mirotic is as least as talented as the 3 front line players who are getting minutes ahead of him. Noah is injured. Pau is playing more than a man his age should. And Gibson is simply not as good as Mirotic, and never will be.

I agree that playing Mirotic at SF may not be a good idea. But financial politics aside, it makes no sense to limit Mirotic's minutes to less than 30. He needs to play, and play competitive minutes in order to reach his potential. It's outrageous that he is watching rather than learning -- particularly since he has so little to learn to become a big contributor to the Bulls success.