Gar Forman: Assets and Liabilities

[ikeziskash]

Smh at the FO apologists

[MGB8]

Thank you for the reasonable response.

I disagree with you, overall, but I don't think your opinion is unreasonable.

If Rose hadn't gotten hurt, who knows. Is Jimmy really a guy who could be a #1 scoring option, or even a #2 on a contending team? I don't know if it's true, but certainly at the beginning of the season it looked that way. And we don't really know how good Draymond Green is, either.

Noah being hurt this year really takes the luster off of any comparisons you do with him.

Taj's frustrating play has a similar impact.

Golden State has a pretty sweet roster with Curry (AS), Klay (AS), Barnes, Green, Bogut, backed up by Iggy (former near AS), Lee, Speights, Livingston, Barbosa, Ezelli and Rush. While Bogut has had some injury time (and they are very thing behind him on the defensive side), they haven't had near the amount of injuries as the Bulls, which (as mentioned) does impact perception.

My biggest frustration, honestly, is that the Bulls are very close to being a favorite for the ring, but the Front Office can't seem to seal the deal. We knew we had a problem at the wing this offseason. We addressed it with a rookie who hasn't been good enough to even earn rotation minutes. And while we've know that's the situation for over a month, the Front Office does nothing to address that weakness, while teams like the Cavs and Grizzlies fix their holes for runs, even to the point of overpaying for a solid center or taking chances on a J.R. Smith.

Yup.

As I said earlier, micro-judging is not the way to do this.

I reject this, and think both of you are incorrect.

As I said, the issue is how they stack up to other teams... how much bang they get for equivalent buck (the pick level).

I don't think the Bulls are particularly great.

Let's compare to the great teams over the past few years:

OKC:
No. 2 overall - Durant - Better pick than Rose no. 1 overall.
No. 4 overall - Westbrook - Better pick than Rose no. 1 overall. Way better than Tyrus at #2 overall.
No. 3 overall - Harden - About as good as Rose no. 1 overall. Way better than Tyrus at #2 overall.
No. 24 overall - Ibaka - As good or better pick than Taj at 26 overall.
No. 21 overall - Craig Brackins - bust - comparable to Teague
No. 24 overall - Reggie Jackson - "base hit" - about what you expect for that pick, maybe a bit better, maybe starting level talent
No. 28 overall - Perry Jones - "base hit" - shows to be a rotation player
No. 24 overall - BJ Mullens (really 25 and a 2nd rounder) - not a hit, reserve player at best, comparable to the James Johnson selection, but at a lower level in the draft.
No. 12 overall - Steve Adams - if his improvement continues, looks to be about as good a pick as Noah at no. 9
No. 21 overall - Mitch McGary - still incomplete, but may be tracking to be a James Johnson style or even Tony Snell style miss (but not a Teague style bust, or potentially McDermott).


If you do the same sort of analysis for Golden State, San Antonio, Houston, even Indiana, you'll see that they have somewhat better track records on drafting, based on position and available talent, than the Bulls. Every team has its busts, but the Bulls aren't really better in that department than any other team - the big thing that the Front Office did was sucker teams in the Eddy Curry, Tyrus Thomas and James Johnson trades.

I typically enjoy your lengthy and stat / reality based posts MGB8. That said, the front office has delivered top of the line talent through late first round picks in the draft. Think about how incredible that is. The bust rate for players picked 24 or later is extremely high. Odds that a player in that range turns into a starter or all-star are low as hell. We picked up Taj, who would start on half of the teams in this league, and Jimmy, who is turning into an all-star or possibly more. The FO has been mediocre in most of the other facets of the game, but the draft is one area where they seem to excel. OKC, the team you're comparing us to, is like apples and oranges. OKC had 3 seasons of top 4 picks. We never got a chance to spend uber high picks on premium talent like that. Their #21 and lower selections seem basically on par with what we have accomplished with similar late round picks.

Your review of Golden State's draft shows we are basically on par with the Warriors, who are one of the NBA's best drafting squads, and also reveals your bias.
My position is:

Ekpe Udoh < Tyrus Thomas
At least Thomas had several seasons of productive play in the NBA as a defensive minded starter who put up good numbers. Udoh accomplished nothing, settling for being one of the biggest busts of all time.

Rose > or = Curry
You consider Curry better than Rose because of a freak occurrence where Rose injured his ACL. But you can't expect a front office to predict freak injuries that will occur several years after the draft unless there was a long injury history prior to the draft (ala Greg Oden).

Klay = Noah
I agree that Klay was a better choice than Noah in terms of talent, but this is a center deprived league (or at least it used to be before guys like Cousins and Nurkic and Whiteside showed up). In terms of team needs Noah would win, so it's basically a wash.

Barnes < Taj
There's really no room for argument here. Barnes was picked at 7... Taj was picked at 24. Both are borderline starters.

Green < Jimmy
I'm tempted to say that Green and Jimmy are a wash. I mean, Green's a terrific SF / PF, and Jimmy's a terrific SF / SG. Both are two way players, but the key difference is that Jimmy's scoring ability dwarfs Green's. If we made Jimmy the first option, I'm fairly certain he'd average over 25 ppg like he was during the early part of the season. Jimmy's currently averaging 20.5 ppg on great efficiency (a TS of .581) as our roster's 3rd wheel. I don't believe you could get the same level of production out of Green on offense.

I am pissed at this front office. They screwed the pooch royally at a time when we needed them the most this past offseason. But even a guy like me, who's so critical of horrible FO moves, has to admit that the track record in the draft is simply excellent.

[MrSparkle]

Gar vs. the best

There's no perfect FO. Miami didn't lose Lebron or Wade during the playoffs. Duncan never tore his ACL and meniscus during the MVP-prime of his career. Could've been a very different legacy for San Antonio had that kind of stuff happened. Not demeriting their moves -- they've continually added talent while staying a true contender every season, which is amazing, but Chicago added talent in limited opportunities as well. Butler, Mirotic, Asik... those are killer late-picks.

The follow-up moves were what killed me. Letting Asik walk, dumping Korver were lame. But we should definitely put that on Reinsdorf, not GarPax. Have to imagine the FO liked them, whereas ownership didn't want to pay luxury tax. These types of moves remind me of the Nash/D'Antoni Suns. Winning a ton of games, overcoming major injuries (Amare) with brilliant replacements (Diaw, Kurt).. but then dumping precious assets and big-time players for cap-savings and god knows what (Joe Johnson, Rudy/Rondo/Nate 1st picks). Had the ownership and FO not been so cheap/quick-to-dump talent, I'm sure Suns could've won a ring, even with all of Amare's microfracture knee surgeries.

Backup PG

Nate and DJ were bail-out signings. We were lucky the rest of the league discarded them... Thibs got the most out of them. There should've been a DJ on the roster last October, but instead they rationed Marquis Teague was a good-enough backup, with Kirk as the primary backup. I question their evaluation of some in-house players? What are they looking at? I understand us fans buying into hype or getting excited by summer-league performances or (college-)name status, but can't a "good" professional NBA organization quickly decide whether a Teague, Snell, McDermott etc. is gonna be ready to contribute to a Thibs-team? Didn't every Bulls fan on the planet know that Kirk is a very limited player that you don't want to over-rely on if your front-court is not offensive-minded?

Backup C

Everyone's quick to blame Thibs for running his players to the ground, but the only players he really ran to the ground were Noah and Jimmy... and it's because the FO's only backup C offered for 2 straight-years was Nazr ****ing Mohammed. That's really comical if you ask me... especially considering the abundant amount of big-men in the 2013 draft at our #20 spot. Snell may or may not pan out as a decent NBA player, but one thing's certain: he's the kinda guy you get in the 2nd round, or total end of the 1st. Meanwhile, Jimmy only started playing big minutes after the Deng trade... and Luol kept putting up career-numbers, and stayed healthier than before, with the bigger role. I'll also mention that Noah had MVP-consideration in the year he was overplayed. I guess good results come at a price.

Overall: FO vs Coach

It is kind of weird telling your coach "Look, we're not winning a ring this year, so take it easy with the players. We're not gonna really fill out the roster, save some money... BUT... don't take it too easy. We don't want to instill losing habits or be unprepared for next year." It's kind of hard getting a team led by Noah, Hinrich and Jimmy to make the playoffs while "taking it easy." Limited skills, which they compensated for by outworking teams with hustle and team defense.