PG - Swiss cheese D

[Hangtime84]

We'll lose a lot with this **** D.

66 points allowed in the paint. WTF


The silver lining, our tank survives!!!

Yes sir Nets will have a better record than us.

[FriedRise]

Putting my tanking hat back on, this L is really a W especially later on when it comes down to it.

[MalagaBulls]

I actually this is the year we say goodbye to Donovan & his mind-joggling rotations. Buzelis should be getting 13-15 minutes a night & eating some of Williams minutes. But AK told him, you play my 95M genius move all year, all night.

[Ice Man]

I wonder what's going on with all the crappy starts, Nets had a 17 point lead in the 2nd. 91% chance to win by that point.

Yep. While the Billy critics invariably talk about the team's 4th quarters, the Bulls were a good 4th quarter team last year and are so again this year. Last night was the first time this season they have been outscored in the 4th. But just like last year, they dig themselves BIG early holes.

[Ice Man]

Vuc had a 54% true shooting percentage last year, while making 29% of his 3s. This year those figures are 67% and 50%. LOL, not even close to being sustainable! On the other hand, Ayo and Pat won't continue to shoot this badly.

I call it a wash, meaning that I see this offense continuing to be pretty good, while the defense is not. Yet another year where the team is not good enough to be remotely a contender, but also not bad enough to be remotely a tanker. Treading water.

[sco]

Beyond letting our opponent shoot over 50%, the TO's killed us. I think we can live with 14 or less. If there is good news, I think those will settle down as the team gets used to this style. To the Bulls' credit, they got up a lot of 3's and, so far, they are shooting them at a good clip, over 38% last night (despite whiffs by Pat and Giddey). I think we win this with Ball playing.

[Ice Man]

Turnovers have been an issue this year. We have the 11th most TOs in the league, which is meh but not terrible, but we're 2nd from the bottom in creating turnovers while on defense. That makes for a net differential per game of -4.5. Yikes.

[VolumePoster]

Matas has played 25 minutes so far this season. That’s a joke. Billy needs to get him minutes.

It's interesting that Julian Phillips is getting the minutes over him.

[VolumePoster]

Vuc had a 54% true shooting percentage last year, while making 29% of his 3s. This year those figures are 67% and 50%. LOL, not even close to being sustainable! On the other hand, Ayo and Pat won't continue to shoot this badly.

I call it a wash, meaning that I see this offense continuing to be pretty good, while the defense is not. Yet another year where the team is not good enough to be remotely a contender, but also not bad enough to be remotely a tanker. Treading water.

They are a very different team with Ball on the floor. It's been like that since 21. He's a rare passer and defender.

[WindyCityBorn]

Can we stop trying to let Zach be a playmaker? He simply can’t do it. His assist to TO rartio is horrendous. There is zero reason to have him run the offense if two of Coby, Giddy or Ball are out there. He tried to do way too much ISO last night and it just led to blocked shots and bad passes. Up until that 4th quarter he had been getting his points through the flow of the offense this season. He wasn’t the only though. I feel like we regressed on that. Hopefully just a blip.

[Ice Man]

They are a very different team with Ball on the floor. It's been like that since 21. He's a rare passer and defender.

Sure, vintage Lonzo is better than what we now have, but there's a limit to what one player can accomplish with this group. Also, it's pretty unlikely that we see vintage Lonzo this year.

But sure, a reasonably healthy version of Lonzo taking minutes from our other guards makes this a better team. No question about that.

[Stratmaster]

If the Bulls are serious about winning games Williams can not play 28 mpg. He is playing at the level of a guy who should only see garbage minutes.

How many more times do the Bulls need to start the game by going 15+ points behind before the head coach makes a change to the starting lineup? This isn't a new problem either.

[meekrab]

Didn't watch the game but based on the box score this was like a worst possible scenario loss, the kids were bad or didn't play and Vuc dragged us to a semi-close result.

[DuckIII]

This game looked, on the whole, like what I expect this team to look like this year though less fun. We have 5 players on this roster who can defend, one of them is Lonzo who is a part time player, and two of the others are Terry who is barely a rotational player (nice game last night though) and Smith.

Other than those 5, the rest of the roster ranges from somewhat to massively negative on D.

[DuckIII]

Can we stop trying to let Zach be a playmaker? He simply can’t do it. His assist to TO rartio is horrendous. There is zero reason to have him run the offense if two of Coby, Giddy or Ball are out there.

Let him? He just does it. I noticed several times he went out of his way to make sure Giddey didn’t get to be the decision maker. He’s done selfish crap like this his whole Bulls career.

I’m no Lavine hater. I think I have one of the higher opinions of him on the board, but this and his disinterested defense is why we can’t trade him. Teams don’t trust him to be a winning complimentary player at his cost.

[chitowndish]

Yeah that’s how Zach got with DDR just kind of passive aggressively tried to compete over scoring, now he’s competing with Giddey over playmaking and when he was around Caruso and we were playing for something or on the national team he did try to compete at defending. I’d also say this is something pretty core to Zach is his competitiveness and like a lot of things with any of us it’s one of his biggest strengths and weaknesses at the same time. I think Zach usually leaves it at a fairly healthy competition place like he didn’t hate DDR and they both I think got along personally but he more wanted to outplay him but it isn’t great from a winning sense because you had the my turn your turn stuff.

I also wouldn’t push too hard against it because I think we’ll see this team working best when they embrace how many people there are that can pass well, we just have to try and break it up when he goes tunnel vision with it but I think Billy is in a bit of a catch 22 there because he benched Zach 1 fkn time and years later that is one of the primary things driving Zach’s decision making. I think it has to subtly come from the team in consistently getting the ball back to Giddey when it matters. Zach is right that you want your best players executing in the clutch but Giddey is the guy that should run the team and Zach should be the primary weapon. If Zach figures this out I think it would go a long way for a established team to add him, he has to show he can defer to people to play with great players and he hasn’t shown he can yet.

[Stratmaster]

I'm not sure what people think they are seeing. First the criticism was Zach is taking too many shots and taking away shots from other players. He is down to 15 shots per game so far this season (way too low, especially as hot as he has been shooting and the Bulls getting about 10 more possessions a game than they used to) That would be his lowest shots per game as a Bull (discounting last season where he hardly played).

So now it is that he is keeping the ball away from Giddy? Whatever. His usage rate is down from his average with the Bulls (I believe 4% lower).

I guess he just shouldn't do anything but stand in the corner?

[MalagaBulls]

Can we stop trying to let Zach be a playmaker? He simply can’t do it. His assist to TO rartio is horrendous. There is zero reason to have him run the offense if two of Coby, Giddy or Ball are out there.

Let him? He just does it. I noticed several times he went out of his way to make sure Giddey didn’t get to be the decision maker. He’s done selfish crap like this his whole Bulls career.

I’m no Lavine hater. I think I have one of the higher opinions of him on the board, [bold]but this and his disinterested defense is why we can’t trade him. Teams don’t trust him to be a winning complimentary player at his cost.[/bold]

Just you wait & see, when Klutch signs him up we'll have teams beating our door down to offer megadeals in a trade.

Oh, wait....

[Stratmaster]

Zach Lavine usage: 25%
Josh Giddey: 23.3%

That seem ok?

[MalagaBulls]

Can we stop trying to let Zach be a playmaker? He simply can’t do it. His assist to TO rartio is horrendous. There is zero reason to have him run the offense if two of Coby, Giddy or Ball are out there.

Let him? He just does it. I noticed several times he went out of his way to make sure Giddey didn’t get to be the decision maker. He’s done selfish crap like this his whole Bulls career.

I’m no Lavine hater. I think I have one of the higher opinions of him on the board, but this and his disinterested defense is why we can’t trade him. Teams don’t trust him to be a winning complimentary player at his cost.

Just you wait & see, when Klutch signs him up we'll have teams beating our door down to offer megadeals in a trade.

Oh, wait....