What do you think Bulls should do with Bobby Portis?

[League Circles]

The Hinrich/Gordon/Deng/Nocioni/Duhon group is being disrespected by that comparison. Those were all good players, just not the type of players that push you to contention.

We do not have good players now. Lauri had a good rookies season and will probably be one and one would expect our draft pick to be good. That's pretty much where it ends. Beyond that, I don't think we have prospects as good as Eddy Curry or Tyson Chandler on that same team, and those guys weren't even mentioned.

Duhon was most definitely not a good player.

Kirk wasn't a good player as a rookie and he played 4 years of college IIRC. Nocioni was almost the same player as Bobby Portis.

Kirk was no better and probably a little worse as a rookie than Dunn was this year, so let's call them similar.

So the key is can Lauri and our pick this summer and possibly our pick next summer and/or Lavine be as good as BG and Deng. Then you hope you can add a free agent in 2019 that is better than Ben Wallace turned out for us.

[Leslie Forman]

Frankly…that's what's going to have to happen.

We've seen how free agency and trades go here. That's not going to be the answer.

That's just a ridiculous thought.

It'd be like Detroit saying that because Darko sucked, they never want to draft at #2 again.

Of course it's not impossible. But based on the very long history of this front office, hanging your hat on the chances of free agency/trades being the answer, well…good luck with that.

I think people are drastically overrating the current group of young players. If not for Mirotic's hot streak, this team would have had the first overall pick. The team was actually worse when Lavine played.

Oh I was being generous to Doug. This roster is a complete pile of trash with literally only one young player that projects to be an even average starter. And even that one, Markkanen, isn't actually even a good player yet. He just had a pretty solid rookie year.

Just take Mirotic and Lopez off the team and they would easily have the worst record in this league. Like an absolutely awful mid-teens kind of record. And even those wins would almost all just be against other tanking teams.

[coldfish]

I assume you mean the one with Rose that won 50 games and not the one the next year without Rose that won 42. We'll see where the team goes, but we'll top the Butler/Gasol 42 in team within 2 years IMO (quite possibly next year). Whether we move towards 50 will depend how well teh current players develop.

I'm kind of stunned that you say that. IMHO, if the team just drafts players and doesn't spend its capspace, I think they will win less next year than they did this year. I suspect that the "one third of the league tanking the whole year" thing will end, making even the bottom of the NBA more competitive.

[League Circles]

Just take Mirotic and Lopez off the team and they would easily have the worst record in this league. Like an absolutely awful mid-teens kind of record. And even those wins would almost all just be against other tanking teams.

I never understand why people compare one team without it's best players to other teams WITH their best players. The relevant comparison is something like, how do the Bulls without Lauri and Lopez compare to the Suns without Booker and whoever.

[coldfish]

Just take Mirotic and Lopez off the team and they would easily have the worst record in this league. Like an absolutely awful mid-teens kind of record. And even those wins would almost all just be against other tanking teams.

I never understand why people compare one team without it's best players to other teams WITH their best players. The relevant comparison is something like, how do the Bulls without Lauri and Lopez compare to the Suns without Booker and whoever.

Well, Mirotic is no longer on the team and Lopez might get traded whereas other teams are not in the process of shedding their best players.

You know that though.

[dougthonus]

I'm kind of stunned that you say that. IMHO, if the team just drafts players and doesn't spend its capspace, I think they will win less next year than they did this year. I suspect that the "one third of the league tanking the whole year" thing will end, making even the bottom of the NBA more competitive.

We'll see how it goes next year.

At a high level, I'd note the following things:

1: Bulls started out 3-20 and while most people blame Mirotic, it took them awhile to establish Dunn as the primary point guard, Portis missed 8 games, LaVine was out for all games, and the team was an entirely new collection of players. While Mirotic obviously had a big impact when he returned, I think the reverse of you, I think people have overstated his impact.

2: The Bulls are fielding probably the youngest team in the league. They are returning virtually everyone from last year, and all of those players outside of Lopez, Grant, and Holiday are at the point of their careers where they should improve. The team looks highly motivated internally and plays hard, my guess is that carries into the off-season and you see guys coming back improved (which would hardly be unexpected based on their age).

3: The Bulls finished 8-20 after intentionally trying to lose (much like other teams). It's my belief if they weren't trying to lose they would have won many more games. While you say other teams may not try to lose next year, they were 6-4 against the bottom 9 during this stretch which is sustainable even if those teams try to win (and IMO, likely improved), and the Bulls were hardly the only team with an inflated record against those teams. The same could be said for all the other squads except they likely didn't lose near half their games to them.

4: I expect they get an impact player in the draft this year.

We'll see where it all shakes out next season of course. There are plenty of reasons to be skeptical of the team and their talent, I can't say I'll be shocked if they end up very poor. LaVine may be complete trash, Dunn might be a bumslayer, and the group may not find good chemistry as a whole.

That said, it may be that LaVine was on a path to significant improvement prior to the ACL, he looks good athletically now and may resume that path. Dunn may improve his 3 and overall level of control just a bit and become a reasonably dynamic 2 way player. Lauri will almost certainly improve his 3 point touch, and those three may find chemistry. The Bulls may draft someone that is a starting caliber player out the gates as well.

Any of those things or anything in between could happen, when I weigh out all the odds in my head, I see 40+ wins as more likely than 25-.

[johnnyvann840]

I think we ask the question - can he guard Embiid?

No chance.

IMO he's one of the few guys that could make Joel work. He'll still get his 20-30 PPG but Bobby claims to be the type of guy who plays like you stole his lunch.

Embiid is the kinda guy who steals you lunch and then eats it in front of you.

Is Bobby up for this challenge?

We need someone who's gonna go after that bully....

Bobby is not that guy.

Bobby likes to mean mug and definitely plays with a chip on his shoulder, but it's mostly just fake tough guy stuff. His strong suit is certainly not defending or post protecting. Hell, Niko is ten times the defender and player overall. Just because Portis hauled off and punched him in practice doesn't make him tough.

[League Circles]

Just take Mirotic and Lopez off the team and they would easily have the worst record in this league. Like an absolutely awful mid-teens kind of record. And even those wins would almost all just be against other tanking teams.

I never understand why people compare one team without it's best players to other teams WITH their best players. The relevant comparison is something like, how do the Bulls without Lauri and Lopez compare to the Suns without Booker and whoever.

Well, Mirotic is no longer on the team and Lopez might get traded whereas other teams are not in the process of shedding their best players.

You know that though.

Yes, Niko is gone, but only played 1/8th of the minutes for us this year, and I think Lopez is likely to stay (we tried to trade him this year and the only offers had bad, long term money coming back so we kept him, and I don't see a jump in demand for him around the league). Niko was 6th in win shares for us and all ahead of him but Nwaba are pretty much locks to be back. He was 4th in VORP. Lopez had a VORP of zero and was 7th in WS at just 1.9. He was 11th in WS/48 for our team. Lopez had his value but I definitely don't think he stands out among our players.

We saw similar comments all last year where people would say that without Jimmy, we were the worst team in the league or something like that. It's like, yeah, take the best player off of any team and they are going to be quite a bit worse usually. In actually analyzing a supporting cast, or players 2 through 15 or 3 through 15 or whatever you're looking at, the relevant comparison is to compare them to similar ranges for other teams.

Though, FWIW, I had misread Mirotic in Tong's post for Lauri, which is why I referenced Lauri instead.

Bulls won 27 games with Lopez and Niko combining for 3.9 win shares. And that was with a ton of injuries, active tanking, and without the additional draftees and internal growth that can be projected for next season. I don't expect 42 wins like Doug might, but without adding any notable FAs, perhaps something like 33 wins or so.

[coldfish]

I'm kind of stunned that you say that. IMHO, if the team just drafts players and doesn't spend its capspace, I think they will win less next year than they did this year. I suspect that the "one third of the league tanking the whole year" thing will end, making even the bottom of the NBA more competitive.

We'll see how it goes next year.

At a high level, I'd note the following things:

1: Bulls started out 3-20 and while most people blame Mirotic, it took them awhile to establish Dunn as the primary point guard, Portis missed 8 games, LaVine was out for all games, and the team was an entirely new collection of players. While Mirotic obviously had a big impact when he returned, I think the reverse of you, I think people have overstated his impact.

2: The Bulls are fielding probably the youngest team in the league. They are returning virtually everyone from last year, and all of those players outside of Lopez, Grant, and Holiday are at the point of their careers where they should improve. The team looks highly motivated internally and plays hard, my guess is that carries into the off-season and you see guys coming back improved (which would hardly be unexpected based on their age).

3: The Bulls finished 8-20 after intentionally trying to lose (much like other teams). It's my belief if they weren't trying to lose they would have won many more games. While you say other teams may not try to lose next year, they were 6-4 against the bottom 9 during this stretch which is sustainable even if those teams try to win (and IMO, likely improved), and the Bulls were hardly the only team with an inflated record against those teams. The same could be said for all the other squads except they likely didn't lose near half their games to them.

4: I expect they get an impact player in the draft this year.

We'll see where it all shakes out next season of course. There are plenty of reasons to be skeptical of the team and their talent, I can't say I'll be shocked if they end up very poor. LaVine may be complete trash, Dunn might be a bumslayer, and the group may not find good chemistry as a whole.

That said, it may be that LaVine was on a path to significant improvement prior to the ACL, he looks good athletically now and may resume that path. Dunn may improve his 3 and overall level of control just a bit and become a reasonably dynamic 2 way player. Lauri will almost certainly improve his 3 point touch, and those three may find chemistry. The Bulls may draft someone that is a starting caliber player out the gates as well.

Any of those things or anything in between could happen, when I weigh out all the odds in my head, I see 40+ wins as more likely than 25-.

I think the difference between us is the baseline. The Bulls were 14-11 when Mirotic played and 13-44 (19 win pace) when he didn't. Lavine, OTOH, made the team worse. The team winning 27 next year would actually be a pretty significant improvement, so when I'm talking about winning in the mid 20's, its actually giving them credit for improvement.

Side notes:
- The odds of the rookie being a positive impact are slim. Even great players are often net negatives when they first start. Durant for example.
- Lavine had a 14.3PER in his 2nd year and 14.6 in his 3rd before tearing his ACL. His PER this year was . . . 14.6. PER isn't an end all/be all stat, but people tend to overrate how he was doing in Minnesota.

[Leslie Forman]

Yes, Niko is gone, but only played 1/8th of the minutes for us this year, and I think Lopez is likely to stay (we tried to trade him this year and the only offers had bad, long term money coming back so we kept him, and I don't see a jump in demand for him around the league). Niko was 6th in win shares for us and all ahead of him but Nwaba are pretty much locks to be back. He was 4th in VORP. Lopez had a VORP of zero and was 7th in WS at just 1.9. He was 11th in WS/48 for our team. Lopez had his value but I definitely don't think he stands out among our players.

We saw similar comments all last year where people would say that without Jimmy, we were the worst team in the league or something like that. It's like, yeah, take the best player off of any team and they are going to be quite a bit worse usually. In actually analyzing a supporting cast, or players 2 through 15 or 3 through 15 or whatever you're looking at, the relevant comparison is to compare them to similar ranges for other teams.

Though, FWIW, I had misread Mirotic in Tong's post for Lauri, which is why I referenced Lauri instead.

Bulls won 27 games with Lopez and Niko combining for 3.9 win shares. And that was with a ton of injuries, active tanking, and without the additional draftees and internal growth that can be projected for next season. I don't expect 42 wins like Doug might, but without adding any notable FAs, perhaps something like 33 wins or so.

WS/48 also says that Felicio is better than Lopez. You'd have to have just completely missed every single Bulls game this entire season to believe that. It's a box score based stat, and Lopez doesn't care about what he puts up in the box score. Ignoring guys who barely played like Vonleh and Arcidiacono, Lopez has the second-best DRtg on/off on the team, only behind Holiday.

He is the only competent center on this team. You take him off and you're playing a frontcourt of Markkanen/Portis/Felicio. This team is already 28th on offense, probably 30th without Mirotic. They were 24th on defense. You take off Lopez and Mirotic for a whole season, easily the two best defensive bigs that were on the team as well, and you're probably looking at, well, the 30th-ranked defense, too.

You have a team that's last in both offense and defense and you're looking at an all-time awful team.

[Leslie Forman]

Side notes:
- The odds of the rookie being a positive impact are slim. Even great players are often net negatives when they first start. Durant for example.
- Lavine had a 14.3PER in his 2nd year and 14.6 in his 3rd before tearing his ACL. His PER this year was . . . 14.6. PER isn't an end all/be all stat, but people tend to overrate how he was doing in Minnesota.

To add to this, if you don't care for PER, LaVine's on/off was absolutely godawful last year in Minnesota as well. Ignoring Casspi, who barely played, he easily had the worst on/off NetRtg last year, even worse than Dunn, who was astonishingly bad.

So far in their careers, LaVine has been a flat out worse player than Justin Holiday. Him being healthy enough to play the whole season is probably not going to be a good thing.

[League Circles]

WS/48 also says that Felicio is better than Lopez. You'd have to have just completely missed every single Bulls game this entire season to believe that. It's a box score based stat, and Lopez doesn't care about what he puts up in the box score. Ignoring guys who barely played like Vonleh and Arcidiacono, Lopez has the second-best DRtg on/off on the team, only behind Holiday.

He is the only competent center on this team. You take him off and you're playing a frontcourt of Markkanen/Portis/Felicio. This team is already 28th on offense, probably 30th without Mirotic. They were 24th on defense. You take off Lopez and Mirotic for a whole season, easily the two best defensive bigs that were on the team as well, and you're probably looking at, well, the 30th-ranked defense, too.

You have a team that's last in both offense and defense and you're looking at an all-time awful team.

IMO, the offense gets better with Bobby taking most of Lopez' minutes. But it doesn't matter, because Lopez is probably still here all season IMO.

[League Circles]

To add to this, if you don't care for PER, LaVine's on/off was absolutely godawful last year in Minnesota as well. Ignoring Casspi, who barely played, he easily had the worst on/off NetRtg last year, even worse than Dunn, who was astonishingly bad.

So far in their careers, LaVine has been a flat out worse player than Justin Holiday. Him being healthy enough to play the whole season is probably not going to be a good thing.

Yeah Lavine playing all year could definitely ruin us. Though I still have hope he'll be on a 1+1 deal, and if so, and he's stinking it up, he'll just be benched and released after the season IMO.

[dougthonus]

I think the difference between us is the baseline. The Bulls were 14-11 when Mirotic played and 13-44 (19 win pace) when he didn't. Lavine, OTOH, made the team worse. The team winning 27 next year would actually be a pretty significant improvement, so when I'm talking about winning in the mid 20's, its actually giving them credit for improvement.

Side notes:
- The odds of the rookie being a positive impact are slim. Even great players are often net negatives when they first start. Durant for example.
- Lavine had a 14.3PER in his 2nd year and 14.6 in his 3rd before tearing his ACL. His PER this year was . . . 14.6. PER isn't an end all/be all stat, but people tend to overrate how he was doing in Minnesota.

I agree that LaVine didn't help, but I am hopeful after seeing him that he will help a lot next year. We will see what happens with him, he needs to make considerable improvements, but he seems to understand that as does management.

I think the record with/without Mirotic is also somewhat meaningless since for more than half those games they were attempting to lose by playing their worst players at the end of games. The other games also had significant other factors that caused them to play worse sa well.

I completely get where you are coming from, I don't think its unreasonable, but I'm much more optimistic than you are. I'm not going to shout from the roof tops that the Bulls are destined to be amazing next year, there's plenty of risk, but I can also see how it can come together pretty easily too and think that is more likely than the reverse (certainly possible there's a bit of hope and homerism in my view as I'm generally taking a positive outlook on things that could go either way).

[League Circles]

Yeah, I'd agree that anything between about 20-44 wins next year shouldn't be surprising.

[coldfish]

I think the difference between us is the baseline. The Bulls were 14-11 when Mirotic played and 13-44 (19 win pace) when he didn't. Lavine, OTOH, made the team worse. The team winning 27 next year would actually be a pretty significant improvement, so when I'm talking about winning in the mid 20's, its actually giving them credit for improvement.

Side notes:
- The odds of the rookie being a positive impact are slim. Even great players are often net negatives when they first start. Durant for example.
- Lavine had a 14.3PER in his 2nd year and 14.6 in his 3rd before tearing his ACL. His PER this year was . . . 14.6. PER isn't an end all/be all stat, but people tend to overrate how he was doing in Minnesota.

I agree that LaVine didn't help, but I am hopeful after seeing him that he will help a lot next year. We will see what happens with him, he needs to make considerable improvements, but he seems to understand that as does management.

I think the record with/without Mirotic is also somewhat meaningless since for more than half those games they were attempting to lose by playing their worst players at the end of games. The other games also had significant other factors that caused them to play worse sa well.

I completely get where you are coming from, I don't think its unreasonable, but I'm much more optimistic than you are. I'm not going to shout from the roof tops that the Bulls are destined to be amazing next year, there's plenty of risk, but I can also see how it can come together pretty easily too and think that is more likely than the reverse (certainly possible there's a bit of hope and homerism in my view as I'm generally taking a positive outlook on things that could go either way).

Not arguing with you here at all but making a philosophical point.

Players go through good stretches and bad. Teams do too. They win games they shouldn't and look great at times.

When fans make future projections, they take the good periods and project them as being more common. ie. player X averaged 15ppg for March, he should be able to do it for the whole year next year.

Sometimes that is true, sometimes it isn't. If someone could figure out the pattern for which ones will successfully be more consistent and which won't, they would be very rich.

[sinsay]

I think Bobby Portis is a good as Wendell Carter.
KEEP HIM LONG TERM AS A CORE PLAYER.

[dougthonus]

Not arguing with you here at all but making a philosophical point.

Players go through good stretches and bad. Teams do too. They win games they shouldn't and look great at times.

When fans make future projections, they take the good periods and project them as being more common. ie. player X averaged 15ppg for March, he should be able to do it for the whole year next year.

Sometimes that is true, sometimes it isn't. If someone could figure out the pattern for which ones will successfully be more consistent and which won't, they would be very rich.

I agree with your point. I think there are obvious reasons why the Bulls played poorly when they were losing, most of that time they were attempting to lose and purposefully losing. The other big stretch they were disorganized and had an entirely new team of all very young players coming together at once with a bunch of guys missing time. So it's easy for me to explain away the losing.

The real question to me is whether or not their winning and good play was a mirage. Were they really better than they showed due to the obvious reasons they lost or was it a hot stretch led by an unbelievably hot Niko that isn't likely to repeat.

If it was a group of 26 year olds with 5 years of experience each then I wouldn't be very optimistic, so I am counting on development that I see as more likely than not along with guessing that a good chunk of the hot stretch wasn't just Niko and luck).

In the end, I agree though, you just can't tell in many circumstances. You could probably tell in the obvious ones like OKC was going to become really good in a few years after seeing Durant and Westbrook. However, it's harder to tell in this situation and also much riskier. You don't have a clear cut superstar to drive things which is always non-ideal.

I get why people want to stay really bad in order to obtain said player, but the odds of getting one even if you remain really bad are very poor. To the extent that you could be very poor for 20 years and not achieve a "can't miss" guy. I don't think the Bulls are title bound by any stretch. This core isn't the make up of a future champion (unless they strike lightning in this draft and Lauri does become the next Dirk), but it's good enough to roll with get back to the playoffs and then hope you can make something else happen once there.

[sco]

Not arguing with you here at all but making a philosophical point.

Players go through good stretches and bad. Teams do too. They win games they shouldn't and look great at times.

When fans make future projections, they take the good periods and project them as being more common. ie. player X averaged 15ppg for March, he should be able to do it for the whole year next year.

Sometimes that is true, sometimes it isn't. If someone could figure out the pattern for which ones will successfully be more consistent and which won't, they would be very rich.

I agree with your point. I think there are obvious reasons why the Bulls played poorly when they were losing, most of that time they were attempting to lose and purposefully losing. The other big stretch they were disorganized and had an entirely new team of all very young players coming together at once with a bunch of guys missing time. So it's easy for me to explain away the losing.

The real question to me is whether or not their winning and good play was a mirage. Were they really better than they showed due to the obvious reasons they lost or was it a hot stretch led by an unbelievably hot Niko that isn't likely to repeat.

If it was a group of 26 year olds with 5 years of experience each then I wouldn't be very optimistic, so I am counting on development that I see as more likely than not along with guessing that a good chunk of the hot stretch wasn't just Niko and luck).

In the end, I agree though, you just can't tell in many circumstances. You could probably tell in the obvious ones like OKC was going to become really good in a few years after seeing Durant and Westbrook. However, it's harder to tell in this situation and also much riskier. You don't have a clear cut superstar to drive things which is always non-ideal.

I get why people want to stay really bad in order to obtain said player, but the odds of getting one even if you remain really bad are very poor. To the extent that you could be very poor for 20 years and not achieve a "can't miss" guy. I don't think the Bulls are title bound by any stretch. This core isn't the make up of a future champion (unless they strike lightning in this draft and Lauri does become the next Dirk), but it's good enough to roll with get back to the playoffs and then hope you can make something else happen once there.

I think trying to extrapolate much from this year is hard.

Were we good when we were winning? I think that you had a few factors going on. First, teams were not getting up for us. To that end a number of those wins were against other tankers or good teams without their best players. Also, when you make a lot of 3's at a high %, you tend to win those games. We didn't do that a lot, but when they were falling, anyone is hard to beat.

[Taikuri]

I'd keep him as our starting PF and trade Lauri + our pick for Kawhi

So you were the guilty one. I was wondering who was responsible for that one vote .

I actually voted for "Stay the course"

I'll lay down my pitchfork then.

I'm a big Lauri fan but your idea isn't bad tbh.