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Re: Please help me out here

Posted: Sun Aug 11, 2019 3:42 am
by BigRedDog
Agree with the premise of this thread that the over is a solid bet. Its nowhere near "free money" though given the bulls health concerns, coaching, and youth.

But getting rid of guys like jabari is worth a few wins... adding guys like sato, thad worth a few wins... and OPJ is worth a bunch of wins. He was the best player three years ago on a team that won 49 games...

Re: Please help me out here

Posted: Sun Aug 11, 2019 10:10 am
by TeamMan
I've been watching professional sports for a long time, and the thing that I've see everyone struggle with the most is chemistry.

There are a lot of "experts" around sports, but for many years I've seen them get it wrong.

In the modern day, the Super Teams have made it easy, so they don't really need to think a lot with the upper tier teams.

But for teams like the Bulls they just have to guess.

What I will say, is that when the handcuffs are taken off of Pax, he can be a great architect for high-chemistry teams. And believe me, the teams around the league have taken note of the job that he has been doing keeping the Bulls afloat with the ownership that he has.

It's my expectation that the Bulls will win 35-40 games this season because they will have great chemistry.

But as we all know, the key will be team health. In this area, the Bulls have had a terrible history, and we can only hope that this group of players will be better able to take care of themselves.

Still, many of the injuries have been of the "freak" nature, so we will just have to wait and see.

Re: Please help me out here

Posted: Sun Aug 11, 2019 2:28 pm
by sco
I do think that Vegas is factoring injury history into their totals and many of us are being optimistic when computing our wins.

I really don't know what the winning impact of replacing minutes from Blakeney, Dunn (at least last year's horrible version), Porter, et al with Sato, Thad, White and Kornet/Gafford. The obvious difference will be defensively, but also we're inserting better passing and BBIQ. Should translate into big benefits. Maybe more than folks think because, IMO, adding a 3rd big scorer into a rotation has diminishing returns because there are only so many shots to go around and when you have 3 20+ scorers, I think guys tend to look for their own shot a bit and efficiency drops.

Re: Please help me out here

Posted: Sun Aug 11, 2019 8:16 pm
by musiqsoulchild
TeamMan wrote:I've been watching professional sports for a long time, and the thing that I've see everyone struggle with the most is chemistry.

There are a lot of "experts" around sports, but for many years I've seen them get it wrong.

In the modern day, the Super Teams have made it easy, so they don't really need to think a lot with the upper tier teams.

But for teams like the Bulls they just have to guess.

What I will say, is that when the handcuffs are taken off of Pax, he can be a great architect for high-chemistry teams. And believe me, the teams around the league have taken note of the job that he has been doing keeping the Bulls afloat with the ownership that he has.

It's my expectation that the Bulls will win 35-40 games this season because they will have great chemistry.

But as we all know, the key will be team health. In this area, the Bulls have had a terrible history, and we can only hope that this group of players will be better able to take care of themselves.

Still, many of the injuries have been of the "freak" nature, so we will just have to wait and see.



Excellent points. Which is why, only players that fit into creating effective chemistry have been added in.

Otto
Thad
Sato
Kornet
Coby
Gifford
Arci

That's our offseason really - Otto trade was an extension of our offseason.

The players whose minutes are MOST being replaced are:
Jabari
Dunn
Blakeney

Chemistry should be very quick to establish with these types of changes.

Re: Please help me out here

Posted: Sun Aug 11, 2019 9:37 pm
by dougthonus
I've said on my podcast, starting this team out as a "22 win team" doesn't feel right to me. The win total last year was kind of irrelevant due to playing so many minutes with G-League players, if you look at the 28 win team and compare it to this roster, they look better than that squad.

I think there's actually very little separating the 3rd seed from the 10 seed in the East IMO. I think the Bulls are kind of at the bottom of that group on paper, but it wouldn't shock me if they ended up as high as #3 (it'd be unexpected, but not shocking).

I think there is a lot of anchoring on thought when people look at the league and they tend to view teams as starting where they left off despite each team in the league swapping out about half its players. Just compare the Bulls top 6 to Boston's top 6 (Boston being commonly viewed as the 3rd best team).

Kemba, Hayward, Tatum, Brown, Smart, Kanter
LaVine, Porter, Lauri, Young, Carter, Sato

I don't see any reason to think that their top six are notably better than our top six. One major injury to either side probably moves the needle more than the talent gap IMO. Of course, perhaps the Bulls greatest weakness might be the injury history of half of their guys in that top six.

Re: Please help me out here

Posted: Sun Aug 11, 2019 11:03 pm
by kulaz3000
Betta Bulleavit wrote:
johnnyvann840 wrote:
musiqsoulchild wrote:Transplant, take the bet. You'll win money on it. Bulls are gonna finish at 39 games won.

The Bulls play 16 games against their Division mates. That's Indiana, Milwaukee, Detroit and Cavs.

More importantly, we play Eastern Conference teams 52 times versus 30 games against the Western Conference.

I am not seeing what Vegas is seeing.


You should bet it. Are you going to pay the loss if he loses? Never encourage another person to gamble their money. Especially on this basketball team. If you like the bet so much, make it yourself.

We had a very similar thread last year at about this time and everybody was spouting off about how it was "free money". Vegas was giving a gift to everyone who bet the over on the Bulls at 27.5. Mark Shanowski even wrote an article telling everyone to go out and grab some of that free cash. You can make every excuse in the World for why they only won 22 games, but the fact is that they only won 22 games. So much can go wrong with this team this season and we are dealing with an unknown.

The handicappers see the Bulls go to guy in the clutch being one of the worst clutch performers in the entire NBA, if not the worst. They aren't stupid and they aren't giving money away, so play at your own risk. I wouldn't touch it although if I were forced to make a bet I would take the over at 30.5. If the line has moved as CF has said, I wouldn't touch it at 32.5.

Any chance to take free dig at Zach and you’re going to take it at every turn. At least you’re consistent if nothing else.....


If you want to debate the contents of JV's post, go ahead. But please don't reply if your only intent is to take a personal dig at another poster.

Re: Please help me out here

Posted: Sun Aug 11, 2019 11:47 pm
by Betta Bulleavit
kulaz3000 wrote:
Betta Bulleavit wrote:
johnnyvann840 wrote:
You should bet it. Are you going to pay the loss if he loses? Never encourage another person to gamble their money. Especially on this basketball team. If you like the bet so much, make it yourself.

We had a very similar thread last year at about this time and everybody was spouting off about how it was "free money". Vegas was giving a gift to everyone who bet the over on the Bulls at 27.5. Mark Shanowski even wrote an article telling everyone to go out and grab some of that free cash. You can make every excuse in the World for why they only won 22 games, but the fact is that they only won 22 games. So much can go wrong with this team this season and we are dealing with an unknown.

The handicappers see the Bulls go to guy in the clutch being one of the worst clutch performers in the entire NBA, if not the worst. They aren't stupid and they aren't giving money away, so play at your own risk. I wouldn't touch it although if I were forced to make a bet I would take the over at 30.5. If the line has moved as CF has said, I wouldn't touch it at 32.5.

Any chance to take free dig at Zach and you’re going to take it at every turn. At least you’re consistent if nothing else.....


If you want to debate the contents of JV's post, go ahead. But please don't reply if your only intent is to take a personal dig at another poster.

I have debated the content of his posts in the past. I got my wrist slapped for that too. I suppose the moral of the story here is that JV is a made poster that shouldn’t be touched period. So it’s whatever for me at this point.

Re: Please help me out here

Posted: Mon Aug 12, 2019 12:11 am
by kulaz3000
Betta Bulleavit wrote:
kulaz3000 wrote:
Betta Bulleavit wrote:Any chance to take free dig at Zach and you’re going to take it at every turn. At least you’re consistent if nothing else.....


If you want to debate the contents of JV's post, go ahead. But please don't reply if your only intent is to take a personal dig at another poster.

I have debated the content of his posts in the past. I got my wrist slapped for that too. I suppose the moral of the story here is that JV is a made poster that shouldn’t be touched period. So it’s whatever for me at this point.


No. You're wrong.

I'll PM you on this matter.

Re: Please help me out here

Posted: Mon Aug 12, 2019 1:29 am
by Ccwatercraft
Ctownbulls wrote:I haven't seen anyone talk about the loss of Lopez who was far and away the best center on the team. I know everyone loves Carter (as do I) but he wasn't that great last year and is returning from 2 injuries.

Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk


Lopez had an excellent 2nd half for sure.

He will he missed, but not the salary

Re: Please help me out here

Posted: Mon Aug 12, 2019 2:30 am
by nomorezorro
dougthonus wrote:I think there is a lot of anchoring on thought when people look at the league and they tend to view teams as starting where they left off despite each team in the league swapping out about half its players. Just compare the Bulls top 6 to Boston's top 6 (Boston being commonly viewed as the 3rd best team).

Kemba, Hayward, Tatum, Brown, Smart, Kanter
LaVine, Porter, Lauri, Young, Carter, Sato

I don't see any reason to think that their top six are notably better than our top six. One major injury to either side probably moves the needle more than the talent gap IMO. Of course, perhaps the Bulls greatest weakness might be the injury history of half of their guys in that top six.


beyond the injury stuff:

depth matters in the regular season. we have a decent "top six", assuming some level of progression from the still-developing players, but we fall off an absolute cliff after that from a talent perspective:

-bench big whose entire pedigree is putting up decent advanced stats playing 17 minutes per game for a dreadful knicks team
-rookie PG from a weak draft class
-injury-prone no-athleticism bench shooter who just missed a full year
-second-year wing who can't shoot and wasn't a particularly well regarded prospect
-kris dunn (???)

roster continuity matters in the regular season. there are two new players entering the rotation for boston, and kemba is basically going to carry the same offensive load kyrie did last season. their defense might be a real problem without horfort but having a lot of the same rotation players will help smooth things over. the bulls have two brand new players, one dude who played 15 games with us and three guys who missed a lot of time with injury.

coaching matters in the regular season. brad stevens might be kinda overrated but he's still highly regarded for a reason. jim boylen is a dingus with no track record of success as an nba head coach.

Re: Please help me out here

Posted: Mon Aug 12, 2019 2:49 am
by nomorezorro
i dunno why i'm arguing so hard to lower expectations for the team...i'm relatively optimistic about our prospects this season. i just think it's worthwhile to be clear-eyed about the challenges that could crop up

basically: i think we have a very real downside of being a ~28-31 win team, but we're more likely to be in the mid-30s. we have decently high upside to the point that a 40+ win season isn't absurd and even a ~45 win season is in play if things click (without needing like, a legit superstar breakout from somebody)

Re: Please help me out here

Posted: Mon Aug 12, 2019 3:00 am
by dougthonus
nomorezorro wrote:beyond the injury stuff:

depth matters in the regular season. we have a decent "top six", assuming some level of progression from the still-developing players, but we fall off an absolute cliff after that from a talent perspective:

-bench big whose entire pedigree is putting up decent advanced stats playing 17 minutes per game for a dreadful knicks team
-rookie PG from a weak draft class
-injury-prone no-athleticism bench shooter who just missed a full year
-second-year wing who can't shoot and wasn't a particularly well regarded prospect
-kris dunn (???)

roster continuity matters in the regular season. there are two new players entering the rotation for boston, and kemba is basically going to carry the same offensive load kyrie did last season. their defense might be a real problem without horfort but having a lot of the same rotation players will help smooth things over. the bulls have two brand new players, one dude who played 15 games with us and three guys who missed a lot of time with injury.

coaching matters in the regular season. brad stevens might be kinda overrated but he's still highly regarded for a reason. jim boylen is a dingus with no track record of success as an nba head coach.


Who are the guys after the top 6 on Boston?

Don't think there's anyone more noteworthy than the Bulls next round of guys either but go take a look for yourself.

Re: Please help me out here

Posted: Mon Aug 12, 2019 3:04 am
by dougthonus
nomorezorro wrote:i dunno why i'm arguing so hard to lower expectations for the team...i'm relatively optimistic about our prospects this season. i just think it's worthwhile to be clear-eyed about the challenges that could crop up

basically: i think we have a very real downside of being a ~28-31 win team, but we're more likely to be in the mid-30s. we have decently high upside to the point that a 40+ win season isn't absurd and even a ~45 win season is in play if things click (without needing like, a legit superstar breakout from somebody)


I absolutely agree that can happen. I just see no reason it can't also happen to Boston, Brooklyn, Miami, Detroit, Indiana, Toronto, Orlando, etc... Those teams have absolutely nothing special going on when you go up and down their rosters. They're all full of risks.

I wouldn't pick the Bulls to finish 1st among this group, but I don't think there is a team in that group that is head and shoulders above the other teams really with the Bulls in that mix as well. All of them are teams I would put in a 35-45 win type mix though probably at least one or two will beat it and at least one or two will fail to hit 35.

Re: Please help me out here

Posted: Mon Aug 12, 2019 3:06 am
by RedBulls23
dougthonus wrote:
nomorezorro wrote:beyond the injury stuff:

depth matters in the regular season. we have a decent "top six", assuming some level of progression from the still-developing players, but we fall off an absolute cliff after that from a talent perspective:

-bench big whose entire pedigree is putting up decent advanced stats playing 17 minutes per game for a dreadful knicks team
-rookie PG from a weak draft class
-injury-prone no-athleticism bench shooter who just missed a full year
-second-year wing who can't shoot and wasn't a particularly well regarded prospect
-kris dunn (???)

roster continuity matters in the regular season. there are two new players entering the rotation for boston, and kemba is basically going to carry the same offensive load kyrie did last season. their defense might be a real problem without horfort but having a lot of the same rotation players will help smooth things over. the bulls have two brand new players, one dude who played 15 games with us and three guys who missed a lot of time with injury.

coaching matters in the regular season. brad stevens might be kinda overrated but he's still highly regarded for a reason. jim boylen is a dingus with no track record of success as an nba head coach.


Who are the guys after the top 6 on Boston?

Don't think there's anyone more noteworthy than the Bulls next round of guys either but go take a look for yourself.


Boston losing Horford is a big game changer for them and their overall depth.

Outside of that, I trust more of the Celtics top 6 to stay healthy over the Bulls top 6

Re: Please help me out here

Posted: Mon Aug 12, 2019 3:17 am
by nomorezorro
i do agree the celtics are overrated but having a legit all-star helps

i really like indy. toronto should be a solid regular season team based on how they performed without kawhi last year. brooklyn is at risk of some regression after overachieving last year but again, having a legit all-star helps. miami has butler, detroit has griffin.

i would break down the tiers of the eastern conference like this:

tier 1: milwaukee, philly
tier 1.5: indiana
tier 2: toronto, boston, brooklyn
tier 3: miami, detroit
tier 4: orlando, chicago
tier 4.5: atlanta (??? i think they're probably too young to make any real noise next season but i guess things could plausibly break right for them)

i think once you get past the top 2, the conference is softer than it was last season among playoff teams, which could inflate the bulls win total some. but i also think the bottom is stronger than it was last year. that could balance things out? i dunno.

Re: Please help me out here

Posted: Mon Aug 12, 2019 3:24 am
by nomorezorro
sidenote: i'm really struggling to figure out how the magic are kind of okay. i look at their roster and assume they must have drastically overachieved last year but they were pretty much in line with their point differential?

i guess vucevic was really really good. still kind of expect them to come back down to earth this season but maybe that's just personal bias

Re: Please help me out here

Posted: Mon Aug 12, 2019 3:49 am
by TheSuzerain
nomorezorro wrote:sidenote: i'm really struggling to figure out how the magic are kind of okay. i look at their roster and assume they must have drastically overachieved last year but they were pretty much in line with their point differential?

i guess vucevic was really really good. still kind of expect them to come back down to earth this season but maybe that's just personal bias

They had a top 10 defense last year. They have an identity.

Re: Please help me out here

Posted: Mon Aug 12, 2019 3:59 am
by johnnyvann840
nomorezorro wrote:i dunno why i'm arguing so hard to lower expectations for the team...i'm relatively optimistic about our prospects this season. i just think it's worthwhile to be clear-eyed about the challenges that could crop up

basically: i think we have a very real downside of being a ~28-31 win team, but we're more likely to be in the mid-30s. we have decently high upside to the point that a 40+ win season isn't absurd and even a ~45 win season is in play if things click (without needing like, a legit superstar breakout from somebody)
Well said. Pretty much my thoughts exactly.

Re: Please help me out here

Posted: Mon Aug 12, 2019 4:10 am
by musiqsoulchild
nomorezorro wrote:
dougthonus wrote:I think there is a lot of anchoring on thought when people look at the league and they tend to view teams as starting where they left off despite each team in the league swapping out about half its players. Just compare the Bulls top 6 to Boston's top 6 (Boston being commonly viewed as the 3rd best team).

Kemba, Hayward, Tatum, Brown, Smart, Kanter
LaVine, Porter, Lauri, Young, Carter, Sato

I don't see any reason to think that their top six are notably better than our top six. One major injury to either side probably moves the needle more than the talent gap IMO. Of course, perhaps the Bulls greatest weakness might be the injury history of half of their guys in that top six.


beyond the injury stuff:

depth matters in the regular season. we have a decent "top six", assuming some level of progression from the still-developing players, but we fall off an absolute cliff after that from a talent perspective:

-bench big whose entire pedigree is putting up decent advanced stats playing 17 minutes per game for a dreadful knicks team
-rookie PG from a weak draft class
-injury-prone no-athleticism bench shooter who just missed a full year
-second-year wing who can't shoot and wasn't a particularly well regarded prospect
-kris dunn (???)


After the Top 6, the following players are what give us a nice edge in terms of bench depth vs. Last seasons version of the Bulls:

Guard backup depth:
Arci
Dunn
Shaq

This means we dont have to count on Coby as a rookie. Nor on Blakeney.

Wing backup depth:
This is where we are light. However, Thad can play SF as well so I expect a lot of Otto +Thad at SF. That means less reliance on Hutch and no need to worry about Valentines injury status.

Big man depth:
Wendell recovered from injury. Thad and Otto both play backup PF minutes well. And Kornet is good for 14 MPG at Center. This means less Felicio. And less grinding down offense by the likes of Robin Lopez and more valuable shooting.

Re: Please help me out here

Posted: Mon Aug 12, 2019 4:27 am
by kingkirk
dougthonus wrote:I've said on my podcast, starting this team out as a "22 win team" doesn't feel right to me. The win total last year was kind of irrelevant due to playing so many minutes with G-League players, if you look at the 28 win team and compare it to this roster, they look better than that squad.

I think there's actually very little separating the 3rd seed from the 10 seed in the East IMO. I think the Bulls are kind of at the bottom of that group on paper, but it wouldn't shock me if they ended up as high as #3 (it'd be unexpected, but not shocking).

I think there is a lot of anchoring on thought when people look at the league and they tend to view teams as starting where they left off despite each team in the league swapping out about half its players. Just compare the Bulls top 6 to Boston's top 6 (Boston being commonly viewed as the 3rd best team).

Kemba, Hayward, Tatum, Brown, Smart, Kanter
LaVine, Porter, Lauri, Young, Carter, Sato

I don't see any reason to think that their top six are notably better than our top six. One major injury to either side probably moves the needle more than the talent gap IMO. Of course, perhaps the Bulls greatest weakness might be the injury history of half of their guys in that top six.


When you couldn't believe I gave GarPax a 2.5/5 for their trading on the podcast we did the other week, that reaction you had to me was what I just had in reading this.

I would be floored if the Bulls finished 3rd. That would shock me.

We also can't measure things by comparing the talents of teams and their top players. If it were that simple, the Celtics and Pacers wouldn't have near identical records last season.