Dresden wrote:MrSparkle wrote:Mech Engineer wrote:GarPax don't have Thibs to blame for injuries. These things happen. A good GM will build an injury proof team. However good Lauri is as a basketball player, he was not expected to be Michael Jordan or Lebron James this year. You need to plan for these injuries but they want to have that flexibility in cap space.
Dallas lost a similar player in Powell but the Mavs have a bunch of contingency plans. I don't want to blame anyone on injuries. They happen to every team. It is just that the Bulls are always caught with their pants down whenever a top 3-8 player in the rotation has an injury. Their season gets severely impacted by these type of injuries almost always except maybe during the Thibs era.
Thibs coaching those banged up teams was a curse. That boosted GarPax more than they deserved and they sold that crap to Reinsdorf.
Yep. This is a classic GarPax situation.
1. Promising prospect is drafted.
2. The young team sucks.
3. FO/Coaches: "Play harder! Tougher defense!"
4. Stress fractures, core/ankle/knee tweaks begin to happen.
5. Player goes down; trade value drops into the toilet.
6. GarPax use the injuries as an excuse for why the season was a disappointment and why they can't make trades.
I don't want to toot my horn, but I've been saying that you don't want Lauri "playing hard." Seriously. You don't. If you want him to be something he's not (Lebron), then like Deng, Kirk, Noah, they're gonna get hurt. Even worse, somehow the medical staff clears these guys with nagging injuries instead of doing what every championship/elite team has been doing with the load management.
Just be real with your player-talent evaluations. This team doesn't suck because Lauri is a crappy #2 option. He should've never been a #2 option, and there is clearly a problem with the rest of the team if one guy is that important to a team's success. The team sucks, and the coach sucks. When your coach can't win against any .500+ team EVER, regardless of how many injuries they have, that means that your squad is brutally bad.
Now all is this said...... I ACTUALLY THINK THAT THE STARTING LINE-UP CHEMISTRY IS GOING TO IMPROVE. Because Boylen is such a silly coach, it takes numerous injuries for things to come out the woodwork. I actually think that Thad Young will get in a better rhythm and play well alongside Zach.
I also think that this might bolster the FO's hand in trade negotiations, because goodness do they need help at the trade table. Be like, "Hey, we actually need Thad now, so I'm not taking Mo Harkless and a bag of singles." Sorry Jerry, I know you were looking forward to some cash considerations from your clowns.
At the same time, this better not make Paxson believe that "Thad is off the trade table." Because that is the idiotic kind of thing Paxson tends to fall into.
I don't think you can prove that #3 has lead to #4. All coaches urge their players to "Play hard" and "Play tough Defense". I don't think you'd want a coach that didn't. To say that that leads to injuries is just not true.
I disagree. Most the league is literally coasting on defense. You know how they do it? They get tall players at every position.
There's a reason why all the teams that are small at SG/SF and slow at PF are bad.
I can't find one example of a +.500 team that plays slow at PF or small at SG. Bench players (Lou) don't count.
As long as you have an average offense (16th or better), and you have good size (not Coby/Dunn at the wing) and competent speed (not Kornet or dare I say it Lauri) at every spot, you will make the playoffs, regardless of defensive effort.
If you have a slow PF and ask if him (and the rest of the undersized team) to overplay on the defensive end, and they're already average or barely-average offensive players to begin with, it doesn't matter if your defense is ranked in the top-10, you're going to lose games, exert/injure players, and suffer offensively.
You can play extremely tough defense or not, but the results are pretty much negligible. Teams space the floor in a way that tactics can't entirely stop anymore. The only antidote is more offense and size.
Which is why admittedly Thibodeau is out of a coaching job despite having a phenomenal coaching career, and why the much worse version of him Boylen is crap.