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It's sad, but Boylan's Thabo experiement will be over after tonight. He still sees Chris Duhon, a chance to make the playoffs, and the opportunity to become a head coach after this season. Why Paxson would hand the keys to a coach who is trying to further his own agenda and enhance his resume, I don't know. But Duhon will be back and Boylan will continue to play not to lose.There is no plan here, folks. We are officially adrift after tonite.

I think its a bit f-ed up we all were chirping how Du's injury would help Thabo's development. Actually I think it was Deng's injury that helped propped him off the bench, not Duhon. I think if there was anyone we should be hoping to get hurt and be deactivated, it should be Ben Wallace. That guy is a disease, a trojan virus beyond any imagination. His apathetic play tonight is just not good for a young team.

NLK wrote:I think its a bit f-ed up we all were chirping how Du's injury would help Thabo's development. Actually I think it was Deng's injury that helped propped him off the bench, not Duhon. I think if there was anyone we should be hoping to get hurt and be deactivated, it should be Ben Wallace. That guy is a disease, a trojan virus beyond any imagination. His apathetic play tonight is just not good for a young team.

It was Kirk's injury that made Thabo a starter, but we felt Duhon's injury and Thabo's greater potential would help him keep a starting job.

To me Sefolosha is just a bigger Duhon . His offense is way below Par

Duhon didn't win anything.

The problem with the Bulls is that if you are willing to evaluate players and give them a pass for shooting badly, or even just flat out not shooting and not producing much offense (like Thabo tonight), then you can convince yourself that any number of players (Noah, Tyrus, Thabo, Duhon, even Wallace) are actually decent and potentially useful players.

And it might even be true, if they could be put into systems where they were surrounded with offensive talent. But when you take them together, and start sticking two or three or four all in the lineup at the same time, it turns into a disaster of shot clock violations, horrible shots, and turnovers.

That is one reason I often think people bleat on pointlessly about Gordon having a turnover or letting someone go by him. This team needs scoring ability many times over compared with needing more defense and hustle. Which the team has a massive redundancy in, but defense and hustle do not amount to putting the ball in the hoop often enough to get the job done.

That is why Gordon could get 3 turnovers in a row, and if you yank him you still are rarely better off, because Duhon and Kirk are often just going to dribble around endlessly and produce a very bad attempt for themselves or for a offensively challenged big, and these things amount to almost the same thing as a turnover.

Deng does not get off without blame either. Because for being the team's no.2 scorer, its a shame that he can't carry that mantle when he is alone on the floor with these hustle players. He never looks to step and take 2 or 3 possessions in a row where he tries to score (like you might imagine Pau could). He doesn't set up others, or even seem to realize that no one else is out there that is going to get good shots for the team.

So to me it really doesn't matter when one of these guys misses a game and the team look bad (like Duhon tonight, or Kirk a few games ago). Nor does it matter if a guy doesn't get minutes (say Noah or Tyrus), because that does not either give prove that we were 'missing' those guys. Regardless of all these things, the problem remains the same with this team (lack of creative scorers) no matter how you shuffle the deck chairs around.

Rerisen wrote:So to me it really doesn't matter when one of these guys misses a game or doesn't get minutes (say Noah or Tyrus) because the problem remains the same with this team no matter how you shuffle the deck chairs round.

I disagree. First of all, scoring isn't the sole problem. Our precipitous drop from 1st to 15th in defensive efficiency seems to be about as large culprit for this miserable season as our poor offense right now. Also, the minutes Tyrus and Noah play largely trade off with Wallace's minutes and either of those two make us a much better team on offense than we are with Wallace in the game.

theawakening wrote:-= original quote snipped =-



It was Kirk's injury that made Thabo a starter, but we felt Duhon's injury and Thabo's greater potential would help him keep a starting job.

sorry, that is true! my bad. either way, we should be hoping for big ben to get hurt, not our party animal duhon.

JeremyB0001 wrote:I disagree. First of all, scoring isn't the sole problem. Our precipitous drop from 1st to 15th in defensive efficiency seems to be about as large culprit for this miserable season as our poor offense right now. Also, the minutes Tyrus and Noah play largely trade off with Wallace's minutes and either of those two make us a much better team on offense than we are with Wallace in the game.

I should not have said that it didn't matter (at all) because I would agree in wanting to see Noah and Tyrus get more minutes over Wallace (they are better at him at scoring).

But I do believe it doesn't matter much to the extent this current roster can be anything more than average or slightly above it.

I agree the defense has been a major problem as well. But even still, to roughly quote Barkley, your not going to get very far trying to hold every team under 90 points every night. Even if our defense were fixed, I don' t think your going anywhere long term with a frontline of Wallace, Noah and Tyrus. And I say that liking both Tyrus AND Noah. But I think we are going to have to pick which one we think has the most or better intangibles outside of the offensive end and then think about packaging the other to get someone more complimentary. Either Tyrus OR Noah, I think would look many times better and fill a certain specific role on the team next to someone like Pau Gasol.

Right now forcing these players to try to score is hurting both them and the team. Because you get something like Tyrus trying to shoot 20 footers or barrel in with a wild drive simply because the offense has nothing else going on. Then he gets 1 or 2 bad possessions like that and the coach thinks he needs to come out. It's not really his fault. And he could even be a much bigger legit threat if he (or Noah) was out there on the floor with another big that was a scoring threat. Because it would force that other defender (now Wallace's man) to actually cover someone and it would get the defense turning their head when the other guy had the ball, thus opening up lanes to slash, rebounding position, lob attempts, and other opportunities for a guy like Tyrus to score indirectly, instead of having to try and score like a number 1 option with everyone focused on stopping them.

mr.ankle wrote:To me Sefolosha is just a bigger Duhon . His offense is way below Par

That seems to be the truth.....

The hope is that because Thabo is bigger and attempts to drive to the basket that he will soon become a better offensive threat than Duhon. If Thabo continues to get consistent PT and plays aggressively rather than passively, he will at least get an opportunity to show he can be the better offensive threat of the two. He already shows definite promise of being the better defender.

Rerisen wrote:But I do believe it doesn't matter much to the extent this current roster can be anything more than average or slightly above it.

I agree the defense has been a major problem as well. But even still, to roughly quote Barkley, your not going to get very far trying to hold every team under 90 points every night.

This is pretty exactly what we did last season I think we were more than slightly above average. We had the 8th best record in the NBA and finished something like 6th in the Hollinger Rankings (and other similar ratings) IIRC. We were in the bottom third of the league in offense but because we were the best defensive outfit in the league we were a scary team. This season's team looked capable of improving both offensively and defensively. Somehow, we've regressed in both areas. I don't have good explanations why and certainly at some point you have to reevaluate your roster, but I'm not ready to jump to conclusions that would've made no sense just a few months ago.

Rerisen wrote:I think we are going to have to pick which one we think has the most or better intangibles outside of the offensive end and then think about packaging the other to get someone more complimentary. Either Tyrus OR Noah, I think would look many times better and fill a certain specific role on the team next to someone like Pau Gasol.

Pairing one of them with someone like Gasol is obviously ideal but I don't think we need to do it at all costs. I think most everyone would deal something like Tyrus or Noah, Noc, and Thabo for Gasol but I don't think that gets a deal done. I don't think I'd trade Lu and Noah or Tyrus because we'd be sacrificing too much of our future to turn into what might only be a .500 team considering how poorly we're playing right now.

Rerisen wrote:Right now forcing these players to try to score is hurting both them and the team. Because you get something like Tyrus trying to shoot 20 footers or barrel in with a wild drive simply because the offense has nothing else going on. Then he gets 1 or 2 bad possessions like that and the coach thinks he needs to come out. It's not really his fault.

I must think much more highly of Tyrus and Noah's offensive potential than you do if you think it's a bad thing to "force" them to attempt to score. That sounds like boxing them into the run the floor hard, rebound, set picks, score on put backs and in transition role Skiles advocated. I think both players are capable of doing plenty more on offense then that. Therefore, I don't have a problem with them trying to score within our half court offense. As far as the coach pulling young players due to a couple ugly shots, that type of impatience is the coach's fault and needs to be addressed as such.

Rerisen wrote:And he could even be a much bigger legit threat if he (or Noah) was out there on the floor with another big that was a scoring threat. Because it would force that other defender (now Wallace's man) to actually cover someone and it would get the defense turning their head when the other guy had the ball, thus opening up lanes to slash, rebounding position, lob attempts, and other opportunities for a guy like Tyrus to score indirectly, instead of having to try and score like a number 1 option with everyone focused on stopping them.

I think we've already seen this happen some. The problem here is Wallace, not Noah and Tyrus. If Wallace's man leaves him and the other front court player dishes to him, whether or not he'll convert is a toss up. I've noticed Tyrus being doubled a lot lately when he gets the ball near the basket so the potentially is definitely there for him to hit someone for an open shot as he learns to identify and pass out of double teams better. Tyrus and Gray have been particularly good at finding each other for easy baskets. However, Noah hit Tyrus under the basket tonight and I've also seen Tyrus find Noah under the basket before. Those guys force defenses to pay attention to them near the basket and they're good passers so there's a lot of potential for good interior passing. Acquiring a player like Gasol would give his front court mate even more easy baskets but I don't think it's necessary to find a fair amount of easy baskets for our bigs. The problem can largely be solved by ridding ourselves of Wallace.

Sef. is not a bigger Duhon....that is a joke unless you're only comparing how they shoot.

Which neither is good at.

Offensively however, I will argue that one of our most productive players is Duhon.

He is far and away the best system player on the team. He is always where he should be, and he rarely makes mistakes. His defense on points is good, not great, but he needs to guard points which makes him very tough to play next to gordon unless we want a match up issue....but then the other team has a match up issue too, but only when we push the ball.

For the offense and defense the Bulls run Duhon is invaluable, and the most important part of the bulls success over the past few years, and the reason why he always ends up back in the starting line up.

He will stay there until him shoots himself out of the postion.

JeremyB0001 wrote:This is pretty exactly what we did last season I think we were more than slightly above average.

We were a 2nd round playoff team, with by some measurements, the best defense in the league! The fact that Gordon and especially Deng have not improved this year has pretty much shown us that last year's team was a best-case scenario. And only then if the team manages to remain in the top 1 or 2 defenses in the league. That is unlikely with Ben Wallace aging, and the team continually be outsized.

I think people drew the wrong conclusions from the Detroit series. They thought we played well enough because we wound up winning 2 games. But this season and last have both shown that we simply match up quite well against Detroit and probably would have not done nearly so well against other potential playoff caliber teams (say Utah or Dallas) who themselves did not even make the Finals, and neither did Detroit. We really were not that close to contender at all IMO.

People have to be honest and somehow reconcile this season with last season. My way of thinking is that the team is not as bad as they are showing right now, but quite likely were not as good as they showed last year. And I throw win loss predictions based on point differential out the window because the East is frankly terrible. Go back and look at the strech of absolute cake teams we had coming back from the West Coast trip last year. Beyond that we have no reliable scheme for winning close games and that is likely always going to keep the team from matching their expected wins.

I must think much more highly of Tyrus and Noah's offensive potential than you do if you think it's a bad thing to "force" them to attempt to score.

Whenever they are in lineups together or in addition to guys like Thabo, Wallace, Duhon, etc, then yes I think they are always going to look bad trying to score. Because they are not doing because they actually have anything available or even a favorable matchup, they simply take shots because they end up with the ball with nothing going on, or the shot clock winding down. They end up with makeshift attempts out of nothing. Not from actual ball movement, or by having clear space to the basket. And until we get another creator on this team its going to remain like that.

Tyrus is not a good 1v1 player right now, and neither is Noah. They need to get things out of the offense. Right now they can't because this offense rarely creates anything beside open jumpers.

The problem here is Wallace, not Noah and Tyrus.

Wallace certainly is the *largest* problem, but merely benching him doesn't make our lack of threat problem go away by any means.

We saw tonight Noah and Tyrus get a good stretch of time together without Wallace to start the 2nd. They played for half the quarter and managed to outscore Memphis 11-9 before Noah left. But that is not exactly world beating against a pretty awful team.

The problem is neither of those guys really have any moves. If one of them played with Gray even it would be a lot better. You can't give Noah OR Tyrus the ball right now and get a double team or even much reaction out of the defense. If either could develop a hook shot, drop step, or anything, the Noah/Tyrus combo might become passable.

Another problem we have related to our big man crunch of minutes is Noc. As our 3rd leading scorer, his points our absolutely vital for the team to compete. And yet for him to get enough minutes when Deng is fully healthy, requires him to play minutes at the power forward. I do not think this is a good long term solution. Because I just don't like the size of the team when Noc is playing PF.

But if Noah and Tyrus begin to get granted those Wallace minutes and even then some of Noc's, they are going to have to begin to score at a rate similar to Noc if they are taking his minutes. If he were to be squeezed into only backup SF minutes, the team would struggle even more to maintain their PPG.

Rerisen wrote:We were a 2nd round playoff team, with by some measurements, the best defense in the league! The fact that Gordon and especially Deng have not improved this year has pretty much shown us that last year's team was a best-case scenario.

Most Bulls fans (perhaps you included) would've laughed in the face of anyone who said that, as one of the youngest teams in the league, we peaked last season. Deng is 22. I don't think you can say that because he hasn't improved as we'd hoped this season he can't in the future. As for BG, I for one didn't expect a ton of improvement since he was already 24 entering the season. His regressing causes some concern since last year was his best season by a considerable margin but he's played better as of late.

The bottom line is that as bad as we've been this season, I don't think you can say yet that we have strong evidence that we peaked as a very young team last season.

And only then if the team manages to remain in the top 1 or 2 defenses in the league. That is unlikely with Ben Wallace aging, and the team continually be outsized.

Wallace was a solid contributor last season but I don't think he's irreplaceable. Noah has already shown he can play the Ben Wallace role quite well this season. We have more size now than we've had in the past so I'm not sure what you mean that we'll continue to be undersized. If you're referring to the back court, our size there has always annoyed me some but it seems difficult to argue that after three seasons of great team defense, it's suddenly become a huge problem.

I think people drew the wrong conclusions from the Detroit series. They thought we played well enough because we wound up winning 2 games.

I don't put much stock into that series one way or another. All of the bench marks I noted that show we were a substantially above average team last season are from the regular season, not the playoffs.

People have to be honest and somehow reconcile this season with last season. My way of thinking is that the team is not as bad as they are showing right now, but quite likely were not as good as they showed last year. And I throw win loss predictions based on point differential out the window because the East is frankly terrible. Go back and look at the strech of absolute cake teams we had coming back from the West Coast trip last year. Beyond that we have no reliable scheme for winning close games and that is likely always going to keep the team from matching their expected wins.

I don't know how to reconcile this season with anything. It's still pretty inexplicable to me.

If we're talking about defense, you have to reconcile this season not only with last season but the past three seasons, because we excelled defensively in each of those three seasons with many of the same players and the same system we have now.

I don't think you can throw point differential out the window because one conference is stronger than the other. Measurements like Hollinger's Rankings already have a strength of schedule component built in to account for that. I always think conference strength is overrated some two since every team plays a third of their games against the other conference.

Whenever they are in lineups together or in addition to guys like Thabo, Wallace, Duhon, etc, then yes I think they are always going to look bad trying to score. Because they are not doing because they actually have anything available or even a favorable matchup, they simply take shots because they end up with the ball with nothing going on, or the shot clock winding down. They end up with makeshift attempts out of nothing. Not from actual ball movement, or by having clear space to the basket. And until we get another creator on this team its going to remain like that.

Sure, I don't want to see either jacking up bad shots because they're playing in an offensively inept lineup and have no other choice.

Tyrus is not a good 1v1 player right now, and neither is Noah. They need to get things out of the offense. Right now they can't because this offense rarely creates anything beside open jumpers.

Well yeah, I think we need an offense that creates more opportunities for them. I don't have a problem with Tyrus occasionally trying to take his man off the dribble or Noah trying to score off the block though. They can score in those situations sometimes and I don't want to pigeonhole them too much this early in their careers.

Wallace certainly is the *largest* problem, but merely benching him doesn't make our lack of threat problem go away by any means.

It's an issue of degrees I get. Our big men don't get many easy looks under the basket with Noah in the game. IMO they get a fair amount with him out of the game. If you're saying they problem is that they don't get a lot of them then I guess you think we need to add someone like Gasol.

We saw tonight Noah and Tyrus get a good stretch of time together without Wallace to start the 2nd. They played for half the quarter and managed to outscore Memphis 11-9 before Noah left. But that is not exactly world beating against a pretty awful team.

I don't believe that you can draw conclusions relying on statistics from such an incredibly small sample size. Give those two 1,000 minutes playing together instead of 7 and then we can start drawing conclusions based on stats. With such small sample sizes you have to rely on scouting assessments instead and I saw stifling defense and at least one occasion where they created offense for each other (Noah drawing a double team and passing to Tyrus open under the basket) tonight.

The problem is neither of those guys really have any moves. If one of them played with Gray even it would be a lot better. You can't give Noah OR Tyrus the ball right now and get a double team or even much reaction out of the defense. If either could develop a hook shot, drop step, or anything, the Noah/Tyrus combo might become passable.

Sure, neither has a great go to move near the basket right now but that doesn't mean teams don't double team them. Isn't that what happened when Noah found Tyrus open under the basket tonight? As I noted in my last post, I've seen Tyrus drawing double teams when he gets the ball near the basket lately. Last game when he was blocked trying to take the ball up in the paint it was a double team. Tonight, I can remember a play where Noc passed the ball to him about 10 feet out near the baseline and Noc's man can down to double him so he passed back out to Noc at the arc (whose man got back to him too quickly for him to get a shot off). Unless your name is Ben Wallace, defenders fear you if you have the ball within ten feet of the basket and will give help until you show you don't warrant it. Both Noah and Tyrus are perfectly capable of scoring near the basket so I think they'll continue to draw attention there.

^^

I don't want to go on too long about hypotheticals. I only brought up tonights Noah/Tyrus tag team, because it is so rare we get to see it. And you kind were hinting that they would be on a much different level offensively if we could just get rid of Wallace. Where I think we would be better, but still lacking.

If we could/can get Pau before the trading deadline, I would certainly go for it, even if it took Deng (+ something like Joe and Duhon, which in itself would be good for Noah and TT).

But short of doing anything drastic like that, I would just be happy to see Noah start over Wallace or at least Big Ben's minutes greatly reduced so that we really could get a honest evaluation (beyond 6 minutes) of what these guys can or cannot do. If they can develop moves, if they can score in opportunistic ways which might not be readily apparent until they get bigger minutes, etc.

I think everyone is for simply seeing them play right now. We have at least a half a season to have the chance to see if they could be the bigs of the future of if its going to look like the team will need more punch down in the post. If this organization was smart, they would get started on finding out. There is some small evidence of late, a change in that direction is starting to happen. I hope it continues.

Rerisen wrote:I don't want to go on too long about hypotheticals. I only brought up tonights Noah/Tyrus tag team, because it is so rare we get to see it. And you kind were hinting that they would be on a much different level offensively if we could just get rid of Wallace. Where I think we would be better, but still lacking.

Yeah, I mean the issue is "What is enough?" We'd get a lot more scoring out of the front court if we jettisoned Wallace (5.7 points per 40 on a 37.4 TS%) and gave his minutes to Noah (13.2 per 40 on a 51.3 TS%) and Tyrus (13.7 points per 40 on a 44.3 TS%). Obviously, our front court offense would improve a great deal more if we added Gasol but you're going to lose some offense in a Gasol trade, so who knows what the net gain will be.

Rerisen wrote:If we could/can get Pau before the trading deadline, I would certainly go for it, even if it took Deng (+ something like Joe and Duhon, which in itself would be good for Noah and TT).

That's a tough one. We lose some of our youth, I'm not terribly comfortable with Noc/Thabo as our long term answer at SF, and I think Deng has a number of All-Star appearances in his future but I might do it if we had a plan to ditch Wallace (even if it's just cutting him or taking on a bad deal). As I noted above, the net gain in offense isn't whatever Pau brings because you're likely losing a good deal of scoring at the SF position. Also, luxury tax ramifications might get in the way of this deal.

I think everyone is for simply seeing them play right now. We have at least a half a season to have the chance to see if they could be the bigs of the future of if its going to look like the team will need more punch down in the post. If this organization was smart, they would get started on finding out. There is some small evidence of late, a change in that direction is starting to happen. I hope it continues.

Amen to that. I don't know how Pax can make any decent moves without first being able to evaluate the talent we currently have on the roster.