Is this year just a fluke?

[DASMACKDOWN]

I think of all the stories this year in the NBA, the Bulls easily are the most puzzling. No one can basically explain what is going on. People try and give it a spin of trade rumours, contracts, coaches etc. Its Rubbish.

In reality, no one can give a definitive answer. This year we arent losing just because we dont have a superstar or a low post pressence. We are losing because we are bad in every single facet of the game. A superstar wont save whats going on with us this year. Just like DWade cant save Miami's season.

Ive done a check on all the previous 3 playoff teams and this was their team avgs.

Last year

FG% .457 3pt% .388 ppg 98.8

opponent
fg% 43.5% 3pt 34.9% ppg 93.8

2005

fg% 446 3pt% .379 ppg 97.8

opp
fg% .426 3pt% .351 ppg 97.2

2004

fg% .432 3pt% .357 ppg 94.5
opp
fg% .422 3pt% .334 ppg 93.4


Bulls This season

FG% .423% 3pt%.344 95ppg

opp
FG% .45% 3pt 38.5% 98ppg

The 38.5% is probably the most frightening stat. Put it this way. PHX shoots a 3pt% 38.5% and thats 4th best in the league. Normally 38-40% 3pt shooting would put you tops in the league every years. We are giving that to every team we face. Thats downright terrible.

No one man can just fix this. This year isnt as simple as, get Gasol, add water and title contention. Its not just scoring, we cant defend either. This is why people are scratching their heads over this team. I actually think this is more a fluke than anything else. The mgmt is lost. The coaches are lost. The players are lost. No one knows the answers thats why everyone is frustrated.

And right now this team isnt going to make the playoffs unless we get a rejuvenation from someone or something. But as it currently stands, we will just stick to the 2 to 3 games back all season long. A major sign of this is nearly every team in the playoffs every year, score more than they giveup. If you have situations where its extremely close, its nearly guaranteed that team just barely made the playoffs or misses ie Golden State last season. In our situation its not close so I dont feel we will slip in.

If I can give an explaination, this year would be the 05/06 Tyson Chandler. An situation where the player that had a very strong season followed it by having an unexplainable poor season. Hopefully like Chandler, we can bounce back next year with a new focus and new attitude.

Paxson however has to put the pieces in place to allow his team to bounce back. Namely a new coaching staff and a whole new philosophy.

[Ben]

Best-case scenario:

Yes, it's a fluke, and guys get it together next year. In the meantime, we play badly enough this year to get a pretty good lottery pick and nab a good, young player who'll help to take us to the next level (or whose rights we can trade, a la Boston, to facilitate the acquisition of an excellent vet).

Worst-case scenario:
Back to the friggin' drawing board, and all of the management gets fired.

[DASMACKDOWN]

Worst-case scenario:
Back to the friggin' drawing board, and all of the management gets fired.

Bring back Krause! j/p

[Tommy Udo 6]

I really dont think the players are as good as we & the media thought that they were

We need to recognize that they are decent role players.

What bothers me is how the Bulls player seem to decline drastically after signing an extension or new contract - Chandler (did better after the trade a year later), Ben Wallace, Kirk, Nocioni.

Ben Gordon & Deng deteriorated after refusing extensions. How low will they fall after actually signing them?

[coldfish]

I know no one wants to read stuff like this:

To a large degree, it looks like teams have the Bulls figured out. On offense, they are sitting on the plays. Every team defends the Bulls the same and its usually effective.

On defense, virtually everyone is running the same play. The PG drives to his strong hand, waits for the help defense, then passes to an open shooter for a wide open three.

The one area that really is on the team is the help defense. The weakside interior help is non existent and the strong side perimeter help is stupid. Regardless of who is at fault, it is killing the team.

I think it has got in the player's heads. It sure seems that when things turn bad, the players get this "here we go again" attitude and hang their heads. So many people want to talk about energy and effort, where I really don't see the huge fall off that some others do. If anything, other teams are using the bulls' energy against them.

Something has to change. As einstein said, "it is the definition of insanity to keep doing the same thing and expect different results." Right now, the Bulls winning looks like it is nothing more than a statistical fluke. If the Bulls shots are falling and the other guys are not, we win. Otherwise, we lose. The team isn't dictating anything on the court.

[Cliff Levingston]

I know no one wants to read stuff like this:

To a large degree, it looks like teams have the Bulls figured out. On offense, they are sitting on the plays. Every team defends the Bulls the same and its usually effective.

On defense, virtually everyone is running the same play. The PG drives to his strong hand, waits for the help defense, then passes to an open shooter for a wide open three.

The one area that really is on the team is the help defense. The weakside interior help is non existent and the strong side perimeter help is stupid. Regardless of who is at fault, it is killing the team.

I think it has got in the player's heads. It sure seems that when things turn bad, the players get this "here we go again" attitude and hang their heads. So many people want to talk about energy and effort, where I really don't see the huge fall off that some others do. If anything, other teams are using the bulls' energy against them.

Something has to change. As einstein said, "it is the definition of insanity to keep doing the same thing and expect different results." Right now, the Bulls winning looks like it is nothing more than a statistical fluke. If the Bulls shots are falling and the other guys are not, we win. Otherwise, we lose. The team isn't dictating anything on the court.

Cliff Levingston agrees totally. These last few years, we've gotten by on simply out-hustling most other teams with a scheme that was fairly new (when Skiles took over). Now, other teams have us figured out and we simply don't have the horses that can simply outplay you.

We do have a cast of role players, but ICLO, they're damn good role players. Either one of Deng or Gordon would probably be considered one of the best (if not the best) sidekicks in the league given someone like LeBron or Wade to play off of.

This year is somewhat of a fluke though. Cliff Levingston is pretty high on some of the talent we have (but low on others like Nocioni). We definitely need to re-shape the roster a bit but not completely overhaul it like some people believe. We also need to bring in new coach who can recognize what we have and design the schemes around that... rather than just fitting any old player into the "system" and hoping for results.

[coldfish]

I agree Cliff. I have been saying this for a while: I would trade anyone on the team, but I wouldn't trade everyone on the team. With a true first option (and some intelligence in using him) everyone would look a lot better.

Personally, I'm on the "go get DRose at all costs" bandwagon because I think he is the only potential game changer that is realistically available.

....

The defense is somewhat puzzling at first, because in theory the team has the personnel to be really good at it. There is no lack of defensive talent on the Bulls.

It really comes down to not doing the right thing at the right time. That should be fixable.

[richard]

we knew the team wasn't the most talented the past few years. the hard working style on defense won them a lot of games because the players embodied the coach. these factors led them to overachieve 2 of the past 3 seasons.

on a side note, since paxson has been here, his team has never had 2 consecutive winning seasons, including this season. that means next year they will be really good.

[fudgie]

Is this a fluke? I have no idea. One thing that this season has exposed to me is that this team doesn't have a guy who can be 'the man'. We hoped that all our guys collectively could pick up the slack but it looks like they're just role players. Now don't get me wrong, they're some of the best role players in the league which is why we always get those rumors about a star wanting to play here.

Now the only problem is acquiring that guy without giving up too much of what we have now. IMHO Derrick Rose would be amazing with this group, but he's guaranteed to be going top 3 in the draft. The other option is wait two years and make a move for LeBron or Wade.

Long story short, we're at a crossroads right now.

[DASMACKDOWN]

I agree Cliff. I have been saying this for a while: I would trade anyone on the team, but I wouldn't trade everyone on the team. With a true first option (and some intelligence in using him) everyone would look a lot better.

Personally, I'm on the "go get DRose at all costs" bandwagon because I think he is the only potential game changer that is realistically available.

....

The defense is somewhat puzzling at first, because in theory the team has the personnel to be really good at it. There is no lack of defensive talent on the Bulls.

It really comes down to not doing the right thing at the right time. That should be fixable.

This is where I get the Chandler comparisons. Chandler went from easily swishing 17ftrs to airballing layups. That one year was an anomaly. If you take out that one season, it looks like a natural progression of a player statwise.

I mean how can a team of Wallace,Noah,Tyrus,Deng,Kirk,Thabo suck defensively? It doesne make any sense.

[DJhitek]

Some great points in this thread, I agree with coldfish. Teams just figured out our sets, I do think we fixed our weakness in the frontcourt though to a certain degree. ie..PJ Brown was so bad last season.

[Leslie Forman]

Some would say that last season was a fluke too. Luol shooting 52%? Ben shooting 46%? Kirk shooting 45%? It's like they all decided to have their career best shooting %s in the same year.

I'd say that the true ability of the team is somewhere in between last year and this year – not a 49-win team, but not a 33-win team like this year's is projected to be. They probably belong right smack dab in the middle, at 41 wins. Which is exactly the same as 2006.

[jump]

Teams have definitely figured us out. That's why Pax's biggest task between now and the summer is to identify a head coach who can bring a whole new system to this team. (Pax's next biggest task, of course, is to balance the roster with better backcourt size and more scorers).

It's been said already, but warrants repeating: Bulls need a coach who can put together an imaginative system that plays to the strengths of the roster. The current road has reached a dead end.

I've been bashing retread coaches, but it just may be that we need a veteran experienced coach to put this team on a new direction.

[Cliff Levingston]

Some would say that last season was a fluke too. Luol shooting 52%? Ben shooting 46%? Kirk shooting 45%? It's like they all decided to have their career best shooting %s in the same year.

I'd say that the true ability of the team is somewhere in between last year and this year

[Rerisen]

I don't buy that its totally random chance that our 3 best players would just have career best shooting years all at the same time. There was another factor at work there. A shared goal, drive to achieve something, belief in Skiles system whatever.

On baseball boards I remember the stat inclined folks being loathe to give credence to anything that cannot be measured, such as chemistry, momentum, etc. And I guess you can make a case that baseball being a game of 1v1 matchups, the team factor is a lot less. But I have little doubt chemistry plays a role in basketball and its hard to play the game at your top level if a player is not right mentally. Something definitely happened this year at the start of the season, that just ran this team right off the track they had been going forward on. And they haven't really recovered. It's been a downward spiral that they can't seem to pull out of.

Now if this was a super talented team (say like Dallas last year), then surely they could have recovered from a rocky start. But being that our team depended so heavily on having a elite defense, and a large measure of good defense is effort, it stands to reason once you lost that motivation and effort to play great defense (see related thread about taking charges for instance) you can get to a place where a team like the Bulls cannot recover. And certainly our defense helped cushion our weak offense at times. So it's vicious circle.

[DuckIII]

I don't think there is any question that there are strong indicators that this season is a fluke. That said, calling it a fluke is a complete description, so it would be inappropriate.

This season has elements of being a fluke. And that is why while some changes do need to be made, they don't need to be dramatic changes in my opinion.

Which is why I completely agree with the last paragraph in Cliff's post. I really, really like most of our roster and think its not just a good core, but an excellent core, to work with for the next 8 years. But we need to make a few moves to tighten up the talent into much smaller rotations by consolidating the role players (I've been with Cliff on the Chapu/Duhon trade for a couple of months now).

And we really, really need a new coach with new ideas. But the core talent is young, relatively diverse, and strong. My biggest fear is that Paxson is going to go too far in trying to reshape the roster.

[Rerisen]

I would be curious if there were previous cases that would support largely a fluke excuse though.

If you could look back and point out teams that were roughly in the ~50 win area (about a step below contender status) where they won around 50 games for a couple years then had a down year where they dropped down to 40 or so, then the following year, picked right up and won ~50 again or even better won more than that, and recovered their lost ground and continued to improve like had been expected. Because we should remember the expectation of this team was not just to stand pat, but to actually exceed last season's success, battling for the EC title, or conference finals in the playoffs. And of course the key to finding a past comparison would have to be that the core of the team hardly changed at all (like it didn't for the Bulls except Joe Smith for PJ). I certainly can't recall off the top of my head any teams that were taking a step forward year by year and then took a large fall backwards, but then recouped it the following year with 2 more steps forward.

I can see slumps (or flukes of bad play) lasting several weeks even months, but a whole year? If the season to this point has been a fluke, why does it necessarily have to continue to last this entire season? If the team is vastly more talented than it is showing, you would think that at any time now, they would revert to their mean and start putting wins together. But far from that, we don't even look good against the cellar teams in the league. And that hasn't really changed this entire season.

[DASMACKDOWN]

I think having a new coach....and coaching staff is key.

I dont think it cant be stressed enough. When you think about it, losing Skiles and putting in Boylan basically hasnt changed a thing in terms of our gameplan. Its just a different voice stressing it.

What we need is a new voice and a new different bunch of people supporting it.

Im sure Boylan would be gone anyway if he isnt head coach next year. But the last thing I want is having a new coach and his assistances are stressing the importance of Chris Duhon.

[Cliff Levingston]

My biggest fear is that Paxson is going to go too far in trying to reshape the roster.

Cliff Levingston's biggest Paxson related fear is his supposed love for Nocioni. Cliff Levingston has said it once and will say it over and over again, but Nocioni is significantly overrated on this board, all of RealGM and in the general public. He's a classic tweener in that he brings a lot of faults to both the 3 and 4 positions and generally hurts your team as much as he helps (if not more, in the mold of Eddy Curry, he's never had a season with a positive +/- on/off court rating). Cliff Levingston really hopes that Pax doesn't have Nocioni at the forefront of his long-term vision, because if he does, we're going to be mediocre for a while.

[DuckIII]

Excellent post, Re. As for the question about examples, I'm sure they are hard to find. The problem is that this team was already on rare ground by being a 49 win team with such an incredibly young group of players. And now its gotten even younger with Noah and Gray being added to the mix and Thabo playing a larger role.

I suspect that most of the time that 50 win teams start to dip, its because the core talent is simply starting to decline due to age, wear and tear.

Our core is still basically between 20-26 years old, with the weight of those ages on the lower end. Hinrich, Gordon, Deng, Thabo, Thomas, Noah, and Gray. Thats 7 guys.

There just isn't precedent for either the success or the failure of this team.