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Will Big Ben bounce back this season and be like he was in detroit? or is he going to continue his decline? why has he declined is it due to an injury?

I don't expect him to bounce back. He's declined for many reasons, the biggest being he's just older. He's going to be 34 in less than a month. He was never a skilled player to begin with and he's not playing alongside Rasheed Wallace anymore.

Ben Wallace got a lot of credit back with the Pistons and he deserved it, but behind all that Rasheed Wallace in my opinion was actually a better defender. Sheed did Wallace's dirty work. Sheed took on the tough guard on most nights allowing Ben Wallace to provide help defense which he was always much better at than straight up guarding his man.

Ben Wallace has also come across back problems recently.

He's not a guy who anyone should expect to play 30 minutes per game any more. He's probably got 20 solid minutes of hustle left in him per game, playing him any longer than that isn't a good thing in my opinion.

It's unlikely Ben Wallace plays better than he did last year, I actually expect him to play even worse to tell you the truth... Like the poster above said with age he's naturally declined athletically but more importantly he just doesn't seem to have that bounce in his step / that extra bit of energy that he used to... He's a pretty depressing player right now to be honest... I mean I've seen horrible big man but at least Jason Collins was always upbeat and happy.

I was actually quite happy with Wallace last year. He wasn't bad as a Cavalier but then the Cavs didn't really need him as a scorer. Defense and rebounding, the Bulls were just stupid in signing him when they needed an inside offensive threat.

TheOUTLAW wrote:I was actually quite happy with Wallace last year. He wasn't bad as a Cavalier but then the Cavs didn't really need him as a scorer. Defense and rebounding, the Bulls were just stupid in signing him when they needed an inside offensive threat.

Yeah Big Ben wasn't too bad for us, especially paired with Big Z.

What worries me though is without Joe Smith, he will likely see minutes paired with AV next year (barring a trade) and that didn't work out too well.

I agree if you look at his numbers


4.0pts
8.9rebs
2.0blks

while dealing with back issues I would say that was a success. Now if those same issues become a every day, or week occurrence than yes we may see a decline in his play. But for someone to make a statement that he was god awful, that in itself is a injustice. {we can't help that the Bulls over valued him we have 2yrs left} How many PF in the league average more than 9rbs & 2blks a yr? Now their are a few but if you start naming those few, they normally come with a title attached to them like ALL-STAR, and no one is trying to confuse Ben with being a all-star. However to discredit his numbers and refuse to acknowledge his body of work for being better than average, one may look at those statements as being less than creditable

We should give him another chance this upcoming season before jumping to a conclusion that he will play miserably. He didn't have enough time to gel with the team when we traded for him at the deadline so he couldn't play this best.

i didnt mind ben - he did what he was asked of him and he knew his role...varejao could learn something from him

Defense and rebounding...

Ben still has winning intangibles that a championship caliber team needs... I would like to hold onto him..

Right, the biggest problem with Wallace was that Varejao started trying to do more of offense.