kodo wrote:The entire positionless and versatility thing has always been very much from AK. His comments on why we drafted Patrick (and also Dalen) are the most insight we've gotten on how he's constructed the team. I don't think he's anti-size, if we had Wemby I'm sure he'd play him obviously, but he values positionless & switchability and unless you have stars those are usually F types like Patrick vs 7' rim runners / shotblockers. And Vuc is the best he could get in a center at the deadline.
I don't think his philosophy is 100% wrong, arguably the two biggest successes this year Boston & OKC are versatile positionless teams with 1 big center. It's debatable but Jalen Williams is OKC's "PF" at 6' 5". But this requires extremely loaded teams talent-wise. The disadvantages of going small are more than made up by playing both Brown & Tatum without having to bench one, or starting Jalen Williams without going with a more traditional bigger PF who isn't as talented. But in Chicago we don't have any talent at the PF position worth going small and losing rebounding & rim protection & matching up better against guys like Giannis. It's not like we can't find a 6' 10" guy who can provide 10 ppg, 1.4 threes per game, and 1 assist.
The coaching part of why small/positionless works is shooting a ton of 3s or fast pace...we are 24th in 3 pointers and 29th in pace. So our style of play doesn't make sense for this team construction either.
Having a garbage shooting profile sure makes things worse.
The lack of rim protection also hurts. Vuc's free cheese. And in exchange for easy buckets, he punishes you with 27% wide open 3P shooting.
I hate pinning it all on one guy, but Vuc's been a truly terrible addition to this team, with seemingly worse repercussions every year. He has his skills and moments, at the cost of many others. But I think AK was very literal when he said Vuc will be here for a very long time.
Hopefully in a 6th man role? Cause he'd be good at that. Although he'll still lose his match-up with Mo Wagner.
Thing about this Bulls team is they literally just need a great player. Somebody who could either create easy baskets on the regular, or score/defend/swiss-army it. At the end of the day, that's the fact.
But if we're talking about single-quickest upgrade (which may or may not be worth it), I believe that upgrading C would be it. Vuc i'd say is a bottom-10 team C. There are many mid-tier Cs who will be on the chop block. I personally don't find them worth pursuing at anything other than a bargain cost, but that's the reality.