Pg: THE BULLS ARE THE TEAM OF DESTINY!

[Chi town]

pat williams having multiple plays where he muscled dudes for a bucket was insane to witness. luckily he followed one of them up with a dumb kickout that appeared to pass on an easy look at the rim, to remind us it's not a totally different guy out there

Or to remind us that since he’s finally doing the things he should have been doing for years, he’ll still struggle with some details while he expands his game and plays a bigger role.

He had a nice drive early in the game when he got foot-tied at the end with no counter and was lucky to find a kick out before traveling. That’s another example.

If Pat plays with the intensity and focus he has so far, good things will happen and he will continue to improve. The two way talent has always been - to my eye - completely undeniable.

It’s the brain. If the switch flips - get back to me in January, I’m just an observer right now - he’ll not only he very tradable on a bargain contract, he’ll be really damn good.

Whoa.

Hadn’t thought Pat could get better or improve. Still kinda shocked that I’m seeing what I knew he was capable of.

What does an improved Pat look like for this team.

[DuckIII]

Anyone left in the Giddey is no good camp?

I don't think he's bad, but there were a couple things of concern in this game.
1. He's still passing up open shots.

2. It was notable that in the 4th we fell behind and they took Giddey (and Okoro) out and replaced them with Ayo and Huerter and immediately went on a big run to get the lead back and keep it for good.

Giddey came back in after we were ahead, but it's something to watch. He didn't finish the Magic game either. So I think he's playing ok, but he's not quite where we need him to be.

Overall, it's obviously good to win, but my observation is that we've won 3 relatively close games against teams that are very offensively challenged right now. I think our defense looks good mostly because we're playing teams that don't score very well against anyone.

We had an entire offseason of deflecting improvement because of wins against tanking teams, teams not trying, and teams with injuries. And now, it's because we aren't playing anyone who's good enough offensively. Detroit went on the road and beat Houston the next game. Orlando beat a good Miami team.

At what point can we just attribute anything to the Bulls playing good basketball and just playing better than good teams? We're doing all of this without our best scorer and a quality reserve big man.

At the point people care more about objective evidence than being “right” and “winning.” Unfortunately this is not limited to sports.

[DuckIII]

pat williams having multiple plays where he muscled dudes for a bucket was insane to witness. luckily he followed one of them up with a dumb kickout that appeared to pass on an easy look at the rim, to remind us it's not a totally different guy out there

Or to remind us that since he’s finally doing the things he should have been doing for years, he’ll still struggle with some details while he expands his game and plays a bigger role.

He had a nice drive early in the game when he got foot-tied at the end with no counter and was lucky to find a kick out before traveling. That’s another example.

If Pat plays with the intensity and focus he has so far, good things will happen and he will continue to improve. The two way talent has always been - to my eye - completely undeniable.

It’s the brain. If the switch flips - get back to me in January, I’m just an observer right now - he’ll not only he very tradable on a bargain contract, he’ll be really damn good.

Whoa.

Hadn’t thought Pat could get better or improve. Still kinda shocked that I’m seeing what I knew he was capable of.

What does an improved Pat look like for this team.

Basically what he looks like now with bigger minutes while maintaining production.

He’s averaging 15/6/3/1.5/1 per 36 with high level defense while shooting 6 threes per 36.

Ignore his insanely high TS in such a small sample size. But this ^^^^^^^^^^^ guy is the guy he can be. And - accepting the assumption he will be this, which is NOT a safe assumption based on his past - that’s a hell of a trade piece at his contract. And a terrific compliment to skinny runners like Matas and Noah.

But I’m done making predictions on Pat. I have always believed what I believe about his athleticism, talent and skill set. And I will never not believe it. Physically, skill wise, he can damn near do it all for a wing. But he doesn’t. So you can’t rely on him. Not yet anyway.

[League Circles]

Patrick is kinda crazy cause he may genuinely be able to guard positions 1 through 5 when needed. That's rare. Dude is naturally STRONG.

[Ice Man]

This season, Pat has defended, knocked down his shots, and made good passes. Sure, he is not (and never will be) a shot creator. He doesn't have the handle to do that. But he has been a very good role player -- and that's just fine with me.

[Indomitable]

I don't think he's bad, but there were a couple things of concern in this game.
1. He's still passing up open shots.

2. It was notable that in the 4th we fell behind and they took Giddey (and Okoro) out and replaced them with Ayo and Huerter and immediately went on a big run to get the lead back and keep it for good.

Giddey came back in after we were ahead, but it's something to watch. He didn't finish the Magic game either. So I think he's playing ok, but he's not quite where we need him to be.

Overall, it's obviously good to win, but my observation is that we've won 3 relatively close games against teams that are very offensively challenged right now. I think our defense looks good mostly because we're playing teams that don't score very well against anyone.

We had an entire offseason of deflecting improvement because of wins against tanking teams, teams not trying, and teams with injuries. And now, it's because we aren't playing anyone who's good enough offensively. Detroit went on the road and beat Houston the next game. Orlando beat a good Miami team.

At what point can we just attribute anything to the Bulls playing good basketball and just playing better than good teams? We're doing all of this without our best scorer and a quality reserve big man.

At the point people care more about objective evidence than being “right” and “winning.” Unfortunately this is not limited to sports.

People are angry and frustrated. I come here to talk ball and have fun. Still, I love my life.

[Infinity2152]

As much as Vooch has been the man so far, we just have to move on at some point. He is 35.

Our team is a bunch of young pups. We now need to put resources into finding the next young center to grow with the team.

there's this whole thread where everyone is in agreement about how he shouldn't get any minutes at all he's lazy, he's a bum etc but he's been clearly the best player on the team. this is coming off a very good season to boot. the guy is just this board's whipping boy for no good reason.

Wild thing is we've been winning around half our games last 4 years with Vucevic as starter and not a single top 10-15 player on the team. No power forward at all half the time, no point guard worth a damn and led by Zach Lavine as our best player. He missed a lot of games too. Take away his 20 and 11, seriously doubt we win more games adding a 10pt, 8 rb defensive center who plays 50 games a season on the strength of Lavine and Derozan. Sabonis is better, what's that looking like? Vucevic has been the healthiest Bulls starter by far over that period as well.

His age makes it time to go, but he's been a scapegoat for an overall bad defensive team.

[Chi town]

This is a fun team and good god Tre Jones is looking like the steal of free agency.

I’m just a bit confused as to how this iteration of the team projects over the next 2-3 years. Do we rely on an aging Vuc to be our C? Do we resign as many of these good (but not great) players as possible to maintain depth? I suppose they’d be tradeable contracts if we continue to win… what’s our ceiling, 2nd round?

I don't think you can resign them all, unfortunately, as there's no profit in paying retail for non-max, non-pillar kind of players. It feels like the Peter Principle of basketball - good young players on bargain contracts get bumped up by agents and GMs until they become decent players in their mid-to-late 20's on painful contracts at (or often above) what the market will bear, and they don't move the needle. (With the occasional Caruso contract notwithstanding.) We are going to have to recycle or consolidate them eventually unless they take below-market deals imo. For example, the Knicks would suck if they paid all the Grimeses and Barretts and Quickleys and Hartensteins that they loved a few years ago. They had to turn them into assets that were hopefully two out of the four: younger/cheaper/better/more (multiple assets). We should too.

I think Collins and Huerter can both be resigned much cheaper than their current salaries. Same for Vuc although I think he needs to go.

I think Ayo will get a raise but not kore than the MLE.

The 9-10 Good players concept works if no one gets overpaid and you don’t have a super max or max vet. It can work if Buz is worth a max and gets it too.

[Chi town]

Anyone left in the Giddey is no good camp?

I don't think he's bad, but there were a couple things of concern in this game.
1. He's still passing up open shots.

2. It was notable that in the 4th we fell behind and they took Giddey (and Okoro) out and replaced them with Ayo and Huerter and immediately went on a big run to get the lead back and keep it for good.

Giddey came back in after we were ahead, but it's something to watch. He didn't finish the Magic game either. So I think he's playing ok, but he's not quite where we need him to be.

Overall, it's obviously good to win, but my observation is that we've won 3 relatively close games against teams that are very offensively challenged right now. I think our defense looks good mostly because we're playing teams that don't score very well against anyone.

I agree on Giddey. Think he needs to be better but we won’t see that until Coby gets back and he benefits from Coby’s gravity.

Or Buz breaks out and becomes a go to guy to get a bucket. I think we are 40 games from that though.

Once Coby and Buz are doing that I think you will see Giddey feast and he will be crazy efficient. His 3 ball has improved big time. He’s looking for it even though he seems to still be passing up a 3 every game.

[ShouldaPaidBG]

30 point games are gonna be rare, but 8 guys in double figures is gonna be common. This is good because it minimizes the impact of injuries and keeps our players fresh and energetic.

[MikeDC]

Anyone left in the Giddey is no good camp?

I don't think he's bad, but there were a couple things of concern in this game.
1. He's still passing up open shots.

2. It was notable that in the 4th we fell behind and they took Giddey (and Okoro) out and replaced them with Ayo and Huerter and immediately went on a big run to get the lead back and keep it for good.

Giddey came back in after we were ahead, but it's something to watch. He didn't finish the Magic game either. So I think he's playing ok, but he's not quite where we need him to be.

Overall, it's obviously good to win, but my observation is that we've won 3 relatively close games against teams that are very offensively challenged right now. I think our defense looks good mostly because we're playing teams that don't score very well against anyone.

We had an entire offseason of deflecting improvement because of wins against tanking teams, teams not trying, and teams with injuries. And now, it's because we aren't playing anyone who's good enough offensively. Detroit went on the road and beat Houston the next game. Orlando beat a good Miami team.

At what point can we just attribute anything to the Bulls playing good basketball and just playing better than good teams? We're doing all of this without our best scorer and a quality reserve big man.

When we're a few games in and teams are making open/wide open shots against us at something like league average rates.
Right now, teams are shooting 46% against us on open 2s and under 30% on open/wide open 3s. League Averages for open 2s is something like 56.8% and 36.9% on open/wide open 3s.

The simple way to put this is that if our opponents were simply making their OPEN shots at league average rates, they'd be scoring an additional 11.2points per game.

This isn't a matter of our good defense, it's luck. If we're still winning when opponents are shooting at average rates against on open shots, it'll be because we're good.

Being good isn't luck. It's:
1. Reducing the number of open shots the opponent gets.
2. Getting and converting open shots for us.

[Jcool0]

I don't think he's bad, but there were a couple things of concern in this game.
1. He's still passing up open shots.

2. It was notable that in the 4th we fell behind and they took Giddey (and Okoro) out and replaced them with Ayo and Huerter and immediately went on a big run to get the lead back and keep it for good.

Giddey came back in after we were ahead, but it's something to watch. He didn't finish the Magic game either. So I think he's playing ok, but he's not quite where we need him to be.

Overall, it's obviously good to win, but my observation is that we've won 3 relatively close games against teams that are very offensively challenged right now. I think our defense looks good mostly because we're playing teams that don't score very well against anyone.

We had an entire offseason of deflecting improvement because of wins against tanking teams, teams not trying, and teams with injuries. And now, it's because we aren't playing anyone who's good enough offensively. Detroit went on the road and beat Houston the next game. Orlando beat a good Miami team.

At what point can we just attribute anything to the Bulls playing good basketball and just playing better than good teams? We're doing all of this without our best scorer and a quality reserve big man.

When we're a few games in and teams are making open/wide open shots against us at something like league average rates.
Right now, teams are shooting 46% against us on open 2s and under 30% on open/wide open 3s. League Averages for open 2s is something like 56.8% and 36.9% on open/wide open 3s.

The simple way to put this is that if our opponents were simply making their OPEN shots at league average rates, they'd be scoring an additional 11.2points per game.

This isn't a matter of our good defense, it's luck. If we're still winning when opponents are shooting at average rates against on open shots, it'll be because we're good.

Being good isn't luck. It's:
1. Reducing the number of open shots the opponent gets.
2. Getting and converting open shots for us.

Link?

[ScrantonBulls]

This season, Pat has defended, knocked down his shots, and made good passes. Sure, he is not (and never will be) a shot creator. He doesn't have the handle to do that. But he has been a very good role player -- and that's just fine with me.

He's a prototypical 3&D player that every team wants. PF/SF that plays high level defense and can hit 3s. EVERY team wants that around their star players.

[DuckIII]

This season, Pat has defended, knocked down his shots, and made good passes. Sure, he is not (and never will be) a shot creator. He doesn't have the handle to do that. But he has been a very good role player -- and that's just fine with me.

I don’t agree. He doesn’t have the ability to be like Coby or even Matas (or take your pick of shot creators all around the league), but he absolutely has it within his skillset to be a guy who can get his own shot off relying only on himself to do it. Just not in the way those other guys do or with as many tools in the box.

Pat is not a no-skill limited roll player like Javonte or Phillips. He has a reasonably solid handle, he’s started shooting pull up 3s off the dribble, he can drive and body, has a reliable inside-out dribble, he can finish with both hands, etc.

People see his embarrassingly obvious blunders and say “stop dribbling” despite the fact that it will be one ugly example surrounded by perfectly fine ball handling. There is a tendency to inflate the significance and frequency of things that look bad.

What he can do is more or less all things and no one will ever convince me otherwise. What he has done is far short of that and with absolutely zero consistency. But it doesn’t mean it’s not there.

[HomoSapien]

This season, Pat has defended, knocked down his shots, and made good passes. Sure, he is not (and never will be) a shot creator. He doesn't have the handle to do that. But he has been a very good role player -- and that's just fine with me.

I don’t agree. He doesn’t have the ability to be like Coby or even Matas (or take your pick of shot creators all around the league), but he absolutely has it within his skillset to be a guy who can get his own shot off relying only on himself to do it. Just not in the way those other guys do or with as many tools in the box.

Pat is not a no-skill limited roll player like Javonte or Phillips. He has a reasonably solid handle, he’s started shooting pull up 3s off the dribble, he can drive and body, has a reliable inside-out dribble, he can finish with both hands, etc.

People see his embarrassingly obvious blunders and say “stop dribbling” despite the fact that it will be one ugly example surrounded by perfectly fine ball handling. There is a tendency to inflate the significance and frequency of things that look bad.

What he can do is more or less all things and no one will ever convince me otherwise. What he has done is far short of that and with absolutely zero consistency. But it doesn’t mean it’s not there.

He's got some moves. I've always liked that one-handed push shot in the paint. I think he's got a bit of a fadeaway game that he can develop more. A new move I'm loving of his is where he gets switched onto a smaller defender, seals them off near the basket and bullies himself in for a layup. I agree, he has an offensive skillset. The key to him has always been learning to play with purpose. In the past, he would simply exist on the court. Now he's reading the defense, cutting hard to the basket, looking to make plays. It's been really wonderful to see.

[League Circles]

This season, Pat has defended, knocked down his shots, and made good passes. Sure, he is not (and never will be) a shot creator. He doesn't have the handle to do that. But he has been a very good role player -- and that's just fine with me.

I don’t agree. He doesn’t have the ability to be like Coby or even Matas (or take your pick of shot creators all around the league), but he absolutely has it within his skillset to be a guy who can get his own shot off relying only on himself to do it. Just not in the way those other guys do or with as many tools in the box.

Pat is not a no-skill limited roll player like Javonte or Phillips. He has a reasonably solid handle, he’s started shooting pull up 3s off the dribble, he can drive and body, has a reliable inside-out dribble, he can finish with both hands, etc.

People see his embarrassingly obvious blunders and say “stop dribbling” despite the fact that it will be one ugly example surrounded by perfectly fine ball handling. There is a tendency to inflate the significance and frequency of things that look bad.

What he can do is more or less all things and no one will ever convince me otherwise. What he has done is far short of that and with absolutely zero consistency. But it doesn’t mean it’s not there.

I've always felt like you do about Patrick but I'd even go so far as to say that ball handling is his most underrated skill. Not that he's been good at it consistently - he's made a lot of handling blunders in his career, but his innate talent and ability frankly because of his outlier hand size/strength is very high level for a 3/4 IMO. There have been plenty of times when if I squint I can see a bit of the Tyreke Evans/Lance Stephenson poor man Lebron's skill level at his best. He just needs to continue to ramp up slowly and he's very young so imagine in 2 years what he could be. That's why I love him as a bench player right now he actually gets more offensive freedom than if with the starters are more of a pure 3 and d guy. For whatever reason, he kind of needs the pressure off and the opportunities ample to play his best. It's weird because he doesn't come across as a selfish player at all, but I think he almost needs some sort of universal green light around him to really do his best.

[DuckIII]

I don't think he's bad, but there were a couple things of concern in this game.
1. He's still passing up open shots.

2. It was notable that in the 4th we fell behind and they took Giddey (and Okoro) out and replaced them with Ayo and Huerter and immediately went on a big run to get the lead back and keep it for good.

Giddey came back in after we were ahead, but it's something to watch. He didn't finish the Magic game either. So I think he's playing ok, but he's not quite where we need him to be.

Overall, it's obviously good to win, but my observation is that we've won 3 relatively close games against teams that are very offensively challenged right now. I think our defense looks good mostly because we're playing teams that don't score very well against anyone.

We had an entire offseason of deflecting improvement because of wins against tanking teams, teams not trying, and teams with injuries. And now, it's because we aren't playing anyone who's good enough offensively. Detroit went on the road and beat Houston the next game. Orlando beat a good Miami team.

At what point can we just attribute anything to the Bulls playing good basketball and just playing better than good teams? We're doing all of this without our best scorer and a quality reserve big man.

When we're a few games in and teams are making open/wide open shots against us at something like league average rates.
Right now, teams are shooting 46% against us on open 2s and under 30% on open/wide open 3s. League Averages for open 2s is something like 56.8% and 36.9% on open/wide open 3s.

The simple way to put this is that if our opponents were simply making their OPEN shots at league average rates, they'd be scoring an additional 11.2points per game.

This isn't a matter of our good defense, it's luck. If we're still winning when opponents are shooting at average rates against on open shots, it'll be because we're good.

Being good isn't luck. It's:
1. Reducing the number of open shots the opponent gets.
2. Getting and converting open shots for us.

If the opposition makes 7% more of their threes does that mean Giddey’s 19/9/7/1/1 on .417 from deep on 5 three point attempts per 36 and visibly improved defense is suddenly considered good?

But I’m heartened to hear that he’s at least not affirmatively “bad” according to you. Maybe he can aspire to be marginally useful someday. Fingers crossed!

[MikeDC]

We had an entire offseason of deflecting improvement because of wins against tanking teams, teams not trying, and teams with injuries. And now, it's because we aren't playing anyone who's good enough offensively. Detroit went on the road and beat Houston the next game. Orlando beat a good Miami team.

At what point can we just attribute anything to the Bulls playing good basketball and just playing better than good teams? We're doing all of this without our best scorer and a quality reserve big man.

When we're a few games in and teams are making open/wide open shots against us at something like league average rates.
Right now, teams are shooting 46% against us on open 2s and under 30% on open/wide open 3s. League Averages for open 2s is something like 56.8% and 36.9% on open/wide open 3s.

The simple way to put this is that if our opponents were simply making their OPEN shots at league average rates, they'd be scoring an additional 11.2points per game.

This isn't a matter of our good defense, it's luck. If we're still winning when opponents are shooting at average rates against on open shots, it'll be because we're good.

Being good isn't luck. It's:
1. Reducing the number of open shots the opponent gets.
2. Getting and converting open shots for us.

Link?

https://www.nba.com/stats/teams/opponent-shots-closest-defender

[Red Larrivee]

When we're a few games in and teams are making open/wide open shots against us at something like league average rates.
Right now, teams are shooting 46% against us on open 2s and under 30% on open/wide open 3s. League Averages for open 2s is something like 56.8% and 36.9% on open/wide open 3s.

The simple way to put this is that if our opponents were simply making their OPEN shots at league average rates, they'd be scoring an additional 11.2points per game.

This isn't a matter of our good defense, it's luck. If we're still winning when opponents are shooting at average rates against on open shots, it'll be because we're good.

Being good isn't luck. It's:
1. Reducing the number of open shots the opponent gets.
2. Getting and converting open shots for us.

So far, the Bulls are 1st in the league in open 3PAs allowed at 9.0 and 1st in wide open 3PAs allowed at 14.7. So yes, they are reducing the number of open shots the opponent gets. They are playing good 3P defense by any measure you look at. It's not luck.

That doesn't mean that opponents won't shoot better; of course they will. Teams are not going to shoot 26% on threes against the Bulls for 82 games. They're also not going to make all of their open shots either. But, 3P defense is a skill and the Bulls as a team are playing as well as you can in a small sample size. They also did the same thing last season too. So, there's a lot of evidence that it carried over.

What you're saying would hold more weight if the Bulls were allowing a lot of these shots and teams were simply missing....a lot of these shots.

[GoBlue72391]

Guys, I was just kidding about extending Vuc.

If he wants to take a sub-$10M one-year deal to come off the bench I'd probably be ok with it, but I doubt that'll happen.