The Bulls-Heat 4th Quarter Project - Completed

[Rerisen]

Deng looked like a non factor in all of the videos I have seen so far in this series. This season he has looked a lot better in attacking.

He also had to guard the best player in the game. It's going to take a lot out of him. Another reason I don't like relying on Deng as the #2 option this year.

[alucryts]

Deng looked like a non factor in all of the videos I have seen so far in this series. This season he has looked a lot better in attacking.

He also had to guard the best player in the game. It's going to take a lot out of him. Another reason I don't like relying on Deng as the #2 option this year.

Yeah good point. When he is the second option, he gets himself into a lot of trouble dribbling. When he takes advantage of back doors, cuts, and spot ups as a lower option, he looks like an all star.

[babblin-on]

Deng looked like a non factor in all of the videos I have seen so far in this series. This season he has looked a lot better in attacking.

He also had to guard the best player in the game. It's going to take a lot out of him. Another reason I don't like relying on Deng as the #2 option this year.

Yeah good point. When he is the second option, he gets himself into a lot of trouble dribbling. When he takes advantage of back doors, cuts, and spot ups as a lower option, he looks like an all star.

The Bulls might need to commit to trying get Boozer to re-establish himself as a post scorer, even if it means sacrificing some games. He really needs to be the team's second offensive option. With the occasional Deng or Rip hot hand game thrown in for good measure.

[Jedi]

It really all boils down to "trap Rose", make the rest of the team beat you and they don't step up - therefore you win. Only playmaker we have is Rose, the only one who can create. The rest live off being fed.

Good stuff though, will continue reading later tonight.

[alucryts]

The Bulls might need to commit to trying get Boozer to re-establish himself as a post scorer, even if it means sacrificing some games. He really needs to be the team's second offensive option. With the occasional Deng or Rip hot hand game thrown in for good measure.

Although I agree with your idea of Boozer having to step up, I disagree with the execution of it as a post scorer. A second option doesn't necessarily have to create much of their offense by themselves. In the case of Carlos, it seems as if he is learning how to play off of Rose to the best of his ability. This includes that mid rand spot up shot, cutting, and some posting up when he has an advantage. I don't think there is much of a doubt that Boozer looks a lot better this season in the offense than he did last year. When I removed my expectations of him trying to be this pick and roll monster with great post ups, he looked a whole lot better. One key to beating the trap is definitely Boozer making teams pay on the back side of it. I believe that so far he has done exactly that this season. Unfortunately, I don't think he can ever be good enough to force teams to stop doing it however (I don't think there are many players in the NBA that can on a consistent basis).

[alucryts]

It really all boils down to "trap Rose", make the rest of the team beat you and they don't step up - therefore you win. Only playmaker we have is Rose, the only one who can create. The rest live off being fed.

Good stuff though, will continue reading later tonight.

I hope that Rip can continue his role as secondary play maker on the team. He has shown some flashes of excellent "quick play making" where he makes a fast pass off of a catch to a big man down low. I believe that he could possibly become the second play maker that we want.

Outside of that, the Bulls have to answer this question now: do they want to have Rose find a away to beat the traps that he is seeing by himself, or do they want to adjust the sets to make the traps harder/impossible? I don't know the answer to that question or which route would be better for the team, but the Bulls need an answer outside of having Rose continually passing out of it; the Bulls need to find a way to let Rose be aggressive still. The key for defenses is not allowing Rose to become aggressive.

When Rose plays aggressively, the team shines all around because this team is built around aggressive Rose. When either Rose or the defense forces him to not be aggressive, this team is built around nothing; Rose has to live up to his part of aggressively attacking a defense to play make as well as score. With the trap, he has no idea how to do either. We simply don't have the talent on the back end of the trap to really eclipse what Rose can do when he is aggressive. We HAVE to ensure that Rose can be aggressive when facing good/smart trapping defenses. Notice in game 2 here that Rose barely attacked to score himself. It was just a lot of him passively drawing the double to pass to the rest of his team. The rest of his team doesn't have the talent level necessary to make the Heat pay.

I don't think that simply getting another play maker out there is going to fix the problem either. Sure, if you could get Monta Ellis in place of Brewer/Rip you have something. However, the amount of talent you would have to give up in order to achieve a player with the talent level necessary to alleviate the problem is simply too much. Right now, the players outside of Rose show their best when Rose is aggressive and the defense is stressed and broken by Rose. We have a lot of players excellent at taking advantage of broken defenses. When the defense controls where and how it breaks in order to stop Rose completely, the defense maintains its integrity on the back end to a point where our other talent does not succeed. If you trade a lot of those back end players to get a player that can break the defense outside of Rose, you no longer have a supporting cast that succeeds and looks stellar against broken defenses. There lies the catch-22 of a second play maker by trade.

[babblin-on]

The Bulls might need to commit to trying get Boozer to re-establish himself as a post scorer, even if it means sacrificing some games. He really needs to be the team's second offensive option. With the occasional Deng or Rip hot hand game thrown in for good measure.

Although I agree with your idea of Boozer having to step up, I disagree with the execution of it as a post scorer. A second option doesn't necessarily have to create much of their offense by themselves. In the case of Carlos, it seems as if he is learning how to play off of Rose to the best of his ability. This includes that mid rand spot up shot, cutting, and some posting up when he has an advantage. I don't think there is much of a doubt that Boozer looks a lot better this season in the offense than he did last year. When I removed my expectations of him trying to be this pick and roll monster with great post ups, he looked a whole lot better. One key to beating the trap is definitely Boozer making teams pay on the back side of it. I believe that so far he has done exactly that this season. Unfortunately, I don't think he can ever be good enough to force teams to stop doing it however (I don't think there are many players in the NBA that can on a consistent basis).

I agree that Boozer looks better in the offense right now than he has for a while(not his whole Bulls tenure, because I thought he looked pretty good last December/January when I think he did play on the post a lot).

I just don't think using him in this David West type role makes him the second option we need. Most championship second options I've seen were good enough to take over a game with offense being run through them. Maybe the Bulls defense will perform at historically great levels and having an offense that is improved but not quite at historic levels will be good enough.

I'd rather have balance between championship level defense and an offense that has a true 2nd option and performs near the levels of most championship teams though. And I think Boozer stepping up and being a legit option out of the post is our best chance of achieving that.

[alucryts]

I agree that Boozer looks better in the offense right now than he has for a while(not his whole Bulls tenure, because I thought he looked pretty good last December/January when I think he did play on the post a lot).

I just don't think using him in this David West type role makes him the second option we need. Most championship second options I've seen were good enough to take over a game with offense being run through them. Maybe the Bulls defense will perform at historically great levels and having an offense that is improved but not quite at historic levels will be good enough.

I'd rather have balance between championship level defense and an offense that has a true 2nd option and performs near the levels of most championship teams though. And I think Boozer stepping up and being a legit option out of the post is our best chance of achieving that.

I think that a lot of the logic about which player we should get to put us over the top suffers from the "all-in-one" syndrome. Boozer simply is not good enough at where he fits with this team to be someone you can run an offense through. However, him doing that makes Derrick Rose a better #1 and will eventually allow him to become more aggressive. A more aggressive Rose now makes everyone else better at what they do. While Boozer will not directly solve the problems, his contributions of late will start making life easier for Rose.

Anyway, back to the "all-in-one" syndrome, a lot of people think that the best solution to a problem that any team has is finding a player who can fix them all. Unfortunately, those players are extremely hard to get. A much better solution (and easier/cheaper) is to to find a few pieces who collectively possess everything that we need. For example, Rip is not a great scorer. However, he helps the play making problem that we have. Therefore, by play making more, he is able to make other players more effective scorers. Ideally, Rip should be able to change and improve everyone else to a point where the improvements equal a solid second option.

[blumeany]

Thus far it seems like, while you can argue Rose should have made this pass or that pass, it's just a case of the Heat challenging the other players on the court to shoot (or Rose to shoot long jumpers) and thriving off the results. The other guys on the team HAVE TO HIT SHOTS. Because even if Rose hits Boozer a few more times and he scores, they're still losing. It's not until Brewer (or whoever is in his role) and Noah (needs to be consistent with his jump shot) start scoring off open looks that the Heat will have to adjust their defense. And I'm not trying to defend Rose and bash everyone else. He clearly made his own mistakes with missing the open man and falling into the Heat's trap.

Also, let's face it, Rose and Deng have a tendency to get a case of the 'oopsies' towards the end of tight games. That certainly contributes to things as well.

[alucryts]

Thus far it seems like, while you can argue Rose should have made this pass or that pass, it's just a case of the Heat challenging the other players on the court to shoot (or Rose to shoot long jumpers) and thriving off the results. The other guys on the team HAVE TO HIT SHOTS. Because even if Rose hits Boozer a few more times and he scores, they're still losing. It's not until Brewer (or whoever is in his role) and Noah (needs to be consistent with his jump shot) start scoring off open looks that the Heat will have to adjust their defense. And I'm not trying to defend Rose and bash everyone else. He clearly made his own mistakes with missing the open man and falling into the Heat's trap.

Also, let's face it, Rose and Deng have a tendency to get a case of the 'oopsies' towards the end of tight games. That certainly contributes to things as well.

So far in the series this is spot on. The Heat defense is stacked in a way that scoring inside the free throw line for Rose is not possible. I was watching Wade in the '06 finals, and there are a few things Rose can do to get going himself. First, he has to not even bring the PnR up if he gets trapped. Once the trap is fully developed, it is impossible to split or evade to score. With that said, he could attack the trap early and split it for an easy score. The other option is attacking when he does have single coverage. I think he is going to try this other option as we move forward, but we will see. I agree with your conclusion that the biggest problem is people just not finishing their shots so far.

[Born2Kill]

I now say goodbye to my morning agenda of productive tasks, and hello to this thread. Thanks!

[alucryts]

I now say goodbye to my morning agenda of productive tasks, and hello to this thread. Thanks!

No problem lol.

[GetBuLLish]

Quick question: is there a reason why we don't have Rose bring the ball up the court and then give him a pick closer to the free throw line, rather than the three point line?

[alucryts]

Quick question: is there a reason why we don't have Rose bring the ball up the court and then give him a pick closer to the free throw line, rather than the three point line?

My best guess is that the only roll man we have skilled enough to do this won't have room to roll because of Noah. I think we could do this successfully with Noah, but I don't think he is skilled enough to do it. What we CAN do with Noah however is the following:

- Looking at the basket from the top of the key, you have the left side of the court and the right side of the court.

- On the left side, Deng sets up in the corner and the shooting guard at the shoulder outside the three point line.

- On the Right side, Boozer sets up along the baseline in the deep mid range.

- Noah sets a screen at the top of the key on top of the three point line.

- Rose start from the right side shoulder and runs his man into Noah for the PnR.

- Rose now drives down the center of the lane just enough to draw his initial defender and Noah's defender on the double.

- Noah now rolls to the rim. His entire job consists of "boxing out" Boozer's defender on the right side on his way to the rim. If he does this, it is an easy layup or dunk after Rose feeds him the ball. Rose just needs to pass it to him the instant Noah boxes out Boozer's man because that is the last defender that can stop Noah.
------------------------------------
The best part about this play is that we already do it all the time with Noah. The key to this play is that Boozer must draw his defender out far enough to allow Noah to cut into the lane. This is a very Nash like PnR, except in Nash's system Boozer is a three point shooting threat creating ridiculous amounts of space; Boozer provides just barely enough to make it work. The problem was that Noah wasn't rolling to the rim on these plays early on in the season. The good news is that he is rolling now. We have to run PnR between Noah and Rose while running PnP between Boozer and Rose.

[GetBuLLish]

Sounds like something I would really want to see. Good call.

On a kind of unrelated note, it's annoying to me watching teams constantly super hedge against Rose. It's obviously a smart move on opposing teams' part, but I want to see Rose with some space to work with haha. How many other players in the league constantly get the super hedge treatment? Serious question.

[alucryts]

It seems to me like the overall problem has been this super hedging that the Heat have done. In an effort to focus my attention on the plays going forward, I am watching the '06 Finals with Wade to see how he dealt with defenses stacked heavily against him. This thread will be on a small hiatus until I watch a chunk of that series.

[alucryts]

Sounds like something I would really want to see. Good call.

On a kind of unrelated note, it's annoying to me watching teams constantly super hedge against Rose. It's obviously a smart move on opposing teams' part, but I want to see Rose with some space to work with haha. How many other players in the league constantly get the super hedge treatment? Serious question.

And yes, I think Rose is the only one who gets it to this degree. Lebron has seen it a bit, but outside of that I don't know any others. I am assuming '06 Wade will see it soon, but I am only on the second game.

[blumeany]

Most teams this year seem to be playing the Bulls the same way. It's just a matter if they have the talent on the floor to pull it off. Considering our 9-2 record, not many teams do. But the Heat do, and that's what matters.

[alucryts]

Most teams this year seem to be playing the Bulls the same way. It's just a matter if they have the talent on the floor to pull it off. Considering our 9-2 record, not many teams do. But the Heat do, and that's what matters.

I think that we definitely struggle with the super hedge, but Korver, Deng, and Boozer are going to be the three guys responsible for making that defense impossible. We saw the Wolves do it last night very well, but Deng and Korver feasted on it (eventually) and busted them out of it. As soon as the defense dropped Rose started abusing the Wolves again.

[alucryts]

Game three is done and uploaded. This game featured the Bulls and Rose abusing the baseline/wing pick and roll. It was lost on unforced and silly turnovers, lack of a plan after Rose passes, and Lebron missed travel calls.