Tank Tracker: Felicio and Nwaba to start! p67

[WindyCityBorn]

If the front office believed he was any good would have been playing more this season.

[League Circles]

FWIW, Felicio's sample size this year has been tiny, but in it he is still posting better WS/48 than Lopez, and he's also above Lopez for that mark for their careers.

Directly measuring whether we win or lose with X player, Felicio's Net Rating is -23.8. That's 16th on the team after Kay Felder and Zipser. Rolo's Net Rating is 17.7 points higher.

WS/48 is mainly a boxscore driven stat, looks at field goals, attempts, assists, FTs, etc.. You get results that don't follow the common sense test like Klay Thompson only being the 10th most valuable player on GS.

I think the case for RoLo is that he's top ten in the league in non-boxscore metrics like Screen Assists, Boxouts, and Shot Contests. That's why his Net Rating (team wins when he's on the floor) is much higher than Felicio's even though his traditional stats aren't very good.

I think it's a good bet that we'll lose more with Felicio, if Felcio performs as expected which is he doesn't help anyone on the floor like Robin does.

Yeah, I think win shares is a preposterous stat, even WS/48 which would obviously be better, but many use it, and many only discuss comparisons using stats. Most people use stats selectively only to support their point. I am among those people.

I'm mostly a skillset guy, and IMO Cris' skillset is better in some ways and worse in some ways than Lopez. I don't know where to find the stats that you mention, but if they are total or per game obviously they are irrelevant.

I haven't seen Cris much this year cause he's barely played at all, but the last two years, I saw him box out as well as anyone in the game now days, including Lopez.

Cris has also set good screens by my eye test, and thus helps ball handlers both with the initial screen, and then he's way better at rolling to the hoop and finishing than Lopez is IMO.

[biggestbullsfan]

My only wonder is if the damage is already done. If we lost two previous games we would almost be #1 right now.

I hope Carter climbs up the ranks so someone else falls to us. Not in love with Trae Young but I wouldn't pass up on him if we landed at 8-10. Unless our two first rounders got us into the top 5.

I think a combo of our two first rounders, a large expiring contract like Lopez and the ability to take on a large contract could help us trade up. How much is uncertain. I guess it depends where teams land.

[biggestbullsfan]

The hilarity if Felicio become shaq 2.0 the rest of the season lmao

Like we cant even tank right.

[dougthonus]

I agree Cris is not the defender Lopez is for sure (yet), though I think Lopez is significantly overrated as a defender by Bulls fans. Cris is clearly a significantly better rebounder than Lopez, even this season in his tiny sample size. He's been a WAY better rebounder in their careers. Both box out very well, but then Felicio actually has the ability to jump for the rebound. As far as general stats, Cris is a far more efficient scorer, posts significantly better WS/48. Cris doesn't have a real bad mid range jumper IMO, though he is hesitant to use it. He is drastically better finishing at the hoop than Lopez. Lopez is a poor rebounder and mostly always has been. He's good at taking himself and the guy he's boxing out out of contesting for the rebound, but that just leaves 4 vs 4 for the rebound.

We'll see, I pretty much think you are wrong about everything you have said here. Felicio may get more rebounds, but Lopez boxes out the guy far and away most likely to get an offensive board and frequently boxes out multiple guys at once by clogging up so much space and pushing people so far from the basket. Felicio just looks lost everywhere he is on the court.

I've seen absolutely no offensive game from Felicio whatsoever outside of catching lobs and pick and rolls where the defense double teams the ball handler. Felicio looks efficient because he won't attempt anything beyond layups and takes a very low volume of shots per minute (a tad more than half of what Lopez does per minute and Lopez isn't a particularly high volume player either). Lopez's 52.7% FG% on 13.7FGA/36 is far more impressive than Felicio's 57.6% mark on only 7.7 FGA/36 IMO.

Lopez has bailed out the offense so many times as well and is a guy who actually creates offense with some frequency, Felicio hasn't shown he can do that at all.

I agree, but considering we're probably talking 15 mpg or so, maybe 20 max, I don't think even being a decent amount worse than Grant would move the needle all that much.

It depends how bad he is. A bad PG can move the needle a whole lot.

I agree his offensive game isn't quite as helpful in terms of skillset than Holiday or Valentine, but he's far more efficient than them and a far better defender, and like Cris shoots less than his counterparts, leaving more shots for Lauri, Lavine, Portis etc who hopefully will benefit from that. He's also a better rebounder than his counterparts.

Yeah, I agree on your take with Nwaba, I think it just depends if he hits some critical mass point where you have lost too much spacing and now everyone can really gang up on LaVine/Lauri because they don't need to respect anyone else 18 feet away from the basket.

[FriedRise]

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What if these guys are... actually good?

[Rerisen]

that is superstar level impact. If you believe he had that level of impact (I don't, although he certainly was the best player in the team) the Bulls should have traded Lauri instead and built around Niko.

Well it's superstar impact for 1/3 a season. You only build around him if you think he's going to keep it up for 5 years or something.

Most didn't, and the Bulls obviously didn't think he would. So far in N.O he's not keeping it up. He has 16.1 PER and .499 TS%.

Of course its a different situation but one of the things that makes superstars superstars is that they are portable, you move them to any situation and they still maintain being superstars, like Jimmy has done or Chris Paul or Durant, etc.

You start by saying he did it for a third of a season, and then proceed to quote his PER and TS% for a 6 game sample.

Regardless, the context and point of the post was that I do not believe Niko had the effect that the ridiculous on/off numbers said he had. Those were the numbers being used to illustrate why he "ruined the tank". He likely won the Bulls a couple of extra games but our superstar in the making would have played more minutes without him there as would have Portis; a guy who everyone looks at those same PER and TS% numbers and think he is actually a good basketball player. Who is to say those guys wouldn't have won those games for the Bulls too?

All we have is 6 games and in them, he's not playing like a superstar, that's all I said. Almost certainly because he never was suddenly a superstar. I mean not hard to predict he wasn't going to shoot close to 50% beyond the arc the rest of his career.

But he did play great for his stint in Chicago this year and I have no reason to doubt the on/off numbers, due to how many various lineups he impacted. He really lifted all boats. But not surprising as any competent stretch 4 has always been a big boon for an offense, so when you get one playing outstanding it makes sense the effect would be many more times as impactful.

Portis wouldn't have had the same effect, because not only are his own counting stats worse than Niko (PER/TS%) but also his impact hasn't been nowhere close in the very large chunk of minutes he's already gotten. Which is because he doesn't shoot nearly as many threes and is also a clearly worse defender. Losing Niko would have also pushed minutes on a worse backup behind Portis, esp in games where Lauri missed, like maybe Zipser.

[Rerisen]

it's obvious his confidence is off for whatever reason

Fragile mentality has always been an issue with him. Something you rarely see in real superstars.

It sort of seemed like getting punched had a silver lining of focusing his motivation on a single purpose - getting out of Chicago.

Now that he's achieved it, maybe he'll go back to the Niko we used to know.

[sco]

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What if these guys are... actually good?

I give them credit for at least sounding like they believe in themselves. I don't but no one would be happier to be proven wrong in their case.

[dougthonus]

What if these guys are... actually good?

Doubt you will have to worry about it, but if so, then great. I'd be psyched if all of a sudden we realized we have 2 other really good players on the roster who are under 25.

[The Explorer]

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What if these guys are... actually good?

Hoiberg is better suited coaching a bad, tanking team than a playoff team. Payne is better suited playing on a bad, tanking team than fighting for minutes on a playoff team. The bar has been set quite low for these guys.

[Belf]

stuff

I'm a fan of the reverse wins method. Basically you take however games you lose pre All-Star wek and then you add them to however many games you WIN for the rest of the season.

For example the Bulls are 20-37 with 25 games left. Under current rules you would want to finish 20-62. Under the reverse method you would want to finish 45-37 because you add wins to the loss column (after AS week) for draft purposes. [In the above example going 25-0 after the All-Star break would be the equivalent of finishing 20-62. You add the 25 wins post AS break to the 37 losses from before the AS break if that makes sense]

That incentives teams to "show improvement" throughout the season. It lets teams not have to pick between going for the 8th seed or going for a better draft pick (winning does both!). It would spice up the trade deadline as theoretically every team would become "buyers." Really I don't see a downside with it.

[RedBulls23]

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What if these guys are... actually good?

Then that's good for the Bulls to have more good young, potentially movable assets.

[dougthonus]

stuff

I'm a fan of the reverse wins method. Basically you take however games you lose pre All-Star wek and then you add them to however many games you WIN for the rest of the season.

For example the Bulls are 20-37 with 25 games left. Under current rules you would want to finish 20-62. Under the reverse method you would want to finish 45-37 because you add wins to the loss column (after AS week) for draft purposes. [In the above example going 25-0 after the All-Star break would be the equivalent of finishing 20-62. You add the 25 wins post AS break to the 37 losses from before the AS break if that makes sense]

That incentives teams to "show improvement" throughout the season. It lets teams not have to pick between going for the 8th seed or going for a better draft pick (winning does both!). It would spice up the trade deadline as theoretically every team would become "buyers." Really I don't see a downside with it.

I think this would be a really cool idea as long as it was only used for non playoff teams. Of course, it's probably one of the least likely ideas to be implemented because it is so radical, and I can't see anyone taking a change this radical.

That said, if any league would do something this radical, it would be the NBA.

[RedBulls23]

What if these guys are... actually good?

Doubt you will have to worry about it, but if so, then great. I'd be psyched if all of a sudden we realized we have 2 other really good players on the roster who are under 25.

Yeah, but looking at Payne's gleague numbers doesn't give you much confidence either. You would think they would pop out more if he was an NBA caliber player.

https://www.basketball-reference.com/gleague/players/p/payneca01d.html

[3noD]

and does fred not have any pride as a coach?

Brett Brown went from the top of the NBA with the San Antonio Spurs, and persevered through 5 years of Sixers tanking.
His reward, they're keeping him as the guy to coach Embiid & Simmons.

Brett Brown is very happy with his career choices.

Loyalty when things are bad will be rewarded.
Whining & complaining when the team hasn't even tanked 1 year won't get Fred anything from this org or any other.

"top of the nba" as an assistant. damn right he took the head coach job. now, he's the coach of a team that might not make the playoffs and has tied up its future in a guy who is an incredibly injury prone. why are the 76ers the model? i like to watch them, they have some nice players, but they're barely better than the bulls. and it's taken them how many years?

Everyone is allowed to express their opinions, even if they are incredibly inaccurate and not based in any sort of reality.

you act like this is such a ridiculous thing that i'm saying. i've watched practically every bulls game this season, now i have absolutely no interest in watching them. the decisions this front office has made over the course of the season has really soured my fandom; and i was quick to dismiss the #firegarpax talk

You’ll come back next year, when we have one of the most exciting young rosters in place to watch grow.


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[tunit213]

This move will sure help the tank

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[Grodoboldo]

I think it would be much better if LaVine, Lauri and Dunn only played together.
That way, they build chemistry while allowing for a 5 man reserve unit of Payne-Grant-Zipser/Valentine- Vonleh-Portis to ensure the tank.

[chi4lyfe]

As much as overt tanking is the logical thing to do, I am concerned that the draft lottery is not televised, and Silver seems the type to come down on those who break the unwritten rules.
Ask Hinkie about that.

ETA: Look for big jumps into the top 3 from teams who barely missed the playoffs (and kept their mouths shut).

Well, you can stop being concerned.

It's not televised, because it would be boring television.

-snip-

1. Thanks for the massively useful info! Now I can rest easier
1a. (Unless Silver weights his Dragon... I mean lottery balls...)

2. Boring television? Oh, you do not know how deep the addiction is with me...

[chi4lyfe]

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What if these guys are... actually good?

If we miss out on the tank because THOSE guys pan out, then we don't need a tank.

Also, it will be final confirmation that we are in the Upside Down.