dougthonus wrote:chefo wrote:Are people really complaining about his play post benching? Or pre-benching? Or just in general?
Probably just in general.
Right now, it doesn't matter if Lauri's playing like a mixture of Steph Curry and AD, he's not getting more than 20 min, period. Hyperbole, I know, but he had games where he scored 16-18 points on like 8 shots, played D well, boarded well... and he still can't get on the court for more than 20 min. It's pretty obvious his minutes, touches, and FG attempts have about nothing to do with how well he has played or not. Hell, Donovan straight up said as much.
In 19 games since his minutes have been lowered, he has scored 16 points twice, and 18 points once and never more than that. So yeah, if _any_ player gets hot roughly once in six games, their minutes probably aren't going to be adjusted a whole lot.
Can't believe people are gloating that we blew another high lottery pick
Not sure anyone is gloating or excited about the fact that Lauri didn't work out better. There are people happy to move on though, because they don't see it working out. That is different from being excited it didn't work. It is excited to move past an something they felt was going to fail rather than sticking with it even longer.
and a very talented one at that.
What do you mean by very talented? Like rotation player talented? Sure, but that's not like some big win. He's not star level talented by traditional measures (doesn't create his own shot much, not a great defender, ball handler, passer, superior athlete, good but not elite shooter).
I get some posters here don't like him, but him not working out, no matter what the reasons, is a huge effin' downer in my book. How many 20-year old sophs as good as him have we had on our team the last decade? Crickets...
How many players have we had as good as Lauri in general in the last decade? Probably 15+. The fact that he showed a lot of promise in his sophomore year, but it turned out to be a flash in the pan and not an upward trend isn't really relevant. He's in his fourth year now.
How many players in their fourth year do people go back and say "but look how good he was as a sophomore"?
To botch his career ever since just speaks to how disjointed and bush-league the Bulls have been for a while.
This assumes that Lauri has talent that vastly exceeds what he has done. I don't think that's a good assumption. He's a fine player, and when he goes to some other team on his new contract, then if he plays up to that deal and isn't sitting there with "he might be a star" expectations and instead is playing with "can be a valuable role player expectations" then the fans of that team will feel better about him. He probably won't be a major talking point for that team either way, just like people don't get into particularly heated debates about Satoransky.
Probably people here wouldn't argue about him so much except there is a very wide gap in how good people feel Lauri is with some people still thinking he's a star that has been unfairly hindered by his situation and others thinking he's worthless (and obviously everywhere in between).
My off the cuff view is I cannot think of another player in my head where the team worked harder to make a guy lacking traditional star level talent into a star than the Bulls did with Lauri. Post trade deadline, they clearly gave up on Lauri and said "forget it, he's not coming back, we don't need to prioritize him" but his first 3.5 years here were all about attempting to make Lauri succeed.
Hope AK and Donovan can turn it around by next year. Lauri is by far their biggest failure this year, IMO.
To the extent he's a failure, Lauri is Lauri's own biggest failure. I don't actually view Lauri as a failure though. As noted, to me, he's a guy who's a valuable role player, but the brief expectations for more than that were simply never reasonable. He's probably about the caliber player you would typically get at his pick. A good, but not great player, that will go on to be a problem at contract time.
OK, let's handle these one by one. And given that it's a pointless exercise to spend that much time on a guy that 95% won't be on the Bulls next year, that'll be that for me; water under the bridge...
* When he absolutely killed the Raps and Nick Nurse said as much, he did it in what? 18 Mins? Do you think he deserved more time that game? It's not about getting hot. He's been at 60%+ TS the entire year. As in, over any meaningful stretch of games he gets you over 1.2 points per shot attempted. Pre-benching, post-benching, playing 18 min/game, playing 30+ min/game. If a player only gets 25 touches and 7 shots per game like Lauri post benching, it's an effin' miracle if he can drag himself to double digits most nights. Look up my prediction after they benched him and Donovan said he won't be featured. I said he'll settle around 10/game with quite a bit of variation with some 15 point games sprinkled with some 5 point games. Good call? But about getting hot? He's been 'hot" all year. When he gets touches, he produces. That's about as factual a statement as there is and the numbers bear it out.
* The reason why I bring his sophomore year is because contrary to what seems to be taken as a self-evident fact is the assumption that the Bulls tried to make Lauri a star for 3.5 years. That's subjectively and objectively false. They didn't try anything of the sort. Let's g through a quick rewind of his career here:
--Drafted 7th, but the Bulls FO admit they did not scout him; he was expected to be a 10-min off the bench 4th big. He was the 3rd PF in the pecking order after Niko and Bobby. If Bobby did not break Niko's face, taking them both out to start the year, Lauri was not going to see the floor that year. Instead, he was the quickest rookie to 100 3s in the NBA history... as a 7 foot big. He also had 80+ dunks, if I remember correctly. Hit a rookie wall, but he had played well so he made himself difficult to bench, not because he was getting entitlement minutes. To close the year, because we were tanking, Hoiberg did the EXACT opposite of trying to make him a star because Lauri was playing so well he was killing the tank. Ancient history now, I know, but Lauri finished the year scoring like 19ppg in 21min and Hoiberg was purposefully benching him the entire 4th quarters and not because he was playing poorly, but because he was playing so well.
--2nd year: the Bulls FO (or Jerry) brought in another super-high usage PF in Jabari after already having Bobby and his 50 touches (2nd-3rd option touches) on the roster. Jabari got 1st option touches when on the team (65). Yay! Another huge logjam and the position Lauri plays--there are 2 guys getting a combined 115 touches a game at his spot. Also drafted WCJ and he got 40 touches (4th option). Compare that to Rolo who got 28. Lauri was not featured to start the year. He got as many touches as Bobby and quite a bit fewer than Jabari. He only got 10ish more than rookie WCJ. Once they shipped Bobby and Jabari out and WCJ got injured, Lauri's touches went from 50ish to 80ish and dude turned into FebruLauri before that crazy heart issue flared up. So, as a soph, he was at 19 & 9 in 32 min / game on 66 touches / game. He was featured for 20 odd games. He got first option touches on average and got you 21 per 36, which for a soph was pretty promising.
-- 3rd year: Dude opens the year by getting, what was it? Like 35 & 17? At which point, either Egghead or one of his assistant coaches allegedly calls him out in front of the entire team for being selfish and breaking the newly designed O. That's the biggest WTF I've ever heard of in an NBA locker-room. Sure is encouraging. Lauri's touches drop from 66 to 45 (4th option) and he is sent chilling to the corner where he has his worst year to date. His everything drops meaningfully. Thad was put in the exact same spot to where his wife had to go on Twitter and defend him against fans calling him a stupid, mindless, lazy 3 point-chucker by saying that's what the coaches are telling them to do. When Lauri complains to Boylen that his touches have dropped by almost half to where he closed the previous year, Boylen tells him that if he wants more touches, he needs to rebound more. Yep, straight up featuring him and wanting to make him a star.
--4th year: Gets an offensive low-ball Felicio-like offer for an extension. Opens the year on fire, scoring 19 per game on 44 touches, which is among the best in the league per touch. Improves on D to passable. Scores in the paint at a 70% clip. Shoots better at near 39% from 3 on high volume. The Bulls get Vuc and Theis. Gets benched after a single game. Not because he's playing poorly but because... crickets? Thad's a better fit with Vuc? Whatever dude came up with that needs to be fired on the spot for being an idiot because it managed to marginalize both the Bulls 2nd and 3rd best players pre-trade in a single move. Bravo! Lauri, after sulking, comes out and really tries on D to the point it's arguable who's a better defender-- him, or defensive specialist Theis. He still scores on 60%+TS like he has the entire year but his touches drop to 8th man off the bench and he's down to 7 shots a game.
So, let's recap--the Bulls have purposefully increased his usage and featured him for 2 months after his rookie year. 2 month. Not 2 years. His last year, he's never played better ball in his life, on BOTH sides, and he got benched anyways despite being an incredibly efficient high volume scorer on 4th option touches.
You can argue he doesn't deserve being featured--and I reply with who deserved it more on these rosters?
--Jabari and Dunn his second year?
--Rookie Coby, Sato, Dunn his 3rd?
--Sato, Coby, WCJ, Theis this year?
Is the argument that the Bulls have tried featuring him and trying to make him a star for real? There's not a shred of evidence to support it. You look at the numbers and the conclusion is the exact opposite. Anyhow, that's why we have sucked as a franchise. If the FO and cocahes can't tell that Lauri is a more talented offensive player than the dudes I listed above, they really need to be devising schemes for the Chinese league because that level of stupid won't be able to cut it in Europe, let alone the NBA.
He's the ONLY player pre-trade apart from Zach where at any point he has played like a top 20 offensive player (FebruLauri). He scored 26 on 60%+TS, and not because of hot shooting. He's a better player now than he was that sophomore year, by ANY objective standard--he's a better defender, he's a better shooter, he's a better finisher through contact; he's a better finisher in the paint.
That's what I mean by talent--he's a guy who's proven he can give you 20 per game and current Lauri can do it on 60%+ TS. That's as rare as an animal as you'll find in the NBA... and our FO and/or coaching staff decided to throw it in the dumpster because he's not a shiny new toy they've brought in. That's called throwing the baby with the bath water.
When you have a guy like that, you increase his touches, you don't halve them. Lauri gets 3 times fewer touches than Vuc. So, it seems that either Donovan or the FO decided they don't need another tall European guy that scores a lot. I think it's as simple as that. Balance, whatever. Irony in all of this is that Lauri has somehow morphed into a much better defender than Vuc and a better defender than Thad. So, they finally managed to get him to be a two-way player... only for us to lose him for what will probably end up being nothing. If that was AK's doing, that little maneuver smells a lot like Vinny-level salesmanship backed by utterly poor actual results on the court because they simply didn't think it through.
Anyhow, don't see the point of discussing Lauri any further. Yeah, I'm disappointed in him. I'm disappointed he didn't hustle his posterior on D because then they'd have no choice but to play him before benching. I'm disappointed that he spent his off-seasons pumping iron and coming back looking like Ivan Drago as opposed to working on his game. And, I'm disappointed that the FO and coaches made up their minds and refused to change them despite him playing well to really well all year. He's the one hope from the current roster that I thought could turn into a high-level two-way player. Which, given that our two "stars" are subpar at best on D, we'd really need going forward. Didn't work out; shame, really.
. I've come to realize the sheer folly of arguing over whether deca-millionaires suck at this or that. Like it matters one bit.
Talk to you lot next season.
