|
Who'd benefit Bulls more now -- Big Ben or Chandler?
By John Hollinger
ESPN Insider
I don't think this is what the Bulls meant by a "circus trip."
As everyone knows by know, Chicago's annual early-season road trip -- necessitated because the lion tamers and bearded ladies take over the United Center for two weeks each November -- turned into its own circus on Saturday when Ben Wallace entered a game with a headband in open defiance of team rules.
The conflict set the stage for a crucial test of coach Scott Skiles' leadership. He's earned much-deserved kudos for keeping the Bulls competitive with a gritty underdog mentality the past few years, but has yet to show he can handle big-name, high-priced players the way a Phil Jackson or Chuck Daly can.
But while we waited on pins and needles for the resolution of perhaps the biggest challenge of Skiles' coaching career, there was another, equally important big-picture question for the Bulls:
Namely, is Big Ben a Big Bust? And, as unbelievable as this would have sounded two months ago, might the Bulls be better off right now with Tyson Chandler?
If you'll recall, Chicago lured Wallace as a free agent from Detroit with a four-year, $60 million deal that was too rich for the Pistons' blood -- even though he was the key piece in one of the decade's most dominant defenses. Because Wallace has virtually no offensive value, the Bulls justified the deal largely on the premise that the four-time Defensive Player of the Year could turn what was already a good defense into an absolutely stifling one. That, in turn, was hoped to be the difference that would move the young Bulls into the upper echelon of the Eastern Conference.
Thus far, he's failed to deliver. Chicago has not shown any marked improvement defensively, ranking fifth in the NBA in defensive efficiency thus far, about the same as last year, when they were sixth in the league. After holding the Heat to 66 points on opening night, the Bulls have allowed seven of their 13 opponents to hit the century mark.
The low point came in the game just prior to the great headband incident, when lowly Philadelphia pumped in 123 points on 53.8 percent shooting. For his part, Big Ben put up a big bagel in the scoring and rebounding departments in 20 minutes of inaction.
Moreover, one of the specific ways Wallace was supposed to help has proven to be a dud.
Chicago led the league in field-goal percentage defense last season, but because the Bulls fouled at a relatively high rate, they ranked only sixth in defensive efficiency. The hope was that adding Wallace would help slash that foul rate, because one of his strongest assets is his ability to block shots and rebound without fouling -- he averages only about a foul per 15 minutes for his career, an amazingly low rate for a big man.
Wallace has kept up his end of the bargain in this respect, but the team as a whole has not. Chicago's rate of .383 opponent free-throw attempts per field-goal attempt is slightly worse than last season's .379 mark, and although this is an improvement relative to the league (as a whole the league average is .013 higher this year), it's a minor one.
That's especially true when one considers Chicago's opponent field-goal percentage, which has ballooned to 46.9 percent from last year's 42.6 percent mark. The Bulls were hoping Wallace's presence would diminish opponent percentages even more, but this has been perhaps his greatest shortcoming to date.
The most glaring indicator is that Wallace is averaging only 1.6 blocks per game. On a per-minute basis, he's sending back shots less than half as often as in his peak season of 2001-02.
And while the Bulls' rebound numbers are slightly better, Wallace's own marks are down substantially. His current rebound rate of 16.2 is quite good for a center, but hardly spectacular. Unfortunately, the Bulls need it to be spectacular. They're paying the max for a player who doesn't score, so his rebounding and defense have to be off the charts. Thus far, they haven't been.
Perhaps we should have seen this coming. After all, it would be easier to write this off as a 14-game aberration if not for Wallace's noticeable performance dip toward the end of last season. His PER was 18.8 after 55 games last season; for the rest of the regular season it was 14.6. In the playoffs, it plummeted further to 11.5, contributing to Detroit's stunning flameout.
Considering the late-year slump, that he's 32 and that he's largely dependent on his freakish athleticism, Wallace's 13.4 mark in 2006-07 looks a lot less shocking.
While Wallace's rebounding and defense remain above average, it won't advance the Bulls' cause much if his rebounding and defense is merely "pretty good" rather than extraordinary.
That's because Chandler, the guy they had in the middle a year ago, already gave them that.
In fact, he's having a better year for the Hornets than Wallace is having with the Bulls. Chandler's rebound rate of 21.0 is among the league's best, while the high foul rate that plagued him in Chicago has been cut sharply this year, enabling him to play a career-best 31.2 minutes per game thus far. His PER of 15.0 is better than Wallace's, and considering that Chandler is eight years younger, it's possible this equation could turn further against the Bulls.
Meanwhile, it's Chandler's Hornets who are experiencing the effect Wallace was supposed to provide in Chicago. New Orleans/Oklahoma City ranks sixth in the NBA in defensive efficiency, a major improvement on its 20th-place finish last season.
That's allowed the Hornets to stay competitive despite David West's absence and the team's general inability to score. (Despite Chris Paul's wizardry, the Hornets are 28th in offensive efficiency.)
The Hornets achieved their defensive improvement largely by slashing their opponents' field-goal percentage from 45.9 to 43.6 percent -- another accomplishment that points back to having a long-limbed intimidator around the basket.
Just as we might have seen a diminished Wallace if we looked closely at the year-end numbers from last season, it's also possible to see how Chandler's impact could have increased. Statistically, his three seasons prior to last year were much more impressive than his 2005-06 campaign, when he was held back by poor conditioning in the early part of the season. It's easy to see how a 24-year-old 7-footer might recover quickly from the setback.
In Friday's Chicago Sun-Times, Chicago coach Scott Skiles said of Chandler, "He looks like he's in very good shape and able to play longer stretches. He wasn't able to as much last year.
"He's really rebounding the ball. He's active. He's changing ends. He looks like Tyson looks when he's playing well."
Having said all this, I think it's a bit much to blame the Bulls' front office on this one. Wallace's year-end stats look like an obvious omen in hindsight, but his PERs for the past four seasons were 17.34, 17.45, 17.49 and 17.54 -- pretty hard to see evidence of decline there.
And once the Bulls had Wallace, trading the equally offenseless Chandler was a no-brainer. It's just happened to work out very badly thus far. But while critiquing the Wallace-Chandler swap requires 20-20 hindsight, it was the Bulls' failure to hold on to J.R. Smith in the aftermath of that deal that was the more foreseeable mistake.
Nonetheless, the Bulls find themselves at 5-9. Glass-half-full types will point out that the Bulls have played what is arguably the toughest schedule in the league thus far, and the wins have been much more one-sided than the losses. Those same folks will also mention that the Bulls also have a history of slow starts thanks in part to the early-season circus trip, so this is familiar territory, and Chicago plays eight of its next nine games at home, only one of which is against a team with a winning record .
Thus, Chicago could be back on the good side of .500 relatively quickly. But the Bulls didn't bring in Wallace so they could eke out a plus-.500 record. They were already doing that with Chandler. The whole point of shelling out $60 million over four years for Wallace was in the hope that he'd turn them into one of the East's elite teams, and thus far the Bulls don't look anything like that caliber of team.
They don't even look like the Bulls -- the hustle and effort plays that defined both Wallace and his new Chicago teammates in previous seasons have been few and far between thus far.
Whether it turns out to be a $60 million mistake depends largely on the nature of Wallace's problems. If it's just a mental thing -- that his notorious moodiness is affecting his output on the court -- then that's a worry, but it's fixable.
The bigger concern would be if his recent sourness is a reaction to his decline, rather than the cause of it. In that case, the Bulls have two problems, and only one of them is fixable. I hope for the Bulls' sake it's the former, but I fear it may be the latter.
|
Login
Register
FAQ
Search
