Nas wrote:
Bulls should be able to get 2 really good players and 1 great and some role players with that money in the offseason. They will be in contention next season no matter what.
Noah
Butler
Mirotic
Taj
Star Free agent
2 good free agents
Roster fillers
Derrick Rose
dude, isn't there a FA list you can look up? who's this star free agent that they're gonna get? melo? maybe make a run at an old/75%-past-it wade if he decides to leave miami when lebron does? i'm not worried about them going out and getting relatively/good free agents, but like.... i think the bulls have consistently proven that you can never expect them to go out and get a star free agent because to the best of my recollection they've never ever done that.
or wait, actually, my bad. i'm totally wrong on this one. i'm forgetting about ben wallace =)
of course, we've now got another shit situation with derrick in between the minor ~1-2 week situation and the blown out ACL: the meniscus! hopefully their MRIs and whatnot can tell them if derrick's knee is taking the kind of abuse that would lead to another ACL blowout (cuz you gotta figure they just don't randomly snap without some sort of hyperextension. there has to be a level of wear and tear that causes them to snap in the normal range of motion, right?) and then MAYBE DERRICK CAN CHANGE HIS GAME UP.
cuz as i've been saying ad nauseum/infinitum for years, the bulls need to somehow go and get a guy who can be a #1 scoring option on the team. YOU ARE NOT GOING TO WIN JACK SQUAT DIDDLY SHIT WITH DERRICK ROSE BEING A ~18+ SHOTS-PER-GAME #1 SCORING OPTION. management needs to realize that thibs can take lesser defenders and coach/system them up into competence that will complement a more robust scoring attack. if you try to play a game that preaches defense above all else and you get him the personnel to maximize that, you're going to end up with situations (in the playoffs) where you've gotta score a damn basket, and if your team's offense is basically derrick-rose-or-pray-that-deng-gets-fouled-flailing-at-the-basket well then SURPRISE! you're going to get shut down in the playoffs when a team says "ok, you'll hold us to 85pts.... but who's gonna score for you?"
that's the problem with the bulls whether rose is out with an ACL or if he didn't even get hurt last night. if you take out derrick rose they don't have anyone on there who can score enough points to beat the other team. that and LOL DENG needs to go because you can give me all of this crap about blah blah blah 16/8 blah blah blah defense/glue-guy... and i'll grant you that he can indeed play defense and yeah you can do worse than deng, but he's the epitome of this bulls team. miami has lebron at the 3, which gives you the defense plus the scoring options... and the game is evolving to kind of faze out the traditional 2 guard into a more hybrid role with the 2/3, cuz look at where wiggins and jabari are gonna end up (tho more likely 2/3 respectively)... that's where it's at.
you need somebody else to be the focal point of the scoring/defensive-attention to allow derrick to play more of a traditional point guard role. his current 33-34% shooting for the season should clue you into the fact that he's sure as hell trying out there (and nobody can ever take away the fact that derrick has heart) and he'll go down fighting, but seriously, i have faith in thibs to take primarily-offensive-players and mould them into good-enough defenders, if not implement a system that utilizes the presences of noah/taj/deng/whoever to help make up for whatever defense you'd lose going out and getting a bigtime scorer at the 2/3 position.
and honestly i dont think this team's gonna start doing that til they look in the mirror and recite step 1: that they're powerless over their addiction to LOL DENG. cuz if you had, say, two guys ahead of deng on the offensive pecking order to go along with derrick, then hell yeah having deng as some sort of a glue guy works... but having him in a position/salary-bracket where he's basically supposed to be the #2 scoring option on your team? the results over the last 10 years speak for themselves. it's just not gonna work with him unless he's a proper role player. maybe he'll be willing to take a paycut to stay here, or maybe he'll get out there and see that the market will offer him the most cash to go to a bum squad... or watch him end up a spur. see if deng was on the spurs with duncan/parker/ginobli/3pt-specialists/etc then he'd be perfect. but if the spurs basically had only tony parker and then got deng, well, they'd be in the same damn position the bulls are in now.
my bad on the verbosity here, but what can i say? i've got the fire and da pashin. and i've also got the steadfast belief/knowledge that the bulls aren't gonna win shit with this team they've got now and the longer they wait to do something about that = the longer we're going to wait to have a legit contender here in chicago.
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Curious Hair wrote:
Les Grobstein's huge hog is proof that God has a sense of humor, isn't it?