You're right. I'm happy to defend the coach that coached his team to the playoffs and achieved a record that actually exceeded the expectations of analysts while you continue to heap praise on the guy that had a worse record than the Sacramento Kings.

I know the Hoiberg thing gets whitewashed but he had record that was 10 games better than what Tom Thibodeau had.

Tom Thibodeau's only pick to date was a flop and yet you still found a way to heap praise on him.

I can pretty much guarantee that Dunn will play much better under Hoiberg.

I don't buy into the Butler hype and it seems that most of the NBA didn't either. Team after team turned Paxson down and now he is being bashed for not getting market value for Butler. Maybe this was what the market was for Butler.

There is no doubt that if they didn't trade Butler you'd be bashing them for that also.

While you keep dissing Jordan he never bashed teammates in public and Jordan always showed up during the playoffs too.

How do you know Rondo was never going to play in the NBA again? That has already been debunked hasn't it?

Wade signing is no where near as big a signing as Pau Gasol.

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Have you come up with a single tangible thing Hoiberg actually does well as a coach yet?

I praised him for successfully cutting his losses and fleecing another team still convinced the guy he picked in the lottery is in fact a lottey talent despite all the evidence to the contrary.
Based on Fred's long distinguished record of getting the best out of young talent, suc ash Doug McDermott and Nikola Mirotic? He's definitely carried out the front office's vision for getting his players to flourish offensively so far.

I just showed you that there are reports that Boston put up a better deal. I already predicted you'd say this simply proves it's his market value because you don't like Butler, and sure enough, here you are declaring this is an indication of Butler's true market value because you don't like Butler. Do you seriously think any of the Bulls or their front office are going to say there were better deals on the table? I'd say the national reception to the trade says a lot more than GarPax's post-hoc spin that they tried their darndest. And of course, if one wants to complain about the market for Butler now, you should be ready to rip GarPax for not dealing him when it was clearly higher last offseason or last trade deadline. Boston was 100% ready to part with multiple picks then and the talks broke down over Crowder.

I'm not going to celebrate chucking Butler just for the sake of chucking Butler. The Bulls once again getting fleeced on a trade isn't a reason to celebrate, even if one theoretically agrees with the need to rebuild. If anything this trade just indicates exactly why the asshats who have necessitated a rebuild should not be the ones overseeing it.
So Jimmy being far milder about his teammates but mentioning it publicly is a fundamentally different sin than Jordan's reign of terror on all his teammates? Please. Jordan would be a "malcontent" by your extremely low standards to qualify as such if even a fraction of his bullshit was made public. And again, why is Jordan's talk just evidence of The Will to Win while Jimmy's is just more evidence that he didn't care about the franchise or winning?

No, no it hasn't. Rondo has historically been a far greater "malcontent" throughout his own career despite your own REVISIONISM to the contrary. If you want to say Butler's loyalty was opportunistic, it's an even more obvious logical deduction that stand-up good teammate Rondo was also purely a matter of self-interest and reputation preservation.


Wade signing is definitely a bigger deal than Gasol despite how the two played when they arrived and also for "it's a business" reasons.

With all the greatness that is Tom Thibodeau's coaching how did they end up with a worse record than Sacramento? For some reason this never quite gets answered.

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Here you go again bringing up Thibodeau any time people are bashing GarPax and Hoiberg. This is exactly what I meant when I said you're always looking to shift the focus despite your kicking and screaming admission that the front office should finally be chucked. I haven't praised Thibodeau's overall performance in Minnesota once. I do think he's a far better coach than Hoiberg and it now looks like he's a better GM than the most experienced front office team in the league that has yet to come close to sniffing a title.

Hoiberg isn't a terrible coach simply because you say it. As far as Hoiberg the coach goes the Bulls looked a lot better as a team once they took the Ball out of Butler's hands. His offense looked much better once iso Butler wasn't the order of the day.

It's only something that the Bulls announcers had been calling for all season by the way.

McDermott played much better under Hoiberg too.

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The stats in fact say the Bulls played much better when the ball was in Butler's hands, despite your own personal biases. That's exactly the reason Hoiberg would defer to the Wade-Butler-Rondo take-turns approach in the 4th so frequently, as it maximized their odds of winning. I do not give a crap what Stacey King wanted.

@ McDermott's improvements under Hoiberg. He played so much better that GarPax shipped him out and gave up a draft pick to do so despite getting even worse players in return.

The statistics also show that they were up 2-0 With Rondo in and 0-4 With Rondo out too. I guess that was bias also.

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Regardless of the trade he played better. Butler was also traded so I guess that means he was a bum too.

If Butler is that guy then Minnesota should win a minimum of 50 games.

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So a 19 game improvement because of 1 player?

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Be well

GO BEARS!!!

Some solid Wade trashing done here.Well done gents. Fuck Wade and his roided out head. Also he's not from Chicago, he's from fucking Robbins/Smoke Lawn/Richards whatever.

I'm gonna go ahead and say McDermott's improvements probably had a wee bit more to do with no longer being an injured rookie and actually playing a full season rather than "The Mayor's" brilliant tutelage. Good to see what you're now going to hang your hat on about Hoiberg not being a poor coach is that he made Doug McDermott slightly less bad. Perhaps Kris Dunn's average can also jump up 4 points a game thanks to the genius of Hoiball

I also love how you like to play the expectations game whenever it suits your argument (or when you want to load the deck for players and coaches you dislike) but have excuse after excuse for the utter failure of Hoiberg and the Bulls in the 2015-2016 season. Here comes the crying about injuries; truly the lack of Joakim Noah for much of the season was what kept Fred from inevitably surpassing what Thibs did with the same team one year earlier. And as always you remain impervious to the fact that the lowered expectations placed on Hoiberg going into last season directly factored in the ineptitude he had amply demonstrated during his first year in the league. Good for him for meeting the bar of mediocrity he had set for himself and "improving" Doug McDermott!!!

Finally, I'd say there's a significantly larger sample size to vindicate how much better the Bulls offense ran with Jimmy in the lineup than your cherrypicked 6 games against a single opponent in the playoffs. Keep fighting the good fight though that true Hoiball is actually a successful and we just haven't been blessed to see it run properly yet. You also seem to be under the impression you're arguing with WWN anyway since I never bashed Rondo much relative to the rest of the trash point guards GarPax had on the roster last year.

If he is a top 10 guy then it shouldn't be a problem. When you factor in the fact that Towns is a top 10-15 guy and Thibs shouldn't be a problem. Melo did it his first year in the league and people think Butler is a better player than Melo, even during his prime. Chris Paul did it in L.A. if Butler is that guy and Thibs is that coach then they should win 50 games. If they don't I'm not going to bash but all i kept hearing was how Butler "carried" the Bulls. He did this in spite of terrible coaching and a shitty roster. Well they have a top 2 coach now as well as a top 15 guy. Wiggins has big time talent and Rubio is a solid point.

The Bulls got fleeced. Let's see if this fleecing results in Wolves success. If it doesn't which it won't, then how could it be argued that they were fleeced? If Dunn turns how to be good then the overrated Thibs will look like a fool.

He is the key to this trade.

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You make stuff up a lot. You base lowered expectations on Hoiberg. You'd be hard pressed to find any publication that said that they were going to be mediocre because Hoiberg is their coach.

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What a coach seems capable of getting out of roster is as essential to how one projects a team to do in a given season as the roster itself. You can't say it's all simply about talent for the roster when coaching talent matters too.

Simple yes or no question: did Hoiberg meet expectations in 2015-2016 with the team that had 2-1 lead on the Cavs the previous season? And if not, why is that failure less relevant than his "success" this year in attaining the 8 seed in a terrible conference?

The Bulls had twice as many injuries as they had during the previous year. They lost 8 fewer games than the previous year. At no point during that season were they healthy. Pau was also a year older and nowhere near the player that he was the previous year.

You duck the Thibs issue but you subtly throw him in whenever you seek to bash Hoiberg or Bulls management.

It's not an excuse as much as it's fact. Pau didn't look all that great under all world coach Pop either. He's old and that's what happens when you get old. Rose played with a mask and looked terrible yet the Bulls were 23-15 after 38 games.

People rode Hoiberg off early and nothing he does will change that. Meanwhile the coach that everyone wanted was bested by 10 games despite possessing a better roster.

He also finished with a record worse than a team that lost its best two players.

If Hoiberg were the disaster that everyone keeps saying he is he wouldn't have made the playoffs. Not with that roster.

I don't recall you ever posting about the Bulls being a good team. In fact you called the team shitty when it was constructed last season. You hated the composition of the team then resorted to the familiar role of Hoiberg bashing once the season started.

If he is coaching a shitty roster to playoffs then be must be doing something right. The roster stinks coaching stinks yet they make the playoffs and go up 2-0 after 2 on top reamns home court. Something is amiss in all this.

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You did not answer with a yes or a no to my question.

It seems I have to remind you that the majority of the games missed came from the benched Joakim Noah and Mike Dunleavy. Hoiberg had the healthiest Rose in years, even discounting the masked version. Gasol's numbers did not decline dramatically from 2015 to 2016 either and certainly his aging is not an adequate excuse for Hoiberg to miss the playoffs. As I said above, you like to play the expectation game except when it comes to Hoiberg's failure to even make the playoffs with a team that was 2-1 up on the Cavs the previous season. What's the calculus here? Thibs failed to meet expectations despite going up 2-1 on the Cavs, but Hoiberg failed less significantly (or even met them?!) when he did not make the playoffs at all?

Bringing up Thibs simply reinforces the point that coaching capability is a factor in season-long expectations, despite your protestations to the contrary when it comes to Hoiberg. Thibs' record of success is precisely one of the reasons why the Wolves were expected to improve more than they did. Hoiberg's record of missing the playoffs with a team that one year previous was 2-1 up on the Cavs is precisely one of the reasons why the Bulls had such low expectations going into last season. If you want to say that shows Thibs may have been overrated, go for it, but it also shows that Hoiberg wasn't rated much at all and meeting the rather low bar he had set for himself does little to change that.

You basically want to give Butler no credit for last season's results but want to act like the very act of making the playoffs is proof of Hoiberg's genius. Likewise it's Butler's fault the Celtics ran the Bulls out of the playoffs, but even being in that position is a credit to "The Mayor," despite your continuous inability to even list slightly convincing things he does well as a coach.

The ball moved well in his offense. That is Hoiberg. Hoiberg also allows his players freedom to play basketball. Those 2 things he does well as a coach.

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These are literally vague baseless assertions.

"The ball moved well?" Then why do all the stats indicate the Bulls fared better when playing ISO-ball than when running his ballyhooed system? Why, despite this swell ball movement, have the Bulls continued to decline relative to the rest of the league in terms of offensive rankings? Why did they go 1-5 in games where that no-good Butler didn't play and couldn't hold up the system?

"Freedom to play basketball?" What does this even mean? That he lets guys do whatever they want? That would really seem to undercut the whole idea of his brilliant system coaching he brought in for and I'm not even sure under what circumstances this idea would even count as a good thing. "One of the things Fred does really well as a coach is letting his players get away with whatever they want." Yes, that's truly one of the most desired attributes when looking at coaching candidates.

What vague idea are you going to propose next? That he's good at getting NBA players to believe in themselves or learn the value of teamwork?

Where is your proof? You don't have any. I'm sure guys like Portis and Valentine will agree that Iso Butler really helped them. There is nothing vague about it. When Rondo ran their offense it looked better and the results backed that up. When Gibson (another) ball stopper was traded and Wade was hurt the Bulls offense looked completely different and their record was slightly better.

Where are your statistics?

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The Bulls were 1-5 in games Butler missed this year. All of the relevant offensive splits for the Bulls are significantly higher when Butler has been on the court this year. The assist rate did not go up by any significant margin when he was on the bench. You're literally hinging your entire argument on 2 playoff games with Rondo, despite the fact that he was a net negative player across the course of the regular season in RPM and on/off splits. The ball moving well by your subjective definition means jack diddly if the offense is actually performing at a lower efficiency.

This is crap since the emphasis away from Iso ball occurred in late February early March. Rondo also was benched and relegated to playing with 2nd unit guys. Once the Bulls took the Ball out of Butler's hands the team played better. All this talk about splits and other stats are beside the point. Anyone that watched the Bulls the last 2 months could see that they were a better team. Wide open shots and better trust in teammates became apparent. This with Wade on the bench.

I noticed that your Hoiberg asking was at a minimum too. You reserve it for periods when they aren't playing games. Tougher to refute I see. Rondo was their 2nd most valuable player down the stretch. In a number of games he was their most valuable. He got guys involved. Butler doesn't and Butler isn't even food in one on one situations. He had difficulty scoring on Avery Bradley even though he was being covered on one on one.

If you look at full season it's easy to see why Rondo was ineffective. In a number of games they were allowing Butler and Wade to run the team.

I asked for evidence and you couldn't provide any.

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Where would you rank Butler LTG? Why do you dislike a guy that climbed his way up from the bottom in just about every way?

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Be well

GO BEARS!!!

I just don't get the discussion here. Wade chose to stay here. Why would he get a buyout?

Wade was a terrible signing and I don't know why anyone would want to root for him after what he did to the Bulls in the Lebron recruitment. Let him play it out here and be miserable and then hopefully we can ban him from the city of Chicago and neighboring counties.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

I have him in that 15-20 range as a player. I respect what he accomplished and how he accomplished it. I don't respect the diva attitude and big timing of younger teammates once he accomplished it. He also attempted to distinguish himself from more accomplished teammates the year before.

Once he became an All Star he showed his ass. He was the Bulls best player but that's like celebrating the tallest midget. Rondo may have been their most valuable particularly for a young team. His attitude and style of play weren't taking the Bulls anywhere.



To illustrate hypocrisy. Zeph used a 6 game sample to illustrate Butlers value while claiming that the 6 game playoff sample wasn't large enough.

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No one cares about Wade or his decision to opt in. He will ride the year out and move on if they don't trade him first. Who cares if he is bought out? I don't.

I'm interested in the rebuild.

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If no one cares why does this thread exist?

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

I gave you numbers. You gave me more baseless assertions and reliance on your overly biased "eye test."

Butler has a higher assist rate in the clutch to comparable players of his caliber and put up his highest assist numbers of his career this year. Your entire argument is based on a reductive "Rondo= teammates involved, Butler= ballhog" false dichotomy. The number of games where Rondo was the most valuable player on the court that Butler also played in can be counted on one hand.

To provide another reason to talk Jimmy Butler.

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http://www.nba.com/article/2017/04/22/b ... ss-chicago

I guess Aschburner has them (baseless assertions) too. Probably the best NBA writer in the game.

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Subjective? I think not.

http://www.cbssports.com/nba/news/nba-p ... ts-scores/

Avg about 15 points less without Rondo. Failed to crack the 100 point mark in 4 games after doing it during the first 2.

I love how playoff basketball somehow becomes irrelevant too.

I guess this is an example of an eyetest bias also. These are easily quantifiable observations.

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