That's my Secret, TT. I'm Always Angry

First, let's talk about what TT did right. I challenged him earlier to sit Boozer on the bench in the playoffs when he's playing like crap, and yesterday he did. It would have been nice if TT had realized Boozer was a detriment before he played 27 crappy minutes, but at least he couldn't hurt us for the last 16 minutes of the game. Playing Asik and Rip the whole second half was the right call as well. Asik because obviously they didn't have another big to insert besides Boozer (unless he went to the White Mamba, and we all knew that wasn't happening,) and Rip because he was making things happen offensively.

Now the bad, from least egregious to most:
3. There was no reason for CJ to play the whole 2nd half. Not that I wanted JL3 to come in. But I've been screaming this all series long: What the hell is Mike James on the roster for if not to take over the point guard duties when both of your other point guards are playing terribly? Mike James could not have been any worse on both ends of the court than CJ was. CJ repeatedly lost track of Lou Williams down the stretch (including a particularly egregious one that led to a Williams 3 with 4 minutes left to give the Sixers a 1-point lead,) and also took some ugly jump shots in the 4th quarter, when there was no reason for CJ to be shooting jump shots. Much has been and will be made of Boozer's 1-11, which was bad in the grand scheme of things, but most of that is big-picture, contract and money type stuff. CJ was 2-11 last night, and still hurting us by taking shots in the 4th quarter, which is a far bigger reason we lost.

Also: Decision-making, which we'll get to in a minute.

2. For the second straight playoff series, the opposing coach got the better of TT on the clipboard. For some reason, the Bulls' defensive strategy the last 5 minutes was "switch-on-everything". The Sixers really could have taken more advantage of this one, there were a few possessions that had Elton Brand posting up Rip, but no one on the Sixers managed to recognize it and get it in to him. They did manage to post Iggy up on CJ, but CJ's quick hands saved them an easy 2.

But what really killed the Bulls was every possession in the last 1:15. I'm going to go to the BMO Harris Bank Telestrator here:
1:15- After somehow collecting the rebound after a bad Lou Williams off-balance 3 (where CJ might have been out of bounds, but it's hard to tell,) CJ pushes the ball up the floor to beat the 8 second clock (huge assist by White Mamba here. Watching the replay, CJ is just standing in the corner with the ball when the shot clock hits 20, and you can see Scal right next to CJ yelling at him to get across the timeline. CJ doesn't actually beat the clock, but there's no way the refs are calling a close 8-second violation there), then slows it down to run the clock (the Bulls are up 3 at this point.) For some reason, the play involves a man who is 2-10 on the day dribbling in the corner by himself for 8 seconds, then going over a Deng screen, (which Williams wisely decides to go under,) and takes a contested 3 with 4 seconds on the shot clock.
:56- Because of the long rebound, CJ is forced to try to stay with Iggy on the way back down, and fouls him to keep him from getting an easy layup. Holiday inbounds to Hawes, gets the ball back, comes off a Hawes screen and draws both TBN and Asik to the corner with him. Here's where we miss Jo. Jo is quick enough to either slow Holiday's momentum, just switch on to him for the rest of the possession (allowing TBN to switch to Hawes,) or get back in the paint in time. But it's Asik, so he gets stuck in the corner. Holiday drops it to Young, while Taj has to try to guard both big men until Asik can get back. Rip is caught in no mans land, not wanting to leave Iggy wide open behind the arc up 3.
:38- The Bulls use their last timeout. I'll get to this in a second as well.
CJ barely gets the ball to Rip (again out of timeouts), gets the ball back, dribbles to the corner, and sets up the screen and roll with Asik, which was probably the best run play of the game. It is, of course, a small miracle Asik caught that ball and finished it. (Assisted by terrible help by Thad Young, he had all the time in the world to rotate over, but he went for the steal instead of just getting in Asik's way. It's not like Asik was going to stop and take an 8-foot jumper.)
:25-  The Bulls, for the second time in the last 5 minutes, allow the Sixers to roll the ball to the frontcourt with no time being taken off the clock (considering they won the game with 2 seconds left, those ticks were pretty important). Iggy gets CJ switched on to him, but doesn't take advantage of it and dribbles over to Holiday. Holiday dribbles to the pain and gets stuck, kicking it back to Thad Young, who drives and makes a ridiculous scoop shot over Ronnie.
:12- Stacey- "You get your foul shooters in the...(pause, realizes the Bulls are out of timeouts) You find your free throw shooters."
CJ dribbles up court, and gets clearly fouled by Holiday with 10 seconds left. (You can clearly see Collins screaming at the refs for a foul while CJ is still coming downcourt. You know what happens next. I've said it for the last 2 years, CJ needs to get better at leading a break with a man advantage. Even if the Bulls were down 1 there, and needed a bucket instead of needing CJ to pull it back out, that wasn't a good pass. CJ always passes the ball too early. If he takes just one more dribble towards the corner, he's either fouled by Hawes or Williams, or Hawes has come away from Asik enough for Asik to finish that dunk. Because he passes so early, Hawes has time to get back to Asik and foul him. (Flagrant? Maybe, but you can't really call that there.) If CJ is back in a Bulls uniform next year, he's got to get better at this part of his game. That and, ya know, not passing the ball to 45% free throw shooter up 1 with 7 seconds left in an elimination game.
:7- Between Asik free throws, Stacey with more premonition: "Watch the runout. Ronnie Brewer and CJ Watson got to watch the runout on a miss..." Man, I wish they had heard you.
Asik's second free throw goes up. Taj is pushed to the middle by Hawes, and Iggy comes behind, sealing him off. Deng, for some reason, tries to go under Thad Young, and only succeeds in putting himself directly under the basket, where he's no help to anyone. Ronnie follows Holiday into the lane (where Holiday is boxing out Asik,) but gets stuck behind him somehow. It was kind of like Ronnie didn't know whether to play safe defense on Holiday, or crash for an offensive rebound, so he did neither. Holiday does a great job of just standing in Brewer's way, too, so he can't help on defense. CJ just stays with Lou Williams on the wing the whole way, instead of coming over and stopping the ball. (You have to give a good amount of credit to Iggy, he was significantly faster than any of the Bulls to get down the court. You can't even blame it on the Bulls' minutes, as Iggy played the whole 2nd half as well.)
:2- The Bulls call a timeout, move the ball to halfcourt, set up a play, and...
Oh, wait, no that's what they would have done had they HAD ANY FUCKING TIMEOUTS LEFT. Which leads to problem #1:

#1: TT overmanages to Lou Pinella proportions. The most useful thing a timeout can do for you, more than killing momentum or setting up a play, is to move the ball to the frontcourt late in a close game. But for that to be true, you have to save some timeouts for the end.

Know who always has a timeout late in a game? Gregg Popovich and Phil Jackson. Phil would let his team play through bad stretches, not only showing faith in his players, but saving those timeouts for when they're really necessary. Same thing with Pop. Or he could have used it on the possession before to get Korver and Rip in the game for Ronnie and Asik. You can't play offense/defense when you have no timeouts, so here are the FT percentages of the players that played the final minute:
CJ- 81%, TBN- 56%, Deng- 77%, Taj- 62%, Asik- 46%. You have a timeout, you can take Asik and Ronnie out and have Taj inbound to 4 guys all over 75% from the line. Because you used your timeouts to set up set plays with 4 minutes left, that's why your last 4 minutes were chaotic.

Is it fair to always compare TT to coaches like Pop and Jackson? I'm forced to by everyone who seems to think the sun shines out of his ass all the time. There's a reason those two men have won 15 of the last 21 championships. And both of them are known for not overmanaging (I'd also say Rudy T and Rick Carlisle fall onto the more relatively mellow side of NBA head coaches, leaving only Riley, Larry Brown, and maybe Doc Rivers as more uptight championship coaches.

TT makes those three look like Tommy Chong. And story upon story is written about how this is a good thing. It's not. It leads to all your best players being injured, your 4th best big man playing more minutes than your 1st or 2nd (depending on the day) because you're too stubborn to just start two power forwards, and running out of timeouts with 2 minutes left in a close game.

This is not how you win championships.

Also, you need better players. But I'll get to that tomorrow.

A Halfhearted Blame Game- Bulls/Sixer Game 4

Another disclaimer: this isn't going to be fun or interesting. I have very little to say about this game, or the series in general, that I haven't been screaming from the mountaintop all season long. The rotation doesn't make sense. Ball movement is stagnant on offense, especially when JL3 is on the floor. Boozer drags down the defensive rotations significantly. The Bulls need to stop giving a half-assed effort.

Oh, wait, that last one is new. I would love to know why the Bulls are playing some of their least inspired, energetic basketball in the playoffs. Did Derrick's injury take that much out of the sails? Obviously it was a huge setback, but, and I quote Kyle Korver's facebook post here:

Bulls fans. Now is not the time to ask why or to get bitter. Now is the time to refocus and ask "How are we going to win this Championship?" We have the best Team in the league. This season has proven, we are a TEAM and it has taken us ALL to have the best record. Lets focus on whats ahead. This is an incredible opportunity for All of Us to step up and make it happen. We're all gonna have to work harder and smarter. We are all gonna have to believe in ourselves. That we are more than the sum of our parts. We need YOU to believe with Us. We need You to believe for Us. We are going to keep going strong. One quarter, one game, one round at a time. Until its over. That's how we're gonna do it.

What a load of crap. Not that it's Kyle's fault (other than all the unnecessary capitalization). But the percentage of hard, smart basketball has been lower in the last 3 games than any other point in the season. The Bulls have done the opposite of what a championship team would have done.

I blame, as you may have guessed, TT for this. It starts with the coach. You can say all you want it's on the players to be the ones to bring the intensity and heart, but if they don't, it's the coach's job to sit their ass on the bench. Yet take a guess which 3 Bulls played the most minutes today?

Did you guess Boozer, Deng, and Watson? AKA, the three worst Bulls in this series so far?

We are in the darkest timeline. I would love to see what the other timelines look like. Forget the one where Derrick doesn't get hurt, even just one where Taj and Boozer's minutes are flip-flopped, or Mike James plays half the minutes that JL3 and CJ have played. I bet we're up 3-1 in that timeline. (Side note: what the hell is Mike James on the playoff roster for, if not to provide offense from the point and veteran leadership. Those are 2 things the Bulls have been sorely in need of in this series.)

I'm not going to break this game down by percentages like usual. There's blame for everyone. Maybe Boozer would get a little more (they made a big deal about how Boozer was having a good game by looking at the numbers, but the shots he didn't make were bad, and he was his usual terrible defensive self.) But other than Taj, everyone deserves some blame.

After Game 5, which I'm quite confident will be the last game of the Bulls' season, I'll break down what the Bulls need to do in the offseason. Will and I have had some intense arguments this season about whether the Bulls need to make drastic changes, or if they're fine with what they have. I was obviously on the wrong side in this argument. This is not a champion roster, even with Derrick. But this is a discussion for later.

Last note, on the refereeing: yeah, it wasn't great. But there's no conspiracy against the Bulls. If the fix was in, which do you think the NBA wants to see in the 2nd round; a rematch of the best first round series ever from a few years ago? Or Philly-Atlanta (God, I fell asleep just typing that.) Chalk these calls up to incompetency, not malice. And frankly, the Bulls didn't really deserve close calls today. Usually the team that plays harder gets those calls. Today it was the Sixers. Play harder next time, then we can complain about the refs.

We Need a TT Intervention

Even though I don't agree with the decision to keep Derrick on the court in Game 1, I could at least see where he was coming from with that. There is no fucking reason that Joakim Noah should have kept playing tonight, let alone come back on the court. This is one of the stupidest things I've ever seen. This is VDN levels of stupid. Joakim might have made his ankle even worse, and for what? To hobble up the court a couple times, unable to jump for rebounds? In what world is an injured Joakim a better player than a healthy Taj or Omer? What the HELL were you trying to accomplish with that???

And now we're coming down the stretch with maybe the worst defensive 5 we can have (and I'm including Deng, JFB guarded Evan Turner much better) on the court to hold a 10 point lead. And apparently the offensive plan is to have JL3 and Boozer throw up off-balance shots? I'm writing this down 1 with 1:50 left, and I can safely say, win or lose, that today is the day I have officially lost faith in TT.

I don't know what the hell is going on. TT needs to protect the basket, and has no big man to do it (Asik is moving too slow), and Deng is doing a terrible job staying in front of Evan Turner. Yet he's staying on in crunch time with maybe the WORST 5 I've seen the Bulls play this year in a must-win game.

And now Deng is bricking ill-advised 3s. And we're doing nothing to counter them. This is one of the worst-coached games I've ever seen, and I've seen Tim Floyd and VDN for most of the past decade.

I want TT gone. We are not going to win a championship with him. He doesn't adapt, and has clearly shown he's too stubborn to stay out of his player's way. I have no faith in TT at all anymore.

What a terrible way to end the season.

Blame Game- Bulls/Sixers Game 2

It's probably a good thing that I'm writing this a day after the game, and not right after, as it's already probably going to be the most profane post ever. If I had wrote it last night, it might have been nothing but swear words.

TT- 50%
Quick disclaimer before I rip into Thibodeau here, what I'm about to write has exactly nothing to do with Derrick's injury. Well, not nothing, since if Derrick was around to bail the Bulls out, we wouldn't be here right now. But I would feel the same way as I do now about TT if Derrick got hurt in the 1st quarter of game 1, or was just missing one game.

Heart. Toughness. Defense. Depth. These are all the things that were supposed to be strengths of the team, that were going to get the Bulls to the 2nd round despite the lack of a superstar. Instead we saw the opposite of those things on display last night. And TT stood by gaping while it was happening. And not just the 3rd quarter. It seemed like he was checked out all night.

But lets talk about that 3rd quarter, where the Bulls took an 8 point lead the Bench Mob gave them with defense and hustle (with an assist from Joakim's sudden offensive prowess) and turned it into a 14 point deficit. It was a 7 point deficit by the time TT sprung into action and decided to make a substitution with 4 minutes left, putting in Taj and Turkish. Apparently he needed Boozer to do more of this first:
8:14 Carlos Boozer 3 second
7:54 Carlos Boozer shooting foul
6:41 Carlos Boozer bad pass (Spencer Hawes steal)
6:39 Carlos Boozer personal foul
5:31 Carlos Boozer misses 19 foot jumper
And the box score doesn't even mention all the times Boozer had a front row seat to a Jrue Holiday layup. One of the things the media loves to give TT credit for is a willingness to hold his big men accountable for poor play. I believe the last time we all slurped TT for it, I qualified it by saying I wanted to see it in the playoffs. Last night he had the chance to make changes in the middle of the third quarter, before things got out of hand. Instead he waited until the Sixers had all the momentum. That was a fucking VDN thing to do.

The other thing about TT that's driving me crazy?

Deng- 20%
So you can sit Boozer and Noah when they're having bad games, and Rip pretty much all the time because you think he's Keith Bogans for some reason, and even Derrick towards the end of the season, but there are times when Deng is actively hurting us, yet stays on the court. If you don't want to play JFB for whatever reason (despite the fact that maybe he could have shut down Evan Turner, and brought energy to the offense, but whatever), then at least play Korver and Rip together, or the Korver/TBN combo, but Deng didn't help on either side of the ball last night, and needed to sit a lot fucking earlier than he did. Hold all your players accountable, TT.

Boozer-15%
See above. Great first shift in, kind of crappy 2nd shift, and then he clearly came out from halftime ready to take fadeaway jumpers and play no defense. We won't even get out of the first round if Boozer doesn't step up on offense.

CJ Watson- 8%
No one's asking you to replicate Derrick's offense, but it would be nice if you could not make Jrue Holiday look like the second coming of, well, Derrick. I know he'll never replicate those shooting numbers again this series, but that out of control. If the shots not falling, you can at least play decent defense. Otherwise, I want to see some Mike James action, TT (or is that too crazy for you?)

Rip Hamilton-4%
I know it's not your fault you're on the Bogans plan, and you played pretty well in the first quarter, but everyone who was on the floor for that 3rd quarter (except Noah) needs a little blame.

Fredo-3%
Again, for some reason Korver wasn't really part of the offense last night, which isn't totally his fault, but he needs to find a way to get more than 4 shots off in 24 minutes.

Absolved
Joakim- A lot is being made today about how Holiday and Evan Turner's numbers last night were flukey, and unlikely to be replicated, but let's be honest, Joakim isn't shooting 10-11 again in this series, either.

JL3- Wasn't great in the 4th, but no one was, and we're going to need some instant offense in this series, so hopefully he keeps that up.

Fix this shit now, TT. The wheels are falling off.