Quick Halloween Thoughts (Bulls-Kings 10/31)

Sorry folks, no time for a full credit post. Going to have to keep it abridged tonight.

-My worst fears came true tonight with Taj. No contract reached because the Bulls lowballed him (4 years, 32 mil? DeMar DeRozen got 4 years 40 mil tonight.) Now the Bulls as an organization have a vested interest in Taj's numbers not getting too high. I'm not saying that's why he only saw 19 minutes tonight, but he changed the game defensively in those 19 minutes. I know Joakim and Boozer (!) both played well tonight, but if Nazr Mohammed is only going to play for 3 minutes, then there's 93 big man minutes available. I'd like to see those a little more spread out, for the good of all three of those guys long term. (Omer Asik played 33 minutes tonight for the Rockets. Just saying.)

(Just as I was getting ready to post this, this tweet came across my feed:

38 million over 4 years. He left a little on the table, in my opinion, but I'm ecstatic it got done.)
 

-I enjoyed seeing both Boozer and Joakim taking the ball to the basket tonight. The Kings aren't known for their post defense, so hopefully this keeps up when we play games against teams with decent defensive big men. We're going to need it as long as our best creator out of the backcourt is Nate Robinson.

-Speaking of NateRob...he's one of our five best defensive players now? Really? That's...foreboding.

-I really don't care that Marco Belinelli hit a three and got fouled on another. I want JFB playing those minutes. If Jimmy's going to be part of the rotation going forward, he needs to play more than 11 minutes a game. At least we'll have some semblance of perimeter D.

-There's been a lot of blogosphere backlash against Kirk Hinrich. And I understand why, he probably got a good deal more money from the Bulls than he would have got anywhere else, and they could have been smarter about fitting him in monetarily with the trade exception. But from a pure basketball standpoint, I think he's a good fit. He'll run the offense at least competently until Derrick comes back, and I think he'll be an upgrade for the 2nd unit once that happens.

-Speaking of Derrick...remember what happened last time Derrick played the Kings?

Sigh...I miss him so much...