A Non-Violent Blame Game: Bulls-Grizzlies 1/16

How much of the flow of this game was the exact opposite of the Celtics game the other night? The Bulls came out flat and off-kilter on the offensive end, made a run to make a game of it in the 3rd quarter, then ran out of gas in the 4th. Why we were on the side of it-

TT- 40%
This is what happens when you play guys 40+ minutes a game. One of them can't play because on an injury and the other one looks like he couldn't hit water from the ocean. Deng ended with a line of 8-18 shooting, but 6 of those 8 were at the basket and most of the misses (2-9) from more than 15 feet away hit the front of the rim. He's tired. Know what would help? Not playing him for entire second halves.

After Jimmy Butler drove the length of the court for a dunk in garbage time I believe Doris Burke said "That's why they like him around here, because he can do things like that." Really? They like him around here? Then play him, just 4-6 minutes each half. I promise you it will not be the reason we lose a game, and will keep us from falling out of games like this.

Noah- 15%
I wish he had been able to keep the momentum from the weekend up, but he looked awful today. If you're not going to to help on the offensive end, Joakim, fine, but can you at least stop Marreese friggin' Speights from dropping 16 and 12 on you? That's where that -15 in 22 minutes came from.

Marc Gasol- 15%
I've only seen the Grizzlies play twice this year, the two times they've played the Bulls. In the first game he looked awful. Today, he looked like the kind of player worth 13 mil a year. If he hadn't settled the Grizzlies down when the Bench Mob went on their run, they might have fallen apart like the Hawks did. 19 points on 9-13 shooting and a game high +26

Boozer- 10%
Time for another round of "Is This What Boozer's Shot Chart Should Look Like?"


The answer, of course, is no. Especially because all of those xs off to the side are those stupid turnaround fadeaways with a hand in his face.

John Lucas III- 10%
I'm sorry, I know we love John Lucas because he's short. But the fact is the starting gap between Lucas and Mike Conley is just as big as the one between Derrick and Jeremy Pargo from the first game.
And also, TT, if CJ was capable of playing the entire 2nd half, why wasn't he capable of starting? He could have kept the game from getting out of hand.

TBN- 6%
He's been shooting so well we'll give him a pass for this one, but he had a couple ugly turnovers and just average D as well.

Deng- 4%
This would be much higher, but I blame TT more for how tired Deng looked. At least, I hope that's why Deng got torched by Rudy Gay and kept settling for outside jumpers instead of going to the basket.

Absolved:
Taj and Asik-
I think TT might need to take it one step further. It's not just playing Taj and Asik in the 4th quarter, it's putting them in when we need stops. I know I'm piling on TT today, but I really think that game might not have gotten out of hand if he had gone back to the bench mob with about three minutes left in the 2nd quarter (when Gasol and Gay were having their way at the rim).

CJ Watson- I listened to a Bullsbeat podcast over the weekend, mainly because it was the only recent all-Bulls podcast I could find, but I stopped it when he suggested Lucas should be getting some of CJ's minutes going forward. No. CJ is a legitimate NBA point guard who could play and contribute even more on a team that didn't have Derrick Rose. John Lucas is an injury back-up plan and that's it. Dropping 25 on the Wizards is nice, but today really showed the gap between the two.

OJ Mayo- 2-7 and somehow -12 in a blowout win. I did not want OJ Mayo on the Bulls, and I do not want OJ Mayo on the Bulls.

Free Jimmy Butler. Seriously TT, before more games like this happen.

Credit Where Credit is Due: Bulls-Celtics 1/13

This post originally was going to be a blame game, at least during the third quarter. The Bulls have been making a habit of letting teams get back in games instead of turning them into blowouts. Derrick talked in his ESPN post-game interview about being a 48-minute team, and there's still obviously a little way to go to get there. However, they got the job done, and since it was so nice to see the starters (besides just Derrick and Lu) have such a big hand in it, I think they deserve a post about it.

Joakim-25%
I'm not trying to grade Joakim on his own curve, but it was nice to see Joakim have the kind of game that was commonplace last year. The trick to a good Joakim game is having him run the floor in transition, be active on the offensive glass, and be engaged in a good one-on-one matchup on the defensive end, and he was three-for-three tonight. Let's hope this is the start of a trend.

Boozer-25%
While I mentioned it in the comments the other night (which I know everyone reads), I decided to go back and find the actual stat. Quote from Matt McHale at Bulls by the Horns (via TrueHoop):

"The one troubling difference in Boozer’s game this season is where his shots are coming from. According to Hoopdata, from 2007 to 2011, Carlos averaged between 7.4 and 6.0 shot attempts at the rim. This season, that number is down to 3.1. Meanwhile, his attempts from 16-23 feet have jumped from 3.0 last season to 5.2 this season."

As my lovely wife likes to say, I'll take any shot from Carlos where he's going to the basket, and cringe when he takes his turnaround baseline fadeaways. It's always nice when he's hitting the outside shot, like tonight, but it doesn't really do the job we signed him for, which is to score inside and take pressure off of Derrick on the outside. Instead, he's basically been Kurt Thomas with less defense.

That being said, I'm giving Carlos credit tonight because he was active on the defensive end tonight, and I think did a more effective job guarding Brandon Bass than Taj and Turkish did. It helped, though, that Pierce and Rondo only decided to make him play help D for about a five minute stretch in the third.

Derrick-20%
With KG being old and slow, and Perkins not around anymore, the Celtics are suddenly ripe for the plucking at the rim, and it seemed like Derrick could get there whenever he wanted. He loses a little credit because it felt like he could have wanted to get there more.

TBN- 15%
5-7 from the field and solid defense on Ray Allen. Pretty much all you can ask out of the Baseline Ninja (although he hasn't performed a good baseline ninja move in awhile).

It's time for the question to be asked: Should Ronnie remain the starter when Rip comes back? I was against it at the beginning of the season when Judson threw it out there. I liked Ronnie's chemistry with the bench mob and thought Rip's offense would help take the pressure off Derrick to carry the starters. However, the Bulls with Ronnie starting are back to where we were last year, with opponents' starting wings not getting going early because of Ronnie and Deng's defense. TT, of course, can be stubborn at times and I'm sure will start Rip as soon as he's healthy, but I still think the question is worth asking now.

Deng- 10%
ESPN has Deng as the top performer due to his great line: 21 points, 16 boards, 2 assists, a steal and a block, but he loses some percentage points for his shot selection, especially in the first half. He was settling for the kind of weird jumpers he liked to take in the VDN era that made me annoyed with him a lot.

Fortunately this is an exception now, and it'll be a travesty if Deng doesn't make the all-star team for once. He has clearly been one of the 5 best forwards in the east, but right now he's currently at 7th, behind LeBron, Melo, STAT, KG, Bosh, and Pierce. Fan voting is, of course, stupid (hey, look, everyone ahead of Deng plays for one of three teams! And Boozer and Hedo Turkoglu are somehow 9th and 10th), but they should still pay a little attention. Deng has been better than everyone ahead of him except LeBron and maybe Melo, but it's close. I'm sure the coaches will fix this, though, if the fans don't.

TT- 5%
A very wary 5% for TT. I think the starters needed a confidence boost, so I'll give him a pass on the fact that they played a combined 192 of 240 minutes on the front end of a back-to-back, especially because Noah and Boozer clearly could use a game when their minutes were in the 30s. But please, please, please, TT, find some more time for Derrick and Lu to rest. We want them to be OK in the playoffs, too, you know.

No Credit-
Bench Mob
It's OK, they've been great all year, so they're entitled to a bad game every now and then, but just look at the Bulls' +/- numbers tonight:
Boozer +19
Deng +16
Noah +13
Brewer +15
Derrick +16
Fredo -9
Lucas -7
Taj -10
Turkish -4

Ouch. And the Celtics ain't a deep team.

While we're on the subject of the Bench Mob...I'm not a big fan of the "Scal-A-Bree-Nee" chant. It feels incredibly condescending. I know White Mamba has a good sense of humor about it, but Scalabrine isn't just goofy-looking white guy, he would be a rotation player on about half the teams in the NBA, and was killing over in Italy before the season started. The Bulls have the luxury of having a deep frontcourt, but I would feel comfortable with Scalabrine playing important minutes for the Bulls in the (knocking on wood) event that one of our four big guys gets hurt. You want to chant for someone on the bench? Let's do it for Jimmy Butler. Then maybe we can see what he can do, finally.

Free Jimmy Butler.

Quick Thoughts on Bulls/Wizards

Don't have a lot of time, but here are a few thoughts about the Bulls game tonight:

-Taj and Asik should be playing 36 minutes a night.

-I love what John Lucas did tonight...but here's his shot chart.


That's a lot of bricks. Thankfully we were playing the Wizards.

-I don't get why everyone loves the Wizards new unis so much. I get the Bullets nostalgia and whatnot, but the Bullets old uniforms were never that great, they were pretty...blah. And the new ones are too busy, and you can't even read the numbers on the jerseys. I am not a fan.

I told you the thoughts would be quick. Expect a much longer rant if Boozer and Noah don't get it together soon and start costing us games.

Free Jimmy Butler.

The Bulls' Big Dilemma

Quick note: I'm writing this during tonight's Bulls-Pistons game, so all the stats I'm citing are subject to change.

I started writing this post in my head after Friday night's game, but never got a chance until now. Obviously there's a lot that can be said about the loss to the Hawks, but I'm not going to waste too much time on the game itself, other than to give TT a little credit for throwing in the towel and giving the starters (who got absolutely destroyed in the minutes they did play) a decent amount of rest.

However, I do want to focus on the Bulls' big men for a minute, and make another bold proclamation:

Taj Gibson is the Bulls' best big man.

And I'm really not panicking here about Noah's slow start. He'll get it together offensively, and not be the type of player you can leave open from 15 feet. I love Noah's passing and on-the-ball defense. But Taj has been better in every aspect of the game thus far this year. He's always been the Bulls' best help defender, but lately has been guarding other bigs as well if not better than Noah this year, and has been finishing around the rim better than anyone besides Rose and Deng. The Bulls have somehow only played 3 games this year decided by less than 10 points, and one of those was the Warriors game, which really was never in doubt. By my count 4 games have been undecided with about 8 minutes left, the Lakers and Hawks comebacks, the Clippers game, and the Magic. In those 4 games, here are the 4 big men +/- numbers:

Taj: +34
Noah: +6
Boozer: +2
Turkish: -1

I know +/- has a lot of noise, but this isn't a coincidence. Taj has been really good when it counts. I'm willing to bet most of that +34 number has to do with Taj altering shots of players attacking the rim (which I'm sitting here watching Boozer and Noah fail to do against Detroit).

Looking at 82games.com, the best 5-man unit for the Bulls at +21 is the current starters (with TBN in for Rip). The starting 5 with Rip isn't far behind at +18. But what's interesting is the 2nd best unit, Rose-Korver-Deng-Taj-Turkish, +20 in only 19 minutes (current starters have played 51 minutes together.)

A lot of that has to do with that 5 being on the floor for most of the Hawks comeback, but I'm willing to say that 5 makes me more confident than any other 5, assuming the opposing team doesn't take advantage of Korver defensively. But the way Korver is shooting, that's probably the best offensive backcourt we can send out there, along with two solid defensive bigs to protect the rim. At least until Noah gets it together, I want to see more of this.

***
Two quick unrelated notes-
ESPN...this is not CJ Watson:


Also, TT, THIS WOULD BE THE PERFECT GAME TO PLAY JIMMY BUTLER. Deng is not having a good game, he's 2-12 from the field, and not playing particularly great defense on Tayshaun Prince (who isn't the toughest matchup in the world anyway,) yet Deng has played 34 minutes 3 minutes into the 4th. What could you possibly have to lose?

Free Jimmy Butler.

Ok sports buffs, trivia time...

Name a professional athlete in each of the four major American sports since 2006 who has been traded from a team, and then traded back later. NOT signed back later as a free agent, but traded back. So Kerry Wood doesn't count.

Also, don't google the question. If you think of a player and want to know if that player was traded and then traded back later, you can google the individual player. But no cheating.

If you can do that, then the BONUS question is name 1 athlete who has been traded for a player to be named later, and then it turned out to be himself being traded back...also in the last 5-6 years.

An Ugly Credit Where Credit is Due- Bulls-Hawks 1/3

Guest opinion of the night goes to Jordan Haramia, who put it simply when he said "Bulls do not deserve to win this game." Simple, direct, to the point, and probably true. However, the Bench Mob did deserve to win. Look at the following plus-minus numbers:

Fredo +18
Taj +17
Turkish D +10
T-Mac -9
Radmonovic -9
Willie Greene -9
Pargo -12
Zaza -7

For comparison, some starters:
Boozer -15
TBN -18
Al Horford +5
Jeff Teague +10
Marvin Williams +7
Joe Johnson +7
Josh Smith +7

With no Rip Hamilton, the Bulls are going to really struggle if Derrick and Deng are both off, like the first three quarters. But the key to this year is depth, and not being afraid to use it, like I said the other night. While it's sorta defeating the purpose to play Derrick and Lu 44 minutes each, I'm completely fine with Turkish playing 22 straight minutes (came in with 10:03 to play in the third, and didn't come out until the last play for Deng.) But I'm spilling over into the credit territory here. Let's get to it:

TT-40%
Here's the tweet of the night (Hollinger and Adande are now tied at two.)

About 25 head coaches in the NBA just give the ball to Derrick in that situation at the top of the key. I know Derrick was supposed to get the ball on that one, too, but just the fact that there was a 2nd option is more than VDN would have been able to come up with. TT had just done it 2 possessions before with the Korver curl play, but it almost backfired as Korver and Taj both passed up open jumpers, and they got nothing out of the play.

Also, I know I've praised this before, but I love that TT will let the group that brought them back stay in the game. I don't know if we complete the comeback if Boozer comes in with 6 minutes left in the game, no matter how tired Taj and Asik were.

Derrick-20%
Just the MVP doing MVP-type things. 16 of his 30 came in the 4th, and the Hawks played the best defense they could on some of Derrick's late drives. Maybe the Hawks should have ran a double at him and forced the ball into Asik or Korver's hands late, but they made the shots tough for Derrick. He's just better.

(After watching the highlights that last paragraph was only half true. Josh Smith could have played much better defense on the layup where Derrick crossed teague over and switched hands at the rim with 57 seconds left.)

Turkish D-15%
Stacey was trying to give him all the credit, but let's not go nuts. Still, Asik certainly changed the game in the 3rd quarter with his hustle, and outplayed the Hawks' bigs on the boards and the defensive end of the court.

Luol Deng-10%
21 points on 7-15 from the field, 8 boards, 2 assists, 2 steals, 1 block, 1 game winning shot...and that might have been Deng's worst game of the season. We saw a little of the "settling-for-open-js" Deng tonight, which might have something to do with the fact that he's playing over 40 minutes a game in a stretch of 6 games in 10 days. Tonight wasn't the night for it, but we need to see some Jimmy Butler soon (or just more Ronnie/Korver time)

Fredo-5%
We're developing a pleasantly surprising trend of Korver being on the floor when the Bulls are playing their best defense. Other teams aren't really taking advantage of him one-on-one (although maybe Marvin Williams isn't the ideal candidate for that), and he's been pretty good at help D and team rebounding lately (Korver had 8 boards tonight, the most since...March 8th, 2008.)

Taj-5%
I've already done a lot of research for this post, and don't feel like doing more, but I'm willing to bet Taj has a lot more 4th quarter minutes this season than Carlos Boozer, which is a trend I really, really like TT.

Joe Johnson- 2%
3-17 from the field. I'm so glad we aren't paying you $120 million.

Atlanta's Free Throw Shooting- 2%
4-9 in the 4th quarter. That's not how you close out games.

Joakim-1%

I want to give Joakim a percent for that pass, but I was thinking I should give Joakim and Boozer credit for the fact that they don't have any attitude about not being a part of a few crunch situations lately. I know it should be expected of a professional, but as DeMarcus Cousins can tell you, you can't always count on that much maturity from an NBA player. Thank you, fellas, and thank you Garpax for putting together a team of professionals.

No Credit
TBN
Even the other night, TBN was more comfortable playing with the Bench Mob than the starters. I think that's the right place for him, and he's going to struggle in the starting roll. Hopefully Rip comes back soon.

Boozer (and his parents)
So it takes your parents being at a game to get attacking, non-defensive liability Boozer? Then how can we get them to every game?

There are going to be ugly games in a shortened, compressed season. Championship teams win those games. Great job, Bulls.

One Small Quibble

So I'm not trying to be the turd in the punchbowl here, I know everyone wants to enjoy their 40 point beatdown that wasn't even that close (the starters +/- tonight: Deng, Boozer, Noah all +35, Derrick +43, TBN +48), but there's something bugging me about this game. Why, in a game without Rip Hamilton, and with the Bulls in complete control...why is Jimmy Butler not seeing any minutes? Please tell me he's not going to go JJ on Butler. James Johnson, who I still think has the chance to be a good pro, never got the chance to contribute at all, even in situations like tonight's when there was no way it could affect the outcome in any way. And JJ had (has) the talent, what he needed was more basketball IQ. Which could have come with more playing time. And then Deng wouldn't have to play 39.1 minutes per game last year.

This year it's going to be even more important to not wear key players down, what with the condensed schedule and all. The Bulls were supposed to be helped this year by their depth, but it's not helping if you don't use it. Deng's minutes through the first 4 games are up to 40.5. Meanwhile everyone on the Bench Mob's numbers are down so far. Taj 21 last year, 16 this year. TBN 22 last year, 16.5 this year. Korver is down from 20 to 11, but that one is probably deserved. My point is the whole reason to have depth is to use it, and if you won't use depth this year, TT, it's going to be a problem later.

Free Jimmy Butler.