# The Truth Remains You Cannot Win a championship with a frontcourt of Wallace/Tyrus..



## Jwill55gRizZ (Jun 8, 2003)

The Truth Remains You Cannot Win a championship with a frontcourt of Wallace/Tyrus.. It's just a fact.. Nothing against them.. But Tyrus and Wallace just do not score well enough to win 16 games in a playoff situation in games where guards aren't stroking everything..

I suggest we trade for Jermaine O'Neal or Kobe Bryant. I say Kobe because if he were on the team the offensive post woes are lessened as Kobe can score in the post, and also that would make Joe Smith more serviceable.. O'Neal would be ideal for the team cause he would replace the defense of Tyrus for the forseeable future, plus he can score extremely well.. He is a veteran and can be counted on and has generally not been injury prone..


----------



## different_13 (Aug 30, 2005)

Not sure if you posted in the 'Bulls trade for O'Neal' thread (not that specific title..) but the deal of Thomas/Duhon/Nocioni/filler sounds good to me.

I agree Tyrus isn't going to be good enough in the next 2 or 3 years for the Bulls to win a title with him and Wallace. They could still add other complimentary players though..

Don't like trading for Kobe. You'd have to give up too much. I can see the Pacers accepting Thomas/Duhon/Nocioni/filler. The Lakers would want Deng or Gordon, as well as all that.


----------



## Mateo (Sep 23, 2006)

I think you can.


----------



## Jwill55gRizZ (Jun 8, 2003)

different_13 said:


> Not sure if you posted in the 'Bulls trade for O'Neal' thread (not that specific title..) but the deal of Thomas/Duhon/Nocioni/filler sounds good to me.
> 
> I agree Tyrus isn't going to be good enough in the next 2 or 3 years for the Bulls to win a title with him and Wallace. They could still add other complimentary players though..
> 
> Don't like trading for Kobe. You'd have to give up too much. I can see the Pacers accepting Thomas/Duhon/Nocioni/filler. The Lakers would want Deng or Gordon, as well as all that.


Yea i saw that in the other thread. You make good points throughout many of your posts.. I agree with the proposed trade.. Good for both teams.. The pacers Absolutely need to rebuild now.. and the bulls need to make a push (Though their need is probably less so)


----------



## different_13 (Aug 30, 2005)

Cheers bop.

I agree about the Pacers, and I'm not entirely sure about the Bulls.
This is mostly to do with the salary roster - they're not gonna get any cap relief from Ben Wallace due to the young guys' extensions, and it remains to be seen if the owner will accept trading his expiring deal away for an impact player (such as Stoudamire, Howard, or Gasol).
If the owner isn't going to pay both a Wallace level contract, and Deng, _and_ Gordon (as well as the rest of the team of course), then trading away Thomas & co for O'Neal is the best move.
One championship is better than getting knocked out in the Conference/League Finals 3 times..


----------



## RoRo (Aug 21, 2002)

Mateo said:


> I think you can.


I'm thinking what you are thinking.


----------



## Jwill55gRizZ (Jun 8, 2003)

well look at the top 8 teams left in the playoffs, and you tell me if those teams have a post player that can score on the block.. actually i'll do it for you

Chicago- No
Detroit- Yes (sheed)
Phoenix- Yes (Amare/Marion)
San Antonio- Yes (Duncan)
Cleveland- Yes (Z)
New Jersey- No- And they lost the series because of it
Utah- Yes 
GS- No (unless you count Al).. but nonetheless they lost because of it.

New Jersey, GS, Chicago all lost because of inability to score inside (among other things).. Chicago will not change as a team, until that changes.. As much as we want to believe that Gordon and Deng can go for 30 a night and we'll be great.. sure on some nights.. but not for 16.. And wallace will give you zero to nothing, and Thomas is going to give you just a bit.

You gotta get a post scorer..pure and simple


----------



## theanimal23 (Mar 2, 2005)

I think it's possible but highly unlikely. If Tyrus shows no signs of scoring ability this year, the Bulls will only win if Gordon and Deng reach the next level as a scoring threat. This means that these two are going off for 25ppg each night and no defense can do anything about it. I don't see that possible for a tandem that has trouble creating their own shot. 

Now if you are asking about scoring overall from the frontcourt, we could get to the Finals and have a fighting chance if we see a guy like Noce pull off a series as he did vs Miami two years ago. A Noce that puts up 16.5ppg would do wonders for our team. You have him and a center rotation of Wallace/Smith and you might be able to get away with it. Now this frontcourt would not 'beat' the other front court in terms of effectiveness. But it would warrant respect. Thats all the Bulls would need to keep the games close down to the wire. With a team that lacks a bona fide scorer, its your best bet. Take the game down to the wire by offensive efficiency and defense and hope Gordon/Deng/Noce/Kirk can get a good shot off.


----------



## fl_flash (Aug 19, 2002)

Jwill55gRizZ said:


> The Truth Remains You Cannot Win a championship with a frontcourt of Wallace/Tyrus.. It's just a fact.. Nothing against them.. But Tyrus and Wallace just do not score well enough to win 16 games in a playoff situation in games where guards aren't stroking everything..
> 
> I suggest we trade for Jermaine O'Neal or Kobe Bryant. I say Kobe because if he were on the team the offensive post woes are lessened as Kobe can score in the post, and also that would make Joe Smith more serviceable.. O'Neal would be ideal for the team cause he would replace the defense of Tyrus for the forseeable future, plus he can score extremely well.. He is a veteran and can be counted on and has generally not been injury prone..


Well.... I'm glad THAT's settled. Seeing as how it's the Truth that you cannot win with a frontcourt of Wallace/Thomas (and I thought the game was played with five players and seven more on the bench to help out - silly me) I guess I can save my $250 on League Pass for the year because what's the point of watching and rooting for the Bulls when The Truth is out.

I mean, I think it's an _opinion_, but I could be wrong. See, I think you can win a championship with the above two players if you put 10 more players around them that can put the ball in the basket.

I'm not sweating Wallace and Thomas getting minutes and I'm definately not worried about other front-couts and how we're supposed to produce with them.


----------



## theanimal23 (Mar 2, 2005)

Jwill55gRizZ said:


> You gotta get a post scorer..pure and simple


For the most part, yes, thats what history has shown us. It's not easy landing this player through a trade. Teams don't give them away unless you sell the farm (See Gasol for Deng and Gordon). This is what makes me nervous. I read that Portland fans are high on Aldridge and expect great things from him this year. Some envision 18/10/2 from him this year. Now I was in the pro-Aldridge camp pre-draft until the very last second where I pulled for Tyrus being our pick. Why? The kid seemed to play with passion and intensity. Thats not a knock on Aldridge as he cares too. But Tyrus just gets pumped up to eat souls. When a player has that kind of intensity, it requires notice. Even though I'm a huge fan of Tyrus, trust Pax's ability to draft, I still have a little bit of doubt in the back of my mind.

Time will tell if this was the right move. And in the Paxson Era, this trade may very well be looked as the one move that was the difference. Not Noah vs Hawes, but Tyrus vs Aldridge. I still have the faith though. Tyrus has said he is a hard worker (jumpshots this summer). We will see if it led to results this season. We know defensively he will be incredible. But Aldridge isn't a stiff either.It could be argued that we lost the House's money if Aldridge proves to be the better player than Tyrus. But there are few instances where you can allow mistakes when it comes to drafting. I see it acceptable to pick a bust on the 24th pick on the draft, but not the 2nd pick. Now Tyrus won't be a bust IMO but the move better be the *correct* one. Because barring trades, it could be the difference for us winning a championship or falling short.

Its definitely too early to tell and I think we will be alright. You don't trade this post-scorer if you're not sure if the guy you pick is going to be a stud. It's too early to call the Wallace/Tyrus combo a dud, but it may never be great. Why? By the time Tyrus reaches his ceiling, Big Ben's contract might be finished or traded as an expiring.


----------



## dsouljah9 (Jul 9, 2002)

*Re: The Truth Remains You Cannot Win a championship with a frontcourt of Wallace/Tyru*

:clap2: 

That post was on point. I get tired of these "let's trade for this guy" threads popping up all the time. This team got to the second round and could have beaten Detroit, but we didn't. Also Thomas will improve this year and Smith will help up front(which is why we lost). Also, you can count on O'neal missing at least 15 games with various knee and back issues because he has some mileage on that body.

As for Bryant; the Lakers aren't trading him.


----------



## Jwill55gRizZ (Jun 8, 2003)

fl_flash said:


> Well.... I'm glad THAT's settled. Seeing as how it's the Truth that you cannot win with a frontcourt of Wallace/Thomas (and I thought the game was played with five players and seven more on the bench to help out - silly me) I guess I can save my $250 on League Pass for the year because what's the point of watching and rooting for the Bulls when The Truth is out.
> 
> I mean, I think it's an _opinion_, but I could be wrong. See, I think you can win a championship with the above two players if you put 10 more players around them that can put the ball in the basket.
> 
> I'm not sweating Wallace and Thomas getting minutes and I'm definately not worried about other front-couts and how we're supposed to produce with them.


Jokes aside, that IS what im telling you.. you can buy it for fun to watch the young developing bulls.. and despite Tyrus being my favourite player in the league. He partnered with Wallace cannot win a title.. point blank period.


----------



## theanimal23 (Mar 2, 2005)

*Re: The Truth Remains You Cannot Win a championship with a frontcourt of Wallace/Tyru*



dsouljah9 said:


> :clap2:
> 
> That post was on point. I get tired of these "let's trade for this guy" threads popping up all the time. This team got to the second round and could have beaten Detroit, but we didn't. Also Thomas will improve this year and Smith will help up front(which is why we lost). Also, you can count on O'neal missing at least 15 games with various knee and back issues because he has some mileage on that body.
> 
> As for Bryant; the Lakers aren't trading him.


I think it's natural for some of us to take the pessimistic view. I know I do at times full knowing the future is bright for the Bulls.

It's too early to say how things will turn out. Taking no internal improvement, we are a 2nd round team. We just need to see how much improvement actually occured. Time will tell. And it could show us wonderful things.


----------



## Jwill55gRizZ (Jun 8, 2003)

Well you are trying to win championships.. You aren't beating the west with that frontcourt.. two 6'9 powerforwards wont do it against Duncan/Amare/etc.. Specifically on the offensive end..

O'Neal would give you that next level.. you gotta make the deal if you could.. If i told you that you could get Jermaine O'Neal for the number 2 pick in the draft everyone would take it and laugh.. one year of injuries and everyone is throwing O'Neal under the bus..


----------



## theanimal23 (Mar 2, 2005)

I'm still thinking about this, and I don't know. If we want a Tyrus/Wallace combo to be championship worthy today, it might not be possible. Tyrus could make a significant jump this year, but I'm not expecting it to be monumental. I'm expecting progress no different that Kirk/Ben/Luol did each year. Bascially, considerable improvement but not gigantic. 

Realistically, by the time Tyrus reaches that level, Big Ben might be finishing his days as a Bull. That said, I don't think Tyrus will be a liability. I think we will see success from him this year, specifically on the offensive end. But Tyrus and Big Ben are not winning this on their own. We have a serviceable Vet in Joe Smith who could play the role of a McDyess on our team. We also have Noce, if healthy, is a huge X-Factor.


----------



## darlets (Jul 31, 2002)

*Re: The Truth Remains You Cannot Win a championship with a frontcourt of Wallace/Tyru*

Well we know you can win one with a younger Ben Wallace and Rasheed Wallace. The Pistons team from the years they made the finals is the level of talent you need if you're going the no true super star model.

People can judge for themselves how far away we are from that level.


----------



## dougthonus (Jul 18, 2006)

> I say Kobe because if he were on the team the offensive post woes are lessened as Kobe can score in the post, and also that would make Joe Smith more serviceable..


So you can win with Wallace and Tyrus.. 

You just don't think our current back court can win with them. I agree this is likely true, however, I also think we won't win with O'Neal who will be injured come playoff time or Kobe who would likely only be acquired if we stripped the team too much.

If we can get Kobe for cheap, then sure, however, that's up to the Lakers and not something we can control.


----------



## fuzznuts (May 23, 2006)

Jwill55gRizZ said:


> You gotta get a post scorer..pure and simple



maybe kirk can develop a post up game?? :biggrin: 

but seriously, i kind of disagree. The way the NBA is going, it's becoming run-and-gun again. Need more semi-big athletic guys that can finish, that can also provide coverage and length on defense. Run at them hard so that the other bigs that the Bulls are playing against get winded. 

Bulls got their guys, more playoff experience has been added, got a chance to develop their "cahones"... 

they'll make a beautiful run in the playoffs.

just my two cents.


----------



## Smez86 (Jun 29, 2006)

Since when did Amare accomplish anything to have a team built around beating him?


----------



## jnrjr79 (Apr 18, 2003)

*Re: The Truth Remains You Cannot Win a championship with a frontcourt of Wallace/Tyru*



Jwill55gRizZ said:


> well look at the top 8 teams left in the playoffs, and you tell me if those teams have a post player that can score on the block.. actually i'll do it for you
> 
> Chicago- No
> Detroit- Yes (sheed)
> ...


Sheed is more a perimeter guy than a score on the block guy. Z plays a lot in the high post as well. So pretty much you're finding it to be 50/50 in the final 8.


----------



## Jwill55gRizZ (Jun 8, 2003)

no no.. Z and Sheed Score in the post.. They are a post presence. in fact in 4th quarters when sheed goes to the post against Chicago he went off... lol..chicago fans should know that most..Z went off in the playoffs with the turnaround shot from the left block he loves..


----------



## Mr.Montross (Sep 24, 2005)

Jwill55gRizZ said:


> no no.. Z and Sheed Score in the post.. They are a post presence. in fact in 4th quarters when sheed goes to the post against Chicago he went off... lol..chicago fans should know that most..Z went off in the playoffs with the turnaround shot from the left block he loves..


'Shweed has some low post game, but I wouldn't call him a low post presense.


----------



## thunderspirit (Jun 25, 2002)

*Re: The Truth Remains You Cannot Win a championship with a frontcourt of Wallace/Tyru*



dougthonus said:


> So you can win with Wallace and Tyrus..
> 
> You just don't think our current back court can win with them. I agree this is likely true, however, I also think we won't win with O'Neal who will be injured come playoff time or Kobe who would likely only be acquired if we stripped the team too much.


+1.


----------



## kukoc4ever (Nov 20, 2002)

dougthonus said:


> So you can win with Wallace and Tyrus..
> 
> You just don't think our current back court can win with them. I agree this is likely true, however, I also think we won't win with O'Neal who will be injured come playoff time or Kobe who would likely only be acquired if we stripped the team too much.
> 
> If we can get Kobe for cheap, then sure, however, that's up to the Lakers and not something we can control.


Just curious, what scenario can you picture where the Bulls can win with the group as assembled near term?

Is it close to hopeless, in your opinion? Or just highly improbable?


----------



## MikeDC (Jul 16, 2002)

*Re: The Truth Remains You Cannot Win a championship with a frontcourt of Wallace/Tyru*

I don't know about "Cannot". Sure, if we land Kobe or someone, we've got a shot. But I suspect "will not" is right. The reason is that Tyrus is too young (and in truth might not ever become the star he would need to become for it to work) and Ben is too old (and thus won't be good enough any more by the point when/if Tyrus is). Two ships passing in the night so to speak. 

Ruling out a Kobe sort of trade, we'd be well to consider either moving Tyrus for an older player and taking a hot now, or moving Wallace for a younger player and hoping it extends our window a bit.

I think Thomas is going to be hard to get value for unless he really steps up his game quickly, and I'm not sure he'll get the chance with Noah and Smith coming into the fold.

With all the talk about O'Neal, here's an ideal. How about Wallace and scraps for O'Neal? Their contracts end at the same time, but Wallace earns $20M less (total) over the same period. The Pacers would certainly appreciate that. For us, we get a younger, taller player who, as I said mentioned, extends our window of opportunity by a fair margin.


----------



## different_13 (Aug 30, 2005)

kukoc4ever said:


> Just curious, what scenario can you picture where the Bulls can win with the group as assembled near term?
> 
> Is it close to hopeless, in your opinion? Or just highly improbable?



I say highly improbable, at best.
The Pistons of 04 were the exception to the rule.
The Lakers clearly suffered from chemistry issues, as well as having 2 completely new starters unfamiliar with the triangle on the squad.

The Bulls have neither a dominant post player, nor 1 or 2 top 50 (ever) players. Deng will only ever be a second fiddle at best - your main scorer can't be a midrange shooter from the sf position. Thomas won't even be a second fiddle. Gordon _is_ a sidekick (and a jumpshooter at that). Hinrich is a good guard, but the overall talent is simply lacking on the Bulls.


----------



## theanimal23 (Mar 2, 2005)

different_13 said:


> I say highly improbable, at best.
> The Pistons of 04 were the exception to the rule.
> The Lakers clearly suffered from chemistry issues, as well as having 2 completely new starters unfamiliar with the triangle on the squad.
> 
> The Bulls have neither a dominant post player, nor 1 or 2 top 50 (ever) players. Deng will only ever be a second fiddle at best - your main scorer can't be a midrange shooter from the sf position. Thomas won't even be a second fiddle. Gordon _is_ a sidekick (and a jumpshooter at that). Hinrich is a good guard, but the overall talent is simply lacking on the Bulls.


With today's NBA, I see it easier being able to win with the Detroit Model than before. The Detroit Model is still the exception, but in years past, this model was likely a failure.

The East is wide open, and there are a few things we need to happen to be the clear-cut favorite:
1. Thomas Develops
2. Sefo becomes a better scorer/penetrator on offense
3. Deng and Gordon elevate their games. They start to earn more trips to the FT line. All elite scorers do this.
4. Big Ben doesn't get significantly worse.
5. Health

Now if these things happen, great. But its very difficult for each and every one of these things to occur.

The biggest issue for me is our offensive droughts. This IMO can be solved in two ways: 1. At the PF position, you hope Smith/Noce can get the job done or Tyrus develops into a 11ppg scorer this year. 2. The core 3 develop the ability to get to the line 6-8 times each per game. All elite scorers get to the line around 8-10x. This would make up for the lack of a post scorer.


----------



## MemphisX (Sep 11, 2002)

An outsiders perspective...

I would not trade Tyrus. IMO he is your best chance at a superstar, even if it is like Wallace and it is a defensive superstar. The problem now is that KG and Gasol are off the market along wit Ray Allen and Paul Pierce. There just aren't many scorers available better than Gordon and he isn't good enough to carry so many mediocre scorers deep in the playoffs.

Maybe something like Wallace to Washington, Jamison to Indiana, and O'Neal to Chicago as the principles would be better for all sides.


----------



## transplant (Jul 31, 2002)

Getting a chuckle out of this one. I love dogmatic proclamations and opinions stated as facts. Good stuff.

I'll try one: You absolutely cannot win a championship when your 2 biggest guys are Luc Longley and Dennis Rodman! Where's the low post scoring...or scoring period?

Obviously, I'm no good at this...I'll leave it to those who view themselves as infallible.

There are lots of ways to win (like matching up the greatest all around player with the greatest defensive wing man). Do I think these Bulls are well-positioned to win the title this season? No, but I'm with Doug that trading for either J. O'Neal or Kobe doesn't figure to increase the Bulls chances much if at all for the reasons he gave.

My opinion is that the Bulls are a good and improving team. I look forward to finding out how far they can go. I'll watch this movie til the end. Down in front.


----------



## Jo Jo English (Sep 24, 2003)

*Re: The Truth Remains You Cannot Win a championship with a frontcourt of Wallace/Tyru*



kukoc4ever said:


> Just curious, what scenario can you picture where the Bulls can win with the group as assembled near term?
> 
> Is it close to hopeless, in your opinion? Or just highly improbable?





transplant said:


> Getting a chuckle out of this one. I love dogmatic proclamations and opinions stated as facts. Good stuff.
> 
> I'll try one: You absolutely cannot win a championship when your 2 biggest guys are Luc Longley and Dennis Rodman! Where's the low post scoring...or scoring period?
> 
> ...


So are the Bulls hopeless or is winning with this group just highly improbable?


----------



## transplant (Jul 31, 2002)

*Re: The Truth Remains You Cannot Win a championship with a frontcourt of Wallace/Tyru*



Jo Jo English said:


> So are the Bulls hopeless or is winning with this group just highly improbable?


Hopeless? Well, they're no more hopeless than any other team in the EC. I think they'll win a lot of games and have a legit shot at winning the East. Personally, I think this is a big deal.

It's only a bleak forecast for those who see it as "a championship or nothin'."


----------



## kukoc4ever (Nov 20, 2002)

*Re: The Truth Remains You Cannot Win a championship with a frontcourt of Wallace/Tyru*



transplant said:


> It's only a bleak forecast for those who see it as "a championship or nothin'."


Why on Earth would you not want the goal of the team to be winning a championship?

If people feel that its improbable that the Paxson way will result in a championship, why stick with it?


----------



## MikeDC (Jul 16, 2002)

What is there besides winning a championship? I mean, I do take a little bit of consolation in that Michael Vick isn't playing for us, but aside from that I thought it was pretty much universally agreed that it was championship or bust.

That doesn't mean winning isn't nice, but look at the scorn that was heaped on Cleveland last year. That didn't look like a happy outcome to me.


----------



## jbulls (Aug 31, 2005)

MikeDC said:


> What is there besides winning a championship? I mean, I do take a little bit of consolation in that Michael Vick isn't playing for us, but aside from that I thought it was pretty much universally agreed that it was championship or bust.
> 
> That doesn't mean winning isn't nice, but look at the scorn that was heaped on Cleveland last year. That didn't look like a happy outcome to me.


Obviously championship trophies are the goal, but there are two questions in play here :

1) Are we a good bet to win the championship this year?

2) Are we on track to seriously contend for championships in the not too distant future?

IMO, the answer to question 1 is "probably not" and the answer to question 2 is "yes". I'm okay with that.


----------



## MikeDC (Jul 16, 2002)

*Re: The Truth Remains You Cannot Win a championship with a frontcourt of Wallace/Tyru*



jbulls said:


> Obviously championship trophies are the goal, but there are two questions in play here :
> 
> 1) Are we a good bet to win the championship this year?
> 
> ...


I spose I am too, though I'm not sure about question 2 being a definite "yes". I still think my original post is pretty on point. I'd feel a lot better with a younger player than Wallace or an older player than Thomas. The two together just doesn't seem an ideal mix to me... to win a championship we want everyone hitting on all cylinders. 

I think to be serious contenders (barring trades and whatnot), we need:
1) Another guy who legitimately scares people offensively. Maybe this is Thomas.
2) Thomas needs to get strong like Bull. One thing that was overlooked in his offensive outbursts against the Pistons was that they were going right back at him and scoring at will on the other end. Hell of a help defender, but as of yet he doesn't have the strength or experience to guard anyone that well.
3) Wallace to play at the same level or better
4) Ben Gordon needs to not get abused defensively, and needs to figure out how to play against a defense geared to stop him.

That's not just for this season, that's for the long haul, and I'm not sure I see it all happening.


----------



## different_13 (Aug 30, 2005)

jbulls said:


> Obviously championship trophies are the goal, but there are two questions in play here :
> 
> 1) Are we a good bet to win the championship this year?
> 
> ...



I'm saying No to both of those. I stick to the arguement you need a dominant post player and/or at least one top 50 of all time player on the team to win. I don't care if the Pistons did it in 2004 - hell, I was cheering them. But it's happened once.. Not even once in 10 seasons, but once in over 40.

In addition, I agree with the points MikeDC made above me.


----------



## Hustle (Dec 17, 2003)

*Re: The Truth Remains You Cannot Win a championship with a frontcourt of Wallace/Tyru*



> Obviously championship trophies are the goal, but there are two questions in play here :
> 
> 1) Are we a good bet to win the championship this year?
> 
> ...


I'm okay with that too. I feel like Noah and Tyrus's improvements will offset the denegration of Big Ben, and the rest of our guys are still young. I expect the players to have the championship or bust mind set. But the reality is if we make it to the Finals and lose, this season will not only not be a bust, but will be quite a success. If the rest of the East can't take us down this year they are going to have a hell of a time doing it in the future. This team is going to be on top of the East for a while.

*AGE:*Thomas 20, Sefolosha 23, Nocioni 27, Noah 22, Hinrich 26, Gordon 24, Deng 22

Let's not forget it even took the greatest player ever 6 years in the playoffs to finally get his first ring.


----------



## Hustle (Dec 17, 2003)

*Re: The Truth Remains You Cannot Win a championship with a frontcourt of Wallace/Tyru*



Hustle said:


> Let's not forget it even took the greatest player ever 6 years in the playoffs to finally get his first ring.


That's because he didn't have a post scorer.:whatever:


----------



## different_13 (Aug 30, 2005)

theanimal23 said:


> With today's NBA, I see it easier being able to win with the Detroit Model than before. The Detroit Model is still the exception, but in years past, this model was likely a failure.
> 
> The East is wide open, and there are a few things we need to happen to be the clear-cut favorite:
> 1. Thomas Develops
> ...


Winning with the Detroit build is feasible in the East, perhaps, but I don't think even _that_ Detroit squad can beat the current Spurs teams (with a great Parker/Manu)..
Even if all those things you listed happen, I still think the Spurs are better. I don't know about the Suns or Mavericks though..

I do agree the Bulls are going to be in the top echelon in the East for a while to come, but I don't think they can win in the Finals yet.

Jordan had Cartwright and Grant, and later himself. Not only that, but those teams had 2 top 50 players..
So did the Bad Boy Pistons (the other 'recent' example of a ((relatively)) balanced squad).


----------



## RoRo (Aug 21, 2002)

*Re: The Truth Remains You Cannot Win a championship with a frontcourt of Wallace/Tyru*



Hustle said:


> I'm okay with that too. I feel like Noah and Tyrus's improvements will offset the denegration of Big Ben, and the rest of our guys are still young. I expect the players to have the championship or bust mind set. But the reality is if we make it to the Finals and lose, this season will not only not be a bust, but will be quite a success. If the rest of the East can't take us down this year they are going to have a hell of a time doing it in the future. This team is going to be on top of the East for a while.
> 
> *AGE:*Thomas 20, Sefolosha 23, Nocioni 27, Noah 22, Hinrich 26, Gordon 24, Deng 22
> 
> Let's not forget it even took the greatest player ever 6 years in the playoffs to finally get his first ring.


agree with you on the age factors.

i'm all for accountability to the highest of standards.
But, for myself, i can't talk about how limited this team is until the majority of it's players are in their prime's.

from that list Kirk and Noc are in the midst of their peak. everyone else has room to grow. deng, noah, and thomas in particular.

the beauty of it all, is we'll be conference contenders while those three grow up and develop. that's a rarity, most teams with three youngsters that talented and athletic have poor records.

and are we that far behind the west? 
last year, we were .500 against the Mavs, Spurs, and Phoenix.


----------



## Masbee (Dec 31, 2002)

transplant said:


> Getting a chuckle out of this one. I love dogmatic proclamations and opinions stated as facts. Good stuff.
> 
> I'll try one: You absolutely cannot win a championship when your 2 biggest guys are Luc Longley and Dennis Rodman! Where's the low post scoring...or scoring period?


Details. Details. The devil is in the details.

I am not a Bulls fan (Blazer fan) and I even know the explanation.

Bulls ran the triangle offense. You don't rely on a deep post threat to run the triangle and to create close in offensive opportunities (done with ball movement), or draw double teams (done with SuperStar).

What do you rely on from your bigs in the Triangle? The ability learn a complicated offense, to PASS and (ideally) hit an open jumper.

As an aside, Jordan was the best post player on the Bulls. Doesn't always have to be a big. 

Whooooops. Looks like Wallace and Thomas are the anti-triangle bigs.

As good as they are defensively, Wallace and Thomas are 1) not a low post threat 2) not a high post threat, 3) not a Triangle offense threat.

The only thing they can do is pair with a creating point guard that will get them easy dunks, oops and layups. Hinrich isn't exactly that type. And they really shouldn't play together too much (unless and) until Thomas develops a reliable jumper.

The 2007 Bulls are not a well put together team. I see them as a work in progress, that the GM (bizarrely) sat and starred at the easel. Lots of talent, young and old, has moved locations recently or is still on the market. The Bulls are still sitting on a mis-matched roster. Strange.


----------



## kukoc4ever (Nov 20, 2002)

*Re: The Truth Remains You Cannot Win a championship with a frontcourt of Wallace/Tyru*

Its a stretch to say question #2 is a yes.

Its assuming development of a player we've never seen in the NBA (Noah) and that TT becomes a Rasheed level 4... both of which are uncertain.

Wallace is on the decline... he's a likely an average player in the future.


----------



## BULLHITTER (Dec 6, 2005)

it should be obvious to even the average fan that the "goal" is to win the championship, however the process is where all the discussion and differences of opinion lie.

i don't believe the bulls believe the team *isn't* going to contend for the EC (at the least), and imo they absolutely *should* contend; whether they'll win imo *is* doubtful. i do caution those who don't think the current configuration can win, because there's a lot of intangibles that can't be accounted for until they put on the jockstraps and hit the court. i believe only detroit should have better on court chemistry than the bulls.

i'd be interested to know what kinds of threads (had the internet existed) would have come about after seeing jordan perform in his first 
3-4 years with a lesser contingent (rather "kobesque" for lack of a better term), then to watch the team get manhandled by boston and then detroit (can you imagine the "trade pippen" after the migraine episodes and "grant's too skinny to be a 4" threads), and read the lunacy that would have surfaced regarding the 3 seven footers the bulls employed as their "low post scoring" options during their runs. i guessing there'd have been rampant "fire krause" after the hopson, mcray et al acquisitions threads as well.

my point is, no one knows the ceiling of guys UNTIL they do it or don't; as previously stated, it took the GOAT 6+ years to do it; these current bulls don't have a top 50 player, but that hardly means that a team of better than average to all-star level talent *can't* succeed. no one's asking for blind faith, but to state "truth is" as fact, is nonsense. all they have to do is do it, and the doubters will cease.


----------



## JeremyB0001 (Nov 17, 2003)

*Re: The Truth Remains You Cannot Win a championship with a frontcourt of Wallace/Tyru*

I really dislike such absolute statements and the idea that you have to build a team a certain way to win. There have been exceptions to the supposed rules in the past and will continue to be exceptions in the future. The Bulls are already doing a good job outscoring the opposing team which is the goal here. If they continue to improve the way almost everyone concedes they likely will, I don't see why they're incapable of winning a Championship. 

It's really easy to just say we should trade for one of the best players in the game or a good post player and win a title but there are a ton of reasons it won't happen (Kobe isn't available, the Pacers might not want to trade within the division, we'd have to gut our team, we'd have trouble matching salaries, etc.). We're probably not going to win a Championship this season and there isn't some obvious trade out there that will change it. Personally I don't think that's the end of the world. We have arguably the best young team in the NBA and we're arguably the best team in the East so I'm reasonably content.



Jwill55gRizZ said:


> Well you are trying to win championships.. You aren't beating the west with that frontcourt.. two 6'9 powerforwards wont do it against Duncan/Amare/etc.. Specifically on the offensive end..
> 
> O'Neal would give you that next level.. you gotta make the deal if you could.. If i told you that you could get Jermaine O'Neal for the number 2 pick in the draft everyone would take it and laugh.. one year of injuries and everyone is throwing O'Neal under the bus..


I mean no offense but where do people get this stuff? Ben shut down Shaq last year and won 4 DPOY awards playing center but suddenly he's a 6'9 PF who can't guard Amare who's 6-10? C'mon. Post defense is not an issue here. 



Jwill55gRizZ said:


> no no.. Z and Sheed Score in the post.. They are a post presence. in fact in 4th quarters when sheed goes to the post against Chicago he went off... lol..chicago fans should know that most..Z went off in the playoffs with the turnaround shot from the left block he loves..


You've gotta be kidding. Sheed scores inside less often than Kirk.

http://www.82games.com/0607/06DET13A.HTM


----------



## MikeDC (Jul 16, 2002)

*Re: The Truth Remains You Cannot Win a championship with a frontcourt of Wallace/Tyru*



Masbee said:


> Details. Details. The devil is in the details.
> 
> I am not a Bulls fan (Blazer fan) and I even know the explanation.
> 
> ...


I somewhat disagree with this. Wallace knows where to be on offense and he's, for a big guy, a gifted passer. I suspect he'd have been A-OK playing next to MJ and Pip and we wouldn't have missed a beat if you replaced Rodman with him (though Rodman was a better offensive player and a better man-to-man defender IMO).

The problem for the Bulls is that Wallace isn't paired with anyone who resembles those two. I like the rest of or guys a lot, but they're hurt by playing 4 on 5.



> The only thing they can do is pair with a creating point guard that will get them easy dunks, oops and layups. Hinrich isn't exactly that type. And they really shouldn't play together too much (unless and) until Thomas develops a reliable jumper.


I do agree with this quite a bit. If TT is ineffective from more than a couple feet away we've screwed the pooch.


----------



## BG7 (Jun 25, 2003)

Fact my ***.

We're going to get 75 points on 56+ TS% from Hinrich, Gordon, Nocioni, and Deng.

So 25 additional points from Smith, Wallace, Noah, Duhon, Tyrus, and Sefo give us 100, which puts us in a very good position to win.

So scoring (aka, the need for a low post scorer) isn't what is needed for us to take the next step.

What we need is the become a more veteran team. One (the least important of the next steps) is for Gordon/Hinrich to bring down the amount of silly turnovers.

But rebounding and interior defense. Thats what we need to get to the next level. We need Wallace, Tyrus, Noah to lockdown the interior, and to grab rebound after rebound, not giving up 2nd chance points. Thats what killed us in the Pistons series, they were just murdering us on the boards.

The offensive talent is in place, now its just a matter of becoming a championship level defense.


----------



## Masbee (Dec 31, 2002)

*Re: The Truth Remains You Cannot Win a championship with a frontcourt of Wallace/Tyru*



MikeDC said:


> I somewhat disagree with this. Wallace knows where to be on offense and he's, for a big guy, a gifted passer. I suspect he'd have been A-OK playing next to MJ and Pip and we wouldn't have missed a beat if you replaced Rodman with him (though Rodman was a better offensive player and a better man-to-man defender IMO).
> 
> The problem for the Bulls is that Wallace isn't paired with anyone who resembles those two. I like the rest of or guys a lot, but they're hurt by playing 4 on 5.
> 
> ...


It can happen.

Amare Stoudemire. Famous as a rookie for dunking and little else. Age 20, shot 31% eFG%, and they made 40% of his attempts.
http://www.82games.com/02PHO10A.HTM

His 3rd season, age 22, shot 43% eFG%, and they made 52% of his attempts.
http://www.82games.com/04PHO14A.HTM

Last season, his 5th (4th played), age 24, shot 44% eFG% on jumpers, and they made up 45% of his FGAs. And it seems to me, he has extended his range even further.
http://www.82games.com/0607/06PHO14A.HTM

So, he went from horrible shooter, to respectable in 3 years.

Also, want to mention, that though Wallace may be a decent passer, it doesn't matter that much. He is such a NON-threat offensively that any decent team defensively will play him for the pass (to a good offensive player). It just doesn't work that well.


----------



## BULLHITTER (Dec 6, 2005)

> The problem for the Bulls is that Wallace isn't paired with anyone who resembles those two. I like the rest of or guys a lot, but they're hurt by playing 4 on 5.


the bulls would've been doing that with the team USA guy too; big deal. wallace's IQ makes up for his lack of scoring skill. having thomas be a scoring factor is far more important in the grand scheme.

wallace understands the game well enough to not hurt the team, and as he ages, the hope is that noah or to a lesser extent gray, provide the team with punch as well, allowing wallace to age gracefully (or until the contract expires)

for the record, i'm not a big believer that the fans are going to see a wallace falling off a cliff, ability wise. an interesting difference is the love i recall antonio davis got around these parts at age 37-38, *and* who made comparable money, while wallace, a 4 time DPOY can't get the benefit of the doubt, even with all league props as a defender and a good year rebounding, assists, and steals by many player's standards.

experience matters; i don't suscribe to wallace not being a major factor when the rubber meets the road; including during the ascenion of tyrus thomas FWIW.


----------



## RoRo (Aug 21, 2002)

crazy question, do we even run the triangle anymore? 
honestly i'm not 100% sure. i think we run more pick and roll and off the ball screens.
i mean the same principles stand, the more versatile the big men are, the better off we are.


----------



## Snake (Jun 10, 2007)

I don't think we can look at this team and say they will or won't win a championship. Each year only one of 30 teams wins the championship. There were 29 teams on the outside looking in last season. 

As a fan I think the most we can ask is that this team is headed in the direction of being one of the top contenders. Hopefully we could be Spurs/Mavs/Suns level contenders but it would be alright if we could be at the level the Pistons have been the last couple of years.

*Will this team contend this season?*
The logical thinking is no, which I agree with. However, is it that far out there to think this team could do it this year? It's certainly a possibility, remember the article in which most of those ESPN experts picked the Bulls as one of the top teams in the east.

*Will this team contend in the future?*
The logical thinking is that we will. But again we can't be sure we will. A lot depends on the young guys developing and maybe we've been spoiled by how well Hinrich, Gordon and Deng have developed that we've forgotten how lousy those Krause picks were.

People say that you need this player or that player to win a championship. I don't agree with that. Teams win the championship and Paxson is trying to build a team that is strong at all 5 poistions.

Take a look at this years Spurs. They were 5th in offensive efficiency and 2nd in defensive efficiency. The Bulls were 1st in defensive efficiency and 20th in offensive efficiency. See the difference? Championship teams are usually good on both ends of the floor. 

Which leads us to this post player talk. It would be nice if the Bulls had a Duncan type (and no Curry is not a Duncan type) to balance the attack. But is it really neccessary? Most people on this board think (and many experts) think Gordon and Deng have some scoring improvement left in them (Hinrich might have a little too). That will make our offense better. The rest will have to come from somewhere else. We know that Tyrus can dunk and he's been working hard on his jump shot. Noah can dunk and we'll have to wait and see how his jump shot works in the NBA. It's also possible that Gray can contribute some. And we'll have a healthy Noc this season, don't underestimate the importance of having a good 6th man as Ginobilli, Barbosa and Stackhouse proved this season.

Taking all that into account is it possible that this team can go from 20th in offensive efficiency into the top 10 while maintaining their level as an elite defensive team. That's what's going to take to make the Bulls into contenders. Personally I think it's a realistic possibility and am willing to give this team a couple of years together to prove it. If a couple of years from now the Bulls can't get over the hump then we ship off some of them off for a star, sort of how the Celtics did this year. Deng, Gordon, Hinrich, Thomas, Noah, Sefolosha, Gray, Noc, and Wallace's expiring. These are the trading chips we can work with if the team doesn't work out.


----------



## JeremyB0001 (Nov 17, 2003)

*Re: The Truth Remains You Cannot Win a championship with a frontcourt of Wallace/Tyru*



Snake said:


> I don't think we can look at this team and say they will or won't win a championship. Each year only one of 30 teams wins the championship. There were 29 teams on the outside looking in last season.
> 
> As a fan I think the most we can ask is that this team is headed in the direction of being one of the top contenders. Hopefully we could be Spurs/Mavs/Suns level contenders but it would be alright if we could be at the level the Pistons have been the last couple of years.


Great point. Half the teams don't even make the playoffs and only three (Dallas, San An, Phoenix) really seem to have a good shot at winning a title next season. It'd be a mistake to make drastic moves just because you're not a 60 win, upper echelon team or you'd be rebuilding every season or two. A team that projects to win around 55 games and go deep in the playoffs is not cause for panic.


----------



## theanimal23 (Mar 2, 2005)

I don't think there is anything to add. Snake did a hell of a job with his analysis.

One thing I still haven't seen from this team even though they've been in the league now for a few years -- Cut down on turnovers. I believe we are still top 10 in the league in giving up the ball. I'm not sure if they are dead ball turnovers or not, but championship caliber teams take care of the ball. These are the 'little' things the team must improve upon to be a title contender. Turnovers, Basketball IQ (How to beat a zone), and making adjustments to what a defensive gives you. 

I believe the talent is there. Sure we don't have an elite player at each position, but as Snake put it, the goal is to have 5 solid starters. The Detroit Model is the exception, but another way of looking at it is that few teams can put together that kind of talent across the board. It looks like this is Pax's goal with a probable starting lineup of Kirk-Ben-Lu-Ty-Noah in a few years.


----------



## RoRo (Aug 21, 2002)

theanimal23 said:


> One thing I still haven't seen from this team even though they've been in the league now for a few years -- Cut down on turnovers. I believe we are still top 10 in the league in giving up the ball. I'm not sure if they are dead ball turnovers or not, but championship caliber teams take care of the ball.


interstingly enough we're 
8th in turnovers but
2nd in creating them

very similar to Golden State who's 
7th in turnovers but
1st in creating them

that made me curious so Bulls are:
4th in steals, GS is 1st

and in blocks, Chicago is:
7th in blocked shots, GS is 3rd (0.3 difference)

just thought that was interesting.


----------



## JeremyB0001 (Nov 17, 2003)

*Re: The Truth Remains You Cannot Win a championship with a frontcourt of Wallace/Tyru*



RoRo said:


> interstingly enough we're
> 8th in turnovers but
> 2nd in creating them
> 
> ...


Well the major common denominator there is that both teams like to run. The faster you play the more possessions there will be and therefore the more turnovers there will be.


----------



## different_13 (Aug 30, 2005)

I'm gonna deal with each paragraph seperately (and probably some other posters too)



Snake said:


> Hopefully we could be Spurs/Mavs/Suns level contenders but it would be alright if we could be at the level the Pistons have been the last couple of years.



Being at the Pistons level won't cut it, in my opinion. Not if you're serious about winning the Title. As you might notice, the last few years the Pistons haven't won it. Since their championship, they've only won the East again once (and that was the year after). I might be wrong on that, but I still think the Pistons haven't consistantly won even _their_ conference, let alone the whole league.




> Take a look at this years Spurs. They were 5th in offensive efficiency and 2nd in defensive efficiency. The Bulls were 1st in defensive efficiency and 20th in offensive efficiency. See the difference? Championship teams are usually good on both ends of the floor.


The Spurs have both slashers and a dominant post scorer. _Their_ jumpshooters get open looks. The Bulls don't, and they don't even have an offensive player to rely on for when the shot isn't falling. As it is, the Bulls scored at good FG% in the regular season (top 4 scorers being around .45%+) Both Hinrich and Nocioni dropped significantly in the playoffs though.
My basic point here is jumpshooters don't generally have hig offensive efficiency. 




> Which leads us to this post player talk. It would be nice if the Bulls had a Duncan type (and no Curry is not a Duncan type) to balance the attack. But is it really neccessary? Most people on this board think (and many experts) think Gordon and Deng have some scoring improvement left in them (Hinrich might have a little too). That will make our offense better. The rest will have to come from somewhere else. We know that Tyrus can dunk and he's been working hard on his jump shot. Noah can dunk and we'll have to wait and see how his jump shot works in the NBA. It's also possible that Gray can contribute some. And we'll have a healthy Noc this season, don't underestimate the importance of having a good 6th man as Ginobilli, Barbosa and Stackhouse proved this season.



Again - their scoring improvements don't matter. I wouldn't want my team to be relying on jumpshooting to keep them in a game. Until Gordon starts driving to the basket more (or someone else does - Thabo being a prime candidate) the talk of a post player will continue.
If you take Duncan off the Spurs and replace him with Wallace, they'd still have Manu and Parker capable of getting easy baskets, or failing that - freethrow opportunities.
As it is, the Bulls were only just below the league average in attempts last year.. in fact, they had more than the Spurs.
Bollocks, that kinda messes my arguement up! - I'm assuming that's because the Bulls play quite up-pace?
on the flipside - imagine if the Bulls _did_ get a Parker or Duncan type inside scorer (someone who will draw doubleteams and freethrows)
My point there is that scoring improvements for jumpshooters are still only jumpshot points - I don't wanna rely on jumpshots when facing the Pistons or Spurs.




> *Taking all that into account is it possible that this team can go from 20th in offensive efficiency into the top 10 while maintaining their level as an elite defensive team.* That's what's going to take to make the Bulls into contenders. Personally I think it's a realistic possibility and am willing to give this team a couple of years together to prove it. If a couple of years from now the Bulls can't get over the hump then we ship off some of them off for a star, sort of how the Celtics did this year. Deng, Gordon, Hinrich, Thomas, Noah, Sefolosha, Gray, Noc, and Wallace's expiring. These are the trading chips we can work with if the team doesn't work out.



How though? In my view the only way to improve offensive efficiency is by not having to shoot the ball, but by being able to get close attempts (layups, dunks, post up moves) 
If you take Duncan off the Spurs, their offensive efficiency will go down. If you take Parker or Manu off and replace them with jumpshooters, it will go down.
The Bulls are lucky in that most of their main pieces will last at least 5 more years and still be in their prime. Nocioni's old, but I don't think age will lessen his production much. Wallace is the only player (with big minutes) that's gonna decline significantly.
Therefore, I think to contend for a title, his contract will have to be traded for a major player. And because I think Noah will make a good pf, but not a good center (alongside Tyrus), I think _that guy_ has to be a bigman.
As you said, the Bulls can afford to wait a few years. I think it's good to let the players grow (as this will also drive up their value if they're traded), but I still think this team isn't gonna get it done.


----------



## bullybullz (Jan 28, 2007)

The Pistons have made it to the ECF for the last five years along with two NBA Finals appearances...


----------



## different_13 (Aug 30, 2005)

Ah, but they haven't won. The title of the thread is you cannot _Win_ a championship.
I'm not gonna deny that they've had success, because they have.
And I've already admitted the Bulls are a top team in the East.
But the fact remains you cannot compete for a title with a jumpshooting team featuring offensive non-threats in the frontcourt.

Getting to a Pistons level is the beginning - being the fixture to feature in the conference finals.



> Hopefully we could be Spurs/Mavs/Suns level contenders but it would be alright if we could be at the level the Pistons have been the last couple of years.


I disagree with that. If you're serious about contending for a title, being second best isn't good enough.


----------



## jnrjr79 (Apr 18, 2003)

*Re: The Truth Remains You Cannot Win a championship with a frontcourt of Wallace/Tyru*



different_13 said:


> I disagree with that. If you're serious about contending for a title, being second best isn't good enough.



Isn't 2nd best the epitome of _contending_ for a title? Otherwise, you'd just be _winning_ a title.


----------



## different_13 (Aug 30, 2005)

True, badly phrased - if you're serious about winning a title, being second-best isn't good enough.
_There._


----------



## JeremyB0001 (Nov 17, 2003)

*Re: The Truth Remains You Cannot Win a championship with a frontcourt of Wallace/Tyru*



different_13 said:


> Being at the Pistons level won't cut it, in my opinion. Not if you're serious about winning the Title. As you might notice, the last few years the Pistons haven't won it. Since their championship, they've only won the East again once (and that was the year after). I might be wrong on that, but I still think the Pistons haven't consistantly won even _their_ conference, let alone the whole league.


Being at the Pistons level was good enough for the Pistons to win a title so why can't it be good enough for the Bulls to win a title? I feel like you're being a little bit greedy here if your complaint is that the team might not make it to the Finals nearly every year. 



different_13 said:


> The Spurs have both slashers and a dominant post scorer. _Their_ jumpshooters get open looks. The Bulls don't, and they don't even have an offensive player to rely on for when the shot isn't falling. As it is, the Bulls scored at good FG% in the regular season (top 4 scorers being around .45%+) Both Hinrich and Nocioni dropped significantly in the playoffs though.
> My basic point here is jumpshooters don't generally have hig offensive efficiency.


It seems like the Bulls have already beaten the odds then, unless you're arguing that the performance of four of our players last season were aberrations. 



different_13 said:


> Again - their scoring improvements don't matter. I wouldn't want my team to be relying on jumpshooting to keep them in a game. Until Gordon starts driving to the basket more (or someone else does - Thabo being a prime candidate) the talk of a post player will continue.
> If you take Duncan off the Spurs and replace him with Wallace, they'd still have Manu and Parker capable of getting easy baskets, or failing that - freethrow opportunities.
> As it is, the Bulls were only just below the league average in attempts last year.. in fact, they had more than the Spurs.
> Bollocks, that kinda messes my arguement up! - I'm assuming that's because the Bulls play quite up-pace?
> ...


If you score better, you going to win more games both in the playoffs and regular season, regardless of what form that improvement takes on. Gordon and Hinrich don't get to the hole as well as Manu and Parker but they're not bad for guards and their inside scoring will improve if they ever start to get more respect from the refs. 



different_13 said:


> How though? In my view the only way to improve offensive efficiency is by not having to shoot the ball, but by being able to get close attempts (layups, dunks, post up moves)
> If you take Duncan off the Spurs, their offensive efficiency will go down. If you take Parker or Manu off and replace them with jumpshooters, it will go down.


It's a pretty simple concept in my mind: if your players start scoring more efficiently, your team will score more efficiently. I'm not sure exactly how young players generally improve their scoring but I know that players as young as Tyrus (20), Lu (22), and BG (24) typically do improve their scoring. I also know that subtracting players who score as inefficiently as P.J. (46.2% TS%), Malik (44.3% TS%), and Sweetney (46.9% TS%) should improve a team's efficiency 9 out of 10 times.



different_13 said:


> But the fact remains you cannot compete for a title with a jumpshooting team featuring offensive non-threats in the frontcourt.
> 
> I disagree with that. If you're serious about contending for a title, being second best isn't good enough.


Again I strongly disagree with absolute statements of opinion presented as facts.

The problem is that no one knows who the second best team is going to be. Are you saying that Phoenix or Dallas or San Antonio is the second best team and can't win a Championship so they should immediately tear down their team and start over or make extremely desperate moves to try an improve a win or two at the expense of their future? You basically seem to want a guarantee that the Bulls are the best team in the NBA and huge favorites to win the title and that's not going to happen no matter what. The odds of this team - or any team currently assembled - ever being a 72 win juggernaut are close to non-existent.


----------



## Snake (Jun 10, 2007)

different_13 said:


> Being at the Pistons level won't cut it, in my opinion. Not if you're serious about winning the Title. As you might notice, the last few years the Pistons haven't won it. Since their championship, they've only won the East again once (and that was the year after). I might be wrong on that, but I still think the Pistons haven't consistantly won even _their_ conference, let alone the whole league.


The Pistons did win one title and made a couple more deep playoff runs and had a 60 win season. The Suns and Mavs have been considered _elite_ contenders for the last couple of years and neither has won a title. Does it mean that they won't win this year? Maybe they will and maybe they won't. My point is even though the ultimate goal is the championship you can't point to a team and say this team will win and this team won't. All you can hope for is that the team is a serious contender and then you let the chips fall where they may.



> The Spurs have both slashers and a dominant post scorer. _Their_ jumpshooters get open looks. The Bulls don't, and they don't even have an offensive player to rely on for when the shot isn't falling. As it is, the Bulls scored at good FG% in the regular season (top 4 scorers being around .45%+) Both Hinrich and Nocioni dropped significantly in the playoffs though.
> My basic point here is jumpshooters don't generally have hig offensive efficiency.


About Hinrich and Nocion's playoff perforamnce's: Noc sucked because he was suffering from his plantar fascitis and I don't really know what happened with Kirk. He had a couple of games where his shot really wasn't falling.

About the rest, Ginobilli and Parker's TS% were only a little higher than the Bulls main scorers TS%. Now while our guys may be a little inconsistent I have a feeling that may improve with another year of experience. There's a couple of thing that I think will help balance out our attack closer to the basket.

1) There's a good chance that Gordon and/or Deng make the all star team this year which will cause the refs to give them more respect. Bulls fans will tell you there were countless plays this season where Gordon or Hinrich went into the lane, got mugged and no foul was called.

2) Tyrus Thomas will have more playing time he will help get us interior baskets. He has a natural dunking ability which will cause defenses to pay more attention to him. He also draws a lot of fouls and has been working on his jump shot. His stats increased every month last season which is an encouraging sign for his development.

3) Luol Deng is 22 and by most accounts his game is still developing. Last season he was automatic with his mid range game and he was good at slashing to the basket within the flow of offense. There's a couple of things he could develop this offseason: extending his range to the 3 point line, working on playing closer to the baket (posting up), having the ability to isolate and take his man off the dribble. The latter two are what I would like to see.

4) PJ Brown was replaced by Joe Smith. This may not seam like an improvement at all, but it is when you look closely. PJ could hit a mid range jump shot, but he was atrocious close to the basket. PJ had almost a third of his attempts close to the basket blocked. There was a thread a little while back comparing Smith and PJ's offense and the general conclusion was that Smith is much better close to the basket.



> Again - their scoring improvements don't matter. I wouldn't want my team to be relying on jumpshooting to keep them in a game. Until Gordon starts driving to the basket more (or someone else does - Thabo being a prime candidate) the talk of a post player will continue.
> If you take Duncan off the Spurs and replace him with Wallace, they'd still have Manu and Parker capable of getting easy baskets, or failing that - freethrow opportunities.
> As it is, the Bulls were only just below the league average in attempts last year.. in fact, they had more than the Spurs.
> Bollocks, that kinda messes my arguement up! - I'm assuming that's because the Bulls play quite up-pace?
> ...


As far as free throws go TT is very good at drawing fouls down low (he led the team in FTA per 40) and as his playing time increases it will help. He also plays closer to the basket than any of our current players which will help get some easy baskets even if they aren't post up baskets. PJ played quite a few minute for us at PF and he was pretty bad at getting to the line. I think Gordon and Deng will get better and as that happens and they get more respect from the refs it will help. As you stated Thabo has the physical tools (athletic, good handle) to be able to slash to the basket but he just didn't have an aggressive enough mindset last year. I wanna see Skiles put him in the game and tell him to take it to the hoop.



> How though? In my view the only way to improve offensive efficiency is by not having to shoot the ball, but by being able to get close attempts (layups, dunks, post up moves)
> If you take Duncan off the Spurs, their offensive efficiency will go down. If you take Parker or Manu off and replace them with jumpshooters, it will go down.
> The Bulls are lucky in that most of their main pieces will last at least 5 more years and still be in their prime. Nocioni's old, but I don't think age will lessen his production much. Wallace is the only player (with big minutes) that's gonna decline significantly.
> Therefore, I think to contend for a title, his contract will have to be traded for a major player. And because I think Noah will make a good pf, but not a good center (alongside Tyrus), I think _that guy_ has to be a bigman.
> As you said, the Bulls can afford to wait a few years. I think it's good to let the players grow (as this will also drive up their value if they're traded), but I still think this team isn't gonna get it done.


I think the Bulls can increase their offensive efficiency by internal improvements. There's only a couple of teams that are younger than the Bulls and they all suck. Also there were times last year when we were playing 3 on 5 on offense (PJ and Big Ben) that meant that Kirk, Ben and Lu had to carry a huge load. There's also Noah and while many think he has no offense you have to remember that as he develops he's going to be taking minute from Wallace and I think we can all agree that he's better offensively than Wallace. At worst he'll be able to catch and dunk.(something Wallace can't do and will further move our offense closer to the basket)

Just to make sure my position is clear. For the Bulls to contend a lot depende on the younger players development which may end up biting us in the ***, but these guys have the ideal environment to develop which is why I'm hopeful.


----------



## Snake (Jun 10, 2007)

Jeremy covered some of the same stuff I did. Sorry about that. His post wasn't up when I started writing mine. (Yeah it took me half an hour to write! You wanna make something of it!)


----------



## L.O.B (Jun 13, 2002)

*Re: The Truth Remains You Cannot Win a championship with a frontcourt of Wallace/Tyru*

During the dynasty years, can you name where the offensive post game came from? The last three championships, the starters were Longley and Rodman. Who had the great post game of that duo? The last championship, Luc averaged a career high 11 freekin points and Rodman accounted for almost 5. 

The Bulls success never revolved around have high scoring big men. Why must we have offensive post production now to win championships, never needed it before.


----------



## Snake (Jun 10, 2007)

*Re: The Truth Remains You Cannot Win a championship with a frontcourt of Wallace/Tyru*



L.O.B said:


> During the dynasty years, can you name where the offensive post game came from? The last three championships, the starters were Longley and Rodman. Who had the great post game of that duo? The last championship, Luc averaged a career high 11 freekin points and Rodman accounted for almost 5.
> 
> The Bulls success never revolved around have high scoring big men. Why must we have offensive post production now to win championships, never needed it before.


Exactly. There's no one way to win a chamionship. Just because post oriented teams have won in the past that doesn't mean every other system is inherently incapable of winning a title.

As they say, there's more than one way to skin a cat.


----------



## ViciousFlogging (Sep 3, 2003)

*Re: The Truth Remains You Cannot Win a championship with a frontcourt of Wallace/Tyru*



L.O.B said:


> During the dynasty years, can you name where the offensive post game came from?


In the 2nd threepeat, it was Michael Jordan.

Also, both Longley and Rodman were superior high post passers, which was essential to the way we ran the triangle.

I mean, I get your drift - you don't need a classic post big guy to win the title. However, most teams that have won the title recently have either had that, or had Michael Jordan in his prime, so I understand why people are so passionate about wanting us to find that guy.


----------



## JeremyB0001 (Nov 17, 2003)

*Re: The Truth Remains You Cannot Win a championship with a frontcourt of Wallace/Tyru*



ViciousFlogging said:


> In the 2nd threepeat, it was Michael Jordan.
> 
> Also, both Longley and Rodman were superior high post passers, which was essential to the way we ran the triangle.
> 
> I mean, I get your drift - you don't need a classic post big guy to win the title. However, most teams that have won the title recently have either had that, or had Michael Jordan in his prime, so I understand why people are so passionate about wanting us to find that guy.


Or they were the Pistons. I'm not sure that we're not on the same page but I think there's a strong point to be made here that you can win a championship with all different types of teams if your players are good enough. I think that inseparable from the argument that you can't win a title without a post scorer is the argument that it's somewhat rare for a team to be successful without a back to the basket scorer. The Bulls have already overcome that hurdle so I think that as long as their young players don't stagnate, this team is capable of contending for a title.


----------



## different_13 (Aug 30, 2005)

Snake said:


> Jeremy covered some of the same stuff I did. Sorry about that. His post wasn't up when I started writing mine. (Yeah it took me half an hour to write! You wanna make something of it!)


lol, I know the feeling, happens to me quite a bit too.
I'll go through both posts so, so neither are wasted.
I'd like to start by saying you both make many valid points (and probably know a lot more about the Bulls than I do)

But before I do that I wanna get this mini 'can you win without a post player' discussion out the way.

As pointed out, the second threepeat had michael Jordan, a brilliant post player.
In the huge thread we had on this subject a while ago, we came to the conclusion that championship teams tend to have a dominant post player (typically a big), and/or at least one or two top 50 of all time players. Additionally, championship teams tend to play good defense, and often the main guy is a strong defender too.
Agreed?
This millenium, titles have been won by Shaq, Duncan and that one year the Pistons won.
Shaq and Duncan, both dominant bigmen. Pistons - the sole aberration so far. However, there was no weakspot in that lineup, all the starters were good at worst, and they had 4 excellent defenders in the starting lineup. But still, not the typical championship team.

In the 90's, titles were won by Duncan/Robinson, Michael Jordan/Scottie Pippen, and Hakeem. (I'll count the pistons in the 80's cos they repeated).
Of those teams, all were good defensively. Jordan and Pippen are both great defenders, Rodman was an excellent defender, and the first threepeat had Bill Cartwright and Horace Grant. I'd say those teams fill all criteria.
Duncan/Robinson - _*two*_ great bigmen.
Hakeem - brilliant bigman.

80's - Moses and Doc - great bigman, top wingman.
Celtics - Parish/McHale (good bigman duo) as well as Bird (and others). 
Lakers - Kareem (great bigman) as well as Magic, _and_ Worthy and co. Lakers and Celtics were stacked man..
Pistons - Dumars/Isiah backcourt (2 top 50 players right there), Mark Aguirre one of those years (great post player) and terrific defense all-round. I'll accept they didn't have an amazing bigman, but they had one or two genuine post threats as well as fulfilling all the other criteria.

I'm not gonna go back to the 70's mostly cos I don't know much about those teams full stop.



> Or they were the Pistons. I'm not sure that we're not on the same page but I think there's a strong point to be made here that you can win a championship with all different types of teams if your players are good enough. I think that inseparable from the argument that you can't win a title without a post scorer is the argument that it's somewhat rare for a team to be successful without a back to the basket scorer.


My point here is, it's happened once. In 2004.

I think it's safe to say there's quite a difference between today's Bulls and the team that had 2 of the top wingmen of all time. There's a whole world of difference between Air Jordan and Air Gordon..
Todays Bulls don't even have one top 50 of all time player, nor a post threat, nor a top-5 (in the league) anything at any position. 


Anyway, Jeremy's big post:



> Being at the Pistons level was good enough for the Pistons to win a title so why can't it be good enough for the Bulls to win a title? I feel like you're being a little bit greedy here if your complaint is that the team might not make it to the Finals nearly every year.


People are talking about the Bulls being perennial contenders with that build of team. The Pistons haven't been. In my opinion, each year since 2004 there's been at least one team better than the Pistons. I know they've had success in the form of conference finals appearances, but they've only won it twice.
And people rarely talk about their opponents when discussing the Pistons - Lakers had clear chemistry issues (Shaq was traded, for Christ's sake!). I'm not gonna take away from what the Pistons did, cos I was cheering em. 
But thusfar, in NBA history, their title win is an abberation.



> It seems like the Bulls have already beaten the odds then, unless you're arguing that the performance of four of our players last season were aberrations.


Like I said in my post, I was surprised at the Bulls %s all around.



> If you score better, you going to win more games both in the playoffs and regular season, regardless of what form that improvement takes on. Gordon and Hinrich don't get to the hole as well as Manu and Parker but they're not bad for guards and their inside scoring will improve if they ever start to get more respect from the refs.


Aside from those Pistons, show me a jumpshooting team that won a title recently.. (and don't mention Michael Jordan).
If the Bulls guards start penetrating more, I'll relent on that matter. As it is (for whatever reason) the Bulls are scoring the vast majority of their points on jumpshots (I'm not using statistics btw, so I'll probably be proved wrong soon..)



> It's a pretty simple concept in my mind: if your players start scoring more efficiently, your team will score more efficiently. I'm not sure exactly how young players generally improve their scoring but I know that players as young as Tyrus (20), Lu (22), and BG (24) typically do improve their scoring. I also know that subtracting players who score as inefficiently as P.J. (46.2% TS%), Malik (44.3% TS%), and Sweetney (46.9% TS%) should improve a team's efficiency 9 out of 10 times.


True, and the best way to up the efficiency is close attempts, in my mind. That, and open looks leading to easy baskets (which are usually a result of drive/kick, or a pass out of a doubleteam).




> Again I strongly disagree with absolute statements of opinion presented as facts.


I'll give you that first bit, I was just getting sick of typing in imo (check some of my other posts :biggrin: )
Though I'll stand by "But the fact remains you cannot compete for a title with a jumpshooting team featuring offensive non-threats in the frontcourt." I haven't seen a team like that win yet (besides perhaps the Pistons).



> The problem is that no one knows who the second best team is going to be. Are you saying that Phoenix or Dallas or San Antonio is the second best team and can't win a Championship so they should immediately tear down their team and start over or make extremely desperate moves to try an improve a win or two at the expense of their future? You basically seem to want a guarantee that the Bulls are the best team in the NBA and huge favorites to win the title and that's not going to happen no matter what. The odds of this team - or any team currently assembled - ever being a 72 win juggernaut are close to non-existent.


No, I'm not saying that. What I am saying is this: the top teams have _very rarely _been jumpshooting teams lacking in offensive bigmen, good penetrators _and_ players that draw a doubleteam. All those teams have at least 2 of those 3 (and the Spurs a couple of most of them!)
I wouldn't want _those_ teams to change significantly, because they have the stuff to contend in the Finals *in my view* biggrin: )
The Bulls don't. (imo)

Hope that's all ok.
Now, *Snake's post *(christ, thank god I'm on a different time-zone, there won't be many people posting now!)



> The Pistons did win one title and made a couple more deep playoff runs and had a 60 win season. The Suns and Mavs have been considered elite contenders for the last couple of years and neither has won a title. Does it mean that they won't win this year? Maybe they will and maybe they won't. My point is even though the ultimate goal is the championship you can't point to a team and say this team will win and this team won't. All you can hope for is that the team is a serious contender and then you let the chips fall where they may.


I think I answered this in my last bit to Jeremy - those teams all have things the Bulls don't (besides the Pistons, whom I discussed earlier)



> About Hinrich and Nocion's playoff perforamnce's: Noc sucked because he was suffering from his plantar fascitis and I don't really know what happened with Kirk. He had a couple of games where *his shot really wasn't falling*.


Ah, the fallacy of jumpshots.. :biggrin: 
But yeah, I know about Noc. I was just trying to find some statistical evidence for jumpshooting failing. Really it adds nothing to my arguement, besides Hinrich's performance - if live by the jumpshot, you die by the jumpshot. At least Billups could post up smaller guards..




> About the rest, Ginobilli and Parker's TS% were only a little higher than the Bulls main scorers TS%. Now while our guys may be a little inconsistent I have a feeling that may improve with another year of experience. There's a couple of thing that I think will help balance out our attack closer to the basket.
> 
> 1) There's a good chance that Gordon and/or Deng make the all star team this year which will cause the refs to give them more respect. Bulls fans will tell you there were countless plays this season where Gordon or Hinrich went into the lane, got mugged and no foul was called.
> 
> ...


About the TS% - I've acknowledged my surpirse at how well the Bulls scored considering it's mostly jumpshots. Manu and Parker's success is one thing that I consider to support my arguement that the Bulls need penetrators. Parker gets ****loads of open looks for his teammates because he's so good at getting to the rim. 

The ref respect is one thing. IF they get the calls, I'd want to see them driving more. Even if they don't get fouled, a close shot is still better than a long shot (i don't mean 3pointers, btw).

I like Tyrus Thomas, and his ability to dunk and draw fouls is a big plus for the team. Even if he only doubles his minutes, his style of play is something the Bulls need. The great thing is, even when he's not an offensive threat he's still a _defensive_ threat. His jumpshot is obviously a bonus.

As for Luol Deng, I'd like to see him add some post moves. Wasn't he training with Hakeem a year ago? The 3point shot and/or the ability to take someone off the dribble would open up his midrange game.
If he maintains his level from the playoffs, that's a solid addition - he scores very well, as well as being a very good rebounder and a decent defender. Solid player.

Yeha, I remember the PJ thread. Fully agreed with that point.



> As far as free throws go TT is very good at drawing fouls down low (he led the team in FTA per 40) and as his playing time increases it will help. He also plays closer to the basket than any of our current players which will help get some easy baskets even if they aren't post up baskets. PJ played quite a few minute for us at PF and he was pretty bad at getting to the line. I think Gordon and Deng will get better and as that happens and they get more respect from the refs it will help. As you stated Thabo has the physical tools (athletic, good handle) to be able to slash to the basket but he just didn't have an aggressive enough mindset last year. I wanna see Skiles put him in the game and tell him to take it to the hoop.


Think I've covered that..



> I think the Bulls can increase their offensive efficiency by internal improvements. There's only a couple of teams that are younger than the Bulls and they all suck. Also there were times last year when we were playing 3 on 5 on offense (PJ and Big Ben) that meant that Kirk, Ben and Lu had to carry a huge load. There's also Noah and while many think he has no offense you have to remember that as he develops he's going to be taking minute from Wallace and I think we can all agree that he's better offensively than Wallace. At worst he'll be able to catch and dunk.(something Wallace can't do and will further move our offense closer to the basket)


Tyrus and Noah are both bigger offensive threats than Wallace ever was. So was Tyson Chandler (in fact, Chandler's better on offense than I ever expect Noah to be).
So I'll agree with you there too.



> Just to make sure my position is clear. For the Bulls to contend a lot depende on the younger players development which may end up biting us in the ***, but these guys have the ideal environment to develop which is why I'm hopeful.


I agree to an extent. The Bulls are definitely relying on internal improvement. But I don't think these players are going to develop into double-team drawing penetrators or brilliant offensive bigmen. I'm not denying the Bulls have some very good young players, but you've all read my opinions on championship teams - and the Bulls don't suit that fit. It's one of the reasons I like that O'Neal trade in the other thread - it adds exactly what the Bulls lack.


Anyway, I think I'll leave it at that.
Feel free to tear into it :biggrin:


----------



## MikeDC (Jul 16, 2002)

*Re: The Truth Remains You Cannot Win a championship with a frontcourt of Wallace/Tyru*



Masbee said:


> Also, want to mention, that though Wallace may be a decent passer, it doesn't matter that much. He is such a NON-threat offensively that any decent team defensively will play him for the pass (to a good offensive player). It just doesn't work that well.


That's certainly true, although by the time Rodman his Chicago his offensive skills had degenerated into something fairly close to Ben Wallace nothingness. Nobody gave him any attention either.

The difference was he was consistently on the court with a bunch of guys who were completely superlative offensive players (MJ and Pip, obviously, and Kukoc would maybe be the second leading scorer on the current team) and the current Bulls team just doesn't have those sorts of options.


----------



## someone (Jul 17, 2007)

*Re: The Truth Remains You Cannot Win a championship with a frontcourt of Wallace/Tyru*



MikeDC said:


> That's certainly true, although by the time Rodman his Chicago his offensive skills had degenerated into something fairly close to Ben Wallace nothingness. Nobody gave him any attention either.
> 
> The difference was he was consistently on the court with a bunch of guys who were completely superlative offensive players (MJ and Pip, obviously, and Kukoc would maybe be the second leading scorer on the current team) and the current Bulls team just doesn't have those sorts of options.


We don't have those options YET... :biggrin:


----------



## Snake (Jun 10, 2007)

I'm only going to cover a couple of points.



different_13 said:


> But before I do that I wanna get this mini 'can you win without a post player' discussion out the way.
> 
> As pointed out, the second threepeat had michael Jordan, a brilliant post player.
> In the huge thread we had on this subject a while ago, we came to the conclusion that championship teams tend to have a dominant post player (typically a big), and/or at least one or two top 50 of all time players. Additionally, championship teams tend to play good defense, and often the main guy is a strong defender too.
> ...


You know what I see from those teams. They were all really good on both offense and defense. Right now the Bulls are only good at defense. One of the easier ways to become good on both ends is to have a great, well-rounded big man. Perhaps we don't see the team concept the Bulls are trying to achieve more often is because it's harder to put together 5 really good players, but the Bulls are closer to that than to having a great big man.

Let's take a look at Shaq and Duncan. These two aren't just great post players, they're great basketball players. Duncan and Shaq (at least in his prime) impact the game in pretty much every way possible. Their teams that have won were great defensive and offensive teams. Unforunately these kinds of players are pretty rare.

Which leads us to my point about the Bulls. If you're a good defensive and offensive team then you're going to be very good (it's just the nature of the game). Right now the Bulls are only a good defensive team. I think the offense can improve through the ways I've listed in my previous posts.



> I agree to an extent. The Bulls are definitely relying on internal improvement. But I don't think these players are going to develop into double-team drawing penetrators or brilliant offensive bigmen. I'm not denying the Bulls have some very good young players, but you've all read my opinions on championship teams - and the Bulls don't suit that fit. It's one of the reasons I like that O'Neal trade in the other thread - it adds exactly what the Bulls lack.


I don't think the Bulls need the double team drawing player (Gordon draws some now, just needs to learn to use them better). The thing is that the Bulls are above average at every position (at some way above average) which would cause the opposing team's defense to have to pay attention to a lot of things.

Again looking back at historical championship winners the two things I take away are:
1)Really good on defense
2)Really good on offense
The Bulls have the first one, they lack the second one. The offense has a good chance to improve as the young players improve. It seems that we disagree on whether this Bulls team is capable of taking their offense to the next level without a serious post player. I listed the reason why I think it's possible (though by no means guaranteed) in my previous posts.


----------



## different_13 (Aug 30, 2005)

In that case I think we can safely agree to disagree.
I understand completely where you're coming from, I just can't imagine any improvements the current Bulls players are going to make that will make up for the problems the team has.

I also agree with your great offense/defense thing, but as you've said - we disagree on how to solve that issue.

Let's just hope the Bulls make the conference finals this season and put up a solid showing, I think that would be great progress (and possibly help open up the pursestrings too)


----------



## JeremyB0001 (Nov 17, 2003)

*Re: The Truth Remains You Cannot Win a championship with a frontcourt of Wallace/Tyru*



different_13 said:


> As pointed out, the second threepeat had michael Jordan, a brilliant post player.
> In the huge thread we had on this subject a while ago, we came to the conclusion that championship teams *tend *to have a dominant post player (typically a big), and/*or *at least one or two top 50 of all time players. Additionally, championship teams *tend *to play good defense, and *often *the main guy is a strong defender too.
> Agreed?


Snake made great points here. I particularly like what he said about the Bulls being much closer to a team with five very good starters than one with a dominant big man. Why go against the grain of the team just to try and fit some preordained formula?

As long as we're talking about what Championship teams _often_ look like then there's no disagreement here. The Bulls are a unique team. I have no problem admitting that. Most championship teams have a good scoring big man, most playoff teams have a good scoring big man, most teams period have at least one big man who's a pretty good scorer. The Bulls don't - though I think Tyrus will become a pretty solid scorer in the near future - and it's only held them back so much thus far. 



different_13 said:


> This millenium, titles have been won by Shaq, Duncan and that one year the Pistons won.
> Shaq and Duncan, both dominant bigmen. Pistons - the sole aberration so far. However, there was no weakspot in that lineup, all the starters were good at worst, and they had 4 excellent defenders in the starting lineup. But still, not the typical championship team.
> 
> In the 90's, titles were won by Duncan/Robinson, Michael Jordan/Scottie Pippen, and Hakeem. (I'll count the pistons in the 80's cos they repeated).
> ...


I disagree most with your conclusion where you suggest that the Pistons were this one in a million team that won it all without a dominant back to the basket scorer. First of all, you pretty much conceded just above that the 80's Pistons teams didn't all have dominant post scorers. More so though, I think the way these players are being characterized is all pretty arbitrary. Neither Grant or Cartwright average 15 PPG for the dynasty teams. That's dominant? Likewise, Kareem didn't average 15 PPG for the 87-88 Lakers. MJ was good with his back to the basket but he also spent a lot of time doing other things like shooting threes during the second dynasty and a lot of those postups resulted in fadeaways that weren't in the paint. I'm not sure you can compare M.J. to Shaq as far as post presence. Really all these examples demonstrate to me is that you can't win a Championship playing 3 on 5 offense and I think that was already pretty obvious.



different_13 said:


> People are talking about the Bulls being perennial contenders with that build of team. The Pistons haven't been. In my opinion, each year since 2004 there's been at least one team better than the Pistons. I know they've had success in the form of conference finals appearances, but they've only won it twice.
> And people rarely talk about their opponents when discussing the Pistons - Lakers had clear chemistry issues (Shaq was traded, for Christ's sake!). I'm not gonna take away from what the Pistons did, cos I was cheering em.
> But thusfar, in NBA history, their title win is an abberation.


This just seems to be a definitional issue. When most people say "contender" they mean one of the three or four best teams each year. I think when people say the Bulls will be perennial contenders they generally mean that they'll be in the ECF most years and make multiple finals appearances. I don't think that's an unreasonable projection for this team.




different_13 said:


> Like I said in my post, I was surprised at the Bulls %s all around.


Again, they're a unique team. It doesn't mean they're a fluke or won't continue to improve like other young teams.



different_13 said:


> Aside from those Pistons, show me a jumpshooting team that won a title recently.. (and don't mention Michael Jordan).
> If the Bulls guards start penetrating more, I'll relent on that matter. As it is (for whatever reason) the Bulls are scoring the vast majority of their points on jumpshots (I'm not using statistics btw, so I'll probably be proved wrong soon..)


Well I've addressed that above. Even if the '04 Pistons were the only team without a dominant post scorer ever to win a Championship - they're not - that proves it's possible. I mean what part of the argument here do you disagree with? That young players usually improve their scoring? That higher scoring equals more wins? That 60 or 65 teams are perfectly capable of winning titles regardless of exactly how they're constructed?



different_13 said:


> True, and the best way to up the efficiency is close attempts, in my mind. That, and open looks leading to easy baskets (which are usually a result of drive/kick, or a pass out of a doubleteam).


Well, whatever types of looks our jumpshooters were getting last year they scored far more effectively than P.J., Sweets, and Malik so even if jumpshooters take those extra shots that will be available, I think it'll help us score more points and in turn win more games.


----------



## dougthonus (Jul 18, 2006)

> Just curious, what scenario can you picture where the Bulls can win with the group as assembled near term?
> 
> Is it close to hopeless, in your opinion? Or just highly improbable?


I would give the Bulls about a 30% chance of winning a title over the next 5 years. So I would say it's improbable, but not highly improbable. The best teams in the league right now are all at a stage where they could have a sudden drop off. There looks to likely be a changing of the guard coming soon as San Antonio and Phoenix will slow down with Duncan and Nash inevitably starting to slow down over the next couple years. Of the young teams, we're one of the best positioned to be a good team down the road.

However, we'll almost certainly always be lacking a true tier 1 superstar, and almost no team wins without one of those. I don't think there is a practical way to get a tier 1 superstar, if you strip the team for Bryant, by the time you build it back up he may be starting to decline, or he may just leave because he'd be in the same unhappy place he was before (losing in the 1st round). Standing pat gives us the best chance at winning (IMO) unless we find a way to just screw someone over in a trade. So I hope we're looking for such opportunities to happen, but you can't force that. You can't go out and just say "I'm going to go win this trade today" you need to wait for someone to get desperate.


----------



## dougthonus (Jul 18, 2006)

> Why on Earth would you not want the goal of the team to be winning a championship?


The goal should be to win one. 



> If people feel that its improbable that the Paxson way will result in a championship, why stick with it?


Because moving away from what we are doing will make it even more improbable. 

If your goal was to be rich, and you worked at a place making 75k a year which was nice, but never likely to get you rich unless you make some brilliant investments in your 401k. So in all probability, you will have to live with a nice, but not great financial outcome. Do you quit the job without a better alternative? 

I think we'd all agree that we would make any move that gives us a greater opportunity to win a championship. However, that opportunity to win needs to be looked at over the course of how it effects the team over the next 5-6 years and not just the upcoming year, or else you may trade in a huge portion of your odds to win later for a small improvement in your odds winning now which would overall dramatically reduce your odds of winning.


----------



## dougthonus (Jul 18, 2006)

> I'm saying No to both of those. I stick to the arguement you need a dominant post player and/or at least one top 50 of all time player on the team to win. I don't care if the Pistons did it in 2004 - hell, I was cheering them. But it's happened once.. Not even once in 10 seasons, but once in over 40.


Remove the part about the dominant post player and the saying is still true. You need at least one top 50 all time player on your team to win the vast majority of the time. Over the past 20 years or so there have been as many teams who've won with a dominant guard as their primary piece as a dominant post player.


----------



## R-Star (Jun 13, 2002)

This shouldnt even be a thread. The Bulls are great contenders in the years to come if they keep their current team together. 

Anyone who doesnt see the Bulls have arguably the best young core we've seen in years, just flat out doesnt like the Bulls and hopes at night for them to fail.

Will they win this year? Probably not, but they could. And if not they can tweak their roster as they see fit. But other than Ben Wallace, the team is fairly young and has lots of time to contend for a championship.


----------



## dougthonus (Jul 18, 2006)

> Will this team contend this season?
> The logical thinking is no, which I agree with. However, is it that far out there to think this team could do it this year? It's certainly a possibility, remember the article in which most of those ESPN experts picked the Bulls as one of the top teams in the east.


How is the logical thinking a "no"?

The Bulls are probably the slight favorite to come out of the East this year. I think they will _contend_. Unless your point is that even if they make it to the finals they will just get blown out in 4 games like Cleveland and that won't count as true contention. However, I don't think that'd happen to us in the finals if we got there, and I think if you make it to the finals you contended regardless of the outcome of the finals.


----------



## Jonathan (Feb 24, 2005)

*Re: The Truth Remains You Cannot Win a championship with a frontcourt of Wallace/Tyru*



dougthonus said:


> Remove the part about the dominant post player and the saying is still true. You need at least one top 50 all time player on your team to win the vast majority of the time. Over the past 20 years or so there have been as many teams who've won with a dominant guard as their primary piece as a dominant post player.


If the NBA survives long enough, there won't be enough "top 50 all time players" to go around among all the championship teams.


----------



## dougthonus (Jul 18, 2006)

> If the NBA survives long enough, there won't be enough "top 50 all time players" to go around among all the championship teams.


We could replace top 50 all time with 1st ballot hall of famer or elite player of his era, or some other slogan to convey the same type of message.


----------



## dougthonus (Jul 18, 2006)

Woops, double post.


----------



## Snake (Jun 10, 2007)

dougthonus said:


> How is the logical thinking a "no"?
> 
> The Bulls are probably the slight favorite to come out of the East this year. I think they will _contend_. Unless your point is that even if they make it to the finals they will just get blown out in 4 games like Cleveland and that won't count as true contention. However, I don't think that'd happen to us in the finals if we got there, and I think if you make it to the finals you contended regardless of the outcome of the finals.


I still see this coming season a growing season in which we need to at least make the conference finals. If we go farther than that you won't see me complaining. If we get to the finals we'd be the underdog (unless someone unexpected wins the west) though I do think this coming seasons Bulls team would have a better shot at winning the finals than last seasons Cavs. The Bulls road to the finals is made easier by going through the eastern confernce playoffs.

At this point I see the contenders as being

First tier
San Antonio 
Dallas
Phoenix

Second tier (in no particular order)
Chicago
Detroit
Cleveland
Boston
Houston
Utah


----------



## kukoc4ever (Nov 20, 2002)

*Re: The Truth Remains You Cannot Win a championship with a frontcourt of Wallace/Tyru*



dougthonus said:


> If your goal was to be rich, and you worked at a place making 75k a year which was nice, but never likely to get you rich unless you make some brilliant investments in your 401k. So in all probability, you will have to live with a nice, but not great financial outcome. Do you quit the job without a better alternative?


I think comparing Paxson to a 75K a year, play it safe, cube dweller is spot on.

And you're right, they are lucky to end up on top, and its likely that it won't happen.


----------



## Snake (Jun 10, 2007)

*Re: The Truth Remains You Cannot Win a championship with a frontcourt of Wallace/Tyru*



kukoc4ever said:


> I think comparing Paxson to a 75K a year, play it safe, cube dweller is spot on.
> 
> And you're right, they are lucky to end up on top, and its likely that it won't happen.


So what would be the right move for him? To quit his job and spend all his time buying lotto tickets?

As I recall Krause did the basketball equivalent of that....it didn't work out too well.


----------



## bullybullz (Jan 28, 2007)

*Re: The Truth Remains You Cannot Win a championship with a frontcourt of Wallace/Tyru*



kukoc4ever said:


> I think comparing Paxson to a 75K a year, play it safe, cube dweller is spot on.
> 
> And you're right, they are lucky to end up on top, and its likely that it won't happen.


Hey K4E, how come you continue to have the Big Ben avatar when you don't really like him?? Or am I wrong??


----------



## dougthonus (Jul 18, 2006)

> So what would be the right move for him? To quit his job and spend all his time buying lotto tickets?
> 
> As I recall Krause did the basketball equivalent of that....it didn't work out too well.


And that is my point as well. You can complain all you want about not winning a title, but until you present the plan that does give us a better overall chance of winning a title that complaining is without merit. As it stands, the Bulls have made very significant strides under Paxson. 

I'm not sure what people here really expected, but he took over the worst team in the NBA while it was in salary cap hell, and he had few assets to work with as his recent #2 pick in Jay Williams just wrecked his career. He turned that team into the team we have now which is at the very least going to contend for the top spot in the East and is by FAR the youngest and best positioned team to do so over the long haul. 

He did that in 4 years. I'm not sure what there is to complain about. The progression has been steady, and the needle still looks like it's pointed up. I sometimes wonder how many of you would fair being fans of the other teams in the NBA.


----------



## bullybullz (Jan 28, 2007)

dougthonus said:


> And that is my point as well. You can complain all you want about not winning a title, but until you present the plan that does give us a better overall chance of winning a title that complaining is without merit. As it stands, the Bulls have made very significant strides under Paxson.
> 
> I'm not sure what people here really expected, but he took over the worst team in the NBA while it was in salary cap hell, and he had few assets to work with as his recent #2 pick in Jay Williams just wrecked his career. He turned that team into the team we have now which is at the very least going to contend for the top spot in the East and is by FAR the youngest and best positioned team to do so over the long haul.
> 
> He did that in 4 years. I'm not sure what there is to complain about. The progression has been steady, and the needle still looks like it's pointed up. I sometimes wonder how many of you would fair being fans of the other teams in the NBA.


Co-signed. Imagine being a Knicks fan!!


----------



## different_13 (Aug 30, 2005)

It's true, the organisation's been very impressive for the last few years.

Anyway, first my response to Jeremy:



> I disagree most with your conclusion where you suggest that the Pistons were this one in a million team that won it all without a dominant back to the basket scorer. First of all, you pretty much conceded just above that the 80's Pistons teams didn't all have dominant post scorers. More so though, I think the way these players are being characterized is all pretty arbitrary. Neither Grant or Cartwright average 15 PPG for the dynasty teams. That's dominant? Likewise, Kareem didn't average 15 PPG for the 87-88 Lakers. MJ was good with his back to the basket but he also spent a lot of time doing other things like shooting threes during the second dynasty and a lot of those postups resulted in fadeaways that weren't in the paint. I'm not sure you can compare M.J. to Shaq as far as post presence. Really all these examples demonstrate to me is that you can't win a Championship playing 3 on 5 offense and I think that was already pretty obvious.


True, the Bad Boys didn't have a dominant post scorer.
However, they _did_ have capable ones in Agguire and James Edwards. The Bulls don't even have that (nor do they have 2 top 50 players in Thomas/Dumars)

Grant and Cartwright were both more than capable, as well as having good size; of course this team also had the Pippen/Jordan combo that the current Bulls lack.

Kareem, by that date, wasn't near as good as he had previously been, true. But I'd say he was still capable, and certainly had been for much of that dynasty. Needless to say, 2 more top 50 players in Worthy and Magic (again both with great size too).

I agree on your Jordan point (he's no Shaq). I still say he's a very good post player at that stage, and drew doubleteams (regardless of where he was on the floor). _And_ he had a second top 50 player in Pippen still. But I'll concede that the second threepeat lacked a 'decent' bigman.

Agree fully on the 3 on 5 offense thing.
I ask you this though - is it not true that all those teams lacking a great post player had 2 or 3 top 50 of all time players?




> Well I've addressed that above. Even if the '04 Pistons were the only team without a dominant post scorer ever to win a Championship - they're not - that proves it's possible. I mean what part of the argument here do you disagree with? That young players usually improve their scoring? That higher scoring equals more wins? That 60 or 65 teams are perfectly capable of winning titles regardless of exactly how they're constructed?


I'm not disagreeing with any of those, but show me a jumpshooting team lacking a bigman that won recently..
I should point out i'm keeping the Pistons of 04 out of this debate as an aberration. I'll discuss them, but I'm essentially ignoring them in my arguements (just so everyone knows..)



> Well, whatever types of looks our jumpshooters were getting last year they scored far more effectively than P.J., Sweets, and Malik so even if jumpshooters take those extra shots that will be available, I think it'll help us score more points and in turn win more games.


True, but I'm not talking about regular season. It's commonly accepted that jumpshooting teams have a hard time in the playoffs, no?
I haven't been discussing regular season at all, I fully agree the Bulls should win more regular season games based on scoring increases, even if they are derived from jumpshots.


On to the rest:



> Remove the part about the dominant post player and the saying is still true. You need at least one top 50 all time player on your team to win the vast majority of the time. Over the past 20 years or so there have been as many teams who've won with a dominant guard as their primary piece as a dominant post player.


I'd argue those teams (the guard-oriented ones) have all had a second top 50 player too (Bad Boys, Jordan..)
And I think all those teams have all had capable post players too (except Jordan, perhaps).
The Bulls lack both.




> This shouldnt even be a thread. The Bulls are great contenders in the years to come if they keep their current team together.
> 
> Anyone who doesnt see the Bulls have arguably the best young core we've seen in years, just flat out doesnt like the Bulls and hopes at night for them to fail.
> 
> Will they win this year? Probably not, but they could. And if not they can tweak their roster as they see fit. But other than Ben Wallace, the team is fairly young and has lots of time to contend for a championship.


If that's in reference to me, I do like the Bulls. Of the Eastern playoff teams, they're probably my favorite (as in liking them)




> And that is my point as well. You can complain all you want about not winning a title, but until you present the plan that does give us a better overall chance of winning a title that complaining is without merit. As it stands, the Bulls have made very significant strides under Paxson.
> 
> I'm not sure what people here really expected, but he took over the worst team in the NBA while it was in salary cap hell, and he had few assets to work with as his recent #2 pick in Jay Williams just wrecked his career. He turned that team into the team we have now which is at the very least going to contend for the top spot in the East and is by FAR the youngest and best positioned team to do so over the long haul.


I like the plan, but in my mind a central part of it is trading Ben Wallace's expiring contract for a solid, all-star level bigman, such as Jermaine O'Neal or Pau Gasol, or Dwight Howard or even Emeka Okafor. 

The Bulls are certainly one of the best-positioned teams to be the next Eastern champion dynasty (the team that either always wins the East, or always contends in the Eastern Finals).

And a I've already said, what Paxson has done is nothing short of amazing.


----------



## dougthonus (Jul 18, 2006)

> I'd argue those teams (the guard-oriented ones) have all had a second top 50 player too (Bad Boys, Jordan..)
> And I think all those teams have all had capable post players too (except Jordan, perhaps).
> The Bulls lack both.


You missed the point. The statement, you need a dominant post player or a top 50 all time player is no different than:
You need a top 50 all time player to win. 

Every post player who won these titles was also a top 50 player. The statement: You need a dominant guard or a top 50 all time player would be just as accurate as your statement.

There's no need to add the part about the dominant post player once you specified the top 50 all time part. For the Bulls to fit into the historic champion mode, they need to acquire an all time great player. Whether it's a post player or not isn't the most important thing, the most important thing is to get the all time great player. After that, if it's a guard you want to get a good big man to put around him, and if it's a post player you want to get a good guard to put around him.

Most great teams have good inside/out games, but the Bulls also proved that greatness is the most important thing. You threw 2 great perimeter players on the same team and it was good enough to basically be unstoppable. They beat up on classically built inside/out teams. I do agree that the Bulls lack that 'greatness' in players, but there is sadly no way to overcome that. You basically can't acquire players like that unless you get lucky and they fall in your lap. They rarely switch teams at points where they have much left in the tank, and if you can't get them with enough left to win now then it's very hard to rebuild with them. Kobe wills his team to the 1st round of the playoffs every year so they never collect good talent to put around him. As the NBA has expanded and the CBA has changed up the way you can acquire players it's become far more difficult to build the powerhouse teams of old.



> And I think all those teams have all had capable post players too (except Jordan, perhaps).
> The Bulls lack both.


I agree. Few teams win without capable players filling in at all areas. The Bulls now have a 'capable' post player in Joe Smith if you just want capable. 



> I like the plan, but in my mind a central part of it is trading Ben Wallace's expiring contract for a solid, all-star level bigman, such as Jermaine O'Neal or Pau Gasol, or Dwight Howard or even Emeka Okafor.


I'm more than willing to trade Wallace now or later. However, we'd definitely need a good return if we traded him now because otherwise we lower our odds of winning over the next 2 years considerably, and we have a decent chance over that period of time (maybe 1 in 12 or so both years). I'd no be willing to drastically lower that chance unless we can also greatly improve it in the years to come. I don't find that likely. Obviously, to get anyone you mentioned on your list it will take a lot more than Wallace.


----------



## different_13 (Aug 30, 2005)

> You missed the point. The statement, you need a dominant post player or a top 50 all time player is no different than:
> You need a top 50 all time player to win.
> 
> Every post player who won these titles was also a top 50 player. The statement: You need a dominant guard or a top 50 all time player would be just as accurate as your statement.
> ...


True. Perhaps I should say a dominant post player (who is automatically a top 50 player) OR _at least 2_ other top 50 players (non-bigmen).
Would that be accurate? Bulls, 2 of em, no bigman. 87 Lakers (if we say Kareem is feeble) 2 top 50 players.
Bad Boys, 2 top 50 guards..
Agreed?




> Most great teams have good inside/out games, but the Bulls also proved that greatness is the most important thing. You threw 2 great perimeter players on the same team and it was good enough to basically be unstoppable. They beat up on classically built inside/out teams. I do agree that the Bulls lack that 'greatness' in players, but there is sadly no way to overcome that. You basically can't acquire players like that unless you get lucky and they fall in your lap. They rarely switch teams at points where they have much left in the tank, and if you can't get them with enough left to win now then it's very hard to rebuild with them. Kobe wills his team to the 1st round of the playoffs every year so they never collect good talent to put around him. As the NBA has expanded and the CBA has changed up the way you can acquire players it's become far more difficult to build the powerhouse teams of old.


True. A lot of that probably has to do with league expansion. It's a lot harder to have a Showtime calibre team when there's 30 teams needing players.

As for great players 'willingly' moving teams (not through trade) the last guy was Shaq (some might argue Nash) when he joined the Lakers.

Mediocrity is just depressing. Y'know, first round Lakers, first round KG..




> I agree. Few teams win without capable players filling in at all areas. The Bulls now have a 'capable' post player in Joe Smith if you just want capable.


I'm thinking more like Horace Grant when he was 20something rather than a 30 year old Joe Smith.
Jamaal Magloire's probably a better post player than Joe Smith, and I don't think he'd do either.
But that's just my opinion.
What I do like about Joe Smith is that he's both easily tradeable and easily replaceable. His production won't be hard to replace or improve on, but it's still valuable due to the type of production, rather than the amount.




> I'm more than willing to trade Wallace now or later. However, we'd definitely need a good return if we traded him now because otherwise we lower our odds of winning over the next 2 years considerably, and we have a decent chance over that period of time (maybe 1 in 12 or so both years). I'd no be willing to drastically lower that chance unless we can also greatly improve it in the years to come. I don't find that likely. Obviously, to get anyone you mentioned on your list it will take a lot more than Wallace.


Yes it will. I'd be willing to package Tyrus with Wallace for a bigman - I'd see the new guy playing center, Smith playing PF, Noah being the primary C/F backup and Nocioni or some scrub being the 4th big. Gray would be held in reserve, as now.

Obviously, it's very hard to pull off a trade of the calibre we're talking about.. But the Bulls certainly have the pieces to get such a trade done - one of the few teams that do, imo: young talent, valuable contract, can afford to give up picks, etc..


edit: formatting (quotes/italics)


----------



## MikeDC (Jul 16, 2002)

*Re: The Truth Remains You Cannot Win a championship with a frontcourt of Wallace/Tyru*



dougthonus said:


> *I do agree that the Bulls lack that 'greatness' in players, but there is sadly no way to overcome that. *
> 
> ....
> 
> I'm more than willing to trade Wallace now or later. However, we'd definitely need a good return if we traded him now because otherwise we lower our odds of winning over the next 2 years considerably, and we have a decent chance over that period of time (maybe 1 in 12 or so both years). I'd no be willing to drastically lower that chance unless we can also greatly improve it in the years to come. I don't find that likely. Obviously, to get anyone you mentioned on your list it will take a lot more than Wallace.


I know we've been though this a few times  but it always seems to me that you're saying we have zero chance of winning now, but we should worry about furthe lowering them 

We can't get any lower than zero.

Now I know what you're saying, they aren't really zero now, and we would probably have a somewhat worse record (though personally I think we'd be a playoff team and perhaps more if Tyrus, Noah, Smith and Noc meet expectations). But still...

You can't win if you don't play. Sure, getting a player is about luck, but it's often true that fortune favors the bold as well. Have the Bulls made any concerted effort to even see if any team would be interested in Wallace. My sense is that they haven't seriously considered the idea at all.

And you know what, at some points, talking gets you into deals. Look at the Celtics. If you were making an all-out effort to win in the next two years, would you prefer Ray Allen or Ben Wallace to go along with KG (it's clear the plan was always to hang on to enough assets to make another run at him) and Pierce? Well, I'd take Wallace, but I've never been a huge fan of Allen's.

And if I were the Bulls, I'd damn sure take the 5th pick for Ben Wallace.


----------



## dougthonus (Jul 18, 2006)

> I know we've been though this a few times but it always seems to me that you're saying we have zero chance of winning now, but we should worry about furthe lowering them
> 
> We can't get any lower than zero.


I think we have greater than zero chance of winning now. Probably about a 1 in 12 chance of winning now. If we change that to a 1 in 30 chance of winning now then the future assets we get for Wallace need to raise the bar considerably. Depending on Noah / Tyrus's development, our chances of winning now could potentially be greater than a few years from now (though I believe in both developing so I will say that's unlikely, but it's certainly a possibility).



> And if I were the Bulls, I'd damn sure take the 5th pick for Ben Wallace.


I would too. I think my problem with this point is that if Wallace was as valuable as the 5th pick in the draft then he would considerably upgrade our odds of winning this year. You seem to think he really sucks in improving our odds of winning, but that he can fetch a really good return on the trade market. I just don't see how you mesh those 2 things together in your head. Especially considering his huge contract. If he's really a good player worth his contract than losing him would substantially hurt our team. If he's not, then we aren't going to get high lotto picks for him. Though I agree with your point that I would make such a trade if available. 

I think in most cases we'd probably agree with what we would trade Wallace for, we just seem to disagree about whether or not the Bulls could pull off such a trade.

I am also privy to some information about who the Bulls are talking to, and while I can't go into great detail, I can say they talk to a lot more teams about a lot more players than gets reported in the media. I think to some extent what you hope for, us looking for trades to find a good deal, is actually happening. It's just not being publicized as much as it could be.


----------



## MikeDC (Jul 16, 2002)

*Re: The Truth Remains You Cannot Win a championship with a frontcourt of Wallace/Tyru*



dougthonus said:


> I would too. I think my problem with this point is that if Wallace was as valuable as the 5th pick in the draft then he would considerably upgrade our odds of winning this year. You seem to think he really sucks in improving our odds of winning, but that he can fetch a really good return on the trade market.* I just don't see how you mesh those 2 things together in your head. *Especially considering his huge contract. If he's really a good player worth his contract than losing him would substantially hurt our team. If he's not, then we aren't going to get high lotto picks for him. Though I agree with your point that I would make such a trade if available.


I think there's two things going on. * First is the value I put on the odds.* Going from 1/12 to something like 1/30 is worth it. The change in odds may be considerable, but it's still a move from one low probability to another, and something like the fifth pick could change our odds more significantly in the future.... say from 1/15 to 1/8. If the value of winning a championship is much higher than being a deep playoff team (and I think it clearly is) then you maximize your expected return by making that trade. *The relative levels of the odds are important. 

*The Celtics, maybe getting him takes them from 1/15 to 1/8 now, and reduces them from 1/25 to 1/50 later. Again, you get a positive payoff.*
I think the second disconnect is that I'm a pretty big believer in the importance of team composition. * I would agree with you just looking at players in the abstract. But when I try to put it into the context of the whole team, there's not a perfect correlation in individual player value and odds of winning.

Take Allen Iverson for example. Hell of a player, but he's been very difficult to build a hell of a team around. Wallace, I've always thought of as a sort of defensive Allen Iverson. You gotta have the right team around him.

Now think about Allen and Wallace and what they do to the Celtics' odds of winning as a team. I think as individual players, even though they're very hard to compare, they're probably roughly at the same level. But which one is a better fit on a team that already has two high-powered scorers?

Again, I think Wallace would have brought more to that situation that Pierce would.

Now, for the Bulls, sure, he makes us better, but I see a variety of replacements there.



> I am also privy to some information about who the Bulls are talking to, and while I can't go into great detail, I can say they talk to a lot more teams about a lot more players than gets reported in the media. I think to some extent what you hope for, us looking for trades to find a good deal, is actually happening. It's just not being publicized as much as it could be.


Sweet!


----------



## dougthonus (Jul 18, 2006)

> I think there's two things going on. First is the value I put on the odds. Going from 1/12 to something like 1/30 is worth it. The change in odds may be considerable, but it's still a move from one low probability to another, and something like the fifth pick could change our odds more significantly in the future.... say from 1/15 to 1/8. If the value of winning a championship is much higher than being a deep playoff team (and I think it clearly is) then you maximize your expected return by making that trade. The relative levels of the odds are important.


I don't think we could get such a return to give us a long run at 1/8, but if we could get someone like that then I'd be game for such a trade. I don't think such a deal is likely to be available though. I also don't think that Boston would have taken Ben Wallace over Ray Allen if they were given a choice between the two, and I think if they had gotten Ben Wallace that it may not have eased KG's mind enough to accept a trade there. I perceive his star to have fallen considerably more than you have apparently.


----------



## kukoc4ever (Nov 20, 2002)

dougthonus said:


> I perceive his star to have fallen considerably more than you have apparently.


Man, what a terrible signing by Paxson.

4 years, 60 million for that.

The right move may have been to just realize that the 4 year Cap Space building plan wasn't a great idea and not blow all that money.

----



Using the 1/12 > 1/30 logic, when would it be possible to "get bad to get good later?"


----------



## Darius Miles Davis (Aug 2, 2002)

dougthonus said:


> I am also privy to some information about who the Bulls are talking to, and while I can't go into great detail, I can say they talk to a lot more teams about a lot more players than gets reported in the media. I think to some extent what you hope for, us looking for trades to find a good deal, is actually happening. It's just not being publicized as much as it could be.


OK, Doug, now obviously you do not feel comfortable divulging all you know, but perhaps you might answer this: do you think the Bulls are going to make a substantial trade this year (before the deadline)?


----------



## McBulls (Apr 28, 2005)

*Re: The Truth Remains You Cannot Win a championship with a frontcourt of Wallace/Tyru*

It doesn't appear that Ben Wallace is getting much love in this thread.

The guy has already been the center of a championship team. Stating that he can't be part of a front line of a championship team is a bit obtuse. He may be in decline, but the end product is the same -- he still anchors a great defensive team.

The Bulls had the most efficient defense in the NBA last season. They didn't do that with an ineffective front line. PJ Brown contributed, but you have to give Ben Wallace the lions share of credit. 

The history of the NBA is littered with the names of players like Ray Allen who scored lots of points for their teams but who never won because they depended on their teammates to do the heavy lifting on the other end of the floor.

Paxson has put together a young team that is set to evolve into one of the best defensive teams of all time. This year. And next year. And with some luck with the development of Noah, the year after that.

Do they have a chance at winning a championship? Hell yes. Great defense wins championships in most sports, including the NBA.


----------



## theanimal23 (Mar 2, 2005)

dougthonus said:


> I am also privy to some information about who the Bulls are talking to, and while I can't go into great detail, I can say they talk to a lot more teams about a lot more players than gets reported in the media. I think to some extent what you hope for, us looking for trades to find a good deal, is actually happening. It's just not being publicized as much as it could be.


Hey Doug, were you able to get a Media Pass to interview Bulls players? I know you were trying to get one earlier. Is this how you've been able to come across some more information regarding the Bulls? However it may be, thanks for the news. I'm just hoping we can get a Bulls Insider. Its ironic that our large fanbases online don't have a 'go-to guy'. I'm happpy to know we are looking into different avenues to improve the team. Thats the key thing even if a trade is not made. I'm sure most trade talks don't go far as timing and trade value are critical things. 

Regarding Wallace -- I think he's great. I was disappointed with the Detroit series as I felt he cared more for that team than Chicago. I think he will be a factor for us trying to come out of the East this year. But, he is the one guy I wonder if we could pawn off for the *right* piece. This offseason would be the ideal time as he would have two years remaining on his deal which is also decreasing. I wouldn't be desperate to trade away Wallace. Even as he ages, he will be a key contributor.

That said, I'm curious to know who the Bulls are talking about and who is untouchable outside of Luol on Chicago's side. I would assume Kirk is valued high. Combo guard, could be All-D 1st team soon, the first piece of the puzzle that allowed us to become the Jib Empire. With all the hype around Deng being a possible breakout player this year to a near 'Franchise' Level, I wonder who else is a Pax personal favorite (Gordon? Tyrus?). The guy knows what he is doing and this year it looks as if I'll be eating my crow for suggesting a Deng for Gasol trade.


----------



## theanimal23 (Mar 2, 2005)

McBulls knows what he's talking about


----------



## dougthonus (Jul 18, 2006)

> Man, what a terrible signing by Paxson.
> 
> 4 years, 60 million for that.
> 
> The right move may have been to just realize that the 4 year Cap Space building plan wasn't a great idea and not blow all that money.


How so? If we hadn't signed him last year, we would have almost certainly signed someone else. We'd instead have Drew Gooden or Chris Wilcox on a huge contract instead (they would have had to have been similar in size to stop Cleveland/Seattle from matching). I don't think either of those guys would be better.

The other alternative would have been to go into last year with a crap frontcourt, which I suppose is possible, but would have caused even worse complaints. We could have then had some cap space this summer instead, but there was also no one worth pursuing to help the front court this year with the cap space either. Next year, it would have been gone no matter what, so of the FAs we could have signed over the past 2 seasons with cap money, I think Ben Wallace still will probably give us the best average performance over the life of his contract (and I don't really particularly like him as a player much anymore either). 

I think the alternatives of not signing Wallace are not better than signing Wallace. Seriously, why do you hold such a grudge against Paxson? I think if the bulls won one title in the next 5 years that you'd complain that someone else would have won 5.


----------



## Masbee (Dec 31, 2002)

*Re: The Truth Remains You Cannot Win a championship with a frontcourt of Wallace/Tyru*



MikeDC said:


> That's certainly true, although by the time Rodman his Chicago his offensive skills had degenerated into something fairly close to Ben Wallace nothingness. Nobody gave him any attention either.
> 
> The difference was he was consistently on the court with a bunch of guys who were completely superlative offensive players (MJ and Pip, obviously, and Kukoc would maybe be the second leading scorer on the current team) and the current Bulls team just doesn't have those sorts of options.


I completely agree about the Bulls era Rodman. In fact, I thought the Rodman experiment was doomed.

As it turned out - Rodman was brilliant on defense and rebounding - the Bulls did in fact play a lot of 4 on 5 on offense - and it worked out great. Why? At that point Jordan and Pippen were so good - historically good - that 4 on 5 with Rodman pitching in a little with the Triangle passing - that they still kicked ***.

That to me is the definition of an anomoly. Like watching a sherpa climb Everest without mask and thinking, "I can do that".

No you can't.

And no, if they aspire to be the best team in the NBA, the current Bulls can't hide Ben Wallace on offense the way the Rodman Bulls hid him. Neither the talent level, nor the experience, nor the coaching, even approaches.

As you point out, Wallace (and Rodman) can be in a starting lineup if the other 4 starters are very good or (and smart) offensive players.

Hinrich, Gordon and Deng are all good offensive players, though none are outstanding. Deng might be in a year or two. Still, you need 4 good offensive players at a minimum, to make up for the hole, imo.

Trade for Kobe already.


----------



## dougthonus (Jul 18, 2006)

> OK, Doug, now obviously you do not feel comfortable divulging all you know, but perhaps you might answer this: do you think the Bulls are going to make a substantial trade this year (before the deadline)?


I don't have sources that are anywhere near that good to tell. I just hear rumors from 2nd hand from different team and agent sources about who is talking to who. The sources all have agendas, so you can never really tell how true what they say is. However, the Bulls have been frequently brought up.


----------



## dougthonus (Jul 18, 2006)

> Hey Doug, were you able to get a Media Pass to interview Bulls players? I know you were trying to get one earlier. Is this how you've been able to come across some more information regarding the Bulls? However it may be, thanks for the news. I'm just hoping we can get a Bulls Insider.


I won't find out for another month or so, but my fingers are still crossed.


----------



## DaBullz (Jul 15, 2002)

*Re: The Truth Remains You Cannot Win a championship with a frontcourt of Wallace/Tyru*



dougthonus said:


> How so? If we hadn't signed him last year, we would have almost certainly signed someone else. We'd instead have Drew Gooden or Chris Wilcox on a huge contract instead (they would have had to have been similar in size to stop Cleveland/Seattle from matching). I don't think either of those guys would be better.
> 
> The other alternative would have been to go into last year with a crap frontcourt, which I suppose is possible, but would have caused even worse complaints. We could have then had some cap space this summer instead, but there was also no one worth pursuing to help the front court this year with the cap space either. Next year, it would have been gone no matter what, so of the FAs we could have signed over the past 2 seasons with cap money, I think Ben Wallace still will probably give us the best average performance over the life of his contract (and I don't really particularly like him as a player much anymore either).
> 
> I think the alternatives of not signing Wallace are not better than signing Wallace. Seriously, why do you hold such a grudge against Paxson? I think if the bulls won one title in the next 5 years that you'd complain that someone else would have won 5.


Bulls had the cap space to sign Al Harrington and Gooden. How'd they do? Gooden played in the finals. Harrington helped his team to the WC semis.

Wallace helped us to 2 more wins than we had in our previous best pax-era team.

Not hating on Wallace, because I do like him. Just pointing out alternatives.


----------



## McBulls (Apr 28, 2005)

*Re: The Truth Remains You Cannot Win a championship with a frontcourt of Wallace/Tyru*



Masbee said:


> I completely agree about the Bulls era Rodman. In fact, I thought the Rodman experiment was doomed.
> 
> As it turned out - Rodman was brilliant on defense and rebounding - the Bulls did in fact play a lot of 4 on 5 on offense - and it worked out great. Why? At that point Jordan and Pippen were so good - historically good - that 4 on 5 with Rodman pitching in a little with the Triangle passing - that they still kicked ***.
> 
> ...


Kobe? At what cost? 

Anyway, as you note, Hinrich, Gordon and Deng are very good (and getting smarter) offensive players. So is Nocioni. That's 4 good scorers. One of them (Gordon) is an outstanding shooter -- one of the best in the game right now. We think Deng is probably going to improve some -- or maybe even a lot. Nocioni will be better if his foot problem is resolved, which seems likely.

We have some hope that either Tyrus Thomas or Sefolosha could develop into good scorers. The rest of the team ain't really all that bad -- Duhon and Smith should be OK offensively. Smith is an offensive upgrade over Brown. Noah should be as effective offensively overall as Sweetney.

Truth is, most teams don't have 5 players averaging more than 10 ppg. Not enough shots to go around. The Bulls have had a season playing together, and their chemistry should be better next year. 

Overall, the Bulls were an average offensive team last year. You don't have to be a Polyanna to assume they will be better next year. That improvement, together with an improvement in their already outstanding defense should be enough to make them legitimate contenders for the title in an NBA that has legitimized zone defenses and reduced the importance of inside post-up basketball.


----------



## Masbee (Dec 31, 2002)

*Re: The Truth Remains You Cannot Win a championship with a frontcourt of Wallace/Tyru*



McBulls said:


> Kobe? At what cost?
> 
> Anyway, as you note, Hinrich, Gordon and Deng are very good (and getting smarter) offensive players. So is Nocioni. That's 4 good scorers. One of them (Gordon) is an outstanding shooter -- one of the best in the game right now. We think Deng is probably going to improve some -- or maybe even a lot. Nocioni will be better if his foot problem is resolved, which seems likely.
> 
> ...


You say the Bulls were average. How? In the playoffs anyway, they were well below average. That's what happens when you don't have a low-post player that demands double teams, or one of the best wing players to draw double teams.

Hinrich, Gordon, Deng are nice (forget about Noc - come on - if he is your "answer" for offensive punch you are in trouble), but none are going to carry the team to the promised land. Deng MAYBE in a few years. By then Wallace is done anyway. Thomas MAYBE will become an ok offensive players in a few years. Same deal.

About Kobe, I only said that half-joking.

But, if a deal were to be done, what only makes sense is the Bulls obtain Kobe (a now player) with their youth and potential. If that kind of deal can't be worked out, then don't do it.

And if the Bulls don't pull the trigger on somebody, I will forever never understand why the signed Big Ben and traded Tyson Chandler for what turned out to be nothing.


----------



## dougthonus (Jul 18, 2006)

> Bulls had the cap space to sign Al Harrington and Gooden. How'd they do? Gooden played in the finals. Harrington helped his team to the WC semis.


A few points related to this:
1) Using team results to justify the importance of guys who aren't in the top 3 players on their team is just not a good idea.
2) We probably couldn't have signed both. They both fit on the contracts they ended up signing, but if we were in on the bidding process the price wouldn't have stayed the same. It would have gone up, and we could barely fit them in on the deals they were signed to. It's likely that if we bid on them that we couldn't have gotten both. Gooden is the one that you really have to wonder how high he'd have gone.

As a side note, Al Harrington would have provided no use to us whatsoever IMO. He'd just be a bad contract.
1) He's got a career PER of 13.8. That's below average, and he was just on a bad team and got to stat pad for a couple years. Some people don't like PER, in general, I like it a lot. I've never liked Al Harrington as a player anyway, but the PER maybe will help illuminate why instead of me just saying "I don't like him". 

2) He's a 3/4 tweener which we had no need for, especially since Nocioni, Tyrus, and Deng all are better players than Harrington.

Drew Gooden I'd have liked. I don't like him as much as having Ben Wallace, but I would have been happy to go after Gooden. How much would it have cost to get Gooden and force Cleveland not to match? I think a pretty considerable amount. You have to figure Cleveland needs to keep him to keep LeBron happy. If LeBron leaves Cleveland the franchise probably loses over 100-200 million in revenue. Overpaying Gooden by 10 million or even 20 million is worth it when they can't replace him and need to keep LeBron happy. If we had gone after Gooden then you could argue that we may not have traded Tyson Chandler. However, we might need to have let Nocioni go this off season instead or be forced into a deep luxury tax area. 




> Not hating on Wallace, because I do like him. Just pointing out alternatives.


Fair enough, I like discussing valid alternatives. I don't even like Wallace that much, but I don't think there was anything that would have made us significantly better. The only thing I would consider having significant upside (assuming the Bulls were going to avoid the luxury tax) is not trading Tyson Chandler, and then not using our salary cap space last year (so that we didn't have bad salary consequences this year). That plan just strikes me as extremely unreasonable at the time it would have had to be acted on. It would have made fans revolt as well as leaving us with huge question marks in the front court this past year especially if Chandler didn't repair his relationship with Skiles.


----------



## dougthonus (Jul 18, 2006)

Double posting again...(mutter) My internet sucks lately, and all the lagging is screwing things up for me.


----------



## Darius Miles Davis (Aug 2, 2002)

*Re: The Truth Remains You Cannot Win a championship with a frontcourt of Wallace/Tyru*



DaBullz said:


> Bulls had the cap space to sign Al Harrington and Gooden. How'd they do? Gooden played in the finals. Harrington helped his team to the WC semis.
> 
> Wallace helped us to 2 more wins than we had in our previous best pax-era team.
> 
> Not hating on Wallace, because I do like him. Just pointing out alternatives.


And just for the sake of parallel structure, Wallace helped our team to the EC semis.


----------



## dougthonus (Jul 18, 2006)

> You say the Bulls were average. How? In the playoffs anyway, they were well below average. That's what happens when you don't have a low-post player that demands double teams, or one of the best wing players to draw double teams.


8 of 16 teams lose in the 1st round. By definition, if you make it to round 2, you are at the very least on better than half of the playoff teams. The Bulls finished with a 6-4 playoff record. While I'm not saying they were playoff bruisers (a 2nd round loss is nothing to be thrilled about), they weren't "below average" in the playoffs either. 

It seems like people treat the playoffs as if it's a round robin tournament and everyone goes really far. Only 4 teams in the NBA made it farther in the playoffs than we did.


----------



## kukoc4ever (Nov 20, 2002)

dougthonus said:


> I think the alternatives of not signing Wallace are not better than signing Wallace.


The better move would have been to hang onto Chandler and Curry. They cost pretty much the same as Wallace alone. And Chandler by himself is as productive, if not more so, than Wallace. And almost certainly will be more so going forward.

It was a pretty ****ty free agent class that summer, as we knew years in advance as Paxson was building his Cap Space. Since we didn't "win now"... Gooden would have been the better choice over Wallace, and certainly cheaper.








> I think if the bulls won one title in the next 5 years that you'd complain that someone else would have won 5.


If John Paxson brings a championship to the Bulls I'll build a life size replica of him out of mashed potatoes and then eat it. Yah, that’s right. I’m not ****ing around.


----------



## BULLHITTER (Dec 6, 2005)

> The better move would have been to hang onto Chandler and Curry. They cost pretty much the same as Wallace alone. And Chandler by himself is as productive, if not more so, than Wallace. And almost certainly will be more so going forward.


:eek8:

where's the "beating a dead horse" emoticon when you need it?


----------



## fuzznuts (May 23, 2006)

kukoc4ever said:


> If John Paxson brings a championship to the Bulls I'll build a life size replica of him out of mashed potatoes and then eat it. Yah, that’s right. I’m not ****ing around.



With or without gravy?


----------



## Masbee (Dec 31, 2002)

dougthonus said:


> 8 of 16 teams lose in the 1st round. By definition, if you make it to round 2, you are at the very least on better than half of the playoff teams. The Bulls finished with a 6-4 playoff record. While I'm not saying they were playoff bruisers (a 2nd round loss is nothing to be thrilled about), they weren't "below average" in the playoffs either.
> 
> It seems like people treat the playoffs as if it's a round robin tournament and everyone goes really far. Only 4 teams in the NBA made it farther in the playoffs than we did.


The subject was offense.

So, I meant, below average offensively.

Sorry that wasn't clear.

To reiterate:

Below average offense + outstanding defense = .500 ish in playoffs

Above average offense + outstanding defense = Eastern Conference Finals

Outstanding offense + outstanding defense = NBA Champs (see, Spurs)

Arguably, the Bulls had the best defense last season. That didn't get them too far. Great defense isn't anywhere near enough.

This is the nut the Bulls need to crack.


----------



## JeremyB0001 (Nov 17, 2003)

*Re: The Truth Remains You Cannot Win a championship with a frontcourt of Wallace/Tyru*



different_13 said:


> True, the Bad Boys didn't have a dominant post scorer.
> However, they _did_ have capable ones in Agguire and James Edwards. The Bulls don't even have that (nor do they have 2 top 50 players in Thomas/Dumars)
> 
> Grant and Cartwright were both more than capable, as well as having good size; of course this team also had the Pippen/Jordan combo that the current Bulls lack.
> ...


Alright, I'm just getting a little confused at this point because at first I thought the argument was that a championship team needed a dominant post scorer and now all one needs is a capable scorer (ie 12+ PPG) in the front court. What constitutes a top 50 player (especially going forward) is an overly complicated discussion in my opinion. However, I do disagree with you that all those teams had at least two dominant players. The highest PER on the 89-90 Pistons was 17.2. Both Gordon and Deng posted substantially higher figures last season. The highest on the 88-89 Pistons was 18.2. The 87-88 Lakers had Magic at a stellar 23.2 PER but Byron Scott was next highest at 19.2. The year before, Worthy was the second highest at 18.4. So there are four teams, two with no dominant players and two with one dominant player. 



different_13 said:


> I'm not disagreeing with any of those, but show me a jumpshooting team lacking a bigman that won recently..
> I should point out i'm keeping the Pistons of 04 out of this debate as an aberration. I'll discuss them, but I'm essentially ignoring them in my arguements (just so everyone knows..)


The Pistons won a championship, there's no reason to just decide to label them an aberration and toss them aside. You seem to be conceding that the Bulls can eventually improve to a team that wins 57+ games so how about you name some jump shooting teams with those win totals who have fallen substantially short of expectations because they lacked a post scorer?



different_13 said:


> True, but I'm not talking about regular season. It's commonly accepted that jumpshooting teams have a hard time in the playoffs, no?
> I haven't been discussing regular season at all, I fully agree the Bulls should win more regular season games based on scoring increases, even if they are derived from jumpshots.


Uh, I don't know. People seem to say it from time to time. As I just noted above, evidence that it's actually true would be evidence that jump shooting teams generally underachieve in the post season relative to their regular season win total. I've never heard of evidence suggesting that. The only post season trend I've heard of is that teams that run tend to struggle a little bit in the postseason. Again, I think the reason that there aren't tons of jumpshooting teams that win championships are that there aren't many jumpshooting teams that win in the neighborhood of 60 games but the Bulls seem to be headed that way eventually.


----------



## different_13 (Aug 30, 2005)

Is it just me, or is the second half of that post lacking your responses?
(or am I just missing the point entirely?)




> Alright, I'm just getting a little confused at this point because at first I thought the argument was that a championship team needed a dominant post scorer and now all one needs is a capable scorer (ie 12+ PPG) in the front court. What constitutes a top 50 player (especially going forward) is an overly complicated discussion in my opinion. However, I do disagree with you that all those teams had at least two dominant players.


Actually, my point was a dominant big guy OR at least 2 top 50 players (that aren't bigmen). IE either Hakeem, or Dumars _and_ Isiah.
I'm not going to talk about PER or try to define dominance, because I don't entirely understand how it works (so I'll just take your word for it on those points).
Yeah, the top 50 thing is complicated. I think the best way to define it is that such a player must belong to the 50 (or however many) players to have played in the NBA, upto that time.
Bob Cousy was certainly a top 50 player, but I've heard it argued several times that he's nowhere near as good as many more modern point guards. Some people would certainly argue that Nash is better than Cousy, though we aren't calling Nash a top 50 of all time player yet.
Does that make sense?



> Again, I think the reason that there aren't tons of jumpshooting teams that win championships are that there aren't many jumpshooting teams that win in the neighborhood of 60 games but the Bulls seem to be headed that way eventually.


That could very well be true - the Bulls look like a potentially elite team despite their frontcourt scoring deficiencies, and I think if any NBA team joins that Pistons squad it will be these Bulls (in a few years).


----------



## DaBullz (Jul 15, 2002)

*Re: The Truth Remains You Cannot Win a championship with a frontcourt of Wallace/Tyru*



dougthonus said:


> A few points related to this:
> 1) Using team results to justify the importance of guys who aren't in the top 3 players on their team is just not a good idea.
> 2) We probably couldn't have signed both. They both fit on the contracts they ended up signing, but if we were in on the bidding process the price wouldn't have stayed the same. It would have gone up, and we could barely fit them in on the deals they were signed to. It's likely that if we bid on them that we couldn't have gotten both. Gooden is the one that you really have to wonder how high he'd have gone.
> 
> ...


The two signed for about $16M, and we had over $20M in cap space. I think if we bid $1M more for Gooden, Cleveland might not have matched. Harrington would have started for us and certainly would have helped when Nocioni went down.


----------



## JeremyB0001 (Nov 17, 2003)

*Re: The Truth Remains You Cannot Win a championship with a frontcourt of Wallace/Tyru*



different_13 said:


> Is it just me, or is the second half of that post lacking your responses?
> (or am I just missing the point entirely?)


Actually I didn't have any responses to that section. I'd meant to delete it but forgot. It's edited now.



different_13 said:


> Actually, my point was a dominant big guy OR at least 2 top 50 players (that aren't bigmen). IE either Hakeem, or Dumars _and_ Isiah.


Alright. Maybe the second part of the argument was just a bit nuanced and I didn't fully grasp it early on.



different_13 said:


> I'm not going to talk about PER or try to define dominance, because I don't entirely understand how it works (so I'll just take your word for it on those points).


If you're interest in PER, the wikipedia entry is somewhat informative. One of the main reasons I use it in this context is that it's a composite stat, so I don't have to list rebounds, scoring, FG%, etc. I suspect that if we just looked at PPG, the results would be somewhat similar. 



different_13 said:


> Yeah, the top 50 thing is complicated. I think the best way to define it is that such a player must belong to the 50 (or however many) players to have played in the NBA, upto that time.
> Bob Cousy was certainly a top 50 player, but I've heard it argued several times that he's nowhere near as good as many more modern point guards. Some people would certainly argue that Nash is better than Cousy, though we aren't calling Nash a top 50 of all time player yet.
> Does that make sense?


One of the biggest problems I have with that methodology is that it's describing a players career and not his level of dominance in the season in question. For instance, Kareem is obviously a top 50 player but was nowhere near dominant during his last championship run with the Lakers. Also, unless we're working from the set of the top 50 players of all time created a number of years back - which wouldn't be that accurate anyways since new all time greats have emerged since then - then it's pretty easy to refer to any well credentialed player who won a championship as a "top 50 player" when in reality that standard would include far more than 50 players.


----------



## MikeDC (Jul 16, 2002)

*Re: The Truth Remains You Cannot Win a championship with a frontcourt of Wallace/Tyru*



fuzznuts said:


> With or without gravy?


:lol:

This has been one of the most entertaining and informative threads in quite a while


----------



## dougthonus (Jul 18, 2006)

> The two signed for about $16M, and we had over $20M in cap space. I think if we bid $1M more for Gooden, Cleveland might not have matched. Harrington would have started for us and certainly would have helped when Nocioni went down.


We didn't have 20 million in cap space. We had 16 million in cap space. Wallace used all of our cap space, and then when we traded Chandler and then traded JR Smith for Howard Eisley's waivable deal we generated about 2 million or so in additional cap space.


----------



## theanimal23 (Mar 2, 2005)

I'm gonna have to agree with Doug's points regarding Cap Space, Big Ben, and Gooden/Al.

Regardless of how people feel about Big Ben, it was the right decision. Use it or lose it. You might as well go for the best Free Agent.


----------



## dougthonus (Jul 18, 2006)

> The better move would have been to hang onto Chandler and Curry. They cost pretty much the same as Wallace alone. And Chandler by himself is as productive, if not more so, than Wallace. And almost certainly will be more so going forward.


The Curry trade has a good chance of being the move which will single handedly give us a chance to win a title. Curry is an awful player. He's borderline worse now than he was as a Bull. Isiah Thomas has coached him up to not play defense so he can stay out of foul trouble, and stay on the court. You can see it in his block numbers, but more so, you can see it if you watch him 'defend' the paint. He just gets out of the way. No team can win when their interior players can't play defense at all. Despite all of the man love for his offensive improvement, his scoring rate is no higher than what it was as a Bull, and his defense is markedly worse. 

If Noah and Tyrus pan out then having Chandler won't significantly improve the team. If not, then losing Chandler will have been a large loss. We'll have to wait and see how that goes.


----------



## Da Grinch (Aug 17, 2002)

reality says unless there is a substantial jump in ability and consistency from the primary scoring perimeter threats, at least some consistent post scoring is needed,

MJ and pippen could get away with a weakscoring frontcourt because of how great they were.

you could count on their 50 virtually every night , and more if need be.

preferrebly you would like those post players to be able to provide close in baskets but if they could make 15 fters all day it would have to do.

its just too much of a load to put on gordon , kirk nocioni & deng at least for right now to seriously say they will contend for a title .

you basically have 3 spots on the floor doing all the scoring but not 1 of those guys in scoring ability will be confused with an MJ, or even a kobe ,tmac or wade which is basically whats needed to cover for such unbalanced scoring.

its something that shows up in the end , the spurs last season finished as the 2nd best defensive team statistically in the league (behind the bulls of course)

but they also finished 4th overall on offense while the bulls finished 20th, and that basically is the margin between being a team that has a legit chance at winning a title and one that doesn't , like the cavs who made it there while being ranked 19th on offense and 4th on defense , having essensially half the game as a weakness will eliminate any real chance of title contention whem matched up with a real contender...as shown when the spurs swept them pretty easily because their lack of true offensive diversity killed them .


----------



## McBulls (Apr 28, 2005)

*Re: The Truth Remains You Cannot Win a championship with a frontcourt of Wallace/Tyru*



Masbee said:


> The subject was offense.
> 
> So, I meant, below average offensively.
> 
> ...


Using the Bulls performance in the playoffs as an index of their capability is fine, but it is an important fact that two of their rotation players (Wallace and Nocioni) were playing over injuries in the Detroit series. In Nocioni's case the injuries effectively took him out of the series. In Wallace's case, the back injury clearly compromised him as well, even though many attributed his relatively poor performance to psychological variables. The Bulls were not deep enough to play over the injuries.

The Bulls were one win in New Jersey away from reaching the ECF finals last year and probably the finals. Before Wallace and Nocioni were injured they crushed a very hot Miami team in the first round. If these guys had been healthy in the Pistons series they might well have beaten them and gone to the ECF finals anyway.

The most important nut the Bulls need to crack is to maintain confidence and to ignore the carping of naysayers who think they can't win with the players they have.

BTW, San Antonio is a good, but not outstanding offensive team. However their defense is outstanding. I notice outstanding offensive teams like Dallas and Phoenix got no further than the Bulls did. Maybe they should trade a couple of their top players for Ben Wallace.


----------



## different_13 (Aug 30, 2005)

*Re: The Truth Remains You Cannot Win a championship with a frontcourt of Wallace/Tyru*



JeremyB0001 said:


> Actually I didn't have any responses to that section. I'd meant to delete it but forgot. It's edited now.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



1: ok, jus' checking

2: probably, I only really made that point halfway through our discussion.

3: cheers, I'll have a good look at that. basketballreference (or whatever it's called now) has PER on it, right?

4: That's true (first sentence). About Kareem, I can cover that by saying Worthy and Magic were both certainly top 50 players at the time. For the latter half, I think that's what I meant by my Cousy analogy - at the time, he was a top 50 player. But we all know Jason Kidd is better than him, and is probably a top 50 player himself. As are many other player - Cousy therefore wouldn't be on the list if he was playing now, and he wouldn't count as a top 50 player for purposes of this arguement. Does that make sense?
Or is that not what you're talking about?

Btw, Da Grinch made a point that I had been trying to argue (about jumpshot scoring). The Bulls offensive players just aren't good enough to be able to rely on jumpshots in the playoffs. But I think we've kinda beat that bush to death..


----------



## JeremyB0001 (Nov 17, 2003)

*Re: The Truth Remains You Cannot Win a championship with a frontcourt of Wallace/Tyru*



different_13 said:


> 4: That's true (first sentence). About Kareem, I can cover that by saying Worthy and Magic were both certainly top 50 players at the time. For the latter half, I think that's what I meant by my Cousy analogy - at the time, he was a top 50 player. But we all know Jason Kidd is better than him, and is probably a top 50 player himself. As are many other player - Cousy therefore wouldn't be on the list if he was playing now, and he wouldn't count as a top 50 player for purposes of this arguement. Does that make sense?
> Or is that not what you're talking about?


I watched Worthy play against the Bulls in the 90-91 Championship but I was eight years old and it was an awful long time ago so my analysis of him is pretty much limited to stats. Obviously he was well regarded because he's in the basketball HOF but his numbers don't give me the impression he was one of the greatest players all time or that he played like he was 87-88. I already mentioned the 18.2 PER which is similar to what Deng (18.8) and Gordon (18.3) did this season. 22.3 points per game is a very good but not staggering figure. 5.5 rebounds and 4.5 assists per game are good all around numbers but don't bring to mind triple double threats like players like Hill, Magic, or Pippen. If a guy doesn't rank in the top 5 in PPG, APG, RPG, FG%, BPG, SPG, or have an amazing all around game then I find it very difficult to agree that he was playing like one of the 50 best players in the history of the game in that season.


----------



## MikeDC (Jul 16, 2002)

*Re: The Truth Remains You Cannot Win a championship with a frontcourt of Wallace/Tyru*



dougthonus said:


> I don't think we could get such a return to give us a long run at 1/8, but if we could get someone like that then I'd be game for such a trade. I don't think such a deal is likely to be available though. I also don't think that Boston would have taken Ben Wallace over Ray Allen if they were given a choice between the two, and I think if they had gotten Ben Wallace that it may not have eased KG's mind enough to accept a trade there. *I perceive his star to have fallen considerably more than you have apparently.*


Hmm... I'm sorry for the verbal juijitsu, but I can't resist... if this is true, doesn't it mean the Bulls wouldn't miss him as much as you think they would i they traded him? 

Beyond the quip, my sense is Allen's star had dropped a fair amount too. Getting the #5 pick, moderate cap relief and a couple serviceable backups seemed like a heck of a return for a guy who's just never delivered a huge amount IMO. But I said before, I'm not a big fan of Allen. He's got like 4 playoff appearances in 11 years.

As far as my perceptions about Wallace, I dunno. I mostly think he just never seemed that happy here. My impression is he'd be a fair bit happier and a fair bit better on a team where he's not the only guy over 30.


----------



## different_13 (Aug 30, 2005)

*Re: The Truth Remains You Cannot Win a championship with a frontcourt of Wallace/Tyru*



JeremyB0001 said:


> I watched Worthy play against the Bulls in the 90-91 Championship but I was eight years old and it was an awful long time ago so my analysis of him is pretty much limited to stats. Obviously he was well regarded because he's in the basketball HOF but his numbers don't give me the impression he was one of the greatest players all time or that he played like he was 87-88. I already mentioned the 18.2 PER which is similar to what Deng (18.8) and Gordon (18.3) did this season. 22.3 points per game is a very good but not staggering figure. 5.5 rebounds and 4.5 assists per game are good all around numbers but don't bring to mind triple double threats like players like Hill, Magic, or Pippen. If a guy doesn't rank in the top 5 in PPG, APG, RPG, FG%, BPG, SPG, or have an amazing all around game then I find it very difficult to agree that he was playing like one of the 50 best players in the history of the game in that season.



Iif 15 is the average these days - would that also have been the case in the 80's or 90's? When did Hollinger come up with it, and does it transfer across rules changes (such as zone etc)?

Oddly enough, b-ball-reference.com has Luol Deng as his primary comparison for the 86/87 season!

If Deng developes into a Worthy esque 3rd guy, he'll be a very succesful ball player imo.
Deng looks to be as least as good a rebounder (especially considering Worthy had a size advantage, and also played more minutes at PF earlier in his career).
He already takes care of the ball better (1.7TO v 2.5 TO), though that may change as he becomes a main focus point on offense. He scores at a high FG% too.


----------



## dougthonus (Jul 18, 2006)

> Hmm... I'm sorry for the verbal juijitsu, but I can't resist... if this is true, doesn't it mean the Bulls wouldn't miss him as much as you think they would i they traded him?


He's still a useful player. He's just no anywhere near a 3 year 45 million dollar useful player. We'd miss a useful player. Since we've already payed and can't put that money elsewhere we can only compare his use to the team, his salary is now more or less irrelevant. For another team, that's not the case. They can view him as a useful player, but they need to decide whether he's "45 million dollars and a good young trade asset" useful. I can't see any team considering that and saying yes. If one did, then I'd be fine taking a good deal. I can't imagine anyone doing so. If Wallace was on some other team and had a comparable season last year, and we had an expiring deal we could trade for him and then had to throw in Joakim Noah (you claimed a #5 lotto pick so Noah is less than that) then I would absolutely laugh at a deal to bring him in for that price. 



> Beyond the quip, my sense is Allen's star had dropped a fair amount too. Getting the #5 pick, moderate cap relief and a couple serviceable backups seemed like a heck of a return for a guy who's just never delivered a huge amount IMO. But I said before, I'm not a big fan of Allen. He's got like 4 playoff appearances in 11 years.


I think Allen's star has definitely also fallen quite a bit, but he's still a great shooter, great scorer, and isn't someone who's undersized and relies on athleticism. His PER has been a steady ~21 for the past 5 years, so his efficiency hasn't dropped, and he was the primary player on his team and will be going to a second team now. Wallace's PER fell like a stone since leaving the Pistons, he's undersized and relies on athleticism. Granted, his contract is slightly worse (same length about 10 million in total extra money), but his performance is still right there. I wouldn't have traded for Ray Allen either, but if I got to pick one of the 2 guys for a team that could use either one then I would definitely take Allen first, and it wouldn't even be close. Had Boston not gotten Garnett, then I think the Ray Allen trade would have been atrociously bad for them. After getting Garnett, it's a bit better in that they at least picked a direction and have a chance.



> As far as my perceptions about Wallace, I dunno. I mostly think he just never seemed that happy here. My impression is he'd be a fair bit happier and a fair bit better on a team where he's not the only guy over 30.


I think he'll be happier this year after getting to know the guys for a year at least. I think it was a very hard transition for him to go to a new team after leaving the Pistons. I hope he has somewhat of a bounce back year, but my hopes aren't all that high. I think he'll be slightly better to equal to last year. My real hope is that we limit his minutes to 30 a night and that he can then keep his intensity higher.


----------



## MikeDC (Jul 16, 2002)

*Re: The Truth Remains You Cannot Win a championship with a frontcourt of Wallace/Tyru*



dougthonus said:


> He's still a useful player. He's just no anywhere near a 3 year 45 million dollar useful player. We'd miss a useful player. Since we've already payed and can't put that money elsewhere we can only compare his use to the team, his salary is now more or less irrelevant.


I see your point, but it's also wouldn't say the salary is irrelevant. If we're talking about trading him, and such a trade frees up some money, that money can be used elsewhere.


----------



## GB (Jun 11, 2002)

*Re: The Truth Remains You Cannot Win a championship with a frontcourt of Wallace/Tyru*



dougthonus said:


> If Noah and Tyrus pan out


What is 'panning out' for Noah, and how long do you expect it to take?


----------



## dougthonus (Jul 18, 2006)

> I see your point, but it's also wouldn't say the salary is irrelevant. If we're talking about trading him, and such a trade frees up some money, that money can be used elsewhere.


It's not like we can spend the 15 million if Wallace is gone though. We'd have the MLE (which I'd rather have Wallace than any MLE player) and improved ability to take on salary in a trade (which could be useful or could be worthless, any limits there are only based on our willingness to spend anyway).


----------



## dougthonus (Jul 18, 2006)

> What is 'panning out' for Noah, and how long do you expect it to take?


Become a starting caliber player for the Bulls. I hope he is ready to be a starting 5 in his 3rd season.


----------



## GB (Jun 11, 2002)

*Re: The Truth Remains You Cannot Win a championship with a frontcourt of Wallace/Tyru*



dougthonus said:


> Become a starting caliber player for the Bulls. I hope he is ready to be a starting 5 in his 3rd season.


Yes, but what he be counted on to bring to the table on a nightly basis?

'Energy' is not an acceptable answer.


----------



## dougthonus (Jul 18, 2006)

> Yes, but what he be counted on to bring to the table on a nightly basis?
> 
> 'Energy' is not an acceptable answer.


For panning out, it doesn't matter what he brings to the table. I want him to have a PER of 16 or greater and be able to play 30 minutes or more a night. Whether he does that by being an elite rebounder, shot blocker, or develops a good offensive game isn't entirely relevant to me. I want him to be a good player who can play center.

As for what I expect him to bring to the table, I expect him to bring rebounding, shot blocking, good man and help defense, finish on the break, provide good passing out of the post, make good basket cuts to create opportunity baskets for himself, and provide a dangerous enough offensive threat that you can't leave him to double team other players.


----------



## DaBullz (Jul 15, 2002)

*Re: The Truth Remains You Cannot Win a championship with a frontcourt of Wallace/Tyru*



theanimal23 said:


> I'm gonna have to agree with Doug's points regarding Cap Space, Big Ben, and Gooden/Al.
> 
> Regardless of how people feel about Big Ben, it was the right decision. Use it or lose it. You might as well go for the best Free Agent.


He's simply wrong on this one (a rare thing).

We took back Viktor's near $2M in salary, signed adrian griffin as a FA for about $1.5M, signed Malik Allen to a near $2M contract

On top of the fact we had over $20M in cap space, if Pax wanted even more, he could have done what Phoenix did when they traded us the pick we used to draft Deng. That is, trade the pick for future considerations (we used the pick on Thomas). That would have added near $4M in cap space. 

Yeah, my figures are rounded up a little.

EDIT: note, we didn't qualify to have the MLE, either.


----------



## dougthonus (Jul 18, 2006)

> We took back Viktor's near $2M in salary, signed adrian griffin as a FA for about $1.5M, signed Malik Allen to a near $2M contract


We didn't sign Malik Allen, he was already on the roster with a guaranteed contract. 

Khryapa only made about 1.1 million last year, and the difference in Aldridge and Tyrus was about 600k, so that only makes up about .5 million. We generated an additional 1.5 million by doing the Chandler trade, so depending on how you factor that into our cap space needs to be taken into account.

As best I can figure by going back and undoing trades and doing the math, we had ~17 million in cap space to start the off season with.


----------



## DaBullz (Jul 15, 2002)

*Re: The Truth Remains You Cannot Win a championship with a frontcourt of Wallace/Tyru*



dougthonus said:


> We didn't sign Malik Allen, he was already on the roster with a guaranteed contract.
> 
> Khryapa only made about 1.1 million last year, and the difference in Aldridge and Tyrus was about 600k, so that only makes up about .5 million. We generated an additional 1.5 million by doing the Chandler trade, so depending on how you factor that into our cap space needs to be taken into account.
> 
> As best I can figure by going back and undoing trades and doing the math, we had ~17 million in cap space to start the off season with.


As best I figure it, we had over $20M in cap space and closer to $24 if we traded the #2 pick for FUTURE considerations (like Phoenix did to clear cap space for Nash) and thanks for pointing out the additional $1.5M achieved through the Chandler trade.

I don't know where the "difference between aldridge and tyrus" bit comes in, though pax might have saved us the $1.172M by not taking Viktor. I think he felt like we were going to be ridiculously small and Viktor was a relatively cheap and usable biggish body. I'd also point out that we couldn't have taken Viktor along with a draft pick unless we had the cap space to absorb his deal.

We also signed Griffin as a FA using some of our cap space.


----------



## DaBullz (Jul 15, 2002)

BTW
I remember when Wallace was signed, I had hopes that Pax might get someone like Peja to sign for the remaining > $5M of our cap space; that is, take a lesser salary to have a shot at a ring.


----------



## JeremyB0001 (Nov 17, 2003)

*Re: The Truth Remains You Cannot Win a championship with a frontcourt of Wallace/Tyru*



different_13 said:


> Iif 15 is the average these days - would that also have been the case in the 80's or 90's? When did Hollinger come up with it, and does it transfer across rules changes (such as zone etc)?


My impression is that it's adjusted for the season so 15 is always average in any season. I doubt that it's possible to account for how rule changes would affect the success of different types of players in different eras.


----------



## JeremyB0001 (Nov 17, 2003)

*Re: The Truth Remains You Cannot Win a championship with a frontcourt of Wallace/Tyru*



DaBullz said:


> As best I figure it, we had over $20M in cap space and closer to $24 if we traded the #2 pick for FUTURE considerations (like Phoenix did to clear cap space for Nash) and thanks for pointing out the additional $1.5M achieved through the Chandler trade.


Obviously it depends on what the future considerations would've been but if we'd passed up on Tyrus for some future draft pick, I suspect we would've gotten hosed just as badly as Phoenix did when they passed on Deng.


----------



## DaBullz (Jul 15, 2002)

*Re: The Truth Remains You Cannot Win a championship with a frontcourt of Wallace/Tyru*



JeremyB0001 said:


> Obviously it depends on what the future considerations would've been but if we'd passed up on Tyrus for some future draft pick, I suspect we would've gotten hosed just as badly as Phoenix did when they passed on Deng.


Phoenix got Nash and 50+ win seasons. It's hard to argue that they don't know what they're doing over there.


----------



## dougthonus (Jul 18, 2006)

> As best I figure it, we had over $20M in cap space and closer to $24 if we traded the #2 pick for FUTURE considerations (like Phoenix did to clear cap space for Nash) and thanks for pointing out the additional $1.5M achieved through the Chandler trade.


Here are my numbers of who we had on guaranteed contracts going into the season, the salary for Tyrus Thomas is based on the amount he would have had as the #2 pick. If you count his #4 pick salary, then you have to add in Viktor Khryapa which is more, so this is a bit better:

Tyson Chandler	$9,150,000 
Andres Nocioni $3,950,000 
Ben Gordon $3,862,080 
Tyrus Thomas $4,027,320 
Kirk Hinrich $3,192,677 
Chris Duhon $3,024,000 
Mike Sweetney $2,696,956 
Luol Deng $2,614,440 
Malik Allen $1,803,600 
Thabo Sefolosha $1,679,280 
Total:	$36,000,353 
Salary cap $53,135,000 
Cap space	$17,134,647 



> I don't know where the "difference between aldridge and tyrus" bit comes in, though pax might have saved us the $1.172M by not taking Viktor. I think he felt like we were going to be ridiculously small and Viktor was a relatively cheap and usable biggish body. I'd also point out that we couldn't have taken Viktor along with a draft pick unless we had the cap space to absorb his deal.


The trade with Portland lowered Tyrus rookie salary by 800k which is where the difference between Tyrus and Aldridge came in. We added Viktors salary, but we subtracted the amount of salary between the #2 pick and #4 pick. The net was us only taking on 300k in extra salary than if we hadn't done the trade.



> As best I figure it, we had over $20M in cap space and closer to $24 if we traded the #2 pick for FUTURE considerations (like Phoenix did to clear cap space for Nash) and thanks for pointing out the additional $1.5M achieved through the Chandler trade.


It's hard to imagine which team would have given us future considerations that would have been more valuable than Tyrus Thomas is ight now, so it's likely that would have sucked. Especially given that with the extra 4 million we wouldn't have been able to sign anyone good. Of course I'm not suggesting you are saying we should have done that, but just pointing out the possibility. I'm just pointing out that would have ended up being a horrible move. Unless we got Oden, Durant, or Horford it wasn't going to pan out, Horford went to Atlanta who wouldn't make a deal since they only had their pick top 3 protected and the odds of Portland or Seattle trading away an unprotected 1st are extraordinarily low IMO.


----------



## dougthonus (Jul 18, 2006)

> My impression is that it's adjusted for the season so 15 is always average in any season. I doubt that it's possible to account for how rule changes would affect the success of different types of players in different eras.


The base calculation for PER gives you some small decimal. To create the number we see, what you find the league PER, create a multiplier so that it is 15, and then use that for all the other players. So it does create a good reference point for how much better a player was vs his generation for any generation.


----------



## DaBullz (Jul 15, 2002)

*Re: The Truth Remains You Cannot Win a championship with a frontcourt of Wallace/Tyru*



dougthonus said:


> Tyson Chandler	$9,150,000
> Andres Nocioni $3,950,000
> Ben Gordon $3,862,080
> Tyrus Thomas $4,027,320
> ...


Slight adjustment to your figuring.

Tyson Chandler	$9,150,000 
Andres Nocioni $3,950,000 
Ben Gordon $3,862,080 
Kirk Hinrich $3,192,677 
Chris Duhon $3,024,000 
Mike Sweetney $2,696,956 
Luol Deng $2,614,440 
Malik Allen $1,803,600 

Total: $30,293,743
Salary cap $53,135,000 
Cap space	$22,841,257


delta Chandler/Brown is another ~$.6M


----------



## dougthonus (Jul 18, 2006)

Tyrus and Thabo have cap holds. Unless you are trading them, you can't remove them.


----------



## dougthonus (Jul 18, 2006)

The cap holds would have been about 4.7 million in total, so it would have been about 18 million in space instead of the 17.1 million I had.


----------



## SALO (Jun 6, 2002)

I think Doug has been pretty spot on in this thread, except I would've liked to have kept Curry. I'm very happy with what we got for him though (Thomas/Noah). 



DaBullz said:


> I think if we bid $1M more for Gooden, Cleveland might not have matched.


Wow. Just... wow.



> he could have done what Phoenix did when they traded us the pick we used to draft Deng. That is, trade the pick for future considerations (we used the pick on Thomas)


Nobody trades the #2 overall pick for future considerations, no matter how "weak" the 06' class was reported to be. Terrible move when Phoenix dumped their #7 pick. They ended up using the additional cap space to sign Quentin Richardson. They already had enough to sign Nash with or without dumping that 7th pick. 

If we had given up the right to draft Tyrus or Roy I would've been pissed. I wasn't even an Aldridge fan at the time but looking back on it now that would've been foolish too. 

Maximizing cap space wasn't going to help as much as you think anyway. Ben Wallace's deal was front-loaded, probably the plan set forth by Irwin Mandel to handle re-signing the core without paying the LT.



> I remember when Wallace was signed, I had hopes that Pax might get someone like Peja to sign for the remaining > $5M of our cap space; that is, take a lesser salary to have a shot at a ring.


Peja wasn't going to turn down $60M from NOK to come here, especially when we still had Deng/Nocioni. Plus, Peja sucks and his body was already falling apart during his final years with Sac. Front-loading Wallace's deal wasn't going to allow us to sign another significant free agent anyway.



> Phoenix got Nash and 50+ win seasons. It's hard to argue that they don't know what they're doing over there.


How do you feel about them hiring Steve Kerr to be their new GM, considering his qualifications (or lack thereof) are pretty identical to what Paxson's qualificatons were at the time of his hiring. You bashed Reinsdorf hard when he hired Pax.


----------



## rwj333 (Aug 10, 2002)

*Re: The Truth Remains You Cannot Win a championship with a frontcourt of Wallace/Tyru*



dougthonus said:


> The Curry trade has a good chance of being the move which will single handedly give us a chance to win a title. Curry is an awful player. He's borderline worse now than he was as a Bull. Isiah Thomas has coached him up to not play defense so he can stay out of foul trouble, and stay on the court. You can see it in his block numbers, but more so, you can see it if you watch him 'defend' the paint. He just gets out of the way. No team can win when their interior players can't play defense at all. Despite all of the man love for his offensive improvement, his scoring rate is no higher than what it was as a Bull, and his defense is markedly worse.
> 
> If Noah and Tyrus pan out then having Chandler won't significantly improve the team. If not, then losing Chandler will have been a large loss. We'll have to wait and see how that goes.


I don't disagree that Curry is a pretty awful player right now, but I think the 04-05 version was pretty darn valuable. I also think he probably would have continued to improve under Skiles... unlike Chandler he's pretty durable mentally and seems to take/ignore criticism pretty well. Part of the reason Curry sucks right now is he's in a bad environment that lets him get away with being overweight and not playing defense. With that said, I'm not unhappy with the trade. 

As for Wallace vs. Gooden: is Wallace going to help us win a championship in the next 3 seasons? Probably not at the rate he's declining. So why not take the younger guy that can help us when we really need it down the road rather than the old guy who won't be around? I guess fans wouldn't have liked it, and but I would have seen the logic in overpaying Gooden for 3 years and ~ 40 million to get him from the Cavs without compensating them and then signing him to a much more reasonable contract afterwards.


----------



## DaBullz (Jul 15, 2002)

*Re: The Truth Remains You Cannot Win a championship with a frontcourt of Wallace/Tyru*



dougthonus said:


> Tyrus and Thabo have cap holds. Unless you are trading them, you can't remove them.


The cap holds are for about $665K each, and yes, I'm assuming you look at all the things you can renounce when you look at your available cap. 

The $665K figure is for vet minimum for the empty roster spot. They would actually have 4 of those holds, for about $2.6M. But you weren't talking about cap holds in your figuring.


----------



## theanimal23 (Mar 2, 2005)

I have no idea what value we could have gotten for the #2 pick in terms of future considerations. I doubt we would get anything near its value. 

I know KG for Lu/Ty/#2 got shot down and Ty/#2 for Amare was rejected.


----------



## rwj333 (Aug 10, 2002)

Yeah, I didn't hear about and can't conceive of even a decent deal for the #2 pick. Phoenix traded the #7 (Deng or Iguodala) so they could sign Quentin Richardson. How did that work out?


----------



## theanimal23 (Mar 2, 2005)

rwj333 said:


> Yeah, I didn't hear about and can't conceive of even a decent deal for the #2 pick. Phoenix traded the #7 (Deng or Iguodala) so they could sign Quentin Richardson. How did that work out?


I heard two stories. One was to clear it for Q, and the other was that they did not think Iggy would be available. Maybe they wanted Q thinking Iggy would not be there.


----------



## DaBullz (Jul 15, 2002)

Hmmm... thomas and thabo
or
Harrington and Gooden

Bet on p-p-p-potential, or have p-p-p-potential realized right now (and those guys aren't exactly old)


----------



## rwj333 (Aug 10, 2002)

Theanimal23, that sounds like bad reasoning or a revisionist explanation from the franchise to me. If they had truly wanted Iggy, they could have waited until the 7th selection came up and then traded if he wasn't there. It's not like the Bulls would have turned that deal down at any point. I'm pretty certain they wanted to sign Richardson.


----------



## theanimal23 (Mar 2, 2005)

rwj333 said:


> Theanimal23, that sounds like bad reasoning or a revisionist explanation from the franchise to me. If they had truly wanted Iggy, they could have waited until the 7th selection came up and then traded if he wasn't there. It's not like the Bulls would have turned that deal down at any point. I'm pretty certain they wanted to sign Richardson.


Yeah I know. I've heard both sides often, so I'm not sure what the true reasons were. IIRC, it was to clear the space for more caproom.


----------



## JeremyB0001 (Nov 17, 2003)

*Re: The Truth Remains You Cannot Win a championship with a frontcourt of Wallace/Tyru*



DaBullz said:


> Phoenix got Nash and 50+ win seasons. It's hard to argue that they don't know what they're doing over there.


Passing up Deng for $3 or 4 million is cap room looks idiotic and will only look worse in time. Whether or not that money constituted a small portion of what they paid to sign Nash is largely irrelevant. In hindsight, no one would do that trade over, Phoenix included.



DaBullz said:


> Hmmm... thomas and thabo
> or
> Harrington and Gooden
> 
> Bet on p-p-p-potential, or have p-p-p-potential realized right now (and those guys aren't exactly old)


Those two aren't much better than average (in fact Harrington was worse than Tyrus last season). Basically that gets us at most probably 51 instead of 49 wins last season and less potential for future growth. I don't think that's anything to get excited about. 

Sometimes I just don't understand why there's so much resistance to the fact that our players are good. Wallace isn't what he once was but the guy is a 4 time DPOY and helps our interior defense and rebounding plenty. Tyrus is a valuable player _right now_ regardless of whatever boneheaded mistakes he sometimes makes and has as much superstar potential as just about anyone on a roster with tons of upside. I don't see why such players seemingly trouble people.


----------



## DaBullz (Jul 15, 2002)

*Re: The Truth Remains You Cannot Win a championship with a frontcourt of Wallace/Tyru*



JeremyB0001 said:


> Passing up Deng for $3 or 4 million is cap room looks idiotic and will only look worse in time. Whether or not that money constituted a small portion of what they paid to sign Nash is largely irrelevant. In hindsight, no one would do that trade over, Phoenix included.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


It gets us a guy who can really play right now when Nocioni got hurt. It also gets us depth to match up with Detroit's bigs. Skiles didn't want to play Thomas, and he needed a guy that plays Thomas' position the whole season.


----------



## McBulls (Apr 28, 2005)

*Re: The Truth Remains You Cannot Win a championship with a frontcourt of Wallace/Tyru*



DaBullz said:


> It gets us a guy who can really play right now when Nocioni got hurt. It also gets us depth to match up with Detroit's bigs. Skiles didn't want to play Thomas, and he needed a guy that plays Thomas' position the whole season.


The Bulls wouldn't have won 49 games with Gooden at center instead of Wallace, Harrington or no Harrington. Kiss the Bulls interior defense and rebounding advantage goodbye. If they were lucky enough to make the playoffs any team with a good center (e.g., Miami, Cleveland) would have wiped the floor with them.


----------



## DaBullz (Jul 15, 2002)

*Re: The Truth Remains You Cannot Win a championship with a frontcourt of Wallace/Tyru*



McBulls said:


> The Bulls wouldn't have won 49 games with Gooden at center instead of Wallace, Harrington or no Harrington. Kiss the Bulls interior defense and rebounding advantage goodbye. If they were lucky enough to make the playoffs any team with a good center (e.g., Miami, Cleveland) would have wiped the floor with them.


We had Chandler to play C.

I think Harrington and Gooden would play at PF instead of PJ.


----------



## dougthonus (Jul 18, 2006)

> The cap holds are for about $665K each, and yes, I'm assuming you look at all the things you can renounce when you look at your available cap.
> 
> The $665K figure is for vet minimum for the empty roster spot. They would actually have 4 of those holds, for about $2.6M. But you weren't talking about cap holds in your figuring.


You are wrong. The cap hold is not the minimum. The cap hold is 100% of their rookie scale contract. You can actually pay them up to 120% of the rookie scale amount (which basically always happens), so their capholds were their actual salaries / 1.2. I'm assuming they were both paid the 120% amount.

Salary CAP FAQ #43 Explaining this


----------



## dougthonus (Jul 18, 2006)

> Hmmm... thomas and thabo
> or
> Harrington and Gooden


This is the argument of false alternatives. 

We could not get Harrington or Gooden by not drafting Tyrus and Thabo. They took up a total of 4.7 million in cap holds before we used our FA money. Both signed for way more than that. Of course, even if we could, that would have been an awful move.

It's Ben Wallace vs Harrington and Gooden, and even then, we may or may not been able to fit both under the cap once we were in on the bidding process depending on how the price changed with additional bidders.


----------



## JeremyB0001 (Nov 17, 2003)

*Re: The Truth Remains You Cannot Win a championship with a frontcourt of Wallace/Tyru*



DaBullz said:


> It gets us a guy who can really play right now when Nocioni got hurt. It also gets us depth to match up with Detroit's bigs. Skiles didn't want to play Thomas, and he needed a guy that plays Thomas' position the whole season.


These seem like pretty minor issues. We actually played pretty well with Noc out. Tyrus got a lot of his minutes and as I pointed out, Tyrus was better than Harrington last season so I don't see swapping Harrington/Gooden for Tyrus/Wallace as winning us more games during that stretch. 

Would we have been better off if Skiles played P.J. less in the Detroit series? Probably, though P.J. carried us in the first half of game six. What I think it comes down to is that you can't make a move that drastically alters the future of your franchise just to convince your coach to make good substitutions. I love Skiles and think he's a good coach but if he develops a habit of consistently handing out questionable playing time such as Duhon playing over Gordon and P.J. playing over Tyrus then Tyrus will be around many more years than he will.



DaBullz said:


> We had Chandler to play C.
> 
> I think Harrington and Gooden would play at PF instead of PJ.


I'm pretty certain we'd be paying the luxury tax this season if we had Tyson plus the other two signed at $20-24 million.


----------



## MikeDC (Jul 16, 2002)

*Re: The Truth Remains You Cannot Win a championship with a frontcourt of Wallace/Tyru*

I tend to think with $18M in space or thereabouts, we could probably have landed both of them. Understanding better how the Bulls were looking at the cap, I think they could have landed one of them, kept Chandler, and still resigned everyone

Gooden signed a 3/yr deal starting at $6.5M
Harrington a 4/yr deal starting at $7.6M

That's $14.1M. In other words, we've got about $4M to play with, and I don't see any reason we'd necessarily have to give one of those guys a 5 year deal when they were's getting one from anyone else.

So ok, you offer Gooden 3yrs and $26M or so. The upside is you get a 6'11" guy who can shoot and rebound for 3 years and don't kill your own financial position. The downside is they match, but that's not then end of the world b/c you force the Cavs into a worse deal than the one they'd like.

<HR>

Anyhoo... people will talk about hindsight being a bad way to analyze things, but I think it's a good way to analyze things. If you look back and you wouldn't have done things differently, then it means you made a good decision. Hindsight is used all the time, and properly so, so analyze how the Bulls (and other teams) have done. 

In many instances, I think the Bulls have come out fairly well. In hindsight, certainly they did about as well as you could hope for in drafting Kirk. And the next year they did about as well as we could want in drafting Ben, Lou, and Du and signing Noc. That was a clear home run year. 

That's two years where, with more information to judge with, I'd still say we did about as well as we could possibly do.

I don't know that we did as well as we could have done the prior two seasons. With the Curry trade, we certainly got the best return we could expect. I think Duhon's deal was totally reasonable. I think we fell down a little bit with Chandler and that's a big part of why he was gone a year later. I think the Bulls were desperate with the Curry situation and felt like they needed to get a deal worked out with Tyson even if they didn't like it that much. That ended up being a bad thing for them and they would have been better served negotiating more and seeing if someone else would either set a price (and talk trade) or offering a somewhat smaller deal. In short, we somewhat bid against ourselves.

Last year, obviously it's too soon to tell, but my somewhat pessimistic prediction is that we'd be better in the long run if we'd hung on to Chandler, drafted Aldridge and then made a run at Gooden, and Harrington if Gooden failed.

That's not to say Paxson deserves to be fired or it's the end of the world, but it's simply the bottom line truth, IMO, that we'd be in a better position today if we'd done that. Just like it's the truth that we're better off for Pax having drafted Kirk instead of other guys who were apparently in the mix back then, like Jarvis Hayes and Mikeal Pietrus. 

OK, I guess I've taken this pretty far afield, but the basic point is that at the end of the day, all that matters is making the best moves possible. Obviously it's hard to tell what those moves are at the time decisions need to be made, but that's why people get paid millions of bucks to make them


----------



## different_13 (Aug 30, 2005)

The main positive with keeping Chandler, and then signing someone like Gooden, is the fact that the team could keep all 3 players (Chandler, Gooden and draft pick) for a long time if they wanted to.
People see the Bulls as a top playoff team in the East, and this is true. But in my opinion any steps forward that Tyrus takes are negated by the fact that Ben Wallace is going to be gone by the time Ty hits his prime. And by that time, the Bulls won't have enough cap to sign a decent bigman.

If they'd instead kept Chandler, signed Gooden and drafted Aldridge, they'd be looking at a bigman rotation of Chandler/Gooden, Aldridge. I don't think that's any worse than Wallace/Smith/Tyrus.
Bearing in mind they can still draft Noah (or anyone else), I think I prefer the first rotation.
They could then also use the cap spent on Smith to get a better backup pg.. or just keep Smith, 's all good.

The only downside is the Bulls would have to pay luxury tax when Deng and Gordon's extensions kick in, but I think a team of

Chandler/Noah/Gray
Gooden/Aldridge/Smith
Deng/Nocioni/Griffin
Gordon/Thabo/Curry
Hinrich/Duhon

is better, and will remain competitive longer than the current squad. The current squad is gonna face problems when Wallace leaves, as they won't have room to sign a solid replacement.
Even trading the expiring for a star player would still require other pieces, such as Tyrus, Nocioni or Noah.
And then they'd still end up paying luxury tax.

I needn't point out that Chandler, Noah, Gooden and Aldridge are easier to trade than Wallace, or that four solid bigmen is better than 3.




> Last year, obviously it's too soon to tell, but my somewhat pessimistic prediction is that we'd be better in the long run if we'd hung on to Chandler, drafted Aldridge and then made a run at Gooden, and Harrington if Gooden failed.


Just in case my post isn't clear enough, MikeDC sums it up perfectly.


----------



## JeremyB0001 (Nov 17, 2003)

*Re: The Truth Remains You Cannot Win a championship with a frontcourt of Wallace/Tyru*



MikeDC said:


> Anyhoo... people will talk about hindsight being a bad way to analyze things, but I think it's a good way to analyze things. If you look back and you wouldn't have done things differently, then it means you made a good decision. Hindsight is used all the time, and properly so, so analyze how the Bulls (and other teams) have done.


Maybe it's not unreasonable but I'm not sure it's a great way to look at things either. You have to at least be very careful. You wouldn't want to say that drafting Jay Williams was a bad idea because he crashed his motorcycle. It's considered more acceptable to use hindsight to evaluate player's performances but sometimes those can be pretty unforeseen also. If a large contingent of fans, analysts, scouts, and/or front office people felt a certain way, we shouldn't rush to dismiss that later. Some results are just rather unpredictable and in that regard a GM shouldn't be held to a standard that much higher than everyone else. 



MikeDC said:


> Last year, obviously it's too soon to tell, but my somewhat pessimistic prediction is that we'd be better in the long run if we'd hung on to Chandler, drafted Aldridge and then made a run at Gooden, and Harrington if Gooden failed.
> 
> That's not to say Paxson deserves to be fired or it's the end of the world, but it's simply the bottom line truth, IMO, that we'd be in a better position today if we'd done that. Just like it's the truth that we're better off for Pax having drafted Kirk instead of other guys who were apparently in the mix back then, like Jarvis Hayes and Mikeal Pietrus.


I'm not really sure how you can first write that it's obviously too soon to tell and then a few sentences later write that it's the truth that we'd be better off. I agree with the former, at least in the case of Tyrus v. Aldridge. I don't really think we have a great idea which player will be better this coming season, let alone several seasons from now. 

I don't really think we have to use hindsight with Chandler and Wallace. Most of what's happened with both of them was predicted by at least some perhaps even many fans. IMO, it doesn't required the use of hindsight to point out that Chandler was going to bounce back or that Wallace would decline some due to his age. However, we don't have the benefit of hindsight to know how Gooden would fit on this team so it requires at least a little speculation. As for Tyrus/Aldridge, I think the jury is absolutely still out, especially when you consider that Aldridge is not a very good fit for our team and probably wouldn't have seen nearly as many minutes last season with Skiles as his coach.


----------



## MikeDC (Jul 16, 2002)

*Re: The Truth Remains You Cannot Win a championship with a frontcourt of Wallace/Tyru*



JeremyB0001 said:


> Maybe it's not unreasonable but I'm not sure it's a great way to look at things either. You have to at least be very careful. You wouldn't want to say that drafting Jay Williams was a bad idea because he crashed his motorcycle. It's considered more acceptable to use hindsight to evaluate player's performances but sometimes those can be pretty unforeseen also. If a large contingent of fans, analysts, scouts, and/or front office people felt a certain way, we shouldn't rush to dismiss that later. Some results are just rather unpredictable and in that regard a GM shouldn't be held to a standard that much higher than everyone else.


Well sure, but excepting the "guy getting struck by lightning" stuff, is, I think, pretty obvious 

If GMs shouldn't be held to a much higher standard, then shouldn't most anyone be a capable GM? Could a team do ok by GMing by conventional wisdom? Instead of paying a GM a couple million bucks a year, could a team conduct some sort of set of polls amongst its fans and come out just as well in most cases?

I'm just curious and throwing out the possibility. It'd be interesting to see how such a thing would work. I'm not even sure it couldn't work if some thought was put into the rules of operation.



> I'm not really sure how you can first write that it's obviously too soon to tell and then a few sentences later write that it's the truth that we'd be better off.


Because betwixt those two, I wrote that the latter point was my predeiction


----------



## DaBullz (Jul 15, 2002)

*Re: The Truth Remains You Cannot Win a championship with a frontcourt of Wallace/Tyru*



dougthonus said:


> You are wrong. The cap hold is not the minimum. The cap hold is 100% of their rookie scale contract. You can actually pay them up to 120% of the rookie scale amount (which basically always happens), so their capholds were their actual salaries / 1.2. I'm assuming they were both paid the 120% amount.
> 
> Salary CAP FAQ #43 Explaining this


Thomas wasn't drafted yet, neither was Thabo.

If the picks were traded for future considerations, the cap holds would be league minimum, as the bulls are required to have 12 players on the roster. Tho I think you would get back 2 of those cap holds when the FAs were signed.

That also puts to rest the notion of there being a false choice:

1) Trade the #2 pick for a future 2nd rounder and the #16 for a similar pick.
2) Keep Chandler
3) Use the $22M in cap space to sign Gooden and Harrington.
#1 + #3 = no Thomas, no thabo, but add Gooden add Harrington.

Bulls lineup:
Frontcourt: Chandler, Deng, Nocioni, Harrington, Gooden
Backcourt: Hinrich, Gordon, Duhon

I'd also point out that Gooden signed for $6.6M and Harrington for $7.6M = $14.2M. That would leave $22M - $14M = ~$8M above and beyond what they signed for to overbid for those two and to use for other FA signings and potentially even to keep the #2 pick and the $4M cap hold associated with it.


----------



## MikeDC (Jul 16, 2002)

*Re: The Truth Remains You Cannot Win a championship with a frontcourt of Wallace/Tyru*



DaBullz said:


> Thomas wasn't drafted yet, neither was Thabo.
> 
> If the picks were traded for future considerations, the cap holds would be league minimum, as the bulls are required to have 12 players on the roster. Tho I think you would get back 2 of those cap holds when the FAs were signed.
> 
> ...


So you're not actually arguing we _should_ have traded the #2 pick, just that we could have? Cause I'm having a hard time seeing cashing in high draft picks for a marginal increase in cap space. It looks to me like we had _enough_ cap space as it stood.


----------



## dougthonus (Jul 18, 2006)

> Thomas wasn't drafted yet, neither was Thabo.
> 
> If the picks were traded for future considerations, the cap holds would be league minimum, as the bulls are required to have 12 players on the roster. Tho I think you would get back 2 of those cap holds when the FAs were signed.


Sorry, I hadn't realized you were advocating trading them. 

If you are arguing Wallace + Tyrus + Sefolosha vs Gooden + Harrington this is such an absolutely huge no brainer in favor of the first 3 that I would consider firing the GM who choose the second 2. Including Chandler makes it better in some respects, except that Chandler doesn't need to be involved. Trading Chandler was a mistake talent wise, but depending on our teams salary structure may or may not end up being a big mistake. As keeping that group together would have put us huge in the luxury tax.



> I'd also point out that Gooden signed for $6.6M and Harrington for $7.6M = $14.2M. That would leave $22M - $14M = ~$8M above and beyond what they signed for to overbid for those two and to use for other FA signings and potentially even to keep the #2 pick and the $4M cap hold associated with it.


If we were involved in the bidding the price would have gone up. Of course, we could just ignore the trading and Tyrus and Thabo part and just say we could have had Gooden + Harrington instead of Wallace. I think this is likely true without trading Tyrus / Thabo, but it would have been close.


----------



## dougthonus (Jul 18, 2006)

> Anyhoo... people will talk about hindsight being a bad way to analyze things, but I think it's a good way to analyze things. If you look back and you wouldn't have done things differently, then it means you made a good decision. Hindsight is used all the time, and properly so, so analyze how the Bulls (and other teams) have done.


I agree using hindsight is fine, but understanding the circumstances at the time is important to keep in perspective as well. You can't always balance out every move you make by how it helps you in the future, some moves are balanced to help immediately.



> I don't know that we did as well as we could have done the prior two seasons. With the Curry trade, we certainly got the best return we could expect. I think Duhon's deal was totally reasonable.


I think these 2 moves were good.



> I think we fell down a little bit with Chandler and that's a big part of why he was gone a year later. I think the Bulls were desperate with the Curry situation and felt like they needed to get a deal worked out with Tyson even if they didn't like it that much.


That's probably true.



> That ended up being a bad thing for them and they would have been better served negotiating more and seeing if someone else would either set a price (and talk trade) or offering a somewhat smaller deal. In short, we somewhat bid against ourselves.


I think Tyson would have taken the QO if we went too low on him. He originally wanted max money, and once the market was set with Z, Dalembart and Curry getting around his deal while he was considered possibly teh best long term player of the group it would have been almost impossible to get him to agree to anything substantially less. Could we have gotten him to go 3-4 million less, maybe, we'll never know. Could we have gotten him to do a deal with fewer years and quite a bit less? I don't think so. Not based on what happened in the market that year, I think he would have QO'd which wouldn't have ended up hurting us any as we traded him for an expiring deal anyway. It would have amounted to about the same thing as what we actually did.



> Last year, obviously it's too soon to tell, but my somewhat pessimistic prediction is that we'd be better in the long run if we'd hung on to Chandler, drafted Aldridge and then made a run at Gooden, and Harrington if Gooden failed.


A lot depends on whether you think Chandler would improve if he stayed a Bull. He hated Skiles, Skiles gave up on him, and Skiles stayed the coach. As for the other moves, I don't think taking Gooden over Wallace would have helped us any short or long term. Aldridge vs Tyrus we'll have to wait and see. I think Tyrus needs to be better than Aldridge to make up for that pick, because Aldridge was a more natural fit, on the other hand, we knew we'd need to be patient with Tyrus when we drafted him and that Aldridge was more prepared to make an immediate impact. Tyrus didn't get all the AAU coaching and wasn't a top prospect going into college, so there's a reason why he's a lot more raw.



> That's not to say Paxson deserves to be fired or it's the end of the world, but it's simply the bottom line truth, IMO, that we'd be in a better position today if we'd done that. Just like it's the truth that we're better off for Pax having drafted Kirk instead of other guys who were apparently in the mix back then, like Jarvis Hayes and Mikeal Pietrus.


I don't think your opinion that matter is quite so clear that I would call it "the truth". All of those points are definitely up for debate at this point. Wallace is definitely a better player than Gooden, and Harrington would have been atrocious had we missed on Gooden. There is substantial risk that Chandler would not have played well had he stayed here, and Aldridge vs Tyrus is an open book at this point. 



> OK, I guess I've taken this pretty far afield, but the basic point is that at the end of the day, all that matters is making the best moves possible. Obviously it's hard to tell what those moves are at the time decisions need to be made, but that's why people get paid millions of bucks to make them


I want a GM who always makes the right move, however, I know I will never get one. No GM makes all the right moves. Some of the people who have heavily criticized Paxson here would have their heads explode if they were fans of other 90% of the other teams and had to evaluate their moves to the same level of critique.


----------



## DaBullz (Jul 15, 2002)

*Re: The Truth Remains You Cannot Win a championship with a frontcourt of Wallace/Tyru*



JeremyB0001 said:


> These seem like pretty minor issues. We actually played pretty well with Noc out. Tyrus got a lot of his minutes and as I pointed out, Tyrus was better than Harrington last season so I don't see swapping Harrington/Gooden for Tyrus/Wallace as winning us more games during that stretch.
> 
> Would we have been better off if Skiles played P.J. less in the Detroit series? Probably, though P.J. carried us in the first half of game six. What I think it comes down to is that you can't make a move that drastically alters the future of your franchise just to convince your coach to make good substitutions. I love Skiles and think he's a good coach but if he develops a habit of consistently handing out questionable playing time such as Duhon playing over Gordon and P.J. playing over Tyrus then Tyrus will be around many more years than he will.
> 
> ...


(My previous post was made before reading MikeDC's excellent post)

If we're in agreement that Skiles is a good coach, then his substitution patterns shouldn't be a question.

This season?

Chandler $10,050,000
Hinrich $11,000,000
Nocioni $8,500,000
Gordon $4,881,670
Deng $3,320,340
Duhon $3,248,000
Noah $1,779,500
Gooden $8,000,000
Harrington $8,000,000
Total = $58,779,510

Luxury tax threshold for last year was $65.42M

That's without using front-loaded and back-loaded contracts to help out for next season.


----------



## DaBullz (Jul 15, 2002)

*Re: The Truth Remains You Cannot Win a championship with a frontcourt of Wallace/Tyru*



MikeDC said:


> So you're not actually arguing we _should_ have traded the #2 pick, just that we could have? Cause I'm having a hard time seeing cashing in high draft picks for a marginal increase in cap space. It looks to me like we had _enough_ cap space as it stood.


I think when you figure on how much cap space you have, you start by making the most favorable assumptions you can to maximize that cap space. From there you reduce the amount by signing players, making QOs, keeping the draft picks, etc.

It's absurd to think otherwise. Bulls have a near $18M cap hold until they renounce PJ Brown. Do you do your figuring on what you really have available and count that $18M against your cap space? I don't see anyone arguing that the cap hold kills our cap space, but rather the (proper) assumption is that the Bulls can renounce him at will so the figure is irrelevant.

And yeah, I wouldn't trade away the #2 and/or #16 unless the situation dictates you need that extra cap space.

Accounting for overpaying for Harrington by $1M (he was UFA) and Gooden by $2M (RFA), we could fit Thomas' and Thabo's rookie scale contracts under the LT threshold, and then some.

Tho the focus on the FAs alone is also not looking at the full possibilities. Other options included looking at any full-boat contracted player and trading the #1 pick outright for him - a situation that saves the other team $MAX in cap space and we had the cap space to absorb it. S&T was also an option - Duhon for a signed and traded Gooden at $10M would work, for example.

If we are going to look at the moves in hindsight, ALL possibilities should be on the table and you can compare what we might have had with what we ended up with.


----------



## Snake (Jun 10, 2007)

Who sells off a number 2 pick? The only possible way I would accept that is if we just needed that little bit of cap space to sign some top flight free agent, not for Harrington and Gooden. Besides, we signed the best available FA without selling it off.


----------



## JeremyB0001 (Nov 17, 2003)

*Re: The Truth Remains You Cannot Win a championship with a frontcourt of Wallace/Tyru*



MikeDC said:


> Well sure, but excepting the "guy getting struck by lightning" stuff, is, I think, pretty obvious


Part of my point was that sometimes performance can be pretty much equally unforeseeable (e.g. Gilbert Arenas, Josh Howard, and Boozer being drafted in the second round and turning into some of the better players in the league). There's this idea that some sort of scouting or insight should have always made it possible to foresee jumps of fall offs in performance and I think that's probably not true a lot of the time.



MikeDC said:


> If GMs shouldn't be held to a much higher standard, then shouldn't most anyone be a capable GM? Could a team do ok by GMing by conventional wisdom? Instead of paying a GM a couple million bucks a year, could a team conduct some sort of set of polls amongst its fans and come out just as well in most cases?
> 
> I'm just curious and throwing out the possibility. It'd be interesting to see how such a thing would work. I'm not even sure it couldn't work if some thought was put into the rules of operation.


That's a very fascinating question. I don't mean to disparage anyone but I don't think most fans could handle the job. You'd want someone who's pretty intelligent, well informed, and has a decent understanding of the cap. Plenty of die hards on internet message boards meet those criteria but your average fan doesn't in my experience.

Also, I think some conventional wisdom is flawed.

It probably sounds absurd but I'm not sure an NBA fan who meets those criteria couldn't do a decent job. Take a look at someone like Pax who had no front office experience and has done a very good job. The biggest issue would probably not knowing the intricacies of the game as well as someone like a former player. I'm not sure you couldn't overcome those deficiencies though by surrounding yourself with good basketball people. As far as I know, Daryl Morey hasn't been immersed with the game throughout his lifetime. 



DaBullz said:


> If we're in agreement that Skiles is a good coach, then his substitution patterns shouldn't be a question.


I don't agree with that. You can be a good coach even if you have weaknesses. I wouldn't call Shaq a bad player just because he can't shoot free throws. Skiles runs great sets, does an excellent job of motivating his players, and gets his teams to play excellent defense. He's had some problems favoring veterans and heady players too much in his rotations IMO but I don't think that means he's not a good coach. He's played a huge role in getting the team this far.


----------



## different_13 (Aug 30, 2005)

Though you've got to wonder what's better - Wallace, or Gooden _and_ Harrington.

Especially if you'd kept Chandler (though admittedly he probably wouldn't have grown in Chicago, due to the problems with Skiles etc)


----------



## Da Grinch (Aug 17, 2002)

in truth the bulls really had their chance to be viable title contenders by having a good diverse skillset in the post making them true title contenders in every1's mind but Pax messed that up repeatedly....while of course still keeping them on pace to be a very good team, so its not like any1 should be screaming bloody murder over it, but you'd still like him to make something happen to put the bulls in true title contention ala spurs, pistons mavs etc.

(a)he obviously could have just kept and paid Tyson and eddy and supplemented them as need be.

(b)he could have simply drafted lemarcus aldridge who is looking like a chris bosh-like scorer instead of tyrus.

(c)he could have kept tyson after signing wallace and used him as trade bait for any of the big name 4 or 5's who have become available over the last 13 months 

(d) take a chance on a talented player whose value in the toilet ala channing frye and hope his offense would be enough to improve the bulls chances. I personally think frye is a perfect fit for the team from a personality standpoint , and a skillset standpointas he has some post up ability but his jumpshot meshes pretty well with how the bulls run their offense...this type of deal could be done from time to time based on availablity , but its a risk , far from a sure thing to work...but aquiring that tyep of player would likely not gut the team.

some of these would have been easliy accomplished with more people friendly management.

for instance skiles management style didn't mesh with chandler , and at least initially with wallace as well, i though either issue could have been settled by paxson telling skiles to ease up.

the paxson/curry situation to me was a monumental mess up in how to deal with a player at best and subversive attempt to be cheap/and or overstep a players right to his own genetic coding at worst.

but still there is a chance for the bulls to win it all but i basically put it at the chance the suns now, mavs had before they decided to learn how to play defense or the heat in the 90's teams that were extremely good at 1 thing, very good regular season teams but their lack of overall diversity basically limits their chances.


----------



## JeremyB0001 (Nov 17, 2003)

*Re: The Truth Remains You Cannot Win a championship with a frontcourt of Wallace/Tyru*



Da Grinch said:


> (a)he obviously could have just kept and paid Tyson and eddy and supplemented them as need be.
> 
> (c)he could have kept tyson after signing wallace and used him as trade bait for any of the big name 4 or 5's who have become available over the last 13 months


I think a big reason Pax traded Tyson was to get flexibility under the luxury tax and whether or not we pay the luxury tax is Reinsdorf's decision, not Pax's. Keeping Chandler around for another year wasn't completely risk free because if he did have a repeat of his '05-'06 season - personally, I thought he'd bounce back - then his contract would've been undesirable and we wouldn't have been able to include him in a deal very easily.


----------



## ViciousFlogging (Sep 3, 2003)

*Re: The Truth Remains You Cannot Win a championship with a frontcourt of Wallace/Tyru*



DaBullz said:


> If we're in agreement that Skiles is a good coach, then his substitution patterns shouldn't be a question.


I disagree. Saying he's a good coach doesn't mean he does everything perfectly. 

Things Skiles does well:
*Gets the team to play balls-out every game. Few NBA teams do this.
*We play really good defense. He deserves his share of credit for that.
*Runs an offense that, IMO, takes advantage of the roster's strengths.
*Just in general, we're a young team and we've been in the playoffs all 3 of his _full_ seasons as coach. I don't think that's coincidence.


Things Skiles could improve on:
*Substitution patterns - primarily, being too quick to trot Duhon out there for extended minutes if Gordon has a cold spell, and playing guys like PJ and Malik too much, even if Tyrus is playing well.
*I think it's fair at this point to suggest that he doesn't know how to utilize big men as well as he does guards and wings. Pax/JR, please hire a big man coach who Skiles will listen to.


So I think it's fair to say he's a good coach, but still question certain things he does.


----------



## ViciousFlogging (Sep 3, 2003)

*Re: The Truth Remains You Cannot Win a championship with a frontcourt of Wallace/Tyru*

good post, Grinch. 



Da Grinch said:


> in truth the bulls really had their chance to be viable title contenders by having a good diverse skillset in the post making them true title contenders in every1's mind but Pax messed that up repeatedly....while of course still keeping them on pace to be a very good team, so its not like any1 should be screaming bloody murder over it, but you'd still like him to make something happen to put the bulls in true title contention ala spurs, pistons mavs etc.


This is a fair assessment. I disagree to some degree, but it's a productive way to have the discussion about Pax and the Bulls' chances.



> (a)he obviously could have just kept and paid Tyson and eddy and supplemented them as need be.


He could have gone that route, and it might have worked. I'm skeptical just because those guys seemed to be most comfortable playing next to a vet like AD and not each other, but maybe they just needed more time to learn each other's tendencies. 



> (b)he could have simply drafted lemarcus aldridge who is looking like a chris bosh-like scorer instead of tyrus.


I think it's a little soon to call Aldridge a Bosh clone. Aldridge got off to a faster start than Tyrus (as most expected), but right now I'm still happy with picking him. I like Aldridge a lot too. I'm rooting for both guys to do well.



> (c)he could have kept tyson after signing wallace and used him as trade bait for any of the big name 4 or 5's who have become available over the last 13 months


But would Tyson have been useful trade bait considering his craptacular 05-06 season and considering that he probably would have struggled for minutes and confidence as Wallace's backup? I think PJ's expiring deal was better trade bait, and I think Paxson intended to use it but didn't find the deal he wanted (and maybe deserves criticism for being too cautious on that front).



> (d) take a chance on a talented player whose value in the toilet ala channing frye and hope his offense would be enough to improve the bulls chances. I personally think frye is a perfect fit for the team from a personality standpoint , and a skillset standpointas he has some post up ability but his jumpshot meshes pretty well with how the bulls run their offense...this type of deal could be done from time to time based on availablity , but its a risk , far from a sure thing to work...but aquiring that tyep of player would likely not gut the team.


It's not too late for the Bulls to do something like this, though I agree Frye might have been a nice fit for what Skiles likes to do.



> but still there is a chance for the bulls to win it all but i basically put it at the chance the suns now, mavs had before they decided to learn how to play defense or the heat in the 90's teams that were extremely good at 1 thing, very good regular season teams but their lack of overall diversity basically limits their chances.


Again, I think this is a pretty fair appraisal. I have a lot of faith in our young guys to keep getting better. If Tyrus or Noah surprises us, I think we could be closer to the title than you think - but that's a hypothetical.


----------



## McBulls (Apr 28, 2005)

*Re: The Truth Remains You Cannot Win a championship with a frontcourt of Wallace/Tyru*



DaBullz said:


> We had Chandler to play C.
> 
> I think Harrington and Gooden would play at PF instead of PJ.


In 2006-7 Brown + Wallace > Gooden + Chandler

After that, we have Gray + Wallace + capspace to sign Smith > Gooden + Chandler
Not bad, given the parameters set down by cheapskate Jerry.

I didn't like the Chandler trade at all, but if Paxson has to stay under the luxury tax threshold because his boss is a cheapskate, then the consequences of moving Chandler don't look so bad.

PS. Al Harrington has no role on the Bulls that Deng, Nocioni and Thomas don't fill better.


----------



## ViciousFlogging (Sep 3, 2003)

*Re: The Truth Remains You Cannot Win a championship with a frontcourt of Wallace/Tyru*



McBulls said:


> PS. Al Harrington has no role on the Bulls that Deng, Nocioni and Thomas don't fill better.


Haven't you been reading DaBullz's posts? We'd sign Harrington to 7-8mil a year to be insurance in case someone gets hurt!


----------



## Da Grinch (Aug 17, 2002)

*Re: The Truth Remains You Cannot Win a championship with a frontcourt of Wallace/Tyru*



JeremyB0001 said:


> I think a big reason Pax traded Tyson was to get flexibility under the luxury tax and whether or not we pay the luxury tax is Reinsdorf's decision, not Pax's. Keeping Chandler around for another year wasn't completely risk free because if he did have a repeat of his '05-'06 season - personally, I thought he'd bounce back - then his contract would've been undesirable and we wouldn't have been able to include him in a deal very easily.


i think it was fairly certain he'd have bounced back to some degree, in the summer of 2005 he admittedly came in out of shape because he didn't want to get hurt, he also had that bout with aesthma( or some form or respitory disfunction) i believed stemmed from coming out of shape and it was too much too soon for his body .

that wasn't the case the following year and his season reflected that, his game really isn't built on things that get rusty , as long as he is in shape and healthy he should be fine and let his defensive and rebounding knowledge and instincts make him an impact player.

also he is 7'1 and one of the best big man athletes in the whole leauge ...still only 24, Pax basically dealt him at his lowest value , holding onto him longer could only have helped get more .


----------



## step (Sep 19, 2005)

> Pax basically dealt him at his lowest value , holding onto him longer could only have helped get more .


And it could of made matters worse, but with hindsight we know that was not the case.


----------



## Da Grinch (Aug 17, 2002)

*Re: The Truth Remains You Cannot Win a championship with a frontcourt of Wallace/Tyru*



ViciousFlogging said:


> good post, Grinch.
> 
> 
> 
> This is a fair assessment. I disagree to some degree, but it's a productive way to have the discussion about Pax and the Bulls' chances.



well its ok to disagree i am just posting about a consensus opinion , from my viewpoint i just go by the facts , generally championship teams are in the top 3rd in the league in both off. and def. efficiency, meaning they are good at both sides of the ball and possess a team capable of competing and beating any type of team, i dont see that from the bulls yet, they have ateam that gets just about all of its points from it perimeter game and its interior guys score almost entirely in garbage basket or flow of game fashion...outside of the bulls of the 90's who had 2 legends at their 2sg/sf spots i dont think another team can claim they won a title under those conditions ...and even then bill cartwrigh , luc longley,toni kukoc and horace grant were all better back to the basket players than any1 the bulls can claim are on their roster...also Pippen and Jordan were better post up players than any1 currently on the roster so it wasn't an element missing from that team like it is on the current bulls.





> He could have gone that route, and it might have worked. I'm skeptical just because those guys seemed to be most comfortable playing next to a vet like AD and not each other, but maybe they just needed more time to learn each other's tendencies.


you are right to some degree , but both tyson chandler and eddy curry have shown significant growth in the roles they had as bulls....Curry has emerged as a true #1 option on the knicks , and chandler has shown this past season he can play well offensively even though he has to basically make room for another player ...but in fairness to him he had shown that ability with curry at times for long stretches , but he has clearly improved since then though.





> I think it's a little soon to call Aldridge a Bosh clone. Aldridge got off to a faster start than Tyrus (as most expected), but right now I'm still happy with picking him. I like Aldridge a lot too. I'm rooting for both guys to do well.



i should have said his game is showing similarities in its growth that looks he could become a similar player in time.tyrus could easily be a better player eventually and not be as good a fit for chicago if the bulls can never run offense through him, giving them a consistent offensive interior presence.




> But would Tyson have been useful trade bait considering his craptacular 05-06 season and considering that he probably would have struggled for minutes and confidence as Wallace's backup? I think PJ's expiring deal was better trade bait, and I think Paxson intended to use it but didn't find the deal he wanted (and maybe deserves criticism for being too cautious on that front).


I think he would have been great trade bait if it came to needing him to such, but I feel he would have been worth more later than after his worst season after aquiring Wallace which lowered Paxson's leverage in trading Chandler even more...its an important thing to deal from strength when dealing with assets , and that wasn't done with Tyson...not at all.




> It's not too late for the Bulls to do something like this, though I agree Frye might have been a nice fit for what Skiles likes to do.


i definitely agree , both on frye fitting in and that there pertty much is always going to be some1 you can take a chance on.





> Again, I think this is a pretty fair appraisal. I have a lot of faith in our young guys to keep getting better. If Tyrus or Noah surprises us, I think we could be closer to the title than you think - but that's a hypothetical.


i think both tyrus and noah will be good players , i pretty much see Noah as david lee with defense and shotblocking...but i dont see him as a real center ...or a real, consistent offensive threat that a team can run offense through...if I'm wrong , I'll actually be happy I'm wrong but thats just how i feel.

tyrus is going to be good, very good , but i do question what he'll be able to accomplish as an offensive threat , maybe shawn marion-like at best which is very good but probably not what the team needs most.


----------



## Da Grinch (Aug 17, 2002)

step said:


> And it could of made matters worse, but with hindsight we know that was not the case.


it doesn't take alot of hindsight to see a 23 year old of tyson's talent will continue to improve.


----------



## DaBullz (Jul 15, 2002)

*Re: The Truth Remains You Cannot Win a championship with a frontcourt of Wallace/Tyru*



ViciousFlogging said:


> Haven't you been reading DaBullz's posts? We'd sign Harrington to 7-8mil a year to be insurance in case someone gets hurt!


You're pretending to be dense, right?


----------



## ViciousFlogging (Sep 3, 2003)

well, that's been your reasoning for signing Harrington in several posts in this thread - mentioning how he'd have been nice to have when Noc was out.

I always sorta thought you considered me dense anyway?



edit: that was in jest.


----------



## DaBullz (Jul 15, 2002)

*Re: The Truth Remains You Cannot Win a championship with a frontcourt of Wallace/Tyru*



ViciousFlogging said:


> well, that's been your reasoning for signing Harrington in several posts in this thread - mentioning how he'd have been nice to have when Noc was out.
> 
> I always sorta thought you considered me dense anyway?
> 
> ...


Nah. One post doesn't prove it.

It's true it'd have been nice to have a replacement for Noc. Even better to have a replacement for PJ. Even better to be able to match up well in more situations. Even better to have bigger guys to throw at Detroit in the playoffs. Even better to be able to play "big ball" from time to time - one guard, 4 forwards. Having another two players that can provide real offense and have to be guarded. Simply having 2 guys who are significantly better than we already are. And so on.


----------



## MikeDC (Jul 16, 2002)

Harrington would have been good for the same reasons I wanted Harrington last summer, even after we got Wallace and traded Chandler for Brown.
* I looked at Wallace and saw a guy who would best be complemented by a taller forward with a rounded offensive game. Harrington's like 6'9 and 245 vs. Noc's 6'7" and 225 or so. As it turned out, Noc wasn't a very good fit next to Wallace for exactly the reasons I thought he wouldn't be.

* I looked at PJ Brown and thought, boy, that guy's gonna be used up. And for the most part, he was.

* I hoped otherwise, but assumed Tyrus wasn't going to be ready for big minutes.

* I looked at Wallace and thought we probably had about two years, at best, of consistent high quality play from him.

Add all that up, and I was desperate to grab one more fairly high quality four (like Harrington or Gooden) because when I looked at the Bulls, it looked to me like we'd just spent a bunch of money on older guys whose only chance to contribute meaningful minutes was in the short term (Wallace, but also Brown and Griffin)... *but*... we hadn't truly finished the job because we didn't get a capable four to play next to Wallace. No, guys like Harrington and Gooden aren't the best 4s in the league, but they were old and experienced enough to be vets who played a consistent 30 minutes and bring something we need. 

We skipped out on that and went with PJ (too old and slow) and Noc (too small) and really neither of them brought the full range of offensive skills that we needed. I think if we were hellbent on trying to win something with Wallace, we'd have done well to get a guy like that.


----------



## MikeDC (Jul 16, 2002)

*Re: The Truth Remains You Cannot Win a championship with a frontcourt of Wallace/Tyru*



JeremyB0001 said:


> Part of my point was that sometimes performance can be pretty much equally unforeseeable (e.g. Gilbert Arenas, Josh Howard, and Boozer being drafted in the second round and turning into some of the better players in the league). There's this idea that some sort of scouting or insight should have always made it possible to foresee jumps of fall offs in performance and I think that's probably not true a lot of the time.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


In political science and economics, we've got the "miracle of aggregation" that suggests the average guys who don't understand how things really work should cancel each other out. That is, 



> On a more technical note, some academics argue that a phenomenon called the "miracle of aggregation" sweeps in at the end of the day to save democracy. Many voters are ignorant, this line of thinking goes, but the ignorance is distributed randomly across the political spectrum. Therefore -- here's the miracle -- only the votes of the informed end up making a difference.


I'll conceed that I'm not a believer  but I'd also point out that voters don't need to make perfect decisions to be considered better, just better decisions than the average GM, who, himself, often seems to have a tenuous grip on the salary cap.


----------

