NBA

[Exa Inova]

[quote]Also, as I said in my last post, if Kidd is not done he would have been all the big man Dallas needed. He can pass out of the post to Dallas's many shooters much more effectively than the best passing big men. Then, maybe Kidd isn't done and the Dallas coaching staff just didn't know how to use him in that series. But I kind of like Avery Johnson and think more of him than that.[/quote]

No
Kidds days of abusing smaller guards are over. They were over when he failed to abuse Parker in the finals against the spurs.
btw, since Terry is their starting shooting guard, every opponent can switch their 2 guard on Kidd to nulify his post game.
btw2, if that is what it takes why didnt the Nets do this all the time?

I liked Avery too in the beginning but I guess just like the player he started to get on my nerves because he was always in their grill.

Nuff idle talk. The game Ive got is Boston-Cleveland.
Let the season begin!!!!!!

[add-on]

[quote name='Exa Inova' post='1570751' date='Oct 28 2008, 17.56']No
Kidds days of abusing smaller guards are over. They were over when he failed to abuse Parker in the finals against the spurs.[/quote]
[quote name='add-on' post='1564789' date='Oct 23 2008, 07.39']Also, as I said in my last post, [b]if Kidd is not done [/b][/quote]
le sigh

[quote]btw2, if that is what it takes why didnt the Nets do this all the time?[/quote]
Not a valid comparison at all. The Nets never had the caliber of shooters that the Mavs do. You can do better than this surely.

[quote name='Greywolf2375' post='1570192' date='Oct 28 2008, 10.49']C's - Cavs - EC goes back through Beantown this year, and with this game at home, I think the C's walk. Hopefully we see no talk of 73 win seasons again.

Lakers - Portland; I think the WC does go through LA with a healthy Bynum back, but this Portland team is going to be fun to watch and when they gel, will do what Clyde could not do; though they do have to do it before Odens age starts catching up. Lakers. Hopefully we see a healthy Lakers team for the entire year.

Mil - Chi. Milwaukee still has a team?[/quote]
Yes, yes. I'm pretty excited about all these games. Should be fun to watch. Good riddance, baseball!



As an aside, Rose's play in the preseason plus the fact that the Bulls don't have a go-to scorer to pull them out of droughts and will have to go to him are making me wish I had my ROY pick back.

Also from watching the preseason, I'm wondering if Hinrich and Rose in the backcourt could actually work. I'm starting to think it would in doses.

[Greywolf2375]

God I hope I didn't curse Oden's year. Course it is interesting to see he is still eligible for the RoY award, but if he gets hurt every 3 1/2 minutes, not sure how he's going to compete for it.

Well, happy that the C's pulled it out. Looks like the emotions of the pregame carried over into the game but they were able to come back and squeak it. KG and Ray-Ray had off nights, but Powe stepped in well and Ronda looked good. 1 down, 72ish wins to go for the title.

[Slurktan]

For any fellow Canuck Basketball fans, the Raps-76ers game got moved up to 6pm because of the baseball. Don't miss it!

[smegma]

Wow, the Bulls actually played like a [i]team[/i] yesterday, looking better than they did during 3/4's of last season. I'm going to maintain my low expectations but if we can at least look like we give a shit for an entire game like last nights, I'll be happy.

[Caliban]

That was awesome. We have had a great group of supporting players over the the last few years. We kinda hoped Luol or Gordon would grow into the go-to stud role, but now they can just do what they do. D Rose. Fuck yes. His speed is amazing, he is an insane player. Ty Thomas went 15-10. I believe Ty has the skills to be a good starting 4 in this league, and I also believe Rose can bring way more out of him then Heinrich could. We havent had a player who could penetrate with the ball. Deng can get to the hole offball but nobody has really forced the op defence to respect the penetration lanes, that is until now.

VDN made 9 guys important last night. Its really important for this bulls team for VDN to use Gordon properly. It was one of my concerns coming into this season. For the Bulls to win 50 games this year, Vinny is going to have to make 10 guys count. We have a lot of pieces out there, assets, but basically every guy except Rose and Deng are massively flawed in some facit of the game. I had no concerns about VDN knowing the game, but he'd never been a head coach, and therefor never worked a bench. I think he did it well last night. Gordon is a big part of this team, hes still our best scorer, and he has always (since college) had to create for himself, but this year it will be different. He got a number of good looks last nigth in the 25 minutes. I look for Gordon to have some big scoring nights soon.

Gooden looks solid again. I like what he brings. Gooden and Noah give us a very solid center position on both ends and Gray gives us nice depth at the position. I like our 5.

Fuck yes Bulls. Got to the line a shit load last night. Did a lot of good things. Took care of business against a bad Bucks team. I like it.

One thing though and I have been saying this for a while. We cant gaurd big shooters. Redd has always owned us and he did again last night. Why did Thabo only play 10 minutes? You need to keep him on the floor, with hughes out hes the only guy we have that can guard a guy like Redd. That didnt make sense to me.

[Caliban]

CB, I see you down there. The Bulls are coming for you on friday night. Bulls on Parade. The East is heading for a shakeup.

[add-on]

Hahaha. Geez, Cal. It was one game. One! There are 81 left!

There were definitely some encouraging things about last night's game, but there's a long way to go before I'll even think about legitimately putting the Bulls and 50 wins in the same sentence.

Notes:

I agree that even though Rose only scored 11, it looked like we finally had the team leader/go-to guy we've been looking for. I love the way Rose has already made other people better. Gordon is getting open shots. Deng doesn't have to create on his own, he can slash or hang out for the baseline jumper at his leisure. Hinrich hasn't ever looked this comfortable playing basketball. Tyrus Thomas looked like he actually had an offensive game at times. Hell, Drew Gooden even played well.



[quote name='Caliban' post='1571428' date='Oct 29 2008, 10.20']We havent had a player who could penetrate with the ball. Deng can get to the hole offball but nobody has really forced the op defence to respect the penetration lanes, that is until now.[/quote]
I think this is an important point and the way Rose changes the Bulls the most. Before, the Bulls would go on long scoring droughts when their jump shots just weren't falling. Rose's ability to get to the bucket is huge in deterring these kind of droughts.

[quote]Gooden looks solid again. I like what he brings. Gooden and Noah give us a very solid center position on both ends and Gray gives us nice depth at the position. I like our 5.[/quote]
I have to sort of disagree. I do see Gooden having a solid year because he's in a contract year and because Rose will make him better. But he's not a 5. He's not big enough and he doesn't play big enough. He's a 4 that we're using as a 5 because we don't have any better options. Noah sucks. He's a Michael Ruffin hustle type player. Everybody has one of those, few people draft them in the top 10. His hustle will result in some good things, but his offensive game is nonexistent and his thinness means he can't guard the bigger centers down low. I hope Gray can develop into a contributor.

[quote]One thing though and I have been saying this for a while. We cant gaurd big shooters. Redd has always owned us and he did again last night. Why did Thabo only play 10 minutes? You need to keep him on the floor, with hughes out hes the only guy we have that can guard a guy like Redd. That didnt make sense to me.[/quote]

Honestly, I loved that he kept Thabo out. That says the he knows how to read the flow of a game and adjust accordingly. Hinrich and Rose were playing well off of each other, so Vinny left them in for stretches of time. Then Hinrich and Gordon were playing well together and scoring a lot, so Vinny left them in for a while from the end of the third through mid fourth. Then Rose and Gordon were playing well together, so Vinny left them in to finish the game. He went with what worked and that's what he's going to have to do until he can figure out a good rotation for the team.

On Thabo, I love his D, I do, but he's still a bit of an offensive liability. Kirk and Ben were getting the job done, so they played.



Regarding Larry Hughes, I was reading Bill Simmons' column and I found this part interesting:

[quote]The NBA landscape is littered with sunk costs every season, but teams rarely do anything about them for three reasons: stubbornness, a fear of admitting failure and a fear of having the sunk cost haunt them on another team. Look at the Pacers right now. Jamaal Tinsley is a sunk cost. They can't trade him without taking back someone else's problems. They can't play him because their fans have turned on him. So what do you do? Admit that he's a sunk cost, buy out 85 percent of his remaining $21 million and allow him to sign somewhere else. Before the current economic swoon, teams may have decided, "Screw that, I'm not doing that just to save a couple million" or "Let's keep him and his expiring contract will be worth something down the road." Not anymore, not with walk-up ticket sales expected to drop severely. So not only will you see the usual group of expiring vets jettisoned to save a few bucks in February (Antoine Walker, Malik Rose, Stephon Marbury, etc.), but for the first time, we might also see veterans cut loose with two or three years left on their contracts[/quote]

[url="http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/081028"]http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story...=simmons/081028[/url]

If the Bulls can't find a way to trade Hughes (which, is going to be fairly difficult I'm thinking), I really hope they consider this. Larry Hughes gives us nothing we don't already have at the 2 spot. Ben's a better shooter, Hinrich's a better passer and Thabo's a better defender. Keeping him only hurts the other players' development and/or trade value. If they could just eat 20 mil or so instead of paying him 26 mil over two years and watching him eat up minutes and shots that could and should be going to other players, that would be fucking great, IMO.

[Slurktan]

Well Raps duo looked good. Was an ugly start to the game shooting wise but after that easily controlled things. Kapono is going to have a monster year.

Elton Brand looks like what people forget Elton Brand always looks like, solid numbers but a loser.

[add-on]

Seriously!!!?? Fucking Seriously!!?? Matt fucking Bonner is guarding Amare Stoudemire and you're not going to him in the post on every possession?? Why the fuck am I not an NBA coach? This is fucking absurd. Go home, Terry Porter, you're a fucking moron.

[smegma]

Speaking of Michael Ruffin, he's a Bull again! I'm not sure we really needed ANOTHER guy that can't score and while he's defensively a good presence, I'm not sure how much of a factor he'll be. Very nice guy though and a throwback to the Krause days :P

Did he play yesterday and I missed it? I was doing laundry during the game so there's a chance he snuck out there when I wasn't looking.

[Starkess]

Well chalk one up to the loss column...but 120-115 isn't a blowout...Chalmers actually didn't suck, and surprisingly, Haslem was fine. Ah, Dwayne, where is your Olympic fire? I'm really not that disappointed, though. Although, the Knicks sucked almost as much as us last year, so I really thought we could pull out a win...ah well, PLENTY more games to go!

(Okay, so I didn't actually get to see the game...but I read about it and saw some highlights. Keep charging, boys! I'll care about you more when football's over. :kiss: )

[Arbor Gold]

Wow, I totally forgot Baron Davis was a Clipper now. Not really helping them against the Lakers atm, but interesting nonetheless. Fun seeing three Bruins on the floor at Staples Center right now.

[BLU-RAY]

[quote name='add-on' post='1571627' date='Oct 29 2008, 13.46']Regarding Larry Hughes, I was reading Bill Simmons' column and I found this part interesting:

QUOTE
The NBA landscape is littered with sunk costs every season, but teams rarely do anything about them for three reasons: stubbornness, a fear of admitting failure and a fear of having the sunk cost haunt them on another team. Look at the Pacers right now. Jamaal Tinsley is a sunk cost. They can't trade him without taking back someone else's problems. They can't play him because their fans have turned on him. So what do you do? Admit that he's a sunk cost, buy out 85 percent of his remaining $21 million and allow him to sign somewhere else. Before the current economic swoon, teams may have decided, "Screw that, I'm not doing that just to save a couple million" or "Let's keep him and his expiring contract will be worth something down the road." Not anymore, not with walk-up ticket sales expected to drop severely. So not only will you see the usual group of expiring vets jettisoned to save a few bucks in February (Antoine Walker, Malik Rose, Stephon Marbury, etc.), but for the first time, we might also see veterans cut loose with two or three years left on their contracts

[url="http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/081028"]http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story...=simmons/081028[/url]

If the Bulls can't find a way to trade Hughes (which, is going to be fairly difficult I'm thinking), I really hope they consider this. Larry Hughes gives us nothing we don't already have at the 2 spot. Ben's a better shooter, Hinrich's a better passer and Thabo's a better defender. Keeping him only hurts the other players' development and/or trade value. If they could just eat 20 mil or so instead of paying him 26 mil over two years and watching him eat up minutes and shots that could and should be going to other players, that would be fucking great, IMO.[/quote]

I actually intended to come in and post this the other day, it's the best thing Simmons has written in quite a while.

Also, good to see the real Caliban working back into form. Was worried there for a couple weeks.

[Exa Inova]

Just one game for me and it were the C's and the Cavs.
C's were sloopy in the first half but after that ceremony who can blame them.
James still is a beast and still has to work on his shot, be it from the field or from the stripe.
He did had 2 plays that made me press rewind: That monster offensive rebound and put back (the speed at which he put it back up was incredible) and the second was that dunk after the Mo Williams steal. The pass was not intended as an ally hoop but he was already airborn when he caught it. Every other player in the league would have taken at least one step but James just flew in and stuffed it.

The rest of the games I have to scout boxscores and recaps.
A few things I found remarkable:
the 76ers losing at home dispite a 20(!) rebound advantage. They had as much offensive rebounds as the Raptors defensive rebounds. Still the Raptors shot the ball only 3 times less.
The Suns still have trouble containing Parker and Duncan.
LA Laker rolling early and spreading the wealth

Dont know what game I will get tonight.

[Slurktan]

[quote name='Exa Inova' post='1572143' date='Oct 30 2008, 07.11']the 76ers losing at home dispite a 20(!) rebound advantage. They had as much offensive rebounds as the Raptors defensive rebounds. Still the Raptors shot the ball only 3 times less.[/quote]

Philly has a major weakness, it can't shoot at all. In the first quarter the Raps were just playing regular man-up d and the sixers killed them on the boards (thats where the 20 reb disparity comes from). Then Mitchell figured out that Philly can't shoot and just went to a boxed zone and Philly had no chance to win after that.

I'd expect by midseason Philly to have traded somebody for a shooter.

[Exa Inova]

[quote name='Slurktan' post='1572273' date='Oct 30 2008, 15.10']Philly has a major weakness, it can't shoot at all. In the first quarter the Raps were just playing regular man-up d and the sixers killed them on the boards (thats where the 20 reb disparity comes from). Then Mitchell figured out that Philly can't shoot and just went to a boxed zone and Philly had no chance to win after that.

I'd expect by midseason Philly to have traded somebody for a shooter.[/quote]
Sounds reasonable. but still you would think that +20 in o-rb should translate to more than just 3 shots more.

[Arakasi]

Yeah the sixers had 26 rebounds in the first quarter and 30 more the rest of the game. Quite the difference. And even with 26 first quarter rebounds they were up by only 3.

[Exa Inova]

[quote name='Arakasi' post='1572290' date='Oct 30 2008, 15.24']Yeah the sixers had 26 rebounds in the first quarter and 30 more the rest of the game. Quite the difference. And even with 26 first quarter rebounds they were up by only 3.[/quote]
Goddamn!
Its known the 76ers have a bad shooting team but they better get help fast because if they gonna use Elton they better surround him with better shooters or hope to run everytime

[Slurktan]

[quote name='Exa Inova' post='1572305' date='Oct 30 2008, 10.37']Goddamn!
Its known the 76ers have a bad shooting team but they better get help fast because if they gonna use Elton they better surround him with better shooters or hope to run everytime[/quote]

Keep in mind as well that the Raptors are a really good team and if JO stays healthy, a great team. Philly got a lot of boards in the first quarter mostly off their own misses (Dalembert had nunmerous Moses Malone plays where he'd miss a shot, rebound, miss, rebound etc,) If you shoot badly against the Raptors you are going to lose. They are far too efficient of a team as they barely turn it over and have inside and outside scorers.