A judge sentenced Denver Nuggets guard J.R. Smith to 90 days in jail Tuesday night for causing an auto accident that killed his friend, though Smith will likely end up serving only 30.
Municipal Judge Debra J. Gelson suspended 60 days of the sentence providing Smith performs 500 hours of community service consisting of visiting sick children at hospitals.
As a Bulls fan, I can safely say that J.R. Smith is someone I've discussed a lot over the years. J.R. was included by the Hornets, somewhat needlessly, into the Tyson Chandler/P.J. Brown swap that pissed me off for a good few years. And from speaking to my fellow Bulls fans, I know that a lot of you miss J.R. Smith. He has crazy range, athleticism, potential (if not much sense) and a special shot making ability. It would be easier to stomach his loss had the best returning player for him not been Aaron Gray. (The players were; JamesOn Curry, who never played a game for the Bulls; the unguaranteed contract of Howard Eisley, who also never played for the Bulls; and Aaron Gray, who needn't have.)
Scott Skiles didn't even take one look at Smith before deciding he wouldn't tolerate him. Smith never reported to the Bulls, and John Paxson tried to turn him around straight away. The Bulls couldn't get a first round pick for him, though, and instead settled on Eisley and the two second rounders .(They later waived Eisley and used the money opened up to sign Adrian Griffin. Yippeeeeeeee.)
Perhaps we needn't miss him too much, though. In his time with Denver, Smith has been charged with assault, disturbing the peace and destruction of property, had his drivers license suspended three times (all three of which came after the fail accident detailed here, amazingly), crashed teammate Carmelo Anthony's car, and has now seen his troubles culminate in this jail sentence.
In this incident, Smith was charged with of improper passing, failure to stop at a stop sign, reckless driving, speeding and failure to wear a seat belt, but mercifully not of vehicular homicide. He also failed to appear in court for his first hearing back in January, drawing a further fine.
That list of bad times also does not include consistent affronts with his coach, George Karl, whose tolerance for Smith's erratic play and mild entitlement is varied at best. Smith has been suspended twice for a combined 13 games, and benched numerous times on top of that. He has never managed to avoid trouble. Seemingly, he's never really tried to.
And he is, after all, just a backup shooting guard.
Still, it's not all bad news; Smith played sufficient minutes last season to earn himself a $600,000 bonus on his contract for next season. So, at the very worst, it's swings and roundabouts.
Some potentially insightful and vaguely articulate basketball commentary will be coming your way shortly. But first, here's something far more important: the Chicago Bulls players singing.
God invented the internet so that we could feel more closely acquainted to professional athletes. It's the reason they have online chats, it's the reason they have their own websites, it's the reason we try and become their Facebook friends, and it's the reason that their team contractually obligates them to humiliate themselves for the sake of a few Youtube videos. For this, we must give our eternal thanks, because God never fails to satisfy us. And nor does Joakim Noah.
During a Bulls game last week, a halftime segment aired that showed Noah, Derrick Rose, Tyrus Thomas and Luol Deng participating in a 'Name That Tune' style challenge. The four players paired up, and one player had to sing whatever tune was playing in his headphones, with the other player charged with guessing which song it was that they were butchering. The hot blonde's job was to guess which team won.
The whole debacle was caught on camera.
A closer inspection reveals that this isn't the first Bulls players karaoke segment of the season. Three other officially licensed videos exist, showing the same players (as well as Kirk Hinrich, Aaron Gray, and the now-departed Drew Gooden and Thabo Sefolosha) taking part in a singalong to various TV theme tunes. The tunes range from seminal to forgettable, yet they are, to a man, bludgeoned.
If anyone emerges from this with any pride, it might be Drew Gooden. Gooden - whom we already know to be always up for a tinkle - demonstrates, if nothing else, a semblance of a sense of rhythm, humility and personality, although he does appear to struggle with the difference between a saxophone and a piccolo. Hinrich continues his galvanising makeover from the shy and retiring elfin-like creature of his rookie year to the matured and forthcoming comedy god that he is today. Tyrus Thomas sings like he plays (with plenty of effort yet little to show for it), as does Luol Deng (who is bloody awful). Most worryingly of all, Derrick Rose seems to sing in the same way that he talks - in a monotoned unrelenting B flat that never shows any signs of breaking out into a fit of inflection or interest. Give me another half hour of Gooden, instead. Thanks.
However, if you thought that other Bulls starlet Ben Gordon had gotten lucky and avoided it all, then despair not. Despite the fact that those videos were probably made during Gordon's entirely awkward contract negotiations, Ben has been seen to have brought the noise before. In this first video, Ben is caught chiming in with a vital contribution to the seminal Chicago Bears theme song, "Bear Down Chicago Bears". (Note: a version with Hinrich in it is out there somewhere, but apparently I've lost it.)
And in this second video, Ben does what 85% of ballers feel obligated to do eventually; he stars in a rap video.
(Note: That last video appears to have been an advert for a product called Mioplex. A quick Google search reveals that Mioplex is a "male orgasm intensifier." This would explain why he felt fifty feet tall. My work here is done.)
The first in a new series of posts detailing teams financial outlooks for the upcoming free agency period, what cap room they have, what exceptions, what draft slots, etc. Should be fascinatingly fascinating, if you're easily pleased.
No information is 100% guaranteed accurate, but unless you're privy to hitherto unknown information, or just better at this than I am (highly possible), then it's probably more accurate than you.
To be completed in an order best described as "Random".
(* = has incentives. Hughes's salary listed WITHOUT incentives, that are dependent on win totals, and thus won't be considered likely. Hinrich's salary listed WITH incentives, which probably won't be considered likely either.)
Ben Gordon (qualifying offer - $6,404,749, cap hold - $14,645,007) Luol Deng (qualifying offer - $4,452,574, cap hold - $9,961,017) Demtris Nichols (qualifying offer - $886,517, cap hold - $512,596)
Draft picks:
First round: 9th pick, subject to lottery results. (Cap hold - $1,840,800) Second round: 39th pick (no cap hold)
Cap room/exceptions:
Nada room, MLE, BAE, and a $5,205,000 trade exception.
Let Chris Duhon go. Gas Larry Hughes. Don't lose Gordon and Deng for nothing - either re-sign them, or get value in a sign and trade. Try and wriggle out from under Simmons's final guaranteed year. Add a veteran centre and a veteran point guard. DON'T BLOCK THE YOUNGSTERS. Get a coach that's better than the cataclismically bad Jim Boylan. Learn how to spell cataclysmically. Explore the possibility of debilitating widespread roster overhaul, but don't for the love of God make a losing trade involving a young player whose value is way below its best. Not again.
Eight weeks have passed since the last game-of-the-week which makes the title of the series something of an outright lie. Yeah. Sorry about that. I was busy and ill and stuff.
Still, to get us back into the series, I'm choosing to depict a game featuring the greatest basketball team in the world (as long as you don't include wins and losses in your criteria for what makes a team good), the insatiable Chicago Bulls, as they take on the Orlando Magic.
For those who haven't been following at home, the Chicago Bulls are less than mediocre this year. And for those of us who support them, it's a rather painful kick in the arse to witness. This team last year won 49 games and made the second round of the playoffs. They weren't half bed. They improved upon this on paper as they upgraded their personel, kept together their core, and assumed incremental improvement from all the young holders. Things were supposed to be beautiful.
They aren't.
For whatever reason, the Bulls suck. A premier defensive unit with mediocre but sufficient offense has suddenly turned into a mediocre defensive unit with the worst offense in the NBA. The "slow start" excuse played for a while, as the Bulls do have a recent history of slow starts. But for whatever reason, this season, they're still bad at the near half way point of the season.
The Magic, meanwhile, tore out to an epic start, and have now levelled off a bit. Just like last year. Except hopefully for them, unlike last year, they won't be distinctly middle of the road come the end of the season. But with future MVP Dwight Howard around, it seems unlikely.
After spending roughly an hour finding a way to watch the game online (obviously via totally legal methods), I gave up, and listened to the audio feed instead. I lay in bed to do this, because I'm lazy like that. It was there that I discovered that the game was being broadcast on a tape delay via English TV channel Five, whose NBA coverage has been nitpicked to death by me in the past (namely, here. So we'll see how they handle this.
- If you didn't know this already, Luol Deng has an English passport. Ben Gordon also will do in the foreseeable future. This makes Five rather intrested in the Bulls progress, and broadcast all Bulls games with simmering dollops of bias. And that's to be commended. Tonight, however, they've gone one step further, and added an in-studio guest - Luol Deng's brother Ajou Deng. Ajou Deng is 29, taller, considerably inferior, with exactly the same voice as Luol. He also looks sorta the same, except with the eyes of poker player Phil Ivey, and with a gap tooth that would have been considered sexy several centuries ago. Ajou speaks slowly, deeply and consistently, with no hint of punctuation or syllable inflection, and with absolutely nothing to say except to respond to the inane questions fired by the in-studio pairing of Mark Webster (not the world darts champion) and Andre Alleyne about how brilliant Luol is. This is going to work perfectly, I can see it.
- Ajou regales us with a story about how he won an MVP trophy during a basketball tournament he played in, the prize for which was a 27 inch television, which he then had to take home on the bus that he arrived on. Welcome to the world of British basketball. Additionally, Britain's first ever entry to the ULEB Cup (the second tier European club competition), the Guildford Heat, are 0-9 in the competition so far, with numerous enormous losses, including a recent 40 point loss to Joventut. Ajou Deng plays for the Heat. So you can see where this is going.
- None of the three studio presenters can tie a tie. Alleyne hasn't bothered, Deng shouldn't have done, and Webster offers up a remarkable ensemble for the evening. Unshaven, somewhat gaunt looking, with an abortive attempt on his very stripey tie and a seriously ill-fitting V-neck sweater, Webster looks as though he has just been pulled out of a crackhouse and thrust into whatever clothes they could find only minutes before the show began. Strangely, though, he's also wearing a purple wristband. Answers on a postcard.
- In back to back sentences, Webster describes the Bulls season so far as "patchy", and then says "let's hope that [another good run to close out the season] happens again!". Like I said, it's all swarmed in bias. And I'm totally cool with that.
- In pre-game build up, Alleyne mentions how Ben Wallace has "picked himself up", in reference to his recent play. Then a graphic shows up showing how the Bulls are the sixth highest scoring team in the NBA this season at 103 points per game, which Alleyne elaborates upon weirdly. Alleyne then closes his stanza with the immortal sentence "Chris Duhon will start in the, um, erm, excuse me, point guard spot vacated by Kendrick Hinrich." So not only are we biased as all hell, but we can't analyse for shit. Fantastic.
- Mark Webster then calls Joakim Noah "Wakeem", and suddenly I feel vindicated about being unable to kick the habit myself. Then again, as we discussed earlier, Webster is a crack addict, so......
(Legal disclaimer - Mark Webster is not a crack addict. Neither of the famous Mark Webster's are.)
The team then proceed to have a conversation about Wakeem, his skills, value to the team, and about his recent suspension for backchat. It's actually an intelligent discussion full of accurate observations, perspective and common sense. While it was taking place, the cameraman went for a wander, and panned to two Luol Deng jerseys sitting on a desk somewhere. Don't know why this happened.
- Finally, before the tip-off, Alleyne and Ajou agree that the Bulls are going to need a big defensive game from Ben Wallace. For those who haven't noticed, here is Ben Wallace's defensive PER this season. Feisty.
- Kendrick Hinrich is sitting out tonight due to a combination of back spasms and epic shitness, so Thabo "The Show" Sefolosha starts in his place. This means that the Bulls have now replaced the third worst jumpshooting guard in basketball (Hinrich) with the worst (Thabo), both of whom are starting alongside the second worst (Duhon). This on a team that also starts the 33% shooting centre Ben Wallace. This is really going to space the floor, I reckon.
- After Ben Wallace wins the opening tip, which he seems to do every night as fatigue ha snot yet set in, Jumpin' Joe Smith attempts the Bulls first 3 shots, and misses them. And you said we didn't have a post scorer!
- Ben Wallace exhibits Shaq-like pick and roll defense early, successfully managing to guard neither Orlando player. But in his defense, if you think paying Ben Wallace $15 million a year for only one dimesion (and you're wrong, for it's actually zero dimensions), then give Rashard Lewis three years and you'll have a black Pat Garrity for $20 million a year. Yes, I'm still harping on about this.
- Chris Duhon misses a wide open three point shot, and Thabo Sefolosha turns down an open 21 footer in favour of dribbling into screeners for 5 seconds. Still, only four minutes until Gordon comes in.
- After Ben Wallace picks up his second foul, Aaron Gray comes in for him. Colour commentator Matt Guokas mentions how this makes Dwight Howard's eyes "light up". Yeah, well, wait until Dwight sees what a powerhouse he has to defend. Aaron Gray is the shit.
- Sefolosha hits a jumper. Wow. Matt Guokas mentions about how that type of player - the thought of as insignificant type - are the type of player that typically burns the Magic. Well, we'll see about that.
- I feel I should mention at this moment that I'm rasping for a piss, and yet the show has had no advert breaks yet. Things are starting to get uncomfortable.
- Coming back from a timeout, the game feed cuts back in with the camera focused on Wakeem Noah on the bench. This causes Webster to lose his professionalism, as the soundman hangs him out to dry by leaving hsi microphone on for five seconds longer than Webster thought he had. After handing back to the American audio feed, Webster then booed Noah loudly, thinking that he was off air. That was fun.
- Joe Smith opens the game 1 for 5 from the free throw line, which is extremely unlike him. He scowls angrily at the basket after all the misses, which is extremely unusual for Smith. This Bulls team is personified by awful body language, and only the constant chirpiness offered by Aaron Gray, Smith and Noah shows any kind of interest in the players being there. And if we lose Joe to a bad temper, then the franchise has real problems.
- Ajou Deng's awkwardness to the camera is topped only by Luol's. If you've ever seen Luol Deng talk toa camera, you'll notice that he slows up his speech for some reason. And quite frankly, it makes him sound like a spanner. I thought I'd mention this.
- The first quarter ends at 27-24 to Orlando. The TV show is now 50 minutes in, and not even the end of the quarter brings me the relief of an advert break. I'm really scratching for a slash here, but I can't seem to stop watching, in case I miss something I can roll my eyes about. Right on cue, Alleyne calls Thabo by the unusual name of "Seffer-LAR-shar". Obviously I can;t miss things like this.
- During the first quarter break, we are treated to a montage of every shot Luol Deng took and/or made. This could get tiresome, even for those of us out there who love Luol Deng dearly and would even be willing to overlook it if he bricked our parents to death. Meanwhile, Ajou Deng's head slowly disappears into his shoulders.
- Alleyne again references the stat they invented which claims that the Bulls are 6th in the NBA in points per game. So the analyst can't analyse, the in-studio guest can't entertain, and Mark Webster is high as a kite (allegedly). Brilliant.
(But, you know? It's still very entertaining for some reason. At least they're enthused. And that counts for a lot. Well, OK, Ajou Deng isn't enthused.)
- For three straight possessions to open the second quarter, Orlando takes and makes straight away 28 footers. Chicago responds by bringing the ball up unneessarily slowly, taking 10 seconds to even get to the play calling stage. The Bulls offense survived all its pitfalls last year by pushing the ball enough to be the 6th fastest offense in the entire NBA, which in a league featuring teams such as Phoenix and Golden State is no mean feat. Yet this year, aided by the slowness of Duhon and Hinrich, they've decided not to bother with that, unless their idea of pushing the ball involves in-rhythm 20 footers with no one in rebounding position. That, they do plenty of.
- Still no ad break. I can feel my bladder rupture.
- After Ben Wallace does his customary 10 dollar move with a 10 cent finish in the low post, Matt Guokas claims that "you might normally go three or four games without seeing Ben Wallace attempt a post move". Oh God, how I wish that was the case.
- As Joe Smith shoots a free throw, a girl with a mop runs behind the rebounders to back underneath the basket Joe is shooting at. Any closer, and she would have run down the paint itself. Strange times. Joe makes it anyway but still doesn't look happy.
- Ben Gordon is in at the point guard spot for Chicago. Fantastic! That'll facilitate the ball movement and stop the turnovers.
- After the outside shooting barrage, Chicago is now down 14. They look deflated already, although I'm not sure they ever looked inflated. They also strangely can't seem to rebound with Ben Wallace in the game. Surely not? It's not like Ben's man routinely goes off for big rebounding nights or anything. An Orlando timeout comes, but no advert break comes with it. Webster says "Wakeem" again.
- Thabo Sefolosha is given a whole calendar week to shoot a three point shot from the wing. He obliges, and makes it. He has now hit three jumpers in one game. One of them nearly hit a flying pig.
- If you are wondering at home, why do the Bulls continue to play Wallace when he is substandard at every facet of the game, and players such as Noah and Tyrus Thomas aren't getting nearly enough playing time, then look no further. They know of the illogical nature of what they are doing, and yet they deliberately do it. The reasoning is thus: if they flog this dead horse enough so that they can get his rebounding average above or near 10 a game, along with his 2 assists, steals and blocks a game, then someone might - just might - trade for the bastard if the Bulls set the bar low enough. And if you think that's silly, then bear in mind that John Paxson's record when it comes to trading players when their value is at their lowest ebb is rather unspectacular.
- Luol Deng shoots a technical foul shot, which must be a first. Meet the Chicago Bulls guards, everybody. For a "jumpshooting team", we sure as shit can't shoot. Deng misses it.
- Thabo penetrates the lane and drops the ball off to Wallace, who finishes with a dunk over that same flying pig. This is noteworthy for two reasons:
1) Thabo isn't awful tonight. 2) Ben Wallace dunked the ball.
Both rare but special things.
- Amazingly, the Bulls have cut it back to a two point game, as Orlando misses a few shots. With their final possession of the half, Chicago runs their insatiable Duhon/Wallace pick and roll. Amazingly, it doesn't work. A turnover and a three pointer later, the Bulls are down 5 at the half.
- The half time show brings us focus on, surprise surprise, Luol Deng. They have a feature in which he talks about a series of slide related to things in his life. These include Big Ben (the clock, not Wallace), his passport photo, Charlie Villanueva, Dikembe Mutombo, a Phoenix Suns cap and Manute Bol, whose legs dumbfound me with their length. This feature was not interesting, but I watched it all in case it was. In doing this, I had to once again sacrifice going for a piss. That's dedication, folks.
- Ajou Deng gets to talk a lot at half time, and cements his status as the least enticing TV personality ever. He does mention at one point, though, that he and Luol have another basketball playing brohter called Deng Deng. Maybe I misheard his dulcit tones, but I swear he said that. Meanwhile, Luol waxes lyrical about Wakeem, the team cancer. (Sarcasm).
- Orlando blows the game open again to start the second half, despite Jameer Nelson running two fast breaks so badly that he ought to be made an honorary Chicago Bull. Both times, he dribbled into the path of his wing man, and had to pull the ball back out. Still, Orlando hits their shots, and Chicago can't get theirs off.
- It's depressing to watch how little Ben Wallace gives a shit.
- Chicago has two point sint he first 4 minutes of the third quarter, including one beautfiful possession that featured a two man game between Wallace and Duhon, in which Wallace caught the ball in the low post with 15 seconds on the clock, and spun around looking for help for every last one of them. Good times.
Orlando trots down, and hits their open outside shots from a penetrate-and-kick game.
The game is blown open to a 73-54 affair from a 57-52 game at half time.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand, that'll do it. I can't be bothered with the rest.
Ladies and gentleman, meet your Chicago Bulls. They're exactly the same outfit as last year, except they're more talented, and massively inferior.
Successful Chicago Bulls teams of the Scott Skiles era were personified by energy and defense. Both have vanished from the current Bulls. No one takes charges. Players don't fight for the rebound like they once did. Their simple playbook used to be reasonably effective when it was executed with a certain sharpness and crispness. But this crispness has disappeared. Players flit about, and the Bulls haven't the athletic talent to get away with that.
The problem does not necessarily lie with the Bulls player personel. They have a flawed roster, with not enough pure shotmaking talent and poor size. But they've always had this, and yet have proven that they can be successful anyway. The probkem stems from what these previously successful players have started not doing that has gotten them away from what they do best.
Instead of incremental improvements from the core, everyone except Tyrus Thomas has gone backwards. And even he hasn't done that much to get better except for adding a reasonable jumpshot. Ben Gordon's doing much better as of late after being benched, but his mind wasn't in it to begin the season, and he reverted to his stand-on-the-wing self of his first two seasons. Luol Deng, affected by nagging injuries, still fatigues too easily and goes for long stretches without touching the ball on offense. Chris Duhon is back to the standard of his sophomore season after a bad campaign last season, but he suffers from just not being that good. Ben Wallace's demise has gone from slow to debilitating. Andres Nocioni is chucking more than ever before, including even his rookie season, and his defense continues to get worse as he leaves several dozen open shooters a game. And Kirk Hinrich's offseason decision to bulk up seems to have resulted in a jarring loss of foot speed and the absence of any consistency in his jumpshot.
The Bulls guards never could finish around the rim. Their big men never could consistently do so either. The team was never tall, and never very athletic. But they used to win anyway. The defense would carry them. Even when they went through massive offensive droughts, they'd put you into one too, by taking many charges, deflecting the ball at all times, and just generally pissing you off. But the charge taking has gone. The deflections are way down. And the offense is worse, despite the too-massive-to-explain difference in offensive talent between the respective trios of Joe Smith, Aaron Gray and Joakim Noah over P.J. Brown, Michael Sweetney and Malik Allen.
So, what's wrong with the Bulls? Something. I don't know what to suggest.
(The following entry may well be written with a small hint of bias. Or, alternately, it may be written with huge seething dollops of it. I'm a Bulls fan, just so's you know.)
Has anybody ever told you that you need a dominant post scorer to win a title? If not, then you're not a Bulls fan. Since the dawn of time (or since the Eddy Curry trade, whichever), this edict has been hurled at Bulls fans and management alike by people of all races, creeds and IQ levels, and never more so than in the immediate aftermath of the Pau Gasol trade-that-never-was at the last trade deadline. Forget the fact that Detroit managed this supposedly impossible feat just three years ago: these people remain steadfast in their opinion. And why shouldn't they? People say it on the TV, after all, so it must be true.
After General Manager John Paxson did not pull the trigger on a deal for Gasol due to the excessive demands of Grizzlies GM Jerry West and the continued breakout of Luol Deng, talk of the Bulls need for a 'dominant' post scorer continued. "Experts" then shifted their attention to Kevin Garnett, ignoring for a moment the fact that such a move was never realistically possible due to the Bulls salary cap position. After that avenue also passed the Bulls by, people rolled their eyes, and widely discredited the Bulls offseason as something of a wash, given the lack of a big trade.
What seems to be overlooked, though, is that having a post up, back-to-the-basket scorer isn't nearly as important as having big men that can make shots. By that, I mean having big men that can hit shots from close in and mid range (or from further outside of possible). For example, in their championship seasons and ones subsequent, Detroit didn't have a dominant post scorer. They had an inside scoring weapon with Rasheed Wallace's fallaway from the post, but that accounted for about 6 points a game. What they did have was three offensively capable big men in Rasheed, Corliss Williamson and Mehmet Okur, who, despite being primarily face-up scorers, were scorers nonetheless, and whom could finish easy shots inside, even if they didn't create much down low. Additionally, the team with the most wins in the NBA last year (Dallas) does not have a post up scorer. They have a big man who is an elite scorer in Dirk Nowitzki, but that's a different thing altogether. (Note - I know they lost in the first round. But that's not why. They lost because they choked.)
In contrast, the Bulls last year had a slew of offensively inept big men. Their man options on that end where either the 41% shooting of reserve Malik Allen, who could only score via the pick and pop jumpshot, or P.J. Brown who had exactly the same issues going on. Failing that, they had either the amazing inconsistency of Michael Sweetney to turn to, or they could give shots to Tyrus Thomas, who could not consistently hit anything outside of dunks all year. And let's not mention Ben Wallace here, because we know what he's like. The Bulls hotchpotch of big men featured no one who could consistently make a layup and, apart from two decent mid-range shooters with nothing further to add, their big man offense constituted a whole lot of nothing. That is, unless you wish to include 6'7 outside shooter Andres Nocioni into the discussion. And that's hardly nullifying the issue right hurr.
But Chicago still did not need a post-up, slow-the-game-down interior scorer. If they could realistically obtain one for a decent price, then it would have been a move worth doing, as long as that player was not Zach Randolph (but hey, there'll be more on him in the Knicks post at a later date). However, they could not. And obtaining a second or third tier one such as Al Harrington or Shareef Abdur-Rahim just really was not bloody worth it.
What they needed was big men who could score the easy shots offered up within the flow, not get blocked by the rim, men who could break a zone defense, and who the guards could trust to pass to without their ears pricking up in anticipation of imminent danger.
Did they achieve this?
Well, not really. Not yet, anyway.
The Bulls did noticably upgrade their big men, though. Replacing the big bag of shite that was the holy foursome of Brown, Sweetney, Allen and Martynas Andriuskevicius was hard to do without upgrading, and therefore upgrade they did. Joakim Noah was drafted in the first round, a player who isn't particularly consistent offensively and who was drafted in front of Spencer Hawes (a superior interior scorer), but who was drafted there due to his superior all around game, which is something of a mantra for the Bulls. Joe Smith replaces the role P.J. Brown held last year, jigging around the mid range area looking for some jumpshots to clank, but who will do so with two added bonuses not previous brought by Brown: Smith is not completely immobile, and can get his layups above the rim. Aaron Gray offers very little offense, but you've never seen a man set backscreens better, And nobody replaces the spot once held by Andriuskevicius, so that's a net positive.
Additionally, another need was addressed with the drafting and signing of Jim Bob Curry. Behind the starters, the Bulls guards lacked offense and outside scoring. Every team needs a token chucker (see The Bench Player Handbook for more on that), and Curry provides Chicago with such a player. He won't play much, but if he does, he could help.
That, aside from re-signing Nocioni to a marginally oversized deal (but one necessarily so due to an alarming amount of open market interest: namely, one team, Memphis), was all that Chicago did. It's all that needed doing, really. Apart from signing Devin Brown, of course.
Next season:
While the Bulls changed basically all of their big man rotation, none of those players brought in are exceptional scorers. Joe Smith is a decent scorer, and Noah will be reasonably efficient in what few shots he takes. But while they have improved on the weakness of the previous season, it's not by a large amount. They still don't have a particularly adept group of offensive big men, and they didn't improve their wing players any. Then again, they didn't need to.
Improvement in this area has to come from within, namely from Tyrus Thomas, He, along with Ben Wallace, carries a load of the pressure in terms of how far the Bulls go this season. Both were inconsistent last season, Wallace due to a combination of nagging back/groin injuries and old age, and Thomas due to rookie rawness. Yet on the occasions that they played decent minutes together, the makings of a decent pairing were formed. Both are good passers and dribblers of the ball, fine rebounders and exceptional shotblockers, and the duo's versatility allows them to match up with any other frontcourt pairing out there - Wallace's strength and Thomas's speed being able to overcome any exaggeratedly-important height disparity. I may have made some words up there, but you get the idea.
The problem, though, was that neither could score well. And Thomas will have to be the one to correct that. It'd be more fun if it was Wallace that did, but......nah. I'm a gambling man, but I'm not taking those odds.
If Wallace is more consistent - or at least comparable to last year without any kind of gaping drop off - and if Thomas continues to develop his offensive game whist reining in the fouls, the duo has the ability to tip the Bulls fortunes over the top, in spite of neither being the mythical post up scorer that's apparently such a necessity. Chicago still retains their backcourt core to die for, with starters Hinrich, Gordon and Deng all still young and improving, and so it's the frontcourt that holds the key to the Bulls season.
Regardless, they're going to win the division. Blatantly. And then the East. And then the world. Maybe.
Sham is a miserable and self-effacing little bastard, whose basketball opinions are often riddled with bias, insecurity, and rank immaturity. He has also never played the sport, and the only game he has ever been to see was a Ware Rebels game back in 2001. The night bus didn't show up and he had to walk the 9 miles home. It was after this that his passion for basketball really took off.
He considers himself to be Britain's foremost NBA expert, an arbitrary title that carries with it no basis in fact, or any worldly significance. He also wrote this section of the website in third person narrative, purely for reasons of arrogance.
Copyright ShamSports.com, 2005-2010. Every published word on this website
is copyrighted to the website's owner, including (but not limited to)
the really stupid ones that I wish I'd never written.
