Posted by BlueSeats:


The ability of the Warriors to play small-ball with impunity gave them an edge in quickness that was the deciding factor in the series. They didn't swarm the pick and roll, per se, but their quicker feet allowed them to switch seamlessly and get up on almost every perimeter position with ease. We all heard the announcers say that it appeared GS was playing 6-on-5 because they were able to trap and close-out all positions of the perimeter so effectively.


[Edited by - blueseats on 05-20-2007 6:59 PM]

I think we are going in circles a little bit. I won't address the defensive issues with Dallas because their problems in that department are obvious. And I think we agree that Dirk is part of that deficiency. In terms of Golden State being able to play small ball, I'll go back to my previous point - punishing a team inside can be done in various ways. And the pick and roll is often more efficient than a post-up because of less setup-time, more positional control and, for the opposing defense, the difficulty of double teaming a 7 foot, 250 lbs cutter. If Dirk would just roll to the basket once in his life, he might realize the advantages of being 7 foot tall. That was the difference in the series, as one-sided as it was.

The pick and roll is a play that allows you to get under the defense; the guard must read the movements of the opposing big man and the pick has to react to the decisions of the opposing guard. Its like a game of poker, where a quick, 3 point shooting 7 foot player is the ace in hand.

Posted by nixluva:

Apparently the Bulls AGREE with me. I've been arguing about the prospects of this team making a deal that will improve them and one of my contentions is that despite cap space, MLE etc. their options for finding what they need come down to having to TRADE one of their young studs. The guy that has already been on highest demand has been Deng. Of course they may be able to work something else out but the point is that it's gonna cost the Bulls and they may not want to pay the freight. If you go back and read my observations you'll see that they are making the same kinds of conclusions I made:

Bulls' reality: Change
To obtain an interior scorer, roster moves likely will be needed

By K.C. Johnson
Tribune staff reporter
Published May 19, 2007, 7:22 PM CDT

After talking to his players collectively late Thursday and individually all day Friday, general manager John Paxson put off his postmortem with the media until Monday.

That the Bulls' No. 1 need hasn't changed all season means the weekend wasn't a suspenseful one.

"We'd like to add some interior scoring and length and athleticism," coach Scott Skiles said, echoing Paxson's comments from the first day of training camp in October 2006.

Paxson declined to include Luol Deng in substantive trade talks for Memphis forward-center Pau Gasol in February, meaning the need must be addressed via the NBA draft, trade or free agency.

"We need a big man, somebody we can rely on to score in the post and demand a double-team," guard Ben Gordon said. "That would free up guys on the perimeter and take a little pressure off us."

Of course, unless the Bulls want to develop another player through the draft, to get is to give. The Bulls are loaded with young assets, some of which would need to be sacrificed to acquire a bona fide interior scorer.

Armed with only their midlevel salary-cap exception of approximately $5.5 million, the Bulls can't count on free agency to net them more than a journeyman answer.

"As long as it's not me," Gordon said, smiling. "We want to keep everybody, but it's probably not possible if you want to bring in another guy."

That the players are cognizant of this dynamic only confirms one of the certainties of sports: Change is inevitable.

The Bulls' rocky 3-9 start in 2006-07 could be attributed, in part, to eight new faces on the roster, as well as the annual extended November trip. Paxson must walk that fine line of trying to improve his team without disrupting it.

"I don't mind change," Skiles said. "Even after I live somewhere for a while, I get a little restless. But continuity is really important too.

"Because of contractual things, we're obviously going to have some spots open. We're going to try to go get people. We're going to have some natural change for sure. How much depends on once we start meeting and get around draft time and go over our roster."

Tuesday's NBA draft lottery will begin providing some answers. If the Bulls somehow parlay a 1.9 percent chance of landing the No. 1 pick, their problems are solved with eight letters: Greg Oden.

If they stay at their current ninth pick—or drop—then the choices become more difficult.

Paxson has made it clear how fond he is of the young core that has helped changed the losing culture surrounding the Bulls and resulted in three straight playoff appearances.

And Paxson's decision to pass on Gasol speaks to how difficult it is to find the right player at the right price.

"These are the tough decisions," Skiles said. "Do you give up somebody you like? It's hard to trick people these days. It's hard to think we're going to go into this summer and we're going to get this guy and get him for free.

"Not many times does it happen like Detroit got Rasheed [Wallace in 2004] where he went to Atlanta, they had no use for him and within two or three days they just give him to Detroit. It's so rare that stuff happens. Normally you have to give to get."

The players understand this as clearly as they understand they have a general manager who is always seeking improvement.

"Pax always tries to make the team better," Gordon said. "I really commend him for that.

"We've made measurable progress over the last couple of seasons. I don't see why he wouldn't try to do something. I'm looking forward to that."

Unless, of course, as previously mentioned, Gordon is the one contacting moving companies and real estate agents.

The Bulls shocked the NBA last summer by throwing $60 million at Ben Wallace, prompting him to leave the Pistons for a division rival. The 2006-07 season featured progress in the form of winning a playoff series.

But an argument can be made that this summer is equally critical to the Bulls' future.

Stay the course and hope for improvement from within?

Sacrifice assets to make a bold move along the lines of signing Wallace?

As usual, the off-season will be just as intriguing as the regular season and the postseason.

"John doesn't make any secret about it, and he didn't [Thursday] night after the game when we talked to the team about our goals: That's to get better and to be active and to try to improve and make difficult decisions on what you need to do with your roster," Skiles said.

"We certainly don't want to bust up any momentum we've created. But we don't want to come to a standstill. We want to get better."

[Edited by - nixluva on 05-20-2007 8:31 PM]

Posted by codeunknown:

Posted by Bonn1997:

We still need to add a low-post presence too (i.e., someone who can score and pass out of the low post and defend the low post). We have merely one-third of those qualities (as do the Bulls). The only difference is that that's *all* the Bulls need, whereas we need dozens of other things too.

[Edited by - bonn1997 on 05-20-2007 8:45 PM]

Our major need continues to be a great all-around post player.

Posted by codeunknown:

Posted by BlueSeats:


The ability of the Warriors to play small-ball with impunity gave them an edge in quickness that was the deciding factor in the series. They didn't swarm the pick and roll, per se, but their quicker feet allowed them to switch seamlessly and get up on almost every perimeter position with ease. We all heard the announcers say that it appeared GS was playing 6-on-5 because they were able to trap and close-out all positions of the perimeter so effectively.


[Edited by - blueseats on 05-20-2007 6:59 PM]

I think we are going in circles a little bit. I won't address the defensive issues with Dallas because their problems in that department are obvious. And I think we agree that Dirk is part of that deficiency. In terms of Golden State being able to play small ball, I'll go back to my previous point - punishing a team inside can be done in various ways. And the pick and roll is often more efficient than a post-up because of less setup-time, more positional control and, for the opposing defense, the difficulty of double teaming a 7 foot, 250 lbs cutter. If Dirk would just roll to the basket once in his life, he might realize the advantages of being 7 foot tall. That was the difference in the series, as one-sided as it was.

The pick and roll is a play that allows you to get under the defense; the guard must read the movements of the opposing big man and the pick has to react to the decisions of the opposing guard. Its like a game of poker, where a quick, 3 point shooting 7 foot player is the ace in hand.

Code, it doesn't have to be either/or between a pick and roller and a post presence. In an ideal world a team would have both. I consider the Larry Brid Celtics to have had one of the great frontcourts of all time. Bird could pick and roll all day long, Kevin McHale had some of the most beguiling post moves of all time, and The Chief was everything you'd want in a skilled, scrappy, cleanup big. It's the addition of a skilled interior player, to create that kind of versatility, that people are looking to add to teams like Chicago and Dallas who can already pick and roll with Deng and Dirk. It's about adding complexity and options to an offense to bring it from good to great.

Posted by BlueSeats:

Code, it doesn't have to be either/or between a pick and roller and a post presence. In an ideal world a team would have both. I consider the Larry Brid Celtics to have had one of the great frontcourts of all time. Bird could pick and roll all day long, Kevin McHale had some of the most beguiling post moves of all time, and The Chief was everything you'd want in a skilled, scrappy, cleanup big. It's the addition of a skilled interior player, to create that kind of versatility, that people are looking to add to teams like Chicago and Dallas who can already pick and roll with Deng and Dirk. It's about adding complexity and options to an offense to bring it from good to great.

Posted by codeunknown:

Posted by nixluva:

Posted by BlueSeats:

Code, it doesn't have to be either/or between a pick and roller and a post presence. In an ideal world a team would have both. I consider the Larry Brid Celtics to have had one of the great frontcourts of all time. Bird could pick and roll all day long, Kevin McHale had some of the most beguiling post moves of all time, and The Chief was everything you'd want in a skilled, scrappy, cleanup big. It's the addition of a skilled interior player, to create that kind of versatility, that people are looking to add to teams like Chicago and Dallas who can already pick and roll with Deng and Dirk. It's about adding complexity and options to an offense to bring it from good to great.

In the playoffs defenses will take away what you do if it's not as BlueSeats says, complex enough. The Best teams have Multiple ways of beating you. Not just one or two. If you take away plan A or B, they've got a plan C too. The Spurs and Pistons have the most complex offenses. They are in addition great defensive teams, but they have a good combination of size and speed. Post play, slashing and shooting.

Luva', there are examples both ways. Utah had one of the simplest offenses and the reached the finals twice. Post-up offense isn't so complex either.

Posted by BlueSeats:

I think we can all agree there is no singular thing "required or sufficient" to win a championship. We can only discuss those things that have empirically proven themselves to be most successful. And I'd venture to guess a premier post player will have been present on more past championship teams than any other single entity. In fact, if there have been as many as 10 championships in the past 60 years won by a team without a dominant post presence I'd be surprised, and I say this having just glanced at the past 60 winners.

Posted by nixluva:

Posted by BlueSeats:

I think we can all agree there is no singular thing "required or sufficient" to win a championship. We can only discuss those things that have empirically proven themselves to be most successful. And I'd venture to guess a premier post player will have been present on more past championship teams than any other single entity. In fact, if there have been as many as 10 championships in the past 60 years won by a team without a dominant post presence I'd be surprised, and I say this having just glanced at the past 60 winners.

I agree, I think that there are too many variables to make this a black or white issue. Teams sometimes get over, due to the lack of good competition. There are lots of times when a team has made it to the Finals coming out of a weak Conference. The thing is that if you simply look at what teams are most anxious to acquire it would be a STUD post player. Oden is just the latest example of that. Not that teams would look past Durant, but if you had to build a team from scratch you'd love to have that Bigman to anchor your team. What has happened is that there has been a lack of quality Bigs and this has forced teams to go for alternative ways of going about putting together winning teams. STILL those teams haven't given up looking to bolster their post presence when they can.

Code, i'm gonna ask you to please tone down your attacks towards me. I haven't posted any such attacks of you and your posting style. I'd appreciate if we can keep this to the subject of the discussion and not make it personal. I really don't know what it is that makes some of us here think it's OK to go overboard in their posts, but it's really not very good for keeping things civil. If i did the same to you this could degrade into an ugly argument. It's also very easy to talk tough on line. I doubt that many of us would do the same in person.

Posted by BlueSeats:

Posted by codeunknown:


Haha, touche...and I think we're approaching "dead horse" status with this particular topic so I'll just say one more thing. Just to emphasize, looking at championship teams without longitudinal data and controls is a flawed way to determine the causality of an element in winning. Detroit might prove that this year. Anyway, in Eddy we trust, so lets see how it plays out.

We are beating a dead horse, but let me get my last whack in. I think we agree that Dallas and Chicago need more interior scoring - how they go about getting that probably depends as much on the players available as how they score their points. I simply focus on the low post scorer in their instances because those teams are already proficient in the pick and roll, and bigs are their positions of greatest need, so a post presence just seems the natural addition. Sure, they can improve internally through execution, and I think Dallas thought that would be sufficient last year, after going 7 games in the finals, but their early elimination this year, I think, begs for a quantum leap over incremental improvement. Chicago is far enough away they'll take any scoring from their PF, but their perimeter oriented game begs for some power upfront.

And all this isn't intended as an endorsement of Curry as he's so deficient in so many aspects of post play as to mitigate the effectiveness of his game. However, he also wouldn't be the first starter in our rotation I'd look to move.

Who are our starters anyway?