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diderotn
Posts: 25657
Alba Posts: 0
Joined: 4/15/2004
Member: #650
USA
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The baby Bulls are now an excellent squad. I am very sure that one day our Knicks will be the same....We need talents in our frontcourt. Please Isiah, go after 3 capable big men to man the SF/PF/C positions.....I have one name for you already: Jamal Sampson
2. How did the Bulls, without warning, get so good defensively?
This time we turn to Ben Gordon for the ready response.
"Coach Skiles," Gordon said.
That's it?
"Yup," Gordon said.
You guys just do whatever Skiles says?
"Yup," Gordon said.
Seems that the revamped Baby Bulls are much more obedient than they used to be, but Skiles has an explanation for his ability to get through where Tim Floyd and Bill Cartwright failed.
"We have a totally different team," the coach said. "That has something to do with it."
Skiles also tries to keep the schemes simple, because of the inexperience. But he doesn't have to compromise on effort, getting dogged work defensively in spite of the fact that his roster is so short on veteran know-how. You can argue that the Bulls' top six players are 24 or younger, with second-year point guard Kirk Hinrich ranking as the senior member of a group that starts with a 19-year-old (Deng).
"The coach demands it out of you," Deng said. "If you want to play, you have to play D."
As a result, they've formed an active-hands unit that allows the opposition to shoot just 41.4 percent from the field, lowest in the league. Skiles doesn't deny that he misses the days when, with a veteran-laden team in Phoenix, he could introduce a couple coverages at the morning shootaround and know Jason Kidd and Co. could carry them out in the game that night. But he's growing to like simplicity, too.
"We were actually really surprised," Skiles said of Chicago's defensive struggles in November. "We defended so well in camp, right from the beginning of two-a-days, and then we just came out giving up 100 points, 48 percent shooting, We were fouling at an unbelievable rate. Then when we really looked at it, it was just basically one guy breaking down every possession. It wasn't a total team thing. As soon as we got after those individual breakdowns, we started becoming a very good defensive team.
"With our youth, we're not going to be a 100-plus points-per-game team [offensively]. We're going to be in the mid-to-low 90s. So doesn't take a genius to figure out that, if we don't keep the other team in the upper 80s, we're probably in trouble. ... For being rookies [or close to it], they've been exceptional."
3. How has Skiles, a supposed screamer, connected with these particular players?
Reason A: Insiders say Skiles isn't nearly the screamer that his reputation suggests, and that he's far more a teacher than a screamer in Chicago.
Reason B: The advantage to having so many young guys, as opposed to veterans, is that they're less likely to fire back at a demanding coach than vets would.
"I think so," Curry said. "I think that's one of the reasons we've been able to turn it around so fast."
Curry was careful to clarify that Skiles is as hard-nosed [and blunt] as legend has it. "Harder than I can probably explain," Curry said after a long pause. "He's a tough guy. He really demands perfection from this team, and we try to give it to him."
Gordon echoed that opinion, putting Skiles in the same intensity class as his University of Connecticut coach, Jim Calhoun.
"They're about as demanding as demanding gets," Gordon said. "They know exactly what they want and they're very confident in their teaching."
Yet Gordon quickly adds that he thinks that kind of push "is something I need in my career," and he's not the only Bull who feels that way. Several young Bulls come from good programs where respect for the coach is ingrained early -- Gordon from UConn, Kirk Hinrich from Kansas, Chris Duhon and Deng from Duke, even Andres Nocioni from Argentina's gold-medal winning national team. In an era when top draftees rarely stay in college for more than a year or two, the experience those players bring from their years in the best college systems is an undeniable plus.
Curry and Chandler, meanwhile, seem ready for someone to push them in the right direction after three lost seasons. Having been bashed so much locally and nationally for their lack of development and consistency, they're both willing to absorb Skiles' tough love if it means that they'll continue to rebound.
"The inexperience is not really that bad, because even though they're young, a lot of these guys are mature for their ages," Davis said. "They're good kids, so we don't worry about them being young. The biggest thing is, they're really listening."
4. Will Bulls fans -- and Bulls management -- continue to be patient?
The fans have been amazingly patient, so patient that the Bulls have no right to expect more. Some sort of dropoff is understandable after a run of six championships in eight seasons, but the Bulls haven't merely faded. In the six seasons since its last title in 1998, the franchise has posted a cumulative record of 119-341.
Finally, at age 22, Chandler and Curry are giving the Bulls more than smiles and photo ops.
Yet the patience shown by general manager John Paxson is almost as laudable. There were widespread calls for a major shakeup when the Bulls opened 0-9. Curry, a restricted free agent this summer, was, in particular, a pretty unanimous choice to be the first one traded away.
Yet Paxson held firm. GMs everywhere called, but Paxson, according to league sources, didn't want to be the one who had lived through Curry's growing pains and then moved him just in time for the 22-year-old to blossom. It's a stance that history supports, since most every big man to jump directly from high school to the pros eventually makes it.
So somehow he convinced Curry, after his mother and agent demanded a trade, to put off contract-extension talks until the summer and focus on the season.
"We established that early," Curry said.
A few months later, Curry and Chandler are at the forefront -- or at least the front court -- of a nucleus that has rival GMs envious. The roster Paxson has assembled recently prompted influential Chicago Sun-Times columnist Jay Mariotti, a regular on ESPN's "Around The Horn," to write that Paxson "has moved on to something more amazing" some 12 years removed from his famed clinching jumper against Phoenix in the 1993 NBA Finals.
"We feel within our organization in the past year and a half or so, we've definitely turned a couple of corners," Skiles said. "We're moving in the right direction and all that. But you don't get anything for that.
"We want what everybody wants. We want a ring. That's what everyone's trying to get. But from where we came from, we've got to sort of get back in the game first. Which is becoming a competitive team every night, winning games [and] at some point becoming a playoff team, and then you take it from there. Normally, teams get in the playoffs, they take their lumps for a few years, they make progress, and sometimes they win it. It's a long, long process."
The true Knickabocker..........
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2/11/2005 9:43 AM
