He's not an all star. He didn't help us to a .500 record. He is rather ordinary in Cleveland, and he's helped them lose 8 of their last 9. Like Ben Gordon, he was traded into a shithole of a situation, and hasn't thrived. Meanwhile, the Bulls aren't producing worse without him. Dunleavy has grown his PER and PPG at SF, and Snell at SG allows Jimmy to play SF. Seems like we have and continue to not miss a beat when he's not out there for us. BG was our starting SG. Since he left, it's been a revolving door position for us, where nobody has claimed the job. It seems to me the time is ASAP to finally fill the SG position and move Jimmy to SF where he belongs. Dunleavy is a good guy, but he's not our SG or SF of the future.
Good analysis of the past month. Too early to answer the OP question, but I hope that, as with Gordon, the Bulls thrive in his absence.
Well, I don't think the quality of product on the court has changed much. Dunleavy, Snell and Butler have seemingly picked up the slack a bit and Deng hasn't been much of an impact player for Cleveland. Perhaps the Bulls are better off not locking up the aging Deng to near MAX money. We'll see what he gets this offseason and how he produces going forward. Paxson is lucky Gordon didn't say yes to his multi year, multi million dollar back in the day since he's turned out to be a bit of a slug. SG has been a tough position to fill for many years now. And its not like we never had a good one on the roster.
The Bulls' SG situation has been a disaster. I wouldn't say we thrived, but more that we managed in regular season with that handicap. Our SGs' PER, going backward by year: This year - Jimmy 13.2, Kirk 9.4, Snell 8.6 Last year - Rip 10.6, Belinelli 10.4 2011-12 - Rip 7.2, Brewer 12.3, Korver 13.6 2010-11 - Bogans 9.0, Brewer 13.8, Korver 13.0 2009-10 - Salmons 12.7, Kirk 11.6 (he sucked then, too), Flip Murray 12.1 2008-09 - BG 17.0 Not one of his replacements managed a 15 PER, which is average.
Lu missed 12 games in that 66 game season, 2011-12. We won 50. Lu's PER that season was 14.3. Somehow we managed to win in his absence and below average offensive play. He played injured, too. Needed surgery he never got.
The Lu trade actually got me thinking about the Gordon vs. Deng debate. Since Gordon has left Lu's fared much better, but we've had more difficulty filling Gordon's shoes than Lu's (at least so far). Gordon's career took a nosedive after leaving here, but it's always puzzled me why. I don't think he's suffered serious injuries, he's always been a hard worker, and I don't think he's ever had a huge fallout with his coaches. (If I remember correctly he was not part of the player revolt in Detroit....although Rip was). It takes some imagination to think his career would have been different if he would have stayed in Chicago, but I've thought twice about whether or not the Bulls made the best choice about who to let go.
BG was hurt. He wore a massive bandage on his thigh in the Celtics series, and it wasn't fully healed when the next season started. His per 36 numbers were similar in Detroit, and he even outplayed Rip. They started Rip because of his contribution to the team for years. They played BG at PG. They didn't run plays well designed for him. They cut his minutes by a lot. The team culture was terrible. My imagination says he'd have been the starting SG, playing 37 minutes had he stayed. Alongside Rose, the Bulls had a top 5 guard tandem, if not better. Lu? If we kept BG instead, Salmons would have been our SF. When Lu was hurt, Salmons put up 18.3 PPG on .415 from 3pt and a 16.0 PER. He also played very good defense. Salmons did have an every other season was really good thing going on, though. He wasn't very good for us as BG's replacement at SG (alongside Lu) the next season. It ultimately wasn't a Lu or Gordon decision. The Bulls did offer and then rescind a hefty offer to BG before he split. They also could have extended BG instead of overpaying Hinrich. Kirk went from a 17 PER to 13 and downhill from there to earn his contract. 13 PER for $11M, year one. Kirk has had a PER of 12+ once since then. BG has never had a PER worse than 12+, though he may this season. And BG definitely burned his bridges in Charlotte. After complaining in the press about the situation there, he's not been in their rotation.
Who did Lu beat out to be all star last season? The question came up in a separate discussion. The only name player I could come up with is Paul George. I looked at George's stats and he had a 16.8 PER last year.
George was on the all-star team last season, yes? John Wall, Deron Williams, Paul Pierce... all those guys had higher PERs than Deng last season, for whatever that's worth. Of course, Boozer and Nate had higher PERs than Deng last season too.
They picked him as SF, no? So did he beat out DWill or did they just have enough guards? Yeah, George was an all-star. So Lu made it over guys like Hedo or what?
I'm not sure if the coaches fill all-star slots like that, like they need 2 SFs and 2Cs etc. If we're looking at just SFs, Paul Pierce is the big name guy that didn't make the team last year. He was still productive last year. John Wall and Deron Williams were also two guys that had good per game numbers last year in the east who had the snub. Stats wise, deng was pretty weak in PER last year, there are 153 players ahead of him.
Do you think the all star selections would include 9 PGs? At some point they have to say "we have enough PGs." It's not like they needed to pick a Bull because of the record - we had Noah as an all-star.
I don't know exactly how they do it. Yes, the 9 PG way seems silly. To answer your question, a big name SF that Deng beat out was Paul Pierce. There were dozens and dozens of players with higher PERs than Deng, but Deng has the intangibles and was coming from a winning team environment. I think a better question would be will Deng ever make the all-star team again? I don't think it will happen in Cleveland, if early returns are any indication.
I think you're right. Nope to Cleveland, yes if he goes and plays for the Lakers. As to the broader question about the value of Deng and Ben Gordon for that matter, I don't think we're asking the right questions. Did those players bring us substantially closer to a championship? You'd have to say yes, right? With Deng and Butler, the Bulls had as good a chance as any at guarding the Lebron/Wade, Durant/Westbrook and Steenson/George combos. This current rendition of the roster will get blasted against those elite teams. Snell and Butler is a solid defensive tandem but you can't give those two significant minutes, at least at this stage of their careers, because of their offensive shortcomings. I fully recognize that Gordon has not played well since he left. Hasn't watching DJ Augustin and Little Nate, and JLIII taught us that fit is key. The thing I used to love about Ben Gordon is that he'd almost singlehandedly win you two games in a seven game playoff series. That's everything the Bulls have been missing since Thibodeau arrived, well that and a healthy Rose. I view Gordon as a good player whose career got derailed when he made a poor roster choice in free agency and then was traded to another team that featured Kemba Walker, a player with with many similar skills and shortcomings. So sure, the Snell/Butler/Dunleavy trio has done a passable job filling in for Deng. Although I think they would have won in Golden State had Deng still been on the roster. But that's kind of beside the point. Those players can't give you what you need in the playoffs to matchup with the elite teams.
Good post. The problem with the Deng+Jimmy reasoning is we haven't really seen them stop LeBron/Wade, etc. In the ECF with MVP Rose, LeBron put up 25.8/7.8/6.6, Wade put up 18.8/6.4/2.2, and Bosh put up 23.2/7.6. Nobody was stopped. They were guarded, but so what? LeBron got to rest guarding Deng, or Deng wasn't enough of a threat to force LeBron to not guard Rose in the clutch. We played OKC once this year. Jimmy played little due to turf toe. Westbrook and Durant had great games. We would only see them in the finals anyway, if we could get that far. Indy? Beat us 97-80. Lu went 6-18 and was outscored by George 21-17. Stephenson outscored Jimmy 15-7. We beat em 110-94 the next game (at home), we had 7 guys in double figures; two 20+. It seems to me the winning formula is to outscore them, not try to hold them to 0 points. The former is possible, the latter impossible.
