Golden State has won 10 in a row and is 15-2, best record in the league. Portland discovered some defense to go with their explosive offense. They're 9-1 in their last 10, and are at 14-4, first place in the Northwest. Toronto, Memphis, the Clippers, San Antonio, and Dallas are 8-2. The Clippers have the worst record of that group at 13-5. Washington, Atlanta, Denver, and Houston are 7-3. Denver is the only .500 record team of all the teams mentioned so far. They're 9-9. Cleveland and Phoenix are 6-4 in their last 10 games. Cleveland at 9-7 is 3 wins behind the Bulls at 12-7. The Bulls are 5-5 in their last 10. After a 7-2 start, they've lost some steam. If the season ended today, they'd be 4th seed behind Toronto, Washington, and Atlanta. Also at 5-5 their last 10 games are Milwaukee, Indiana, and New Orleans.
The "consensus" 1 & 2 teams are 4 & 5 now. Toronto, Washington, and Atlanta deserve quite a bit of respect. Clearly. It wasn't long ago they were doormats. Milwaukee was a team that tanked last year. Now they're 5th seed. The East is lame. There are 7 teams with 13 or more wins in the West, just 1 in the East. If you're any good at all in the East, you should be feasting on the lesser competition.
I'm satisfied with our start to the season, but the Bulls aren't hitting it out of the park with their play on the floor right now. We're almost twenty games into the season and we're still not a good defensive team. There's something wrong with that. We're kind of lumbering along and doing just enough to keep our W/L record within a zone of reasonableness. For a change though, we're lumbering along and doing just enough to out-talent other teams, instead of out-hustling them. There are a lot of positive vital signs: Gasol looks good, Jimmy looks great, and Rose has looked good enough. The biggest hole in our rotation right now is the putrid play of McSnell, which creates a hole in our lineups because we don't have a reliable backup 2/3, which makes the rest of the backcourt sensitive to injuries.
The Bulls had continuity and all that stuff that was supposed to be an advantage. So far it's been enough of an advantage to squeak by. I expected us to be a 60 win team. We're looking like a 50 win team, which is still good.
There are a half dozen teams in the East that are good. Bulls are one of them. How good? Aw heck, it's only December and the positives seem to significantly outweigh the negatives. For now that's good enough for me. Sent from my Venue 8 Pro 5830 using Tapatalk
The real season doesn't start until the end of the regular season. However, the regular season should prepare you for the playoffs. How you practice is how you play. That's what my better coaches would say.
Actually, I do. It's why Thibs plays every game like it's the last one ever. Playoffs is the goal. Then let's see how we stack up against teams playing balls out to win like we do in the regular season.
Cleveland may be 6-4 in its last 10, but I should have mentioned they've won 5 in a row. Apparently LeBron has decided to be the alpha player he was for the Heat.
Cleveland looks to have come out of its early season slumber and are rounding into form pretty quickly. Sure didn't take that long.
Fine. I'll bite, you troll. First, I don't think Thibs coaches every game like it's his last. I think he's coaching for the playoffs, he just doesn't believe there's a causal connection between roster minutes and having a healthy roster for the playoffs. He could have had a couple more wins this season if he'd had switched to using a one-big lineup, which is to say he's sacrificed wins so that Mirotic, and even Cameron Baristow get development opportunities. He also leaves Mirotic out on an island against guards all the time, sacrificing buckets for development opportunities. Secondly, I do think there's something to peaking late in the season and starting slow. RealGMs wiretap headlines has two articles about the Warriors. In one of them, Lacomb states that Mark Jackson didn't understand Xs and Os, and that Jackson's assistants were goofs. In the other, Kerr compares the Warriors to the frickin' 01-02 Kings. Even with their prodigious talent, that team is 100% going to burn out before the playoffs.
The 72 win Bulls team could have coasted into the playoffs. The 69 win team even moreso, as they were defending champs for the 4th time. That 69 win team played Jordan and Pippen both 38 minutes a game at ages 33 and 31. That PJax could motivate those guys to go out and play hard enough to win that many games is what I'm talking about. That team played Dickey Simpkins in just 43 games, and only 8 minutes per when he did play. That's a blueprint for how a championship team plays. I disagree that Thibs could win more going to a 4 guard/1 big lineup. I've seen most of the games and he just doesn't play that kind of lineup unless the opponents do. And I think I've only really seen it once. Peaking late in the season isn't what those Bulls championship teams did, they played at a super high level for 82 games, then kicked it up a notch. So yeah, I think how they practice (regular season) matters. So does Thibs, or he wouldn't be playing Jimmy with a 15 point lead against opponents 6-12th players. Jimmy's a young guy, 6 years younger than Pippen was back then. Surely he's fit enough to play a couple more minutes a game. As for the Warriors? They're 3rd in the league in PPG and 1st in DRtg. That's a pretty good formula for winning. Last year? They were beaten in 7 in the first round by a 57 win uber talented Clippers team. Not exactly a choke job.
http://espn.go.com/nba/statistics/player/_/stat/minutes/sort/avgMinutes So Butler is #1 in the league in MPG. Lebron is #2 and Kyrie is #3. Love is #11. Are they up in arms in Cleveland? Is this good news for the Bulls since the Cavs are now destined to break down come playoff time? Pau is tied for #11 at 35.9 MPG a game, and that should come down. This has more to do with the Taj injury and Noah's off and on health as well, more so than a heavy handed Thibs, IMO. If those guys are both healthy, I'd like to see Pau at around 28. Its a tough spot for Thibs though, since we need Pau to play, especially when Taj and Noah are out, in order to try and win games. One guy that isn't complaining about Thibs I imagine is Jimmy Butler, as he's playing his way into a MAX contract under his care. The 3rd Bull I see on the list of MPG is Noah at #66 at 31.8. So, the Bulls have #1, #11 and #66 as their top 3.
Seems to me that Thibodeau has always been pretty clear about minutes...if you're young, healthy, worthy of big minutes and don't have a management-imposed limit, you're going to play 38+ minutes if a game is relatively close. Gasol may need to bring Thibs his birth certificate. This said, while the minutes per game stat can get people all excited, the Bulls have no player in the top 10 in total minutes played...Butler is #15, Dunleavy (only starter to play in every game so far) is #57, Pau Gasol is #63 and Noah is #96. IMO, it's arguable and circumstance-dependent on which of mpg and total minutes is more important in terms of possibly causing a negative effect on player performance. Right now, I'm not too concerned about Butler's minutes. Gasol and Dunleavy are the ones that concern me a bit. Dunleavy played over 2,500 minutes last season. That strikes me as too many yet he's on a similar pace this season...I blame McDermott and Snell. Gasol's also on a pace that would take him over 2,500 minutes. With Mirotic's emergence, it shouldn't be that tough to keep Gasol rested.
I think the case of what minutes a player ought to get is a case-by-case thing. Different guys due to age, style of play and build can handle different levels of minutes. Lebron's been playing close to 40mpg as the best player on his team for 10 seasons and it doesn't seem to affect him at all. Karl Malone played 38 MPG at the age of 38! With that in mind I don't think the Bulls are in the midst of a minute crisis. Butler plays big minutes but he's the exact kind of guy that can handle them. The only guy that has me a little worried right now is Gasol. 35.9 is just above the threshold of where you'd want to see a guy like him at. I think 34 would be okay, and around 32 would be ideal. However, if you subtract minutes due to injuries I don't think anyone is being overplayed. When Derrick has started and finished each game Kirk has averaged 24 minutes a game. When all 3 have been healthy the minutes breakdown between Gasol, Noah, and Taj has looked like this: Gasol: 33 Noah: 31 Taj: 26 Most of these games happened when Niko was still wearing his NBA diapers. Those 3 numbers look reasonable to me. The only long run impediment I see to minutes allotment is the suckage of McDermott and Snell. We don't have an adequate backup 2/3 on our roster, which creates minute imbalances elsewhere.
Just great stuff. Thibodeau doesn't seem to mind playing Hinrich and Butler at the wings together with either Rose or Brooks at PG so the team isn't stressed much by the shortcomings of Snell and McDermott. Of course, if Butler were to go down for any extended period, the team is screwed.
