jnrjr79

From KC:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports...0,973614.story


Darko is a useful defender, though not as good as Asik. What kind of a deal would he command at this point?

RollWithEm

Closer to the league min than to Asik's deal for sure.

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Firefight

Let Asik walk... That contract won't be as bad for Houston because they can space it out, but for the Bulls, that 3rd year would be killer, especially with them potentially having some major cap space that year to chase some FA's ...

Asik will probably continue to grow into an even better defender, and may even improve a little on teh offensive end, but I think we've seen enough. He will never be worth that money, and his offensive game and lack of hands will continue to hamper him in the NBA.

mvP to the Wee

Ugh.

Dornado

Asik is a far better rebounder than Milicic, and probably a better defender overall (though I'll plead a little ignorance on Darko's team D). Interestingly, even though Darko has been around forever he's only one year older than Omer. I don't mind this given the pricetag relative to Asik I guess.

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Rhyder

Not at all. I am still shocked at the money offered Humphries and McGee. Makes Omer's look almost reasonable. I think Omer is worth 3-5 million per year, and paying him 8 makes it $9-15 million dollars overpaid over the life of the contract. To me, this contract will be almost Boozeresque outside of the obvious age difference. If signing Asik causes us either to lose Taj, lose out on max FA cap space two summers from now, or make us pay the LT two consecutive seasons, he is not worth it in the slightest to me.

I would have liked to have retained Korver for the year, but management probably knows better than we do our chances at competiting for the championship. To me, this says no and better to get a TPE than keep him here for $10 million for no real benefit.

yodurk

I wonder if the front office has not fully decided on matching Asik yet. The talks with Darko might be to feel out if they can get 80% of Asik's production for 25% of the price. If they can get Darko for $2M/yr or less (as opposed to Omer's $8M/yr), then to me the decision is obvious; cut Omer loose, sign Darko. I like Omer and all, and I'm not totally opposed to keeping him even at that price, but for a guy playing 20 min/game at most as a backup 5, you can get away with taking a slightly lesser player in order to save some cap room better spent on other positions.

King Joseus

No link at this point, but twitter says we've signed Nazr Mohammed.

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narek

there's a follow up on the tweets from Nick Friedell, but it is all unnamed sources:

http://espn.go.com/chicago/nba/story...-nazr-mohammed

Hoodey

You know what's funny? The more I read evaluations of Bulls fans, the more they always include two things. Rebounding and defense. They never seem to address scoring. It's almost as if scoring "doesn't count." "Hey but this guy scores better." "Scoring?! The team with the most points only wins the game man. That's played out. I'd rather lose but play in a way that would make 1981 Bobby Knight happiest."

Who was a better defensive team? The 93 Bulls or 93 Knicks?

The Bulls opponents scored 3.5 more PPG against them than the Knicks opponents did against the Knicks. The Knicks were 2nd in the league in rebounding, the Bulls were 12th.

Guess who could just flat fill it up? The Bulls.

Guess who moved on despite the misguided characterization of basketball by Bulls fans from 04-present? The Bulls.

I sure am glad that even though the Bulls were good defensively and rebounding, they didn't put all their eggs in that basket.

I'm so glad that when teams like the 04-12 Bulls got in Jordan's Bulls face and said, "hey, look at us, we defend and rebound," Jordan was like "yeah, I'm just going to tear you a new a-hole taking it straight to the cup."

The Knicks were the best defensive team in the league. And yet all I remember is Marv Albert's words in game 4. "He has 50! Michael Jordan with fifty points..."

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Dornado

This evaluation included defense and rebounding because we were talking about losing a role player whose specialty was defense and rebounding. If the '93 Bulls lost Bill Cartwright and replaced him with another player with a similar skill set I imagine I'd have made a similar comment. Even the '96 Bulls had Randy Brown... it is okay to have defensive role players, that does not mean that I don't want guys that can score too.

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Hoodey

In your case yes you were speaking of this kind of player.

However, my greater point was about the evaluation of the fan base of basketball for 8 years. Scoring has not really been a part of it. It's a fan base of people whom I have questions about in terms of if they watched Jordan or really appreciate why those teams stuck it to people.

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Dornado

It definitely plagued us during the Skiles era (and in the beginning of the Thibs era, though Rose is a huge lift obviously), I agree - and it is not just scoring, but how you score that is important. We lack ball handlers who can attack the basket (which is even more important in the post-MJ/post handcheck era, I think) and guys who can create high percentage offense for themselves (and others) in the post - like MJ did. Even if you don't have a post threat, you need guys that can create high percentage looks for themselves when needed.

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Hoodey

Don't get me wrong, I think this place is way better than the Skiles era. As we get farther from Krause being fired and the "hey, we're only one non-ultra-competitive move from becoming the 2002 Bulls" fear mongering, of course things will get better.

I'd agree with what you said and then ask, "okay, who besides Rose has fit the bill you described in that paragraph since Paxson took over?" You look at Rose, who I'll further discuss after this paragraph, and he's a guy John Paxson lucked into. So, whether you happen to support Pax or not, is it fair to say that he struggles to make guys like this a priority?

Then, on Rose, I'll say he penetrates well, but I wouldn't call him a guy who attacks the basket. He can get to the second or final level of defenders well, but then struggles to have an explosive finishing move that is high percentage. Basically when he gets to that second level, he appears to run out of gas in terms of explosive finishing.

This team needs a guy who can put it in the bucket big time to go with Rose.

If you commit to Cousins or Bynum, you're talking about making an organization-wide commitment to getting a guy who can continuously coach these guys in the post fundamentals that were a "high school given" during John Wooden's twilight.

If it's a perimeter guy then he has to be the total package. Speed, size, the ability to put it on the floor and then the ability to beat the second wave.

And sometimes that means rolling the dice on a guy like DeRozan when you may find out he just doesn't fit the bill as a "star" in those regards once you pair him with Rose.

I also think that a big part of this is taking the load off of Rose. If you notice, Rose shot 50% as a rookie. So did DeRozan. As players taking on the load, they have each shot much lower. Put them both together where it's double trouble and it may lead to much better scoring.

I already KNOW Luol Deng, Joakim Noah and Boozer don't fit this bill. However, to be fair to Noah, on his deal he'd be a good #3 defensive/rebounding guy. He, much less than Deng or Boozer, doesn't make his money on scoring.

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I'm just here to talk about basketball. Feel free to exchange ideas with me, disagree or debate. I'm not interested in what you think of me as a person and/or large posts about this. Debate the ideas, or don't. If you have something about me like a really weird post of a link of me on the radio, just PM me.