[DHarris34Phan]

2000-2001 Bulls

PG: Khalid El-Amen/Bryce Drew
SG: Jamal Crawford/Fred Hoiberg
SF: Ron Artest/Ron Mercer
PF: Elton Brand/Marcus Fizer
C: Brad Miller/Benoit Benjamin

I didn't observe the Bulls as carefully as you all probably did, but looking at the team in 2000-2001, I want to know...

What went wrong with this team? I know that they were all very young players, but going 15-67 I think is way worse than the talent they had.

I want to know why this team didn't work out, and why or why not the team had to be changed.....

In my opinion, this team was one quality PG (Jay Williams?) away from being a playoff contender in the East, and from the looks of it now (player progression, 4 more offseasons), would probably be a Finals Contender now (sans the Artest Suspension).

So, from a Bulls fan perspective, why was the 2000-2001 team broken up, and do you agree with it?

 

[ace20004u]

2000-2001 Bulls

PG: Khalid El-Amen/Bryce Drew
SG: Jamal Crawford/Fred Hoiberg
SF: Ron Artest/Ron Mercer
PF: Elton Brand/Marcus Fizer
C: Brad Miller/Benoit Benjamin

I didn't observe the Bulls as carefully as you all probably did, but looking at the team in 2000-2001, I want to know...

What went wrong with this team? I know that they were all very young players, but going 15-67 I think is way worse than the talent they had.

I want to know why this team didn't work out, and why or why not the team had to be changed.....

In my opinion, this team was one quality PG (Jay Williams?) away from being a playoff contender in the East, and from the looks of it now (player progression, 4 more offseasons), would probably be a Finals Contender now (sans the Artest Suspension).

So, from a Bulls fan perspective, why was the 2000-2001 team broken up, and do you agree with it?

I think that roster had a lot of players who hadn't matured yet and the coaching they recieved didn't emphasize the right things. I think this squad probably would have had more sucess if they had a guy like Skiles as coach and had been kept together longer. Incidently, Benout Benjamin wasn't the back up center, it was Dragan Tarlac if memory serves.

 

[The 6ft Hurdle]

That's been the story of the last 6 years.

A lot of talent that'll probably make up a pretty good portion of today's 2nd and 3rd tier of stars, but never really putting the pieces together.

They were all very young players with no experience, no veteran leadership, no good coach, and thus no confidence at all to win.

If you move over a year to 2001-2002, you'll see that we traded Elton Brand and added Tyson Chandler, Brian Skinner, Eddy Curry, and Trenton Hassell.

So much that could've been. Damn.

 

[Fizer Fanatic]

2000-2001 Bulls

What went wrong with this team? I know that they were all very young players, but going 15-67 I think is way worse than the talent they had.

I want to know why this team didn't work out, and why or why not the team had to be changed.....

In my opinion, this team was one quality PG (Jay Williams?) away from being a playoff contender in the East, and from the looks of it now (player progression, 4 more offseasons), would probably be a Finals Contender now (sans the Artest Suspension).

So, from a Bulls fan perspective, why was the 2000-2001 team broken up, and do you agree with it?[/B][/COLOR]

IMO, That team was broken up because JK thought they could never become championship material w/o taking some big chances to get better (hence, the TC & EC experiment). He might have been wrong (hard to know for sure), but I think he was right.

As far as why they stunk so bad, here are my thoughts. JC wasn't yet anything close to what he's been the past two years back at that time, he wasn't ready to play significant minutes yet and so Floyd burried him on the bench in favor of El-Amin who was perhaps worse than JC at that time defensively while being a more willing distributor offensively. JC was a PG, not a SG in those days. Artest was very awkward offensively in those days, he's come a long way since. Mercer was the 2nd best offensive player on that team at the time behind Brand and played SG, not SF. They actually played better than their record IMO. Seems that they played a lot of close games, but most of the time they lacked a dependable 4th quarter go-to guy--Brand & Mercer didn't quite cut it down the stretch. Also, the PG position (both offense & defense) and perimeter offense were well below average and that really hurt their ability to compete. Miller was out of shape at the beginning of the season if I recall correctly.

 

[Rhyder]

IMO, That team was broken up because JK thought they could never become championship material w/o taking some big chances to get better (hence, the TC & EC experiment). He might have been wrong (hard to know for sure), but I think he was right.

As far as why they stunk so bad, here are my thoughts. JC wasn't yet anything close to what he's been the past two years back at that time, he wasn't ready to play significant minutes yet and so Floyd burried him on the bench in favor of El-Amin who was perhaps worse than JC at that time defensively while being a more willing distributor offensively. JC was a PG, not a SG in those days. Artest was very awkward offensively in those days, he's come a long way since. Mercer was the 2nd best offensive player on that team at the time behind Brand and played SG, not SF. They actually played better than their record IMO. Seems that they played a lot of close games, but most of the time they lacked a dependable 4th quarter go-to guy--Brand & Mercer didn't quite cut it down the stretch. Also, the PG position (both offense & defense) and perimeter offense were well below average and that really hurt their ability to compete. Miller was out of shape at the beginning of the season if I recall correctly.

This is a fair assessment on all counts.

I also go as far and say Brad Miller was misused in the system. He was used as our second post option, instead of using his good passing skills and playing a high pick and roll game with Brand. As a result, the ball ended up in Mercer's hands a lot more and he had to jack a lot of shots with the clock winding down, because he was really the only option on the team that could create a shot from the perimeter. The ball in Miller's hands more early in the clock would probably mean a lot less shots for Mercer.

Really, we were just a below average passing team outside of Miller than did not play good defense (outside of Artest). Brand altered some shots, but he was not a force on the defensive end by any stretch.

Artest was out of control offensively that year too, and really was up until he joined the Pacers. He was trying to do too much too fast and never looked comfortable driving to the hoop.

 

[nanokooshball]

First of all our coach was TERRIBLE... ugh just makes me wanna throw up when i think of him

and second of all i think jamal crawford was injured for a lot of the year and that meant our guards STUNK IT UP.... we had no talent there @ all w/o craw-daddy (not that he's a great player.... but he had much more talent than those that played when he was injured)

 

[bullsville]

How do you delete a message?

 

[bullsville]

Now that I think about it, Nocioni's game on offense right now looks a lot like Crazy Ron's did when he was a Bull.

 

[bullsville]

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[johnston797]

JC wasn't hurt that year. He was torn his ACL the next summer. He just was far from ready.

Miller was a bit out of shape. The guards were terrible, just terrible.

Blame it on Krause - why in the world would your backcourt be an unproven Bryce Drew, Crawford at 19, and second rounders El-Amin and Guyton. He aqcuired all 4 guys that summer. What a joke.

Still I like our current core a zillon times better.