The reality of Fizer and ERob

Artest wasn't that disappointing his second year.
He maintained his rookie numbers, which were good, in identical minutes. That's not a disappointment. It's only if we look back at his third year that we can say that his second year was subpar, knowing now what he is capable of.

Brad Miller, while certainly injured, was a disappointment in only that the Bulls were sad he couldn't stay healthy. When he was healthy, we were happy to see him crash boards hard and show a little scoring potential.

And to be honest with you, ERob and Fizer didn't really have disappointing seasons.. that's not why this post exists.

I think the reason that ERob and Fizer are left out in the rain is that Artest and Miller were starters, and key pieces of the team at that time. ERob and Fizer are not, and there's no reason to try to make them key pieces, either. With Hassell, Crawford, and now Mason as being perfectly skilled and functional SG's (with a lot of upside left to go with all three), with Rose manning most of the minutes at SF, and with Chandler taking 30+ mpg at PF, ERob and Fizer are simply not going to fit. It's not because they aren't good players, or that they won't become good players. It's because they just won't get enough time on the floor, because others on the team deserve it. Erob and Fizer both deserve their own share of PT as well, Fizer much more than ERob, but they 'd have to find it at other teams.

And hopefully, we're thinking the same thing.

Big picture here. I feel that my stance is really worth defending.

A team is not simply the quality of its players. A team is taking the key pieces and building the correct roles to fill in around them. You can't just take a bunch of excellent players and put them on the floor together.

No one ever mentions the Fizer-Curry chemistry, or the Fizer-Crawford chemistry, or the Fizer-Rose chemistry. By no one, I mean not only the people on this board, but the players themselves never mention Fizer. Why not?

I watched him play once. He is a good player. He can take his defenders one on one. I saw him drive past Garnett for a dunk last winter. He has decent quickness and can put the ball on the floor, although he'll stun no one with flashy handles or crossovers. He can rebound, when he tries, and his rebounding efforts improved over the season.

Eddie Robinson is also a good player. The Bulls like him more, as well, especially after dishing out the contract to him. He's athletic and can be a decent player. But he is chronically injured, and he really doesn't have a jump shot. What kind of shooting guard lacks a jumper? The Bulls must see a drastic improvement in his offseason training to consider starting him at SG. It seemed to me that even Eddie himself knew his own limitations as a shooter... in 163 career games, he took only 13 3-point shots, sinking 4 of them.

But the fact is, Robinson belongs on another team, like the Clippers or even the Mavericks, where they can use his athleticism with a fast-tempo offensive game. The Bulls are fast and athletic too, but they need to work on scoring in general, and that means having guys that can shoot the ball. Crawford, Hassell, and Rose are all better jump shooters than Robinson. That's just how it is.

The arguments that people have presented for keeping Fizer and Robinson mostly revolve around their potential to really play the game. But my argument is that they are almost TOO talented, and will get squeezed for minutes as well as be counterproductive in filling the roles needed to support the true stars, in Chandler, Curry, Rose, Williams and perhaps Crawford. Fizer and Robinson are too good to be shaped and molded into good role players to come off the bench and do the things that benches are expected to do: score in bunches, play an elite level of defense, and crash boards.

They can stay for a season, and if somehow Robinson shows himself to be a different player than what I'm putting him down for, then maybe he'll stay around, especially since he's difficult to trade. But Fizer won't stay. At the max, he'll be for his third and probably fourth year, but that's it. He won't want to stay, and we don't particularly want him to stay either.