Tryptophan Aftermath

by Bluelou on Nov 23, 2007 1:08 PM CST

After a day of over-indulging, sleeping on the couch through football snooze-fests and thinking of things that we all have to be very thankful for (the Bulls being 2-8 not being one of them)...
I find myself thinking the same thing(s) over and over about the Bulls' dysfunctionality and anemic performance in virtually every catagory...

Say and think what you want about player's abilities and needing to find it within themselves to play well regardless of their surrounding situation(s) (coaching, player chemestry, etc..)...
And that they are "professionals" and get PAID to do just that and dig it out no matter what...

But that is idealistic thinking - for modern times.
In the good ol' days, perhaps....Players like Bird, Magic and Jordan would dig deep and bring it from within....pushing themselves above and beyond in the most difficult adversities....when players got paid according to their talents and accomplishments AFTER they accomplished them.

But one must remember that the NBA is not the bold and brash league that it once was. And players with true class and polished talent are far and few between these days.
The NBA is merely a SHELL of what it used to be....riddled with spoiled rotten gang-bangers that tatoo themselves into oblivion, punch their own team mates, choke their coaches, and turn the used-to-be revered court into brawl-fest wrestling rings.

And THAT is why coaching is even MORE critical, now more than ever.
Heck, even the dynasty BULLS didn't get to the next level until Jackson took over, and then he did it again in LA.
A true SUPERSTAR leader AND coaching have to be together....at the same time....and it almost seems like over the years, the NBA has groomed itself to be this way, for marketing, money, to fill seats, to sell merchandise, and whatever else.

Scott Skiles has revealed his coaching ability cards and his hand is weak.
And he doesn't have any wild card (superstar/leader player) on the team to help his hand....and even if he DID - he'd probably run his mouth and piss that player off and end up benching him too.
So it is (or should be) obvious that while Skiles HAS turned the Bulls around and gotten them back into the playoffs....he does NOT have the ability to take this team any further. And the players are turning their backs and tuning him out.

So in the end - only two things will fix this and get the Bulls back to the finals, although not necessarily in this order:

Fire and replace Skiles - with the RIGHT coach for THIS team.
Trade whatever players are required to get a genuine go-to, take-over-the-game LEADER on the team, whoever that may be.

Otherwise, we will be exiled to repeated, year after year stabs at the big prize, only to come up short and go through repeated agony in the end.

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Ray Allen on good teams.

"The good teams in this league never lose two in a row," said Allen, who led the Celtics with 21 points. "When you lose a game, you need to know how to respond."

Damn how do they have Houston and Maimi on ESPN but no the Lakers vs Boston? They need a flex schedule.

On the Bulls I hope out hope they can get it back together. Really though Hinrich and Deng will be the Key. Kirk Hinrich needs to be alot better if they are to get this right. This is on Kirk. HE NEEDS TO PLAY WELL! Or they need to move on some how. Get to the hoop Kirk! Stop complaining too.

Thabo Sefolosha got bad. Took a stupid pill.

by joejoeEnglish94bulls4ever on Nov 23, 2007 1:29 PM CST reply actions

oh, so you're one of those 'fans'

by your friendly BullsBlogger on Nov 23, 2007 2:11 PM CST reply actions

All I want for Christmas are new jerseys.

[IMG]http://i182.photobucket.com/albums/x52/JoJoEnglish94/NewBullsjerseys1.jpg[/IMG]

Thabo Sefolosha got bad. Took a stupid pill.

by joejoeEnglish94bulls4ever on Nov 23, 2007 3:46 PM CST reply actions

WARNING!

Tryptophan side effects include:
-drowsiness
-racism

and worse...

-Iron Lawitis

Officially a hater on Ballhype!

by hscs on Nov 23, 2007 4:08 PM CST reply actions

That was from August.

But aside from that, this is the part that gets me in trouble with you guys:

The criteria for who the best players are is not subjective. It is taken from the all-pro teams and the MVP voting

As if those things aren't pretty damn subjective. It's not as if someone who won a championship, and then had really good, but perhaps not the best, season the following year isn't given more consideration for All-NBA than someone on a perennial loser who may have been better. Since some (or most) think the MVP must be on a winning team, by that definition... anyway, it's circular logic.

I agree with hscs and Matt and others who say that superstars don't win championships, great teams do. The thing is, of course, that having one of the best players in the league makes that easier. Not easy, of course, but easier. This is crux of the very discussions going on about Kobe: if he's not making his teammates better (or raising the overall performance of his team to a whole-is-greater-than-the-sum-of-the-parts level), how good is he really?

There is also some subjectivity to it. I'm not sure it's definite-or if a study has been done on it-but it seems like the shoe commercial, big-name players get the benefit of the doubt on calls in the playoffs. If this is true, is it because these players are simply better at getting other teams to foul them, or is it because the referees have watched too much SportsCenter?

I don't know. Superstars don't mean championships. That's definite, as Kevin Garnett and Charles Barley and Karl Malone and many others will tell you (obviously, neither does being a low-post scorer). However, to continually claim that it's not important, or it's just as easy doing it from a "bunch of good players" standpoint is just as ridiculous of a viewpoint as the Iron Law.

I don't know how one defines Superstars or whatever someone wants to call them (I'd start here--which doesn't show how good those players were in their championship seasons, and obviously PER isn't a perfect stat, yada, yada), but are Robinson's, Duncan's, Shaq's, Jordan's, Johnson's, Olajuwon's or Bird's credentials really questioned as among the very best ever to play the game?

(FWIW, none of this means that I'm ready to give up on this team. Skiles, yes. Hinrich, maybe. Wallace, in another year. However, I have a lot of optimism that Deng, Thomas and Noah will turn out to be a better "core" than Hinrich, Gordon and Deng. Even if they don't, I like them enough and enjoy watching them enough that I'll enjoy watching them continually make the playoffs as one of the youngest teams in the NBA.)

Let us prepare for glory! --Michael Redd

by tyger1147 on Nov 23, 2007 5:15 PM CST up reply actions

I will add.

that I allow that it could merely be coincidence or correlation without strong causation. I think it's erroneous to dismiss it as such, though, without further analysis.

Let us prepare for glory! --Michael Redd

by tyger1147 on Nov 23, 2007 5:27 PM CST up reply actions

meh

it's far more logical to look at a team's overall OE, DE, and point differential to determine how good they are/were. Checking the roster would be the next step, and it's not entirely clear how much of an impact one player makes. Adjusted +/- and player wins make a good case that there's a big gap between the impact of Tim Duncan, and Kobe Bryant.

Officially a hater on Ballhype!

by hscs on Nov 24, 2007 10:46 AM CST up reply actions

Right on.

Ding!

by Kemp @ Blog a Bull on Nov 23, 2007 9:25 PM CST up reply actions

scientificially proven

Winning percentages in November are inconclusive. All summer long we believed this team is good, and that is because this team is good.

by chicago-homesick-blues on Nov 23, 2007 6:24 PM CST reply actions

good for nothing...

by Zac23 on Nov 23, 2007 6:41 PM CST up reply actions

so?

You hate NBA players because they aren't the sort of people you want them to be or the sort of people you identify with. There's some truth to the fact that there's been a salary explosion so the socio-economic gap between the average player and average fan has expanded but don't you think if they were all too busy being gang bangers they'd probably not have a lot of time left to put in the sort of hard work necessary to keep their job in the NBA?

by theundergroundman on Nov 23, 2007 6:44 PM CST reply actions

I don't hate anyone

I just believe that certain changes have to be made for the Bulls to move to the next level.
And if you seriously don't think that the NBA has degraded over the last decade, then I won't even debate it...there would be no point.

But keeping a job in the NBA apparently doesn't take much...look at this year's losing teams and bad they really are.
There is very little evidence of hard work (if any) on those rosters.

But hey...no surprise...It's a game, remember?

Is it spring training yet?

by Bluelou on Nov 24, 2007 2:21 AM CST up reply actions

sadly

it's not a surprise that someone considers the players a bunch of "spoiled rotten gang-bangers" who only lose games because they don't work hard enough.

Officially a hater on Ballhype!

by hscs on Nov 24, 2007 10:13 AM CST up reply actions