Iverson took Rose out in a hurry, fouls were on A.I., he knew what he was doing and here is a more balanced report by the bulls website:

“Larry Hughes led a balanced attack with 19 points and five assists, but the Bulls (13-15) couldn’t overcome a big first-half deficit in a 104-98 loss in Detroit. Ben Gordon and Andres Nocioni scored 18 points apiece for Chicago, which shot 47 percent from the field.”

Off the bench, quit complaining, who did better? Who kept Iverson to a 5 pt game when averaging 18? Or was he on Stucky for 40, who also nailed Rose several times?
All Offense on Blog a bull, never Defense, maybe a line, no stats. What do you expect, your two centers combine for 4 points? All those second chance shots I guess? So was Rose even hitting? C’mon, we got beat by a better team, no bad calls, “T” on Wallace, it was called decent. Lot worse shooting percentages on this team. Matter of fact, until last week, all of them were worse than Hughes, your Bully a Bull.

It’s hard to hate Deng because he is such a good guy. I take that back. I can’t stand this guy and there is no words that describe how much I want this piece of sh*t off this team. This game just displayed how completely mediocre he is. I don’t even know if I would call his play mediocre, it’s worse than that.

If somebody can name ONE thing this guy excels at..Tell me because I can’t see it. His jump shot sucks now, whenever he drives to the basket he loses the ball, he can’t play defense, can’t rebound, can’t pass, and did I mention he can’t catch the ball?

PA-THE-TIC is what he is.

…this Neil Funk is irritating. he is still in radio mode, describing every second of the action. We have eyes Neil! Not that there is much to see and appreciate with this team right now, except for Rose and some occaisional flashes from BG, and TT

as VDNs insistence of putting Rose on Iverson. Iverson might be in the top 10 of all time for drawing fouls. Why not put him on Stuckey or Hamilton. Especially after the 2 foul first quarter.

I know he now takes minutes at the PF position but it is unintended or planned. Deng’s outside game is limited and he has no significant range. Sort of like many PFs in the game. His range is more common with PFs. Deng is 6’9" and that is common with smaller PFs, like TT. He is 220 lbs and he is light for PFs but we know he is willing to work on himself to get better. How difficult would it be for him to add 15-20 lbs in the off-season. Put him in the Eddy Curry diet and tell him to add muscle with a strength trainer. He will make his money by being in the right place, right time to rebound and pick up garbage points, so he will get more chances to finish before defenders set up. He is now listed as 5 lbs more than TT and the same size. What is surprising is that Paxson talked about moving him to the 2-guard position, that only tells how badly he knows the players he drafted.

It’s the same old “left it all back in the olympic games” scenario for Deng. Instead of using the offseason to recharge his over-achieving, low-athleticism physical abilities, he spent everything he had trying to get a meaningless joke of a British team into the real tourney, just so they can be humiliated in 4 years from now.
   How stupid can someone be. He wasn’t born there and doesn’t live there now, but he’s willing to sacrifice the 2008-09 NBA season, just to get them in the real games. Hilarious Lu, I thought you had a half of a brain but it’s actually less than that. When Britain plays in the next big tourny, they will get blown out by 35 every single game. How is that a step up? And it won’t be like the team deserves to be there, just Lu does. The rest of the team couldn’t make a division 2 NCAA starting lineup….And once Lu is gone they will start to lose every game by 40-50 pts.
   I’m sick of watching mediocre Bulls players feeding their egos by participating in the olympics, and then stinking up the entire United Center the entire next season. We’ve seen it with Noce, Hinrich, and now Lu and Thabo. Lu looks completely gassed, and he’s slow for the nba to begin with. If Lu plans on attending any more olympic games as anything other than a spectator, we need to trade him. Only the truly physically gifted like LeBron or Kobe can pull it off. Definitely not an overachiever like we have many of(namely Luol).
    I hate the olympics anyway, and haven’t had positive feelings for the “16 days of Glory”, since I was about 10 in 1990. It’s a big political farce and I’m not going to pretend it’s anything other than what it is. Pax need to start putting clauses in contracts to prevent pointless olympic participation. It’s killing these mediocre overachievers we have out there. I am surprised Luol doesn’t just come out and admit these things, because the only other logical explanation is he just “plain sucks”, and I am not ready to go there yet.

I’d be willing to part with gooden, hinrich, and deng. They can have any of the two out of three they want. Tyrus and Noah need to play with a true big guy WHO CAN MOVE. A front court of Tyrus and Kaman would be great at defending the paint and mostly blocking shots. Kaman deserves a fresh start, and so does Deng, hell I’m so SICK OF DREW GOODEN I’D TRADE HIM FOR THE RIGHTS TO BIMBO COLES.

The Clippers have Al Thornton, why would they want Deng? They also wouldn’t want Gooden. Maybe Hinrich and Noc for bench purposes…but those two are too high paid for benchplayers.

I don’t see what we can really offer the Clippers….maybe some combination of Hughes, Hinrich, or Noah and a draft pick

this year are only slightly below his career averages. I am not sure how much more he can be expected to improve. 2006-07 was clearly an outlier for him.

if my high school basketball coach had just learned to use me properly, and played me all the time, even though I wasn’t very good. I would definitely be dating a model right now if my wingmen could only step it up a few notches and make that happen for me. And luol would be an all-star today if skiles had better “developed” him, taken him under his wing, been a better father figure, I guess. I suppose he’d be playing better now if vinny got tired of apparently being functionally retarded and learned how to use him “properly.” Could skiles probably have done a better job expanding lu’s game? Maybe. Who’s to say scotty didn’t try and darndest and maybe deng’s just a friggin idiot. Maybe his heart’s not all in it. Who knows. And I’m all for a coach maximizing the talent that he has, so maybe vinny could do a better job of contriving some cutesy plays to get lu some baskets. Point is this is the f-ing NBA folks. Why this growing unpopularity of personal accountability? It’s not that I don’t realize we’re all disappointed in him – I’m just sick of some people still making excuses for him. Are we still afraid of hurting deng’s feelings lest we permanently damage his psyche? Is Luol Deng a f-ing baby? Is he a small child? Last time I checked no he is a large grown man who is contractually obligated to play $70 million worth of ball. If vinny must go out of his way to adjust the gameplan so lu can score thru one of the 3 ways he knows how, then maybe it’s actually not in the best interest of the team to focus on lu getting 20 a night. IMHO, Luol Deng is and always has been overrated. His career is basically one great playoff series. Pax screwed this one up. He’s a nice player in his own right, who’ll get u 18 every few nights and spurts of good D. But in a league where pgs and bigs are the scarce goods and 3’s are so much easier to replace, lu’s just not worth his salary, plain and simple.

that is Luol is a decent player who has limited upside because of his lack of one-on-one skills (he is effective off the ball but needs a system playing to his strengths to excel) and would be considered a solid asset if he wasn’t rewarded with such an overinflated contract. A similar argument could be made for Hinrich and Nocioni.

Paxson has overvalued some of his roster (and is stuck with Larry’s ridiculous contract because of the corpse’s highway robbery he pulled by going comatose after his signing) which may wind up having the Bulls lose their only legitimate scorer while getting nothing in return (Gordon). I just hope he doesn’t compound his mistakes by trading away our 2 players with the highest potential upside, Noah and Thomas. They have both struggled, being young and poorly coached, but who besides Rose, has room to grow expotentially? The Bulls can only improve by letting the younger players learn on the job.

There is no future benefit to be gained by playing Hughes 38 minutes or Gooden, once he returns, other than limping into an 7th or 8th playoff spot this year and still not knowing what kind of players they could be once they get the experience and learn a few tricks that all savvy veterans pick up along the way.

If Pax keeps the right pieces and can trade some of our overpaid albatrosses, the Bulls still could have a bright future with Rose as the centerpiece.