I was anti-Paxson for awhile.  His style of acquiring character and experience over talent didn't make sense to me.  I looked at the past champions - Jordan, Olajuwon, Kobe, Shaq, Duncan, Pierce, Garnett...and thought "stars win championships... we need a star!"

Then I started learning more about adjusted plusminus - the stat that takes every lineup every player is in each year, the opponents every one of those lineups faced, and the score differential from each shift, allowing smart people with PhDs to separate each player's value from those of his teammates and opponents - and I realized: stars typically win because stars are just really really good.

How good?  Kevin Garnett had a +14.47 adjusted plusminus (APM) last year, which means he's 14.47 points better per 100 possessions than an average NBA player.  That's more than Shawn Marion (+3.83), Josh Howard (+3.79), Tracy McGrady (+2.85), Joe Johnson (+2.04), Richard Hamilton (+0.93) and Ray Allen (+0.92)... combined.  Surround a true superstar with an average team (think LeBron this year), and you automatically put yourself in contention for a title.

But the Nuggets are in the semifinals this year without a superstar.  The Rockets without Yao and McGrady took the Lakers to seven games without a superstar.  The Pistons won a championship without a superstar.  And it's because those teams have/had plenty of rotation players with a positive APM.  Each individual player may only be a +1 or +2, but add 'em up and they compete.

There's been a lot of talk about going balls out for Wade or Bosh in 2010.  If we get one of them, great.  But I think there's an easier way to get back into contention, and it started with the moves Paxson made this past season.  Here's a look at the estimated APMs for our Bulls players this year (estimated using EOPM and fundamentallysound's defensive statistical APM).

By taking each player's Estimated Offensive (EOPM) or Defensive  (EDPM) Plus Minus and multiplying it by the % of minutes played, we get each player's net effect to our team per 100 possessions over 82 games.  According to EOPM, the Bulls should've been +0.55 points per 100 possessions better offensively than league average.  They turned out to be +0.10 better, pretty close.  (Note: defensively, fundamentallysounds system already adjusts for team defensive rating, so the expected total will always resemble the actual.)

What you'll notice in the chart, though, is almost every negative player (found by adding EOPM and EDPM) from the 2007-2008 Bulls is gone. 

Nocioni (-1.33), Gooden (-0.35), Hughes (-0.47), and Thabo (-2.53) were all shipped out at the deadline, Gordon (-0.20) likely won't be re-signed, and Gray (-1.39), Hunter (-5.57), Roberson (-7.50), and Linton Johnson (-8.04) likely won't be in the rotation next year.  Maybe Pax is looking at this APM stuff too?

We have eight rotation players coming back.  Adjusting their % of minutes so they add up to 90% instead of the current 65%, and adjusting their USG% so they average 20%, here's our team for next season:

(Edit: The formatting below got screwed up, but it comes out to +4.13 for next season, or around a 50-win team.  That's before the final 10% of minutes are accounted for, but it's also before adjusting for improvements from Rose, Tyrus, and Noah.  The second half later in the week.)