Watch out Perkins.

i kept screaming “Why is Tyrus Thomas not in!”

:::sigh

if we wont use him, trade him….regardless..great season fellas..

He really was selling the whole “inexperience” thing last night. Although I don’t think things are nearly as bleak as you made them out to be.

Then this coming week we can move on to the challenge of figuring out and enhancing an entirely mediocre team on the brink of the luxury tax.

It’s a young, likeable team with a great young player. There aren’t many teams in the league that wouldn’t be envious of the Bulls situation. The off season will be challenging, in terms of improving the team via the draft or free agency. But I think most fans realize that the best way for us to improve next year will be from the growth of Derrick Rose rather than bringing in new players. If he takes the next step, next year should be real exciting

Oh well.

You should have just wrote one recap for the entire season. Oh let’s blame every fucking game on Vinny Del Negro. I swear you act like the players are never at fault and that they are just Vinnys puppets and everything that they do bad is Vinnys fault, while everything they do right is in spite of Vinny…

inexcusable not playing TT.

I just watched Haslem get ejected with a F2 in the Heat/Hawks game for doing a variation of what Rondo did to Miller. Only he got more shoulder and didn’t cause the guy to get stitches and was at least a foot closer to the ball. What a joke, NBA. Haslem just thought that was a good playoff foul.

This season ended on VDN’s terms. Not John Paxson’s. Not even the players terms.

Most of this series we were blessed to see some of the players natural talent bail out VDN’s horrid coaching job. Let’s point out some of the obvious blunders . .

• The most “I don’t give a fuck about defense” that my eyes have ever seen. Most notably the defensive switches.

• The lucrative substitution patterns. Especially in this series. When people kept mentioning ways that the Bulls could actually steal game 7 away from the champs, I noticed was it was the Bulls fresh young legs that got more mention than most other reasons. I doubt they were just referring to Rose.

When I saw the line up of Miller, Salmons, Hinrich, Gordon and Rose for most of the second half, I pretty most lost all hope on the game and of course the season. The idea of Miller as the only big man out there pretty much gave our game plan away. The Celtics saw this and clearly thought, “Well, that’s great if all they care about is scoring. We have a pretty nice lead. As long as we score our share of points, rebound anytime we want . . . and get to the line anytime we want, we should be fine. Oh and as long as we know that once we blow past any guard the Bulls throw at us, we should be fine considering Brad Miller is all they’ll have left in their line of defense.”

• Tyrus Thomas. Oh Tyrus. I honestly wouldn’t be bothered if he demanded to be traded sometime between now and next years trading deadline. It’s not that I lost faith in him. Because in all reality, I have a whole lotta faith in him. It’s because I finally realize that no matter what he does good for this team, they would much rather focus on the bad. I just wish they looked at Tyrus the same way they looked at Brad. As much as a liability Tyrus is out there with a dumb mistake here and there, Brad Miller is worse of a risk with his constant defensive mishaps and slow self.

You also have to think that (gasp) VDN will be here at least one more year and if he continues to sit Tyrus in crucial times, we might as well try to get something for him now instead of him walking away for nothing as well. I seem to remember when Skiles first succeeded as Bulls coach, Paxson went all out to surround him with Skiles-type players. I really don’t want Paxson doing the same thing here with VDN. The last thing I wanna hear after the draft or free agency is Pax saying something along the lines of, “He fits into the style that coach VDN and I wanna do.” That’s like pretty much saying, “He’ll listen to whatever we have to say and play his role when needed no matter how much talent he has.”

• The saddest thing about most of this season is that I honestly don’t see that many players from this past year contributing to the future of this teams success. I’m not saying they shouldn’t but the way it looks, they just won’t have a shot.

I honestly believe that the only players safe on this roster is Derrick Rose and Joakim Noah.

Some can make an argument for Deng but after seeing what Salmons has done for this team, it wouldn’t shock me to hear his name floating around trade rumors for the next couple years.

I have a hard time looking at this past season cause to me, all I see is Rose and Noah. It sucks when you have no idea where your team is headed cause you can’t appreciate the growth of the players you’ve had the pleasure of seeing over the last year in particular.

• Last, I’m ready for the summer. The best times to read about your favorite team are around the times they’re most likely to make changes. The time leading up to the trading deadline or anytime around free agency and draft . . . those are the times that every article you read about your team don’t look like the exact same piece. How many times do you read the Tribune and the headline says something along the likes of, “Thomas, finally blossoming under new coach” and then going to the Sun Times site to read, “VDN brings out the best in the Bulls’ Tyrus Thomas.”

Let’s face it, every article is pretty much an exact replica of one you’ve read before. At least now, we’ll have some fresh new perspective on how to turn things around for the better. We’ll get to see new and fresher trade ideas, mock drafts and etc . . .

Or where BG is headed to next.

Heck, who knows . . . maybe that Kobe Bryant rumor comes back again considering this is that year he’s allowed to walk away from LA if he chose to.

I mean I doubt it but a pretty embarrassing series to the Cavs might be the trigger that was needed for him to realize that he’s gonna need young and talented legs around him if he has any chance at all left to get a ring without Shaq on his side. I mean let’s face it, LeBron is gonna get better and the Lakers and Kobe . . . . well, they’re just gonna get old.

Ughh, why have I already started speculating on the impossible . . .

Cause the year is over and that’s what we usually do in the off season?

Let the rumors begin . . .

i heard that it was possible boozer might leave UTAH is that true?

if i were paxon and i wasnt gonna sign BG, we should go for boozer

They just didn’t have the will to survive that the broken champions did.

I guess I disagree I think your team played dirty all series and got away with murder.

hed get into so many fights, id love to watch it

1. The game was not decided by the Bulls utter refusal to play Tyrus or to go big in the 4th quarter.

• OK, seems hard to justify, doesn’t it? We had difficulties on the boards, we had our top two bigs in foul trouble, and we played Lindsay Lee Hunter (how come they keep dropping his middle name like he’s an assassin or serial killer?) over Tyrus. Yes, that’s silly, but that’s when we actually brought the game closer.
• Tyrus didn’t play that well.
• And finally, ask yourself this question. Who do you pull to put Tyrus in, if the goal is to come back, play at a “normal” size, and leave Miller or Noah on the floor too? Your choices are Derrick Rose, Ben Gordon, Kirk Hinrich and John Salmons. In the specific context of this game, in which the opposition was Pierce, House, Allen, and Rondo (figure our biggest guy takes Perkins).

See what I’m getting at here? In the specific context of this game, with Kirk playing well and Salmons not, I suppose you’d have to go with taking Salmons out (since he wasn’t doing much offensively) and playing Tyrus on Pierce or Allen. Does that strike anyone as a grand idea? Not me, especially given that Tyrus hadn’t played much that way the entire series.

Offensively, I’m not sure what we create with that either because in the abstract I’d certainly prefer Salmons taking a shot to Tyrus.

So on the whole… I think the Bulls were probably playing their 5 best players. They actually cut in to the lead and made it a game playing that way, they just didn’t get any of the theatrical and manufactured shots from BG, Salmons or Rose that the needed at the end.

My solution:

• Somehow they need to turn some combination of Tyrus+picks+your choice of Kirk/Deng/Salmons into a top notch big man and keep the rest. If you’re out there with Rose (plus experience), Gordon, one of Deng/Salmons/Kirk, Chris Bosh/Amare/etc and one of Miller/Noah… I think you win this game with a 4th quarter comeback.

If I were Gar Paxson, that’s what I’d be selling hard to Jerry Reinsdorf to get him to pony up. If we can get the truly special big, this team could be a contender. Without… we’re too many pieces that don’t fit well enough together.

• Alternate solution… if you’re a believer in Deng (I am, I’m just not a believer in Deng’s health), then Deng at the 4 in that lineup looks a lot better than Salmons at the 4 in that lineup. I think if Deng’s healthy, he’s out there on the floor and either Kirk (who played really well) or Salmons (who didn’t) is on the bench. Maybe we come back and win that way. I think I still prefer a to give up more and get a guy like Bosh, but it’s a start to be fully healthy.

2. This game was lost in the second quarter with a properly sized lineup out there.

• The 22-2 blast the Celtics laid on us to end the second quarter came consistently against every lineup we could through out there. We had two out of three of Noah/Miller/Tyrus out there at all times. With the smaller guys, the only guy we didn’t pull was Rose (who did not have a good stretch, to say the least). We tried Rose/Gordon/Hinrich, Rose/Gordon/Salmons, Rose/Hinrich/Salmons, and continued to lose ground in every case.
• My main observation is that the NBA is very often a game of runs, and despite every combination we could neither score nor stop, and thus we couldn’t stop the runs. The problem was we could never get on a real run of our own later.
• Some of that starts with Rose, who was pretty manhandled during this period and also shot 0-5, when he was the only common element in the whole sorry quarter. Some starts up front with the big guys that we have totally not dominating what ought to have been inferior competition.

This isn’t to say Vinnie should be coach of the year or anything. He sure as hell isn’t. What I am saying is that in the end, the loss was directly attributable to the fact that we have a very talented but still rookie PG, and, we got shellacked in the second Q and couldn’t stop them, and (for the first time and only time in the 6 games it mattered) couldn’t get enough buckets in the forth Q (which, if you’re keeping score, means we did quite well at that in 5 of 6 games).

After what he did for Chicago it would be a slap in the face to let him go, in my opinion.

I may be pointing out the obvious when I say this, but the offense seemed stagnant ALOT. Rose would bring up the ball, dance around, wait for something to happen, when nothing really did. Maybe Hienrich would attampt to come off a screen but that didn’t work (when I was watching). This was throughout the series, especially in the final posessions of each overtime game.

I was rooting so hard for the Bulls, it was so exciting, but the offense just killed me. Rose would hold the ball for 20 seconds then would be pressured into driving and dishing for a forced shot or a wild layup.

But, MAN!, do I love watching Gordan make wild layups. That guy can take a hell of a beating. That guy is absolutely amazing, and especially underrated.
Clutch as hell too.

One more thing: Rose blocking Ronda’s shot in game six is a memory I will cherish forever.
I hate Ronda.

You guys interested in a trade?

Thats who they have the Bulls picking on NBA draft.net

VDN’s contract ends after 2010?