But still the possibility exists that it can work!

The Golden State Warriors bought out Mike Montgomery's contract and hired Don Nelson to take over the team again. Nelson's Warriors won their final five regular season games and qualified for the 2006/07 playoffs.  The rest is history.

Montgomery really is not so difference from Skiles.  His style of play was against his players strengths. Definitely against his pg Barron Davis strengths.

some quotes during the period after Montgomery firing..

 "There was little faith on the team in the job Montgomery was doing with the Warriors. I hadn't heard that something was about to happen right now, but had been told all along to not be surprised if the team parted ways with Mike. Now, ESPN reports that the likely replacement is Don Nelson. It's tough to say how well he and Baron Davis will get along when it comes to playing style and decisions on the floor".

Well Nelson and Davis seem to have work it out.

Matt, before and if you travel here, this is not a endorsement to bring back Cartwright or the other Krause college coach guy.

Notable:
Phoenix and Dallas opened 1-5, Dallas 1-5 too.
Sac, Atl, Por 4-2

There is still hope.  I'm sure Sbulls could find a correlation with something else that seems way more trivial that is stronger.  Or a negative correlation with something that would seem to be a negative.

GO BULLS!

This isn't baseball where it's these 2-minute/2-second confrontations. It takes a LOT more focus and concentration to be "on" during a basketball game.

There are few players like (presumably) Jordan or Shaq who can combine great talent with an ability to constantly focus during a game. However, there are still plenty of players who suck who probably don't give a shit about the booing.

Anyway, there's no way to quantify, and really no way to know, if this stuff affects the players. That doesn't mean that it doesn't. It doesn't mean that the players aren't still really, really good players if it does. Paxson said the trade talks affected him when he played.

How? Are we sure? I don't know. But that's probably the best 'evidence' we have on whether it does. I do, however, subscribe to the idea that if it does affect the players, that it affects the vast majority of them negatively. The only good booing does (imo) is it helps relieve fan frustration. I think that's lame.

Kirk's defense on the pick and roll has been awful.  He leaks too much giving the point guard space, has no height to catch up with a perimeter shooting big man, and he's trying to protect the dribble penetration when he knows that behind him are two of the better shot blockers in the NBA.  He's playing defense like he's the only Bulls player out there.

Chicago's point differential is -9.7.  They are getting off 7 more shots than their opponents.  They are a -3 in rebounding differential, but +2 in offensive rebounding differential.  This is where Skiles' coaching is coming into question.

He is notorious for benching players for bad defense and ill advised passes that turn the ball over on offense.  What he needs to employ is a rotation that will increase the team FG%.  He can do that with a lineup that attacks the basket.  Nocioni came out in the 2nd half of the Raptor game and took it straight at Bargnani.  He picked up three fouls in 5 minutes.  Noc was yielding 5 inches to Bargnani.  Where was the scouting report?  Where's the coaching here?  You can remove chess pieces from the board with strategy.

I don't know if Griffin is healthy, but he can post up guards.  None of our other guards can do this.  When you look around the league, winning teams have a guard that will go into the post to exploit matchup problems.

The sad thing is the circus trip is always hard because the Western Conference doesn't play any defense and the Bulls aren't going to outscore anyone.  The Suns don't like to foul so the gameplan should call for attacking the basket on every possession.  Posting up Shawn Marion to get him into foul trouble is key.

So memo to the Bull players and coaches...

PLAY BETTER AND GET OVER IT!

And the only reason he or any athlete says the booing bothers them is that if they expressed their true feelings, which I'd almost guarantee would be something along the lines of "Who gives a shit if they boo?" the fans would viciously turn on them, the team would be forced to trade them, they'd have to take a pay cut because no team can tolerate a player not playing the PR game, they'd lose endorsement money and eventually get drummed out of the league.

So the player says (when asked), "Yeah, that booing, it hurts, but I understand the fans' disappointment and we just gotta play better...blah, blah, blah."

When do the Lakers play in Chicago?