Very entertaining Bulls season preview over at Sham Sports, from an admittedly biased Bulls fan. Which gives those of us nice familiarity through a lead like this:
I do have a quibble in that while Detroit didn't have a 'dominant post scorer', a lot of their players had post-up abilities. Not that the Bulls need to change up their movement-emphasised offense to suit post players, but the ability to just dump the ball inside once in a while would be nice. Could be Luol Deng or even Tyrus Thomas who can add this skill just enough to make a difference.
The preview (not sure if 'Mark' is indeed Sham) goes on to explain that while yet another summer went by with pundits scratching their heads over the lack of a big-time post scorer, the Bulls did quietly get post players who are better at scoring.
This is a similar rallying cry to last season's acquisitions, as while we knew Ben Wallace was no great offensive threat, he had the non-scoring skills to help the offense in ways Tyson Chandler didn't. The overall upgrade didn't shake out the way a lot of us thought (mostly due to the dramatic drop in production from PJ Brown) but overall this team has been steadily getting better in the frontcourt:
'05-'06: Chandler, Harrington, Songaila, Allen, Sweetney
'06-'07: Wallace, Brown, Thomas, Allen, Sweetney
'07-'08: Wallace, Smith, Thomas, Noah, Gray
The preview concludes with another endorsement of a Thomas-Wallace frontcourt:
I do get the idea: it'd be really fun to see, dominant low-post scorer be damned. I don't think it will happen early in the season, but if Tyrus progresses and Wallace holds up it may be Skiles' best option.