I think Coby's demeanor has also been pretty awesome. He's not just playing well but also playing confident and you can see him constantly going over to his peers, namely pat and ayo, and trying to hype them up. I don't want to jump on the "bag on lavine" train, but I will say that while lavine really tried to act as the bulls leader in public forums, he rarely acted like it on the court. And no, Coby isn't necessarily a leader of the team yet, but I don't really see his level of play falling off too much this from where it is now. He's making good decisions when he has the ball in his hands and he's done a great job working on both his handle and jumper where he's not a liability with the ball in his hands.
Adam pointed this out during the Unwatchabulls era, Coby and Pat have known each other a long time apparently and even though his hold on his own job was somewhat tenuous Coby was over during shootaround coaching up Pat when he was at rock bottom. I don't want to go too far into cheeseball shit but having teammates who like each other and want to help one another is nice for a change. Like Jimmy Butler took the off-day in Chicago last month to fly up to (La Crosse? Eau Claire?) to see Nikola Jovic play in the G-League. That's a guy that's officially The Franchise spending his time off chartering a plane to western Wisconsin to support a guy Barely On The Roster.
And I mean on a similar note we saw Derozan go to Ayo's jersey ceremony at U of I when he was a rookie. So we definitely have at least some dudes who like each other lol...
The other day i was watching pre game and Coby literally ran around and talked to everyone individually, even grabbed Demar and lifted him up in the air... which was kind of weird but everyone seemed to be having fun
I think the "Vuc touches" question is more nuanced than it's sometimes presented.
1. Running offensive sets through Vuc in the high post (or top of the key) can be very effective as we've seen recently -- especially watching Vuc swing the ball quickly or hit guys cutting in the lane.
2. Generally, trying to run an offense based around forcing the ball into Vuc in the LOW post is a far worse plan of attack (as noted here often) -- EXCEPT when he's got a clear matchup advantage against a small-ball lineup. This is similar to running PnR through Vuc; success is entirely matchup-dependent. Both of these approaches require the team to demonstrate more situational awareness than they're often shown.
3. Again and again, it's been made clear that Vuc and Zach are just terribly incompatible. (The offense also flowed great without DDR or Zach against the Bucks on 11/30). I'm not saying that Vuc is "better" than Zach, or that a team built around Vuc would be great. But Zach (and to a lesser extent DDR) is the kind of ball-dominant player that makes Vuc look worse than he actually is. No time to expound further but I'll just say I enjoy watching the "Vuc-only" Bulls 100% more then the "Zach-only" Bulls!
SBN's Ricky O' Donnell had some interesting numbers re: VOOCH THE EPICENTER OF OFFENSE today. The long and short of it is with LaVine out, Vooch is getting all the front court touches, and his average time per touch is lower than anyone else with that high of touch share. He's making good, quick decisions.
I don't like his contract and a lot of the offensive improvement over the last seven can be attributed to an assortment of things (e.g. hello, 40 percent three point shooting) that I'm not convinced are terribly sustainable, but I'm here for the basketball being much less sticky.
I pointed out something similar with the Bulls pass rate. When Vooch gets the ball, he makes quick assertive decisions. Still playing inefficient ball (it lost them the game last night), but his team oriented play has made everyone else around him better.
I don't agree with #3. Donovan is just failing at his job here. There is little reason why, between Zach and Coby, they can't at least some of the time run the level of DHO stuff the Kings do with their guards and Sabonis. Is Vuc as good as passer as Sabonis? Obviously, no. So I doubt he could match that volume of offensive creation. But the fact that that's not more of a staple of the healthy Bulls is yet another indictment of Donovan and his approach. Hell, Bam isn't even that good of a passer and the Heat run really nice, extremely simple, DHO shit all the time. No reason why the Bulls can't do that. Maybe Zach isn't that into the idea? Too bad, it's Donovan's fuckin job to manage the players.
I could have prefaced #3 with the words "On this team, under this coach" and it sounds like maybe you'd have agreed? Over the past several games it's clear that Donovan CAN get what he wants out of the vast majority of his players, and his team CAN run an offense that looks energetic and purposeful. But it's not a recipe for sustained success if your star(s) don't buy in. It is certainly possible that BD is the real problem and that his inability to keep Zack accountable and focused on team play is the biggest failure of the past several years.
I haven't actually seen an NBA version of Zach that's looked well-coached, so he could be "uncoachable" or just not had the right guy coaching. Olympics Zach looked closest to a team player under coach Pop but not sure if that was the coach or the superstars around him that demanded or coaxed him into embracing that role (5th/6th scoring option on the team).
I think this is it. The Bulls in general are partly to blame for, from the very beginning, selling themselves and Zach on the idea that hes a star. At various points, they needed to teach some lessons that never got taught. Maybe he was always unteachable, but as far as i can see they didnt try. Its too late now, unless maybe its a guy like Lebron who will just crush him if he pulls something like that.
Yeah, I think we probably do largely agree. One thing I'd note is, it can both be the case that Zach is hard to convince and that BD is failing at his job. In fact, I personally think both things are true.
Side note I'd like to mention is that the biggest difference in these non-Zach games hasn't been 3pt%. It's been offensive rebounding. Their team ORB% has jumped 7 percentage points to what would be the league leading figure by a lot. And that's with Alex clearly fucked up. By contrast their eFG% is only up by a point or so. But that's how it is in Utah, as well. They get a lot of Orebs, less because they're so talented at that, and more because their movement creates interstices to move through to grab offensive boards.
Dunc'd On had a free podcast the other day on the best and worst organizations in the league. I think the Bulls were 28th.
One of the things they really dug into with the Pistons (30th) but which I think transparently applies to the Bulls as well is how many different agendas everyone has. With the Pistons, three or four different groups wanted a different coach. None of them championed Monty Williams, who they ended up actually hiring with the richest coaching contract in history.
In the context of a dysfunctional organization, the individual advocacy of the coach (or anyone else) doesn't count.
The Bulls FO/Ownership is very much a "win the press conference" group. There's no going to that dysfunction and just saying "Hey, don't re-sign this guy". A smart coach who wants to keep his job, in fact, would probably not even say it out loud.
What he might do, is create the situation where the issue comes to a head. Get everyone publicly proclaiming that they're going to play a certain way (that you know Zach LaVine isn't going to like). Which is... what's happening.
I feel for Zach in a way. Thibs, Hoiberg, Boylen, Donovan. By the time he gets to BD ignoring the coach is a survival skill. If there was a coach out there that young Zach is going to listen to, he for sure didn’t get that.
I mean I didn't really expect him to go in saying don't sign him explicitly or whatever. Maybe he could have tried to create the situation sooner.
Really the unfortunate thing is that the team looked great with the promise of Lonzo and so it felt like really maybe it could work. And it was just enough to keep it dangling until now.
I wasn't opposed to his contract, I also wasn't opposed to trading him then. But yeah, I mean the organization is so dysfunctional there's certainly not one sole thing to blame.
Not realistically. Coaches are middle management. The Horse makes 8 times what you do. Your direct superior might want you to get him to »play right » but he also really doesn’t want you to embarrass him by benching the guy or any of his other great decisions. The owner doesnt want the all-star guy in all the commercials getting pissy and telling the PR flaks to fuck right off after games.
In short, the coach has a lot more immediate concerns. Should it be that way? No. But the problem isnt the coach, its the dysfunctional organization. If they said « hey Billy, sit that fucker down until he wises up », maybe it would happen.
What would really happen, though, is either the coach would get fired or Zach would demand a trade. Which he has... which is kind of evidence that they’ve tried « coaching « him and Zach didnt take to it.
You are overly focused on changing Zach's mind/behavior by punishing him. That is not the only way to influence people. If Billy being a "players coach" means anything constructive, it has to mean he has a wide array of non-punitive tools for influencing players' thinking. If he doesn't have that, or if the assertion is really that Zach is so uniquely problematic a player (literally incredible, in that I don't believe it), then he should be fired because he sucks.
Nah, I'm not. I'm saying that you have an unrealistic view of how coaches, teams, and star players all work. Carrot or stick, it doesn't matter if the organization isn't even on the same page.
Coaches generally don't have the power or ability you think they do.
And players who don't listen and do what coaches want aren't uniquely problematic. They're pretty much par for the course in the NBA. Certainly not a majority, but there are plenty of guys like this. And plenty of owners and FOs with other agendas as well.
Like, a few years ago, remember when the Bulls signed Chicago's Native Son Jabari Parker to sell tickets and play the 50% of basketball games? The offensive 50%. He made sure everyone was clear on that as soon as he got that $20M.
Now, Fred Hoiberg sucked ass as a coach, but let's be honest and so that his failure to reach Jabari Parker with "a wide array of non-punitive tools for influencing" Jabari's thinking about basketball was probably not in the top 200 of his problems.
Did he ever want Jabari Parker in the first place? By the way he played in the short amount of time he had him, it was pretty clear he thought the whole thing was a bad idea. That was a dysfunctional org choice. Did his buddy Gar Forman want to hear his true opinion about it? Clearly not. Did his buddy Gar Forman scapegoat him and fire him when it didn't work. Absolutely.
Like, that's something that folks should understand. Hoiberg should have been fired about 3 games into his tenure. But he wasn't, because that would have been embarrassing to the org. There was no real reason to fire him when they did, except that it distracted from the much more obvious embarrassments the team was facing at the time.
Zach is a better version of Jabari Parker, but he's only a different degree, not a different kind. In the right situations, good coaches can make use of these guys (the way Granvillator is identifying above with Jamal Crawford. But most of the time they don't, and that's not really on the coach.
I also don't think it's a matter of someone "failing" per se. Like Billy D and Zach not seeing eye to eye doesn't mean that Zach isn't' a team player nor does it mean that Billy D isn't a players coach. It just means that the two don't mesh. And i think it's easy to look past it when things are appearing to lookup, which was kind of the case all till maybe lonzo got hurt.
To me the most blame just goes to the front office. This roster was never actually balanced, and whether its because lonzo truly was needed to be a lynch pin to me is irrelevant. The bulls front office should have always had an idea of how Lonzo's injury could play out and they knew that zach, derozan, and vuc weren't meshing - even on paper. It shouldn't be a question of "can billy make this work", the org should have been actively trying to do...something!
It's great that we found out that the younger option of our big 3 is the one that works the least, but that just means now that you have two aging (aged?) options to go forward with...and that's not good either. The org really should be thanking their lucky stars for Coby for looking like an actual nba guard
While Zach sits on the sideline in street clothes, he apparently gets to watch Coby White be the player he could be if he’d just pass the ball. I’m here for it.
I'd love some behind the scenes reporting. Any chance Zach might be talking to the coaches about how he could fit within THIS offense. Likely not as it all seems broken.
This team is not going to tear it down. So the best bet is to help Coby Pat and Ayo develop by surrounding them with a decent roster. If Zach actually has no value you can still trade him for two $20M contracts that are more easily aggregated along with future picks to make a legit play for the next star asking out, bringing that player into what looks like an increasingly solid squad with young but maturing talent with upside.
All is not lost. Even if AKME fell into rather than planned that scenario.
Yeah of course. Things have changed. Klutch may be able to get him to LA. But maybe not. He may not have a lot of choices. And he's got some rep rehab to do. I guess we'll see how delusional he is.
So Jimmy just snatched our soul but Jimmy is gonna do that. These mini "series" are interesting, but I see a lot of teams splitting them and a split is the best I hoped for so I can't complain, but this was a winnable game.
Spoelstra was playing with Love and Caleb Martin at the C/PF spot opposite Vucevic/Williams down the stretch and they murdered us. The offensive rebounds they got were just sick. They were pinning Vucevic down at the elbow and he's not nearly mobile enough to crash the boards from that spot. But SOMEONE should have been there. From 3:08 to 1:06 the Heat got 4 offensive rebounds which they turned into 6 points.
As bad as the rebounding was, Vucevic put up the last two shots and they were both hurried and frankly awful. On the first one there were 8 seconds on the shot clock with a 2 point lead when he left it short at the rim. And there were 8 seconds left again when he fired that 10 foot hook shot in a rush. It's weird that a guy who shot 3/13 was suddenly our go-to player. The whole thing looks like a botch — Billy wanted them to pound the ball inside to take advantage of Miami's lack of size, and Vucevic wanted to shoot to justify getting that kind of attention. Which is strange because that had not worked at all this game, regardless of who Miami was playing, and we were obviously getting killed on the offensive boards when it suddenly became time for Nikosolation plays.
Dunc'd On the other day had a rare segment when they talked about the Bulls and they were amazed at our continued fascination with Vuc and our undying commitment to making it "work" with him.
I know a couple people have pointed to Vuc's slightly better numbers over the last few games, but the basic flaws all still seem to be there. He's so easy to guard and so easy to take advantage of defensively.
Yes, he's moving the ball quickly, but it's mostly when he just gets passed it in a position to do nothing but push it on to the next guy. Teams see that he's not going to shoot it, so they let him. When he tries to drive or he gets passed into the deeper post, the ball hits him in the hands and he fumbles it.
Defensively, hes' really immobile, so the moment he gets drawn away from the basket, our rebounding is screwed like you say. That's also on Pat and everybody else, but man, we're unable to do much to control things when it matters.
I think Coby's demeanor has also been pretty awesome. He's not just playing well but also playing confident and you can see him constantly going over to his peers, namely pat and ayo, and trying to hype them up. I don't want to jump on the "bag on lavine" train, but I will say that while lavine really tried to act as the bulls leader in public forums, he rarely acted like it on the court. And no, Coby isn't necessarily a leader of the team yet, but I don't really see his level of play falling off too much this from where it is now. He's making good decisions when he has the ball in his hands and he's done a great job working on both his handle and jumper where he's not a liability with the ball in his hands.
Adam pointed this out during the Unwatchabulls era, Coby and Pat have known each other a long time apparently and even though his hold on his own job was somewhat tenuous Coby was over during shootaround coaching up Pat when he was at rock bottom. I don't want to go too far into cheeseball shit but having teammates who like each other and want to help one another is nice for a change. Like Jimmy Butler took the off-day in Chicago last month to fly up to (La Crosse? Eau Claire?) to see Nikola Jovic play in the G-League. That's a guy that's officially The Franchise spending his time off chartering a plane to western Wisconsin to support a guy Barely On The Roster.
If only we could get our hands on a guy like Jimmy and build around him.
And I mean on a similar note we saw Derozan go to Ayo's jersey ceremony at U of I when he was a rookie. So we definitely have at least some dudes who like each other lol...
The other day i was watching pre game and Coby literally ran around and talked to everyone individually, even grabbed Demar and lifted him up in the air... which was kind of weird but everyone seemed to be having fun
A sinking ship raises all tides.
I think the "Vuc touches" question is more nuanced than it's sometimes presented.
1. Running offensive sets through Vuc in the high post (or top of the key) can be very effective as we've seen recently -- especially watching Vuc swing the ball quickly or hit guys cutting in the lane.
2. Generally, trying to run an offense based around forcing the ball into Vuc in the LOW post is a far worse plan of attack (as noted here often) -- EXCEPT when he's got a clear matchup advantage against a small-ball lineup. This is similar to running PnR through Vuc; success is entirely matchup-dependent. Both of these approaches require the team to demonstrate more situational awareness than they're often shown.
3. Again and again, it's been made clear that Vuc and Zach are just terribly incompatible. (The offense also flowed great without DDR or Zach against the Bucks on 11/30). I'm not saying that Vuc is "better" than Zach, or that a team built around Vuc would be great. But Zach (and to a lesser extent DDR) is the kind of ball-dominant player that makes Vuc look worse than he actually is. No time to expound further but I'll just say I enjoy watching the "Vuc-only" Bulls 100% more then the "Zach-only" Bulls!
SBN's Ricky O' Donnell had some interesting numbers re: VOOCH THE EPICENTER OF OFFENSE today. The long and short of it is with LaVine out, Vooch is getting all the front court touches, and his average time per touch is lower than anyone else with that high of touch share. He's making good, quick decisions.
I don't like his contract and a lot of the offensive improvement over the last seven can be attributed to an assortment of things (e.g. hello, 40 percent three point shooting) that I'm not convinced are terribly sustainable, but I'm here for the basketball being much less sticky.
Somebody isn't clicking the links in the post 😭
Oh, fuck. Guilty.
I mean... I try not to give twitter any traffic lol.
that is a good point, I should always steal instead
I pointed out something similar with the Bulls pass rate. When Vooch gets the ball, he makes quick assertive decisions. Still playing inefficient ball (it lost them the game last night), but his team oriented play has made everyone else around him better.
I don't agree with #3. Donovan is just failing at his job here. There is little reason why, between Zach and Coby, they can't at least some of the time run the level of DHO stuff the Kings do with their guards and Sabonis. Is Vuc as good as passer as Sabonis? Obviously, no. So I doubt he could match that volume of offensive creation. But the fact that that's not more of a staple of the healthy Bulls is yet another indictment of Donovan and his approach. Hell, Bam isn't even that good of a passer and the Heat run really nice, extremely simple, DHO shit all the time. No reason why the Bulls can't do that. Maybe Zach isn't that into the idea? Too bad, it's Donovan's fuckin job to manage the players.
I could have prefaced #3 with the words "On this team, under this coach" and it sounds like maybe you'd have agreed? Over the past several games it's clear that Donovan CAN get what he wants out of the vast majority of his players, and his team CAN run an offense that looks energetic and purposeful. But it's not a recipe for sustained success if your star(s) don't buy in. It is certainly possible that BD is the real problem and that his inability to keep Zack accountable and focused on team play is the biggest failure of the past several years.
I haven't actually seen an NBA version of Zach that's looked well-coached, so he could be "uncoachable" or just not had the right guy coaching. Olympics Zach looked closest to a team player under coach Pop but not sure if that was the coach or the superstars around him that demanded or coaxed him into embracing that role (5th/6th scoring option on the team).
I think this is it. The Bulls in general are partly to blame for, from the very beginning, selling themselves and Zach on the idea that hes a star. At various points, they needed to teach some lessons that never got taught. Maybe he was always unteachable, but as far as i can see they didnt try. Its too late now, unless maybe its a guy like Lebron who will just crush him if he pulls something like that.
Yeah, I think we probably do largely agree. One thing I'd note is, it can both be the case that Zach is hard to convince and that BD is failing at his job. In fact, I personally think both things are true.
Side note I'd like to mention is that the biggest difference in these non-Zach games hasn't been 3pt%. It's been offensive rebounding. Their team ORB% has jumped 7 percentage points to what would be the league leading figure by a lot. And that's with Alex clearly fucked up. By contrast their eFG% is only up by a point or so. But that's how it is in Utah, as well. They get a lot of Orebs, less because they're so talented at that, and more because their movement creates interstices to move through to grab offensive boards.
Every conceivable combination of guys that are NOT Zach LaVine seem to have no problem playing well together.
Every combination of guys that includes Zach looks ... like Zach playing and 4 other guys playing.
You can lead a horse to water but you cant make him drink
Lame. You make like $6M a year. It's your job to make the horse drink.
Agree. Or if he really won't, try to avoid letting the FO sign the guy to a max contract.
Dunc'd On had a free podcast the other day on the best and worst organizations in the league. I think the Bulls were 28th.
One of the things they really dug into with the Pistons (30th) but which I think transparently applies to the Bulls as well is how many different agendas everyone has. With the Pistons, three or four different groups wanted a different coach. None of them championed Monty Williams, who they ended up actually hiring with the richest coaching contract in history.
In the context of a dysfunctional organization, the individual advocacy of the coach (or anyone else) doesn't count.
The Bulls FO/Ownership is very much a "win the press conference" group. There's no going to that dysfunction and just saying "Hey, don't re-sign this guy". A smart coach who wants to keep his job, in fact, would probably not even say it out loud.
What he might do, is create the situation where the issue comes to a head. Get everyone publicly proclaiming that they're going to play a certain way (that you know Zach LaVine isn't going to like). Which is... what's happening.
I feel for Zach in a way. Thibs, Hoiberg, Boylen, Donovan. By the time he gets to BD ignoring the coach is a survival skill. If there was a coach out there that young Zach is going to listen to, he for sure didn’t get that.
I mean I didn't really expect him to go in saying don't sign him explicitly or whatever. Maybe he could have tried to create the situation sooner.
Really the unfortunate thing is that the team looked great with the promise of Lonzo and so it felt like really maybe it could work. And it was just enough to keep it dangling until now.
I wasn't opposed to his contract, I also wasn't opposed to trading him then. But yeah, I mean the organization is so dysfunctional there's certainly not one sole thing to blame.
Not realistically. Coaches are middle management. The Horse makes 8 times what you do. Your direct superior might want you to get him to »play right » but he also really doesn’t want you to embarrass him by benching the guy or any of his other great decisions. The owner doesnt want the all-star guy in all the commercials getting pissy and telling the PR flaks to fuck right off after games.
In short, the coach has a lot more immediate concerns. Should it be that way? No. But the problem isnt the coach, its the dysfunctional organization. If they said « hey Billy, sit that fucker down until he wises up », maybe it would happen.
What would really happen, though, is either the coach would get fired or Zach would demand a trade. Which he has... which is kind of evidence that they’ve tried « coaching « him and Zach didnt take to it.
You are overly focused on changing Zach's mind/behavior by punishing him. That is not the only way to influence people. If Billy being a "players coach" means anything constructive, it has to mean he has a wide array of non-punitive tools for influencing players' thinking. If he doesn't have that, or if the assertion is really that Zach is so uniquely problematic a player (literally incredible, in that I don't believe it), then he should be fired because he sucks.
Nah, I'm not. I'm saying that you have an unrealistic view of how coaches, teams, and star players all work. Carrot or stick, it doesn't matter if the organization isn't even on the same page.
Coaches generally don't have the power or ability you think they do.
And players who don't listen and do what coaches want aren't uniquely problematic. They're pretty much par for the course in the NBA. Certainly not a majority, but there are plenty of guys like this. And plenty of owners and FOs with other agendas as well.
Like, a few years ago, remember when the Bulls signed Chicago's Native Son Jabari Parker to sell tickets and play the 50% of basketball games? The offensive 50%. He made sure everyone was clear on that as soon as he got that $20M.
Now, Fred Hoiberg sucked ass as a coach, but let's be honest and so that his failure to reach Jabari Parker with "a wide array of non-punitive tools for influencing" Jabari's thinking about basketball was probably not in the top 200 of his problems.
Did he ever want Jabari Parker in the first place? By the way he played in the short amount of time he had him, it was pretty clear he thought the whole thing was a bad idea. That was a dysfunctional org choice. Did his buddy Gar Forman want to hear his true opinion about it? Clearly not. Did his buddy Gar Forman scapegoat him and fire him when it didn't work. Absolutely.
Like, that's something that folks should understand. Hoiberg should have been fired about 3 games into his tenure. But he wasn't, because that would have been embarrassing to the org. There was no real reason to fire him when they did, except that it distracted from the much more obvious embarrassments the team was facing at the time.
Zach is a better version of Jabari Parker, but he's only a different degree, not a different kind. In the right situations, good coaches can make use of these guys (the way Granvillator is identifying above with Jamal Crawford. But most of the time they don't, and that's not really on the coach.
I also don't think it's a matter of someone "failing" per se. Like Billy D and Zach not seeing eye to eye doesn't mean that Zach isn't' a team player nor does it mean that Billy D isn't a players coach. It just means that the two don't mesh. And i think it's easy to look past it when things are appearing to lookup, which was kind of the case all till maybe lonzo got hurt.
To me the most blame just goes to the front office. This roster was never actually balanced, and whether its because lonzo truly was needed to be a lynch pin to me is irrelevant. The bulls front office should have always had an idea of how Lonzo's injury could play out and they knew that zach, derozan, and vuc weren't meshing - even on paper. It shouldn't be a question of "can billy make this work", the org should have been actively trying to do...something!
It's great that we found out that the younger option of our big 3 is the one that works the least, but that just means now that you have two aging (aged?) options to go forward with...and that's not good either. The org really should be thanking their lucky stars for Coby for looking like an actual nba guard
I'm here for some Coby love. He's earned it and I am happy for him.
And he just seems like a good hang too. That must count for something.
While Zach sits on the sideline in street clothes, he apparently gets to watch Coby White be the player he could be if he’d just pass the ball. I’m here for it.
He's *drawing fouls with his hair*, folks. Prime Lebron could never.
I'd love some behind the scenes reporting. Any chance Zach might be talking to the coaches about how he could fit within THIS offense. Likely not as it all seems broken.
This team is not going to tear it down. So the best bet is to help Coby Pat and Ayo develop by surrounding them with a decent roster. If Zach actually has no value you can still trade him for two $20M contracts that are more easily aggregated along with future picks to make a legit play for the next star asking out, bringing that player into what looks like an increasingly solid squad with young but maturing talent with upside.
All is not lost. Even if AKME fell into rather than planned that scenario.
Its pretty evident that Zach said FU and your offense to start the season.
Yeah of course. Things have changed. Klutch may be able to get him to LA. But maybe not. He may not have a lot of choices. And he's got some rep rehab to do. I guess we'll see how delusional he is.
So Jimmy just snatched our soul but Jimmy is gonna do that. These mini "series" are interesting, but I see a lot of teams splitting them and a split is the best I hoped for so I can't complain, but this was a winnable game.
Spoelstra was playing with Love and Caleb Martin at the C/PF spot opposite Vucevic/Williams down the stretch and they murdered us. The offensive rebounds they got were just sick. They were pinning Vucevic down at the elbow and he's not nearly mobile enough to crash the boards from that spot. But SOMEONE should have been there. From 3:08 to 1:06 the Heat got 4 offensive rebounds which they turned into 6 points.
As bad as the rebounding was, Vucevic put up the last two shots and they were both hurried and frankly awful. On the first one there were 8 seconds on the shot clock with a 2 point lead when he left it short at the rim. And there were 8 seconds left again when he fired that 10 foot hook shot in a rush. It's weird that a guy who shot 3/13 was suddenly our go-to player. The whole thing looks like a botch — Billy wanted them to pound the ball inside to take advantage of Miami's lack of size, and Vucevic wanted to shoot to justify getting that kind of attention. Which is strange because that had not worked at all this game, regardless of who Miami was playing, and we were obviously getting killed on the offensive boards when it suddenly became time for Nikosolation plays.
Dunc'd On the other day had a rare segment when they talked about the Bulls and they were amazed at our continued fascination with Vuc and our undying commitment to making it "work" with him.
I know a couple people have pointed to Vuc's slightly better numbers over the last few games, but the basic flaws all still seem to be there. He's so easy to guard and so easy to take advantage of defensively.
Yes, he's moving the ball quickly, but it's mostly when he just gets passed it in a position to do nothing but push it on to the next guy. Teams see that he's not going to shoot it, so they let him. When he tries to drive or he gets passed into the deeper post, the ball hits him in the hands and he fumbles it.
Defensively, hes' really immobile, so the moment he gets drawn away from the basket, our rebounding is screwed like you say. That's also on Pat and everybody else, but man, we're unable to do much to control things when it matters.