I agree with a lot of this, but I personally thought Coby had a very solid preseason. Not that it was perfect, but I thought he looked like a better point guard than I was expecting. His ability to collapse the defense and hit open players is probably better than just about anyone on the team.
That Biteme dude from Turkey can shoot. Seems like Acne/Donny value the positionless basketball thing, which to them means no need for a true point guard and really small ball centers. Donny is playing Drummond a lot tho, which hopefully means less of that? Let’s see if Taylor makes the roster.
What's extremely frustrating is the Bulls just did the "blow it up" thing and were terrible for a few years while amassing draft picks and extra salary. But then they got impatient right before the payoff and decided to blow all their picks and money on a core filled with players that don't compliment each other.
So we got half a year of something fun until the glue guy's knees blew out and we got a single playoff win out of it. Now several years later our best bet is likely to go back into "blow it up" mode and reset everything. This team is truly a pleasure.
Yeah, we have somehow broken the NBA talent cycle. Normally, when you are as bad as we were for as long as we were, we would have a windfall of good, cheap talent and we could start to be good again. But through bad decision making, bad ownership, bad in-house talent development and culture, and short-sighted roster construction, we never had great chips to begin with and cashed in the ones that we had prematurely.
So not only do we suck again but our average performance over the past decade is a sub-.500 team and a 33 win team for the past half decade. Our team building strategy is such that we will almost always be a losing team and we will never be able to cash in on it. We suck.
The Bulls had good young talent from those years of sucking...they traded a future all-star and most improved player for Derrick Jones Jr. and a heavily protected first rounder. They traded another #7 overall pick + a young solid defensive center + a future first that turned in Wagner for an older offensively minded big...they also traded a solid vet PF and another future first for one dimensional two point shooter...but, the team lack patience and discipline to implement a proper rebuild. Imagine if this front office didnt suck so badly at trading, the Bulls could have had a young team on the come up with depth, talent and picks...
For example, if we kept the players, kept the picks, even assuming some of the same moves...I would probably prefer the team below with all of our future rounders in team control...
Not that you guys are into Advanced Stats or anything, and this is sort of the worst way to do it, but just adding up Win Shares from last year.
Lauri - 8.2
LaVine - 7.1
Gafford - 6.1 (!!!! - dude was ridiculously efficient and good last year!)
Franz - 5.4
Wendell - 4.6
Caruso - 3.6
Williams - 3.5
White - 3.1
Ayo - 2.9
= 44.5 wins
It's an interesting concept to play out. Still lacking a PG, but everything else fits really well. Markkanen and LaVine are efficient, moderately-high volume scorers. Wagner starts over Williams and Carter, Wagner, and Caruso are all good low-volume, efficient, offensive players who don't need to score to be effective and provide strong defense. Coby, Ayo, and Williams are more so-so efficient offensive players, but with potential and you can give them freer rein to develop. And Gafford is just an uber-efficient (70% TS%!!!) offensive menace on the inside.
They are sort of the platonic ideal in terms of "non-superstar" but really good players that fit and complement each other well with defined roles.
You have your perimeter defender, interior defender, scorers, facilitators and ball-movers, your interior scorer (Gafford). There's not a lot of iso or long-2s and waste in that lineup.
I think it'd be really fun to watch. And it would be young. With cap space!
I'm still not over trading Jimmy Butler for six years of low-level purgatory. Not to say that management could've built around him successfully--it's just that we could've had a lot more fun doing it, seeing as this organization understands purgatory as a final destination.
Now we have a greatest hits album stuck on auto-repeat that doesn't have any greatest hits. Unless you count Ayo Dosunmu, world's smallest stadium show. Which is sobering, considering he's been AKME's best draft pick since he was installed (2020). Partick Williams, at this point, is a myth--something that's fun to talk about, but never seen. And Dalen Terry, as YFBB points out, is not an NBA player.
The feel I have for this regime was solidified in their doubling-down on Vucevic. If there's a player who inspires much less as an offensive centerpiece, I don't know of him. At least not in the terms by which management has both invested in and talked about him being so crucial to a season's success.
The approach should be "wave goodbye and put out a nice message and composite photo on X," no? For Demar's sake, he should be sent to a contender. We're seeing Patrick Williams isn't as useful as Torrey Craig, who costs the NBA equivalent of free. And Dalen Terry, or as Demar calls him, "Baby Man," is already selecting the drop-down for Mandarin on Duolingo.
So if it's a matter of extending them all, or renouncing the heck out of everyone and using the 41 mil in cap room to sign a Demar replacement and next year's equivalent of Keita Bates-Diop and Seth Curry, then I know which choice I'd prefer.
Donovan getting close to benching PW for Craig but needs to also start Carter over White. Donny’s quotes in Sam Smith’s article were really negative (for him) regarding how poorly White/Ayo handled pressure from Schroder.
My 'home' team plays in the top Swiss basketball league (that's not saying much), and if I had the 'chance' of getting Dalen Terry as one of the American players I'm not sure I would pull the trigger!
General question: what's going on with my favorite Bulls site, BlogABull.com? It used to be very active, frequent stories, a huge participating crowd of commenting readers ... but now on SubStack we get a story a week and almost nobody is here. Was the move to SubStack and the push to paid subscriptions a bad business decision, or am I missing something?
Second, if you were following BaB that closely you'd know the comments section was practically dead on SBNation and became way more active when Matt moved BaB to Substack.
Third, as far as I'm aware yfbb does this on the side, so he probably doesn't have time for daily articles. He's also mentioned multiple times that he wasn't going to be doing articles for each preseason game.
It's a bummer to admit but Patrick Williams isn't very good. He's just "a guy" and if he's starting on your team, your team is probably stinks. All of the excuses need to stop, including the "he's only 20 / 21 / 22" that have led the list since he was drafted. The Bulls should find another team enchanted with all of his theoretical upside and trade him (something they should have done 1 or 2 years ago).
He's better than both of those guys. I actually liked how he played last night. He went at Gobert directly and made moves with no hesitation. just had an off night from 3....and he was rebounding aggressively.
If he can play with that motor every night and be able to hit at his usual clip, that is a potential X factor...but we've seen that movie so many times so i'm still in prove it mode. still don't trust that he is going to be assertive and not overthink when the whole squad is out there.
I will say his handles are a lot tighter this year and his finishing looks improved...still not sure why he never get any lobs.
Honestly, DFS and Royce O'Neal are hard players to value too. They're useful cogs, but if your useful cog is suddenly costing you a big long-term deal and a first round pick, you might be overpaying.
There's a certain kind of player that's great to have when you're getting them at a discount, but pretty bad to have at full price. Like... those guys are decent at $10-12M/yr I guess (but not really exciting). But what about DeAndre Hunter at $22M/yr
Hunter seems like a very clear comparison. If there are extension talks going on, Pat's agent is going to say "Pat deserves every penny of what Hunter got. They have similar stats but Pat's still younger".
He'll probably find a team that will give him that too. Do I think it's a good deal? Not really for the Bulls.
So I guess I'd be pretty willing to trade Pat, even though I don't have a lot of faith in AKME to find a good deal
Yea i can definitely see Pat's agent using DeAndre's deal as a baseline. Very similar players, similar production, similar potential(same failure to launch)
I was thinking of PJ Washington as a comp for PWill- both undersized 4's who dont score a ton and have 3Pt range. Pat is the better shooter, but PJ is the better rebounder....IIRC, PJ got about $15M per in his extension, and I think something like that for Pat would be reasonable...
I'm sure you know best. But I was just genuinely curious as to what happened to effect all this change. Things seemed to be going great for the forum on SB Nation. Many articles, lots of participation, etc. Right now, seems we don't have critical mass anymore . . . Hopefully that changes as the new season kicks off!
There's a lot to like about Substack, but the biggest problem with using it as a host/framework for BaB is the way the comment section works. It's really hard to see identify new comments.
That combined with relatively few posts to ensure there are new discussions starting where you can keep track of the threads means it's difficult to participate more than a couple days after a post has been made.
We had a discussion about it a while back and several of us thought there was a better host/setup that was suggested by one of us. I don't remember the details, except I offered to put up the $200 or so if YFBB wanted to try that host/framework instead of Substack.
Golden Era SB Nation had the best system where it was easy to see what you had read before. Here, the threads have been somewhat manageable but imagine trying to navigate something with 100 comments.
Nah man I’m already firing up the scapegoat Vooch bandwagon.
I am here to make DeRozan my escape goat...
I agree with a lot of this, but I personally thought Coby had a very solid preseason. Not that it was perfect, but I thought he looked like a better point guard than I was expecting. His ability to collapse the defense and hit open players is probably better than just about anyone on the team.
That Biteme dude from Turkey can shoot. Seems like Acne/Donny value the positionless basketball thing, which to them means no need for a true point guard and really small ball centers. Donny is playing Drummond a lot tho, which hopefully means less of that? Let’s see if Taylor makes the roster.
What's extremely frustrating is the Bulls just did the "blow it up" thing and were terrible for a few years while amassing draft picks and extra salary. But then they got impatient right before the payoff and decided to blow all their picks and money on a core filled with players that don't compliment each other.
So we got half a year of something fun until the glue guy's knees blew out and we got a single playoff win out of it. Now several years later our best bet is likely to go back into "blow it up" mode and reset everything. This team is truly a pleasure.
Yeah, we have somehow broken the NBA talent cycle. Normally, when you are as bad as we were for as long as we were, we would have a windfall of good, cheap talent and we could start to be good again. But through bad decision making, bad ownership, bad in-house talent development and culture, and short-sighted roster construction, we never had great chips to begin with and cashed in the ones that we had prematurely.
So not only do we suck again but our average performance over the past decade is a sub-.500 team and a 33 win team for the past half decade. Our team building strategy is such that we will almost always be a losing team and we will never be able to cash in on it. We suck.
The Bulls had good young talent from those years of sucking...they traded a future all-star and most improved player for Derrick Jones Jr. and a heavily protected first rounder. They traded another #7 overall pick + a young solid defensive center + a future first that turned in Wagner for an older offensively minded big...they also traded a solid vet PF and another future first for one dimensional two point shooter...but, the team lack patience and discipline to implement a proper rebuild. Imagine if this front office didnt suck so badly at trading, the Bulls could have had a young team on the come up with depth, talent and picks...
For example, if we kept the players, kept the picks, even assuming some of the same moves...I would probably prefer the team below with all of our future rounders in team control...
Carter/Gafford
Lauri/Wagner
PWill/Jett Howard
Zach/Caruso
Coby/Ayo
Dalen Terry?/Julian Phillips?
I agree with your general point but that lineup is probably good for like 42 wins.
32 wins
Not that you guys are into Advanced Stats or anything, and this is sort of the worst way to do it, but just adding up Win Shares from last year.
Lauri - 8.2
LaVine - 7.1
Gafford - 6.1 (!!!! - dude was ridiculously efficient and good last year!)
Franz - 5.4
Wendell - 4.6
Caruso - 3.6
Williams - 3.5
White - 3.1
Ayo - 2.9
= 44.5 wins
It's an interesting concept to play out. Still lacking a PG, but everything else fits really well. Markkanen and LaVine are efficient, moderately-high volume scorers. Wagner starts over Williams and Carter, Wagner, and Caruso are all good low-volume, efficient, offensive players who don't need to score to be effective and provide strong defense. Coby, Ayo, and Williams are more so-so efficient offensive players, but with potential and you can give them freer rein to develop. And Gafford is just an uber-efficient (70% TS%!!!) offensive menace on the inside.
They are sort of the platonic ideal in terms of "non-superstar" but really good players that fit and complement each other well with defined roles.
You have your perimeter defender, interior defender, scorers, facilitators and ball-movers, your interior scorer (Gafford). There's not a lot of iso or long-2s and waste in that lineup.
I think it'd be really fun to watch. And it would be young. With cap space!
Like, fuck, even the goddamn Kings got good. Are the Bulls on the Charlotte Hornets tier of trash front offices?
I'm still not over trading Jimmy Butler for six years of low-level purgatory. Not to say that management could've built around him successfully--it's just that we could've had a lot more fun doing it, seeing as this organization understands purgatory as a final destination.
Now we have a greatest hits album stuck on auto-repeat that doesn't have any greatest hits. Unless you count Ayo Dosunmu, world's smallest stadium show. Which is sobering, considering he's been AKME's best draft pick since he was installed (2020). Partick Williams, at this point, is a myth--something that's fun to talk about, but never seen. And Dalen Terry, as YFBB points out, is not an NBA player.
The feel I have for this regime was solidified in their doubling-down on Vucevic. If there's a player who inspires much less as an offensive centerpiece, I don't know of him. At least not in the terms by which management has both invested in and talked about him being so crucial to a season's success.
The approach should be "wave goodbye and put out a nice message and composite photo on X," no? For Demar's sake, he should be sent to a contender. We're seeing Patrick Williams isn't as useful as Torrey Craig, who costs the NBA equivalent of free. And Dalen Terry, or as Demar calls him, "Baby Man," is already selecting the drop-down for Mandarin on Duolingo.
So if it's a matter of extending them all, or renouncing the heck out of everyone and using the 41 mil in cap room to sign a Demar replacement and next year's equivalent of Keita Bates-Diop and Seth Curry, then I know which choice I'd prefer.
Donovan getting close to benching PW for Craig but needs to also start Carter over White. Donny’s quotes in Sam Smith’s article were really negative (for him) regarding how poorly White/Ayo handled pressure from Schroder.
I'm not sure Carter can handle pressure either. Nate Duncan always jokes about if Carter guarded Carter, he'd never make it past half court
My 'home' team plays in the top Swiss basketball league (that's not saying much), and if I had the 'chance' of getting Dalen Terry as one of the American players I'm not sure I would pull the trigger!
Patrick Williams will have made $32m after this year(4th). His game looks like he's more than OK with just playing for ice cream and weed after that.
General question: what's going on with my favorite Bulls site, BlogABull.com? It used to be very active, frequent stories, a huge participating crowd of commenting readers ... but now on SubStack we get a story a week and almost nobody is here. Was the move to SubStack and the push to paid subscriptions a bad business decision, or am I missing something?
It is a bad business decision, yes, maybe because I'm NOT pushing for paid subscriptions.
First, it's preseason so not a lot of activity.
Second, if you were following BaB that closely you'd know the comments section was practically dead on SBNation and became way more active when Matt moved BaB to Substack.
Third, as far as I'm aware yfbb does this on the side, so he probably doesn't have time for daily articles. He's also mentioned multiple times that he wasn't going to be doing articles for each preseason game.
It's a bummer to admit but Patrick Williams isn't very good. He's just "a guy" and if he's starting on your team, your team is probably stinks. All of the excuses need to stop, including the "he's only 20 / 21 / 22" that have led the list since he was drafted. The Bulls should find another team enchanted with all of his theoretical upside and trade him (something they should have done 1 or 2 years ago).
He's better than both of those guys. I actually liked how he played last night. He went at Gobert directly and made moves with no hesitation. just had an off night from 3....and he was rebounding aggressively.
If he can play with that motor every night and be able to hit at his usual clip, that is a potential X factor...but we've seen that movie so many times so i'm still in prove it mode. still don't trust that he is going to be assertive and not overthink when the whole squad is out there.
I will say his handles are a lot tighter this year and his finishing looks improved...still not sure why he never get any lobs.
I think he's a dangerous NBA player to value.
Honestly, DFS and Royce O'Neal are hard players to value too. They're useful cogs, but if your useful cog is suddenly costing you a big long-term deal and a first round pick, you might be overpaying.
There's a certain kind of player that's great to have when you're getting them at a discount, but pretty bad to have at full price. Like... those guys are decent at $10-12M/yr I guess (but not really exciting). But what about DeAndre Hunter at $22M/yr
Hunter seems like a very clear comparison. If there are extension talks going on, Pat's agent is going to say "Pat deserves every penny of what Hunter got. They have similar stats but Pat's still younger".
He'll probably find a team that will give him that too. Do I think it's a good deal? Not really for the Bulls.
So I guess I'd be pretty willing to trade Pat, even though I don't have a lot of faith in AKME to find a good deal
Yea i can definitely see Pat's agent using DeAndre's deal as a baseline. Very similar players, similar production, similar potential(same failure to launch)
I could see him getting 4/80 from a few teams.
Trade him for b-ball Paul!
I was thinking of PJ Washington as a comp for PWill- both undersized 4's who dont score a ton and have 3Pt range. Pat is the better shooter, but PJ is the better rebounder....IIRC, PJ got about $15M per in his extension, and I think something like that for Pat would be reasonable...
They need to improve their player development strategy or else Patrick Williams is going to be a best case scenario for any Bulls draft pick.
I'm sure you know best. But I was just genuinely curious as to what happened to effect all this change. Things seemed to be going great for the forum on SB Nation. Many articles, lots of participation, etc. Right now, seems we don't have critical mass anymore . . . Hopefully that changes as the new season kicks off!
There's literally no Bulls blog left on SBN
you can read more here: https://www.blogabull.com/p/blogabull-is-moving-out-on-its-own
I was planning on writing a bit more on the fall of SBNation but didn't in the dead season. I'm sure there will be a time for it.
There's a lot to like about Substack, but the biggest problem with using it as a host/framework for BaB is the way the comment section works. It's really hard to see identify new comments.
That combined with relatively few posts to ensure there are new discussions starting where you can keep track of the threads means it's difficult to participate more than a couple days after a post has been made.
We had a discussion about it a while back and several of us thought there was a better host/setup that was suggested by one of us. I don't remember the details, except I offered to put up the $200 or so if YFBB wanted to try that host/framework instead of Substack.
Golden Era SB Nation had the best system where it was easy to see what you had read before. Here, the threads have been somewhat manageable but imagine trying to navigate something with 100 comments.
We're gonna try the Chat function for games.