Meh, the Bulls are at the very least doing what they're supposed to be doing with Giddey. My guess is that they'll settle at 3 years at $23/$24 million per year.
Once you conclude that nothing good can or will happen, except on the margins or in the lottery and solely through dumb luck, until Jerry dies, the entire nature of fandom is to pray they don’t do anything so stupid that will handicap them when that day inevitably arrives.
In this situation, the risk has been averted, Giddey is not getting huge money for 5 years. What happens next is basically irrelevant, only changing the relative probabilities of the dumb luck.
It would be preferable if they would squirrel away draft capital, even second rounders, to better empower that new day. But since they are, as noted on this blog, allergic to second rounders and dismissive of draft pick value in general, the best action is actually inaction, chasing nothing and be bad at that, keeping players on 2 year deals and perpetually able to make moves once a new directive from ownership and new management ever arrived.
I think it's a little weird people are focusing on his shooting, and not on the fact that he started drawing fouls and getting to the rim more. Which is, in my opinion, far more important, and makes me much more interested in Giddey than I was before, and far more interested than I would be if he only shot well in the second half of the season.
And I just wrapped up watching the last 20 games of the season, and I would say one takeaway is that I object to saying most of the opponents were checked out over that time frame. I haven't watched a post AS break Bulls game since 2016. I did not realize that they became a pretty fun team to watch after Zach left. Especially when Vuc was out of the lineup. That game in Indiana for example about gave me a fuckin heart attack it was so frenzied. A lot of these 20 games I watched were pretty good and fun!
I'll also note that I think Coby's end to the season is being absurdly ignored. This guy who's only 25 played like the best versions of Jamal Murray and Tyrese Maxey and people are just like "whatever". I don't get it. Not saying any of this shit is proof of anything. But one good way of assessing whether someone can do something is if they've already done it. Not sure why there isn't more intrigue about this, apart from the fact that their employers are the fuckin worst.
Coby has had two stretches of both being healthy and w/o LaVine:
11/30/23 - 2/14/24: 36 games, 57% efg, 23 ppg.
2/4/25 - EOS: 31 games, 56% efg, 23 ppg.
Those are both cherry picked somewhat, but talking about Coby without talking about LaVine is tough. LaVine sank teammates and teams with his static low IQ play, and Coby most of all.
We get to see a whole season of Coby White w/o LaVine and hopefully he stays healthy so we can see if he can actually do it for an entire season.
Yes I do legit think we need to account for the LaVine loserdom vortex. He shot great to start the season and that won't be around next year, but also his loser gravity will also not be around.
It's also his contract. He's practically un-extendable so nothing he could meaningfully do versus it really is a prove-it season coming up heading into unrestricted free agency. If he can sustain what he did in March, then he'll get attention. ThatsWhatTheMoneyIsFor.gif
The context is what makes that last stretch of the season feel underwhelming. Like that game in Indiana you’re referencing - the Bulls lost that game by 15 points. You’re going to have a tough time selling excitement to fans if your pitch is “I know we’ve won 1 playoff game in the half decade this guy has been in charge, but look at how fast paced some of our losses are!”
And look at the teams they beat in that 15-5 stretch. Orlando, Miami, Indiana, Brooklyn, Utah, Sacramento, Lakers, Nuggets, Lakers, Raptors, Trailblazers, Hornets, Heat, Wizards, 76ers.
I’d say 5 of those 15 wins were against a team that was objectively good (Orlando, Indiana, Lakers, Nuggets, and Lakers). However, Haliburton didn’t play in that Indiana game and Jokic didn’t play in that Nuggets game. So that means 3 of the 15 wins were objectively impressive.
That would be useful context if I were talking about the team. But it's just two guys. I mean, they were genuinely counting on guys like Terry, Colins, Smith, etc to help get those wins. That's a big part of the context you refer to and it just doesn't matter.
I hear you. But it's hard for me to separate these two guys from the team in some artful exercise of what's possible for them specifically.
Like, I can't imagine a scenario where we'd excuse a basketball player who is supposed to be imperative to overall team success for going 5-20 with 7 TOs in their team's most important game of the year.
To be fair, that's one game I'm citing, but how the Bulls lost it was pretty spectacular, hard to forget. I guess we're talking about two different things now, between the end of the season sample and the play-in, and that's my bad. But, it's difficult for me to contextualize most of these individual efforts as meaningful in what amounts to years upon years of unserious basketball settings.
I would be more intrigued if I thought Coby and Giddey could contribute to a team serious about routinely winning in the playoffs. Giddey had that chance once and was phased out. Coby might get that chance, but I doubt it's with this team.
I think you can separate those 2 guys in that it really highlights the predicament the Bulls are in. Both Giddey and White are probably like the 4th best player on a good team. Best case scenario, maybe they can become like the 3rd best player on a good team. If they're asked to be more than that (or paid more than that) than the team is going to be not too good.
The Bulls best players are only 4th best type players, but they are getting much bigger roles than that. The Bulls are not good. They need to get guys who can be #1s or #2s, not overpay lesser players to masquerade as such.
The Bulls have no plan or even idea how to get better players.
Let's look more at context. I compared Coby to Maxey and Murray. Do those guys drive winning? Catch any Philly games last year? How'd that go? You've watched Denver, obviously. How do they look when Jokic is out? Or even just on the bench? Think about Devin Booker's career. Does he drive winning or not? Want to bet on whether or not Jaylen Brown looks like a winning player this year?
These are all really awesome players. Do they drive winning? The answer is: "It depends". There are like 4-7 guys in the whole league for whom that is not the answer (and I guess a bunch on the lower end of the talent pool).
Different way to look at it. Before last season I pised a question: Let's say we just drop Jayson Tatum on this team. What's the ceiling this year? Over the next 3 years? Last year I believed that even with Tatum, the Bulls would really struggle to crack exactly 50 wins at any point in the near term.
Revisiting that question this year. If Coby and Giddey's final third proves durable, then I do not think this team would need luck at all to breach the 50 win mark with a guy like Tatum in the fold. That's pretty meaningful, imo.
You don’t think it’s valuable to apply context to try to understand that 15-5 run at a deeper level? Why doesn’t it matter that 2 of those 7 wins were against teams missing their best player (Haliburton and Jokic)? And why doesn’t it matter that another two of those games were against the extremely weak 8 seed team that beat them by almost 20 in the play in game?
AK has not earned the benefit of the doubt from me. We should be looking critically at what he’s trying to sell to us. And what he’s trying to sell us right now is that 15-5 stretch. I’m not interested in buying narratives of team success from him until they start actually improving from an overall win-loss perspective.
Of course those things matter to some extent, but I don't think you are trying to get to a deeper understanding. I'd say you are just looking for a reason to discount the results. For 2 of the Bulls opponents to be missing their top player doesn't seem to me to be that surprising, top players miss games a lot. Did you look to see how many of the Bulls losses that we were missing our top player?
If you want to just look at games against playoff teams with an above .500 record, where both teams started their top player, then sure that would be a small sample of the games, but the Bulls would still have a winning record in those games, which not many teams could say. And then if you want to say that's not enough games for you to decide how good they are, then okay, I get that.
Even if I removed the full context and just looked at that 15-5 stretch at a high level, it didn’t lead to anything. They were blown out in the play-in tournament.
You’re arguing in defense of the Titanic after it already hit the iceberg.
In the Bulls' last 10 games against playoff teams, only one team (the Thunder) played a starting five that also consistently started in the first round of the playoffs. Every other team was resting at least one of their first-round playoff starters.
Also in those final 10 games against playoff teams, the average minutes played by a starter in the game against the Bulls was 26 minutes per game. In the first round of the playoffs, the same players who started against the Bulls and started a first-round playoff game averaged 33 minutes per game.
I am pretty sure they were trying. Teams do play their starters more minutes in the playoffs and they shorten their rotations. They also tend to go small, so the starters may change. None of this means they are not trying though in the regular season.
I couldn't match your numbers. I show that for those 10 games the Bulls played their starters 31 minutes and their opponents 30 minutes.
I showed that the Bulls were at full strength for 4 of those games, while their opponents were full strength in 5. (Burks missed a game for Miami otherwise it would have been 6.) The Bulls loss against Cleveland was definitely a give away game, we sat Vuc, Giddey and White. Pacers also gave us a win, sitting Haliburton and giving their bench a lot of run.
The other 8 games all looked to me to be fully competitive. Lakers played all their starters in both games. Magic were at full strength. Nuggets sat Jokic, put played their other starters for up to 40 minutes.
I think the Bulls record down the stretch was legitimate.
We can all argue back and forth about the legitimacy of those 20 games...but the end result is that since 2017, we have had one winning season and have made the playoffs once. that is almost a decade of mediocrity to flat out futility.
And I'm supposed to believe that Giddey is the key to a Bulls resurgence. I don't think he sucks, he is a good but flawed player. Same goes for Coby White who i like a lot.
Fact is both of those guys are #4,, at best #3 on high level playoff squads and we need to concentrate on getting #1-#2 guys either thru draft or trade..instead of worry about paying #3-4 level dudes.
The context of Fischer's reporting, and questions of how Giddey actually would fit with the Warriors, does make me wonder if this 'interest' is actually instead wish-casting from Kuminga's camp
Who knows, but I'm guessing it was leaked by the Warriors front office to make people think they're trying to do something. I think the only way GS could get Karnisovas interested in dealing Giddey is if they include Podzemski in the deal, and I don't see that happening.
Oh I see. Now we should also not count 2nd games of back-to-backs, or games where the opponent's 2nd best player is just coming back from injury. This will make everything a lot easier, we won't have many games that are meaningful.
I just updated the results. The Bulls record for the last 20 games is really 0-0.
I'm relatively confused about why non of these guys, but obviously Giddey have signed yet. If several teams have shared what they'd pay/trade for Giddey, the market is pretty set.
The longer it drags out, the worse everyone feels about it.
There’s a chance that AK just forgot he hasn’t signed Giddey yet.
Meh, the Bulls are at the very least doing what they're supposed to be doing with Giddey. My guess is that they'll settle at 3 years at $23/$24 million per year.
Once you conclude that nothing good can or will happen, except on the margins or in the lottery and solely through dumb luck, until Jerry dies, the entire nature of fandom is to pray they don’t do anything so stupid that will handicap them when that day inevitably arrives.
In this situation, the risk has been averted, Giddey is not getting huge money for 5 years. What happens next is basically irrelevant, only changing the relative probabilities of the dumb luck.
It would be preferable if they would squirrel away draft capital, even second rounders, to better empower that new day. But since they are, as noted on this blog, allergic to second rounders and dismissive of draft pick value in general, the best action is actually inaction, chasing nothing and be bad at that, keeping players on 2 year deals and perpetually able to make moves once a new directive from ownership and new management ever arrived.
But pinstripes tho
I think it's a little weird people are focusing on his shooting, and not on the fact that he started drawing fouls and getting to the rim more. Which is, in my opinion, far more important, and makes me much more interested in Giddey than I was before, and far more interested than I would be if he only shot well in the second half of the season.
And I just wrapped up watching the last 20 games of the season, and I would say one takeaway is that I object to saying most of the opponents were checked out over that time frame. I haven't watched a post AS break Bulls game since 2016. I did not realize that they became a pretty fun team to watch after Zach left. Especially when Vuc was out of the lineup. That game in Indiana for example about gave me a fuckin heart attack it was so frenzied. A lot of these 20 games I watched were pretty good and fun!
I'll also note that I think Coby's end to the season is being absurdly ignored. This guy who's only 25 played like the best versions of Jamal Murray and Tyrese Maxey and people are just like "whatever". I don't get it. Not saying any of this shit is proof of anything. But one good way of assessing whether someone can do something is if they've already done it. Not sure why there isn't more intrigue about this, apart from the fact that their employers are the fuckin worst.
I like Coby but consistency is still an issue.....
Still think he's a 6th man on a contender but he has definitely improved
Coby has had two stretches of both being healthy and w/o LaVine:
11/30/23 - 2/14/24: 36 games, 57% efg, 23 ppg.
2/4/25 - EOS: 31 games, 56% efg, 23 ppg.
Those are both cherry picked somewhat, but talking about Coby without talking about LaVine is tough. LaVine sank teammates and teams with his static low IQ play, and Coby most of all.
We get to see a whole season of Coby White w/o LaVine and hopefully he stays healthy so we can see if he can actually do it for an entire season.
Yes I do legit think we need to account for the LaVine loserdom vortex. He shot great to start the season and that won't be around next year, but also his loser gravity will also not be around.
We'll see!
It's also his contract. He's practically un-extendable so nothing he could meaningfully do versus it really is a prove-it season coming up heading into unrestricted free agency. If he can sustain what he did in March, then he'll get attention. ThatsWhatTheMoneyIsFor.gif
We've been here before with March Nikola.....
So someone needs to punch Vooch in the face and he'll decide to go play basketball in Europe?
The context is what makes that last stretch of the season feel underwhelming. Like that game in Indiana you’re referencing - the Bulls lost that game by 15 points. You’re going to have a tough time selling excitement to fans if your pitch is “I know we’ve won 1 playoff game in the half decade this guy has been in charge, but look at how fast paced some of our losses are!”
And look at the teams they beat in that 15-5 stretch. Orlando, Miami, Indiana, Brooklyn, Utah, Sacramento, Lakers, Nuggets, Lakers, Raptors, Trailblazers, Hornets, Heat, Wizards, 76ers.
I’d say 5 of those 15 wins were against a team that was objectively good (Orlando, Indiana, Lakers, Nuggets, and Lakers). However, Haliburton didn’t play in that Indiana game and Jokic didn’t play in that Nuggets game. So that means 3 of the 15 wins were objectively impressive.
That would be useful context if I were talking about the team. But it's just two guys. I mean, they were genuinely counting on guys like Terry, Colins, Smith, etc to help get those wins. That's a big part of the context you refer to and it just doesn't matter.
I hear you. But it's hard for me to separate these two guys from the team in some artful exercise of what's possible for them specifically.
Like, I can't imagine a scenario where we'd excuse a basketball player who is supposed to be imperative to overall team success for going 5-20 with 7 TOs in their team's most important game of the year.
To be fair, that's one game I'm citing, but how the Bulls lost it was pretty spectacular, hard to forget. I guess we're talking about two different things now, between the end of the season sample and the play-in, and that's my bad. But, it's difficult for me to contextualize most of these individual efforts as meaningful in what amounts to years upon years of unserious basketball settings.
I would be more intrigued if I thought Coby and Giddey could contribute to a team serious about routinely winning in the playoffs. Giddey had that chance once and was phased out. Coby might get that chance, but I doubt it's with this team.
I think you can separate those 2 guys in that it really highlights the predicament the Bulls are in. Both Giddey and White are probably like the 4th best player on a good team. Best case scenario, maybe they can become like the 3rd best player on a good team. If they're asked to be more than that (or paid more than that) than the team is going to be not too good.
The Bulls best players are only 4th best type players, but they are getting much bigger roles than that. The Bulls are not good. They need to get guys who can be #1s or #2s, not overpay lesser players to masquerade as such.
The Bulls have no plan or even idea how to get better players.
Let's look more at context. I compared Coby to Maxey and Murray. Do those guys drive winning? Catch any Philly games last year? How'd that go? You've watched Denver, obviously. How do they look when Jokic is out? Or even just on the bench? Think about Devin Booker's career. Does he drive winning or not? Want to bet on whether or not Jaylen Brown looks like a winning player this year?
These are all really awesome players. Do they drive winning? The answer is: "It depends". There are like 4-7 guys in the whole league for whom that is not the answer (and I guess a bunch on the lower end of the talent pool).
Different way to look at it. Before last season I pised a question: Let's say we just drop Jayson Tatum on this team. What's the ceiling this year? Over the next 3 years? Last year I believed that even with Tatum, the Bulls would really struggle to crack exactly 50 wins at any point in the near term.
Revisiting that question this year. If Coby and Giddey's final third proves durable, then I do not think this team would need luck at all to breach the 50 win mark with a guy like Tatum in the fold. That's pretty meaningful, imo.
Terry, Collins and Smith are all still on the team though. They're all going to get minutes next season.
You can spin like crazy, but 10 of the Bulls last 20 games were against playoff teams, and we were 7-3 in those games.
Why is it a spin?
You don’t think it’s valuable to apply context to try to understand that 15-5 run at a deeper level? Why doesn’t it matter that 2 of those 7 wins were against teams missing their best player (Haliburton and Jokic)? And why doesn’t it matter that another two of those games were against the extremely weak 8 seed team that beat them by almost 20 in the play in game?
AK has not earned the benefit of the doubt from me. We should be looking critically at what he’s trying to sell to us. And what he’s trying to sell us right now is that 15-5 stretch. I’m not interested in buying narratives of team success from him until they start actually improving from an overall win-loss perspective.
Of course those things matter to some extent, but I don't think you are trying to get to a deeper understanding. I'd say you are just looking for a reason to discount the results. For 2 of the Bulls opponents to be missing their top player doesn't seem to me to be that surprising, top players miss games a lot. Did you look to see how many of the Bulls losses that we were missing our top player?
If you want to just look at games against playoff teams with an above .500 record, where both teams started their top player, then sure that would be a small sample of the games, but the Bulls would still have a winning record in those games, which not many teams could say. And then if you want to say that's not enough games for you to decide how good they are, then okay, I get that.
But who is our top player?
"They are all our top player" - Arturas Karnisovas, probably.
You do know how this past season ended, right?
Even if I removed the full context and just looked at that 15-5 stretch at a high level, it didn’t lead to anything. They were blown out in the play-in tournament.
You’re arguing in defense of the Titanic after it already hit the iceberg.
Yeah, that was disappointing.
In the Bulls' last 10 games against playoff teams, only one team (the Thunder) played a starting five that also consistently started in the first round of the playoffs. Every other team was resting at least one of their first-round playoff starters.
Also in those final 10 games against playoff teams, the average minutes played by a starter in the game against the Bulls was 26 minutes per game. In the first round of the playoffs, the same players who started against the Bulls and started a first-round playoff game averaged 33 minutes per game.
They weren't trying their hardest.
I am pretty sure they were trying. Teams do play their starters more minutes in the playoffs and they shorten their rotations. They also tend to go small, so the starters may change. None of this means they are not trying though in the regular season.
I couldn't match your numbers. I show that for those 10 games the Bulls played their starters 31 minutes and their opponents 30 minutes.
I showed that the Bulls were at full strength for 4 of those games, while their opponents were full strength in 5. (Burks missed a game for Miami otherwise it would have been 6.) The Bulls loss against Cleveland was definitely a give away game, we sat Vuc, Giddey and White. Pacers also gave us a win, sitting Haliburton and giving their bench a lot of run.
The other 8 games all looked to me to be fully competitive. Lakers played all their starters in both games. Magic were at full strength. Nuggets sat Jokic, put played their other starters for up to 40 minutes.
I think the Bulls record down the stretch was legitimate.
the end result was not making the playoffs again.
We can all argue back and forth about the legitimacy of those 20 games...but the end result is that since 2017, we have had one winning season and have made the playoffs once. that is almost a decade of mediocrity to flat out futility.
And I'm supposed to believe that Giddey is the key to a Bulls resurgence. I don't think he sucks, he is a good but flawed player. Same goes for Coby White who i like a lot.
Fact is both of those guys are #4,, at best #3 on high level playoff squads and we need to concentrate on getting #1-#2 guys either thru draft or trade..instead of worry about paying #3-4 level dudes.
Can we at least agree on that?
The context of Fischer's reporting, and questions of how Giddey actually would fit with the Warriors, does make me wonder if this 'interest' is actually instead wish-casting from Kuminga's camp
Who knows, but I'm guessing it was leaked by the Warriors front office to make people think they're trying to do something. I think the only way GS could get Karnisovas interested in dealing Giddey is if they include Podzemski in the deal, and I don't see that happening.
You can spin like crazy, but 10 of the Bulls last 20 games were against playoff teams, and we were 7-3 in those games.
So you're saying you can spin like crazy too
Actually you're saying I can spin like crazy but you can spin very lazily.
I should have linked in the post, I didn't know this was in dispute
https://www.blogabull.com/p/what-meaning-is-there-in-this-meaningful
Oh I see. Now we should also not count 2nd games of back-to-backs, or games where the opponent's 2nd best player is just coming back from injury. This will make everything a lot easier, we won't have many games that are meaningful.
I just updated the results. The Bulls record for the last 20 games is really 0-0.
I mean, yes, essentially that's what I'm saying
Technically 0-1 because the play-in game
Maybe don't suck ass for the first half of the season and then you can get more meaningful games later to analyze
Naw, that game doesn't count either, because Lonzo didn't play.
I'm relatively confused about why non of these guys, but obviously Giddey have signed yet. If several teams have shared what they'd pay/trade for Giddey, the market is pretty set.
The longer it drags out, the worse everyone feels about it.