Seeing how the other half lives
I was checking out the Bulls-Wolves game tonight. A tale of two young teams with bright promise and clear problems on a night were the brightness blurred the clarity.
Great game, Sheed style: Both teams played hard. Really hard and pretty damn well.
The Wolves were down by 16 early, and lead for only 4 and half minutes of regulation. Al Jefferson and Kevin Love had outstanding nights, and the Wolves guards made huge defensive plays down the stretch. Minnesota madness!
As noted on this board, Rose is a superb rookie. He is a blue chip supreme. Deng and Gordon both mystify me, though. Clearly they have shown they can win together, but their shared struggle with consistency (and more to the point complimentary play) is mind boggling. If those two would play like the level headed vets they should be, Chicago could be in the conversation with Detroit, Atlanta, and Miami. I like how Noah is coming on. He still needs to get stronger, but his floor game is emerging and he is now a contributor.
I have been watching the Wolves off and on this past month. McHale is finally earning his pay. As also been noted, Foye seems to have blossomed into a dangerous lead guard on both ends of the floor. Jefferson is a beast. So is Kevin Love. (O.J. who?) Guys like Bassy, Craig Smith and the surprising Rodney Carney are all thriving in their respective roles. Minnesota is comin up.
posted by The Green at
9:17 PM
2 Comments:
Nice post, thanks for watching. JLev and I were at this game, to see the rook(s) and the suddenly winning Wolves, and experience Target Center's new pub fare: Corned Beef and Smithwicks at a Disney style concourse pub. (They also sold "Irish Nachos" which substituted Waffle potatoes for tortilla chips, and then had meat and lettuce and sour cream on top like supreme nachos. Gross.)
Anyway, after reading your post I will temper my feelings that the Bulls are the Irish Nachos of the NBA, and that they suck and they have no hope. Certainly they played well against the young T-pups, and they ran endless give-and-gos to their big men when the Wolves came out flat-footed. They looked good, and I agree that Noah was more impressive than I expected.
But Gordon's probably gonna walk at the end of this year...he already passed up big money (although there's still time to overpay him). Meanwhile, the Bulls have sunk significant money into glorified role players like Nocioni and Deng and Hinrich. For the time being their big men are inneffective, and Big Al totally abused them down the stretch. I found myself asking, how can the Bulls possibly improve?
But I forget that they are young, they have a for-real #1 pick who will only get better...and if their big men grow into themselves (big ifs) they could still be good. Gooden comes of the books this year (and possibly Gordon), so if they succeed in moving Hughes, they'll have plenty of wiggle room to put other players around their core. But for now, they have so many role players that they don't have time to play guys like Sefolosha, who strikes me as a good complimentary guy who should get more minutes. They really need another star to put with Rose.
How good would Chris Bosh look in a different shade of red, next to Tyrus Thomas?
By
TVDave, at 10:21 AM
This game was infuriating - I am almost ready to start back to poetry to help me get over how shitty the Bulls are this year.
Paxson gets all the blame - so many draft picks, nothing to show for it. How many years have I spent watching terrible basketball under some promise of salary cap room to lure in a great player?
But this game was lost due to a rookie coach. Coming out of a tmeout with 30 seconds left and down by one, Vincent of the Black calls for a quick play to pass the ball to Gordon for a jump shot from the corner. Miss.
Nevermind that Minny got the rebound, missed and Rose got one more chance to be the hero. A coach needs to call a real play with a real chance of getting a shot and a foul that could put us up by 2.
Los Lobos have had a great month but fuck that, Bulls are just so FRUSTRATING!
Pitchers and catchers in 17 days.
By
HP All-stars, at 5:06 PM
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