whitesoxfan99

QUOTE (Jordan4life @ Feb 14, 2016 -> 11:01 PM) I figured with it being Kobe's last one that guys would be a little more hype. Jordan's last one in '03, man, that was a battle. Guys were really competing. AI, T-mac, Kobe, Kg, etc. Yeah, at minimum once the East got down I thought they would at least make some effort on defense. Most years the intensity starts off s***ty but at least picks up a little bit as the game goes on. That game was a f***ing joke. You don't have to treat it like a real game but you should be playing harder than my fatass co-workers do when we play at lunch time.

The intensity level in this game has been bad for a long time but this has been unwatchable. Usually when a team gets down big they pick up the effort a little bit to try to make a game of things but that hasn't happened at all.

QUOTE (gatnom @ Feb 13, 2016 -> 09:58 PM) Lol, what a weird ending to the Illinois game. Refs waved off the game tying shot on minimal contact and then swallowed the whistle when Hill gets tripped. It's hard to care because Illinois sucks, but classic B1G road officiating right there. If I cared at all I would be livid. If you are calling a foul at all on his game tying shot it should have been an and 1 not basket waived off and Lumpkin clearly tripped Hill with the ref looking right at him on the final play.

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Feb 12, 2016 -> 10:56 AM) 2nd best RB in Bears history No

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Feb 11, 2016 -> 01:42 PM) What benefit was there to clammor for him to stay? Jimmy has made it clear he was a believer. Rose and Thibs were always close and I don't recall Taj or Noah being happy. I don't know that Mirotic would know any better and while Doug might have been upset he was hurt so it is a moot point (and Thibs supported Doug's drafting). Pau is the one outlier who did not like Thibs (and it isn't a shock since Pau is pretty low key and largely used to being coached by Phil who was very low key in the grand scheme of things). The funny thing is Pau played better under Thibs last year than he did his last few years in LA (some of that was actually being healthy) and he hasn't played any better this year under Hoidberg than he did last year.

Also, while injuries definitely are impacting this team, the fact is even when their record was good this team was basically playing like a .500 basketball team in terms of their efficiency margins. Their best month of they year in terms of win-loss record was November and they actually got outscored by their opponents that month. They won a lot of close games (7 of their 8 wins were by 6 points or less) and only one of their losses was a game they had a chance to win so they were never as good as their record indicated. This has been a mediocre at best team from day 1 this year and now that they are having injuries they have gone from mediocre to downright bad.

QUOTE (Y2JImmy0 @ Feb 11, 2016 -> 01:31 PM) They clearly stopped last year. At least, parts of the team. Gasol never bought in to the way Thibs did things. I doubt Mirotic or McDermott did either. Guys didn't exactly clamor for him to stay. Well Mirotic has regressed this year and McDermott is still a net negative every time he steps on to the court so the coaching change seems to have done them both a lot of good.

So I know people love to talk about defense when a team is "underachieving" but its funny to me that the entire focus of the Bulls' players and coaches has been on their defense when their offense has been a far bigger issue all year. They are just a terrible offensive basketball team.

The Bulls also now have a negative point differential on the season.

5-13 in their last 18 games and 2 of those wins were against teams that barely qualify as NBA teams.

The Bulls like a team ready for the all star break tonight.

QUOTE (buhbuhburrrrlz @ Feb 9, 2016 -> 02:44 PM) @tomhaberstroh 39m39 minutes ago Ugh. Butler played 47 mins on 2nd night of B2B. Missed next gm w/bad left knee. Then played at DEN and was carted off the floor. Sad stuff. But the injuries were all Thibs' fault.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Feb 9, 2016 -> 02:33 PM) Right now they're 7th in the East. Blog I just read suggests this is 7+ games for Jimmy. Bulls are 1.5 games ahead of the Hornets, in the middle of a losing skid, now without their best player. I sure as heck would be trading Gasol for the best deal I could get in this situation, probably also trying to clear either dunleavy or Gibson out so that they can make a full max contract offer to anyone and everyone next offseason. What's the harm? Butler + Rose + Durant sounds like an adequate setup to me. If there is one thing the last 18 years has taught us, it is that the Bulls are always able to land elite free agents.

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Feb 2, 2016 -> 12:25 PM) I agree McD is better than last year. While Hoiberg gets credit for enabling him and helping him with his confidence, I still think most of his issues had nothing to do with Thibs and had everything to do with the fact that he was hurt and as a result fell out of favor. I guarantee he'd have gotten playing time with Thibs this year and probably been as good if not better. Thibs was very good at getting the most out of his guys, imo. And Thibs was behind and on board with drafting Doug (so it isn't like Gar / Pax shoved him down there throats). And really, how much has he actually improved? His offensive game is as one dimensional as they come, his rebounding has somehow gotten worse, and he is less involved on offense when he is in the game this year than last year. Basically he has made open shots this year that he missed last year but McDermott was always a guy who was eventually going to be a solid spot up jump shooter.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Feb 2, 2016 -> 11:12 AM) Kendall Gill blasted how they defend pick and rolls. He said if they defended it the way he thinks they should defend it, they would have 10 more wins. Well that is just dumb considering they have been a top 10 defensive team all year and they don't have the personnel to rival a team the Spurs defensively which is what they would need to do to have 10 more wins.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Feb 2, 2016 -> 11:17 AM) A lot the team defends that way. The effort is way down in too many games. I just don't agree with this. This team plays hard on defense and has been pretty consistent on that. You are always going to have some poor performances on the defensive end over the course of the season but defense really hasn't been an issue. And while there are some bad defenders on this team (Mirotic, Brooks and McDermott) I don't feel any of those guys lack effort on that end very often.

QUOTE (buhbuhburrrrlz @ Feb 2, 2016 -> 12:01 AM) Think they're 4-9 last 13 games. Another case of limping into the all star break. 5 more games to go. And only two of those wins were against legitimate NBA basketball teams. They had the great win against the Cavs and a good win against the Pistons but the other 2 wins were against the 76ers and Lakers which barely count.

The Bulls offense has been a joke in overtime.

Might not be indisputable but the angle they just showed certainly looked like that was off Butler not Hayward.

I hate Stacey King. I really do.

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Feb 1, 2016 -> 01:50 PM) Now clearly Rose still needs to do more when he doens't have the basket and the offense has to figure s*** out cause it looks so ugly at times, but I'm also more and more convinced that has a lot to do with the fact that we have a lot of really s***ty role players too (the days of this being a deep team are over and it is a myth). On any given night we could have 4 or 5 just horrendous players who get significant minutes (Brooks / Snell / McD / Mirotic / Moore are all so inconsistent that they can all be absolute black hole awful...Hinrich probably should fit in this camp but so little is expected of him and he's still such a stable passer / defender). Your constant defense of Hinrich always cracks me up. Hinrich is awful and has been for a long time. And what makes him a stable passer? His assist rate is ridiculously low. The only reason he doesn't turn the ball over much is because he literally does nothing on offense. You can find plenty of guards that wouldn't turn the ball over if you told them to never dribble or try to create for anyone else.

QUOTE (Buehrle>Wood @ Feb 1, 2016 -> 06:57 PM) All true. We basically have Milan and Odenigbo who are (potentially) real football players on the dline and neither of them has even proven anything. Maybe McGrew can be a 3rd down pass rusher but I'm super optimistic there. That is why I've consistently said that even if we are solid next year because of starting a ton of seniors we are royally f***ed in 2017 which makes this Cubit thing and punting on 2 straight recruiting classes extra infuriating.

QUOTE (Buehrle>Wood @ Feb 1, 2016 -> 06:05 PM) Pretty good day for Illini recruiting (relatively). Just landed LB Dele Harding who may be the best player in the class and could start from day 1. The news was that he was going to Rutgers so that's a nice surprise to get him. Also got Eddy Fish to flip his commit from Boston College to Illinois. I guess if there's a silver lining to this bad class, it's that Illinois has an oppurtunity to sign a decent offensive line class for the second year in a row. That seemed like a rarity even when they were recruiting well. When Harding is your headliner your class is beyond garbage. And I'm more concerned about dline recruiting than oline since we lose 5 seniors after next year and besides the seniors we have maybe 2 kids in the program that are dlinemen that have any talent. We also have no good dlinemen committed right now.

QUOTE (Buehrle>Wood @ Jan 29, 2016 -> 09:20 PM) Well he's not anymore. That's 4 guys who cancelled this weekend at least. So much for that. Drake Spears decommits because he doesn't have the grades. This class just keeps getting better and better. Even if they close "strong" by adding a couple ok players this class is f***ing awful. This class is even worse than Zook's last couple of classes which were both awful. You have to go back to when Ron Turner just stopped even trying to recruit to find a class this bad.

QUOTE (Buehrle>Wood @ Jan 29, 2016 -> 12:04 AM) Lol, of course. Not sure how they lost out on Carmouche with all the need at LB. Have 4-5 Scholes left. Let's save it from complete disaster. Shane Richards- juco OL, ok state verbal. I thonk hell end up in champaign though. Just visited Sadarius Hutcherson- So Carolina verbal would probably be our best commit if they can get him. He's visiting this weekend. Dele Harding- He's pretty much a must. And he should commit to Illinois. Last decent LB prospect were in on since Carmouche chose elsewhere. Was a UT verbal now down to Rutgers and Illinois. Visiting this weekend. Tadarryl Marshall- lot of decent offers and for some reason is visiting illinois this weekend. David Montgomery- Iowa State commit, visiting this weekend. Only rb were in on. Not a position of need but he's a good prospect to see what up anyways. Trevour Simms- Mizzou commit or something, I don't know. He's flipped like 10 times. Land 2-3 of those kids and I'll maybe be okay with the class. Doubt we even do that. Lot of people visiting this weekend, they better get some committs. Marshall and Montgomery aren't visiting any longer. Where are you seeing that Hutcherson is visiting?