Just now, Chisoxfn said:

Maybe their owner wants Buckets and is now going to bring someone in who helps get him Butler?  

That would be a strange stand for a GM to make, I wonder if it was a behavior issue.

4 hours ago, bmags said:

The Suns just fired their GM. 

He has not performed well, however, strange timing for performance firing.

The Suns owner (Sarver) is a complete moron and sticks his face into too many thing and ends up making this 10x worse.  McDonough probably told him to butt out of something or to shove it for some reason.  This is the same owner that hired Earl Watson as a Head Coach...and gave the job to an unqualified Lindsey Hunter instead of Dan Majerle when he let Alvin Gentry go.   He's got to be one of THE WORST owners in the league.

So it's preseason, but the bulls defensively are ATROCIOUS. Just incredibly, incredibly bad.

Just now, bmags said:

So it's preseason, but the bulls defensively are ATROCIOUS. Just incredibly, incredibly bad.

No young team is good at defense. Its the facts of life. This team might always be bad at defense, but it is a big reason why many pundits still expect Bulls to be really bad. I will point out, Lavine had another electric offensive performance. Like dynamite.  

 

The Bulls FO has to hope that someone else, Jimmy's caliber, pulls a similar stunt this season or next season as I presume their plan is to land one guy via a "value" trade, surround him with Mark/Carter Jr., and whichever non Mark/Carter Jr. pieces they didn't trade, and use that nucleus to try to add via free agency.  Butler is going to get traded for pennies on the dollar.  

1 hour ago, Chisoxfn said:

The Bulls FO has to hope that someone else, Jimmy's caliber, pulls a similar stunt this season or next season as I presume their plan is to land one guy via a "value" trade, surround him with Mark/Carter Jr., and whichever non Mark/Carter Jr. pieces they didn't trade, and use that nucleus to try to add via free agency.  Butler is going to get traded for pennies on the dollar.  

And yet the Bulls aren't on the radar of teams for seemingly anyone who wants traded, as usual. 

If they want that strategy to work, they're going to need MarkCarter to step up big time this year, or at least to build up enough draft picks where suddenly they look like a reasonable destination for people. No one really wanted to go to Philly, but they got on the list of people because they built up a S*** load of talent. Ditto GSW, although that's to a different extreme.

The defense will be bad overall but having Dunn, who is an All-NBA defensive guy when he's at his peak, plus the defensive potential of Carter, certainly helps. I also don't think Markkanen or LaVine are that bad defensively. It's Parker and the majority of the bench that will be the big problem defensively, in my opinion 

16 hours ago, Balta1701 said:

And yet the Bulls aren't on the radar of teams for seemingly anyone who wants traded, as usual. 

If they want that strategy to work, they're going to need MarkCarter to step up big time this year, or at least to build up enough draft picks where suddenly they look like a reasonable destination for people. No one really wanted to go to Philly, but they got on the list of people because they built up a S*** load of talent. Ditto GSW, although that's to a different extreme.

Who's Mark Carter?

13 hours ago, Jose Abreu said:

The defense will be bad overall but having Dunn, who is an All-NBA defensive guy when he's at his peak, plus the defensive potential of Carter, certainly helps. I also don't think Markkanen or LaVine are that bad defensively. It's Parker and the majority of the bench that will be the big problem defensively, in my opinion 

It's not fair to markkanen to put him and lavine in the same sentence. Markkanen gets in bad matchups but tries, Lavine runs around like a chicken with his head cut off. He has just very, very bad feel for nba team defense.

Just now, bmags said:

It's not fair to markkanen to put him and lavine in the same sentence. Markkanen gets in bad matchups but tries, Lavine runs around like a chicken with his head cut off. He has just very, very bad feel for nba team defense.

is it a bad feel or lack of interest?  I lean towards the latter

Just now, Kyyle23 said:

is it a bad feel or lack of interest?  I lean towards the latter

I actually think he tries but he basically just really wants to be 1-1 situations with his guy, but no nba offense is just giving you static isos on the wing. So as soon as he gets down on the defensive end and the offense sets up with some screens and movement he just end up WAY out of position, and then he tries to aggressively make up for it and gets himself in WORSE position.

There was a point when the d was setting up and lavine lost his man on a sudden screen, where his man came up and was handed the ball and shot a 3. Lavine made the strangest route to the ball he ended up behind his own teammate on the screen, and his response was to push Lopez in the back to "guard" his man.

It's just cluelessness combined with overzealousness.

57 minutes ago, Brian said:

Who's Mark Carter?

The genetic combination between lauri markannen and wendell carter

32 minutes ago, Balta1701 said:

The genetic combination between lauri markannen and wendell carter

Oh. I'd put that one in the shredder.

Gonna be honest, from a distance the Jimmy show is kinda fun.

Just now, bmags said:

Gonna be honest, from a distance the Jimmy show is kinda fun.

Wow, that is Trump levels of needing validation.

5 minutes ago, Tony said:

Thank God he's not the Bulls problem at this point. What a headache. 

He really is saying something many others believe, especially around Wiggins.  His tone is just different. This isn't much different than how Kobe or even Jordan would have done things.  If you weren't going to really put in the work and be a good player, you didn't need to be there.  Buckets is basically telling the front office, you should have done something and listened and made the move to bring us better winning players. Instead you ignored what most said about the Wolves (their non Buckets best players were soft) and stuck with it hoping Jimmy would be happy.  

The Wolves saga is even better. Apparently Buckets took the 3rd string unit in practice and whooped the crap out of the starting unit.  Buckets is proving his point...the other guys on the Wolves are soft and not capable of winning a title.  He wants to be in a dynamic where when he does that, someone steps up and knocks him on his butt or works even harder to shut him up. That is what he wants. He is no different than many other great players in that regard.  

Whole thing is hilarious and yes, I'd still take Buckets on the Bulls...as long as we were going to bring in another star to go with him. 

 

6 minutes ago, Chisoxfn said:

The Wolves saga is even better. Apparently Buckets took the 3rd string unit in practice and whooped the crap out of the starting unit.  Buckets is proving his point...the other guys on the Wolves are soft and not capable of winning a title.  He wants to be in a dynamic where when he does that, someone steps up and knocks him on his butt or works even harder to shut him up. That is what he wants. He is no different than many other great players in that regard.  

Whole thing is hilarious and yes, I'd still take Buckets on the Bulls...as long as we were going to bring in another star to go with him. 

It's very weird:

 

http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/24950981/jimmy-butler-heated-practice-timberwolves

 

What I don't get is Jimmy did this wrong. If he wanted out, right before the season starts when teams aren't planning to add a contract like his is just wrong IMO. Pop off either at the end of last season or at the deadline. 

There's nothing they can do about Wiggins. Guy isn't moveable.

Guarantee if it was up to thibs he'd trade wiggins and KAT and roll with that 3rd stringer unit, taj, and he'd be on the line with Mike James in a heartbeat. 

1 hour ago, Dick Allen said:

It's very weird:

 

http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/24950981/jimmy-butler-heated-practice-timberwolves

 

What I don't get is Jimmy did this wrong. If he wanted out, right before the season starts when teams aren't planning to add a contract like his is just wrong IMO. Pop off either at the end of last season or at the deadline. 

There were reports right after the season ended that he wasn't happy with Wiggins / Towns. I think he probably wasn't "strong" enough in those intents and Thibs assumed he could smooth it over.  Instead everyone just thought time would heal all wounds and Jimmy decided (not the best timing) that he was going to strong-arm the organization to go somewhere else (technically by making the move when he did...he certainly gave himself all of the leverage).  

40 minutes ago, bmags said:

There's nothing they can do about Wiggins. Guy isn't moveable.

Guarantee if it was up to thibs he'd trade wiggins and KAT and roll with that 3rd stringer unit, taj, and he'd be on the line with Mike James in a heartbeat. 

But I think Glen Taylor is strongly in KAT's camp, hence him getting the big contract, etc.  

I'm confused how "trade me now, I don't want to be here" fits with him declaring "you fucking need me" to the GM/coach. 

3 minutes ago, Jenksismyhero said:

I'm confused how "trade me now, I don't want to be here" fits with him declaring "you fucking need me" to the GM/coach. 

I thought that was strange too. I am guessing he must have given a him or me thing with KAT and maybe even Wiggins.