The year before winning the lottery and drafting Derrick Rose, the Bulls won 33 games. And in Rose's first two years under the generally confused Vinny Del Negro, the Bulls finished an even 41-41 each year.
Del Negro was dismissed after Rose's second year - which was also the Summer of Lebron/Wade/Bosh/David Lee/Joe Johnson... during which the Bulls landed Carlos Boozer/C.J. Watson/Kyle Korver.
Boozer was widely considered to be a flop, infuriating fans with his disdain for defense and passivity on offense. Watson and Korver were nice bench players, supporting iron man Luol Deng with the fabled "Bench Mob". Little the Bulls added that summer would have portended a big step forward for the team.
Yet, incredibly, the Bulls jumped from 41 to 62 wins, finished with the league's best record, advanced to the East finals, and lost to Miami in 5 games (although by a total of a mere 11 points in the series).
Adding Rose, for his first two years, added 8 wins over what the Bulls were before his arrival.
Adding Tom Thibodeau, on the other hand, added 21 wins. Rose deservedly won MVP. Luol Deng was transformed, in the eyes of Bulls fans, from a terrible John Paxson contract decision to one of the game's best small forwards. Joakim Noah has continued his upward trajectory and has emerged into a legitimate All-Star capable of leading the way to victory on the road in a playoff game seven.
It is fair to ask, then, if the driving force behind the Bulls' competitiveness is not merely the individual brilliance of Derrick Rose, but rather, the style of play and relentless professional culture instilled by Thibodeau - carried out through linchpins Noah and Deng.
Conventional wisdom says that superstars win championships, and more often than not this is true. However, there are precedents for teams winning titles with just a lot of very good players. The most oft-cited example was the Larry Brown Pistons, who won a title without a single player who could be argued was even in the top 3 at his position, but had five - Billups, Hamilton, Prince, Rasheed Wallace and Ben Wallace - who were all in the top half dozen. Further, the Spurs have a very clear shot at winning the West this year with an aging nucleus and not a single player that could still be called a superstar.
When Reggie Rose made the unfortunate comment this winter that he felt the Bulls had not done enough to build around Derrick, he said that it could affect his decision to push it and come back this season. As we sit at one year and one week since the injury with Derrick still not back on the court, it's hard to avoid the disturbing reality that Reggie gave us a very clear insight into the thinking of Team Rose: throw this season away.
Trouble is... they were wrong. In Rose's absence, Carlos Boozer had his best year as a Bull. This is interesting because for his first two years in Chicago, Boozer actually played much better when Rose was out and he was a bigger part of the offense. Noah and Deng both made the All-Star team. The mercurial Nate Robinson stepped forward with scoring binges that won games for the Bulls, most memorably in Game 4 against the Nets. Jimmy Butler blossomed into a very solid bench player, a three-position defensive stopper with an emerging offensive game. He even acquitted himself well in a starting role and provided hope that with further improvement of his jump shot he might well be the answer at the shooting guard position. (After watching the development of Noah, does anyone want to bet against Thibodeau's ability to get one more level of improvement out of Butler?) Even afterthought signing Marco Belinelli stepped up with some big games when called upon, in keeping with Thibodeau's "we need everyone" mantra.
Forgetting all about the tempest surrounding Rose's return, it is very fair to ask not whether Rose has a good enough supporting cast, but whether Rose or what you could get in TRADE for Rose would give better support for Thibodeau, Noah and Deng.
Very few NBA coaches truly add value. Their function is to provide a little strategic and tactical direction but also to keep players who make more money than they do all pulling in the same direction. College coaches might scheme and develop their way to the Final Four, but conventional wisdom says that coaches can't do that in the NBA.
We have mounting evidence that Thibodeau is one of the few coaches - perhaps the NBA's only coach - who adds value in much the way a superstar player does. And once you accept that premise, a range of options present themselves in the quest to build a Championship team that perhaps we might not have considered before.
And if Derrick Rose wants to play in his hometown for the long haul, it's something that the protective circle around him might want to think hard about.
Adding Thibodeau to a team with Derrick increased wins to 62, it's not as simple as "just Thibs." (For example, a team with Thibs but no Derrick just won 45 games.)
ReplyDeleteWhile you're correct that Thibs is one of the few impact coaches, it's not an either/or and it's definitely true that you have a far far better chance of winning a title with this team adding a star player (i.e. Rose) than adding instead say another 2-3 Deng/Butler caliber guys.
You're also speculating when you say "it's clear that Reggie gave us a very clear insight into the thinking of Team Rose." It's as clear that Derrick's leg just doesn't feel right and there's little to no point in risking it. The entire premise of this stems from "Rose can play but chooses not to, therefore he a)isn't the guy we thought and/or b)isn't as valuable as we thought."
It could easily (more likely) be as simple as "I don't want to be Penny Hardaway, who ruined his career by coming back too soon." Or that he knows if he's mentally favoring the leg, he's at a big risk for a compensating injury. Again - everything in his career would tell you that he'd do anything to get out there and help win. So you can decide that despite all that it's a ploy against management because his brother's an idiot or you can go with the sane explanation that when he says it doesn't feel right, its because it actually doesn't feel right.
I think that to accept that Rose truly isn't physically ready this late in the game, you logically have to accept that Bulls have been acting irrationally for two months now.
ReplyDeleteThe Bulls would not have released to the public that Rose was medically cleared for games unless they knew that the Rose camp was trying to run out the clock in the season.
If Rose really were not ready to play based on whate everyone sees from watching him in practice, they would ahev shut this whole thing down long ag. They would have left no doubt. They would not have told us he was cleared. They could have, on any day since, said "We see him every day and he's really not close yet." They would have officially shut him down by now. They certainly wouldn't STILL be leaving the door open for him to play this series.
The only explanation for why the Bulls continue to let this smolder and put increasing pressure on Rose would be if they're watching him in practice every day and know he's ready to go -whether he says so or not.
His gatekeepers are a hyper-protective big brother and an agent who has a beef with the organization, and they have him convinced that in big picture, he'd be best served by going 18 months between games. It's not a matter of whether he 'wants' to play. I'm sure he does. Although boy, his comments from yesterday and today were pretty uninspiring on that front, talking about how this is his time to "relax" and he's spending time watching a lot of movies.
The other issue is: if he's STILL not right at 53 weeks, then we have a really big problem here, as the avaregae time for NBA players with a torn ACL to return to game action is 36-37 weeks. And we have NEVER seen someone be back at practice for 3 months and still be unable to play. Iman Shumpert was back at practice for two WEEKS and was then back in games. That was four months ago - and he tore his ACL the day before Rose
But again, if this were really the case, the Bulls would be out front protecting Derrick and making it clear to thr world that he really isn't ready. They're absolutely not doing that. This would be so EASY to fix... and the Bulls don't do it. I think it's a stretch to interpret the organzation's behavior in this as anything other than a passive-aggressive attempt to keep the pressure on Rose... and they would not do that if they were not sure he was ready.
There is really no other explanation, besides top-to-bottom incompetence, that Paxson, Forman and Thobodeau would not have been clear and unambiguous about this and let the world know he doesn't yet look right in practice instead of saying over and over that we're just leaving it to Derrick.
You're ignoring the difference between "look right" and "feel right." And the fact that there's a significant increase in intensity and physicality of play from practice to a game. For example I'd bet a lot that no matter what people say, there's no one hitting Rose in the air like he'll get hit in a game, no one making Kenneth Faried-like stomps at his feet/legs. And pretty much every player who came back and reinjured himself or developed a compensating injury was cleared, right?
ReplyDeleteAs for the brother/BJ speculation, it's just that - speculation. Everything could EASILY be just what it is on it's face. Much like when the Bulls said "Luol is sick," it took Lu coming out with the tweets to make it known he wasn't just sick, he had a spinal tap, spinal headache, etc. Just like in previous go-rounds with Lu when it's been similar and the Bulls haven't communicated effectively, leading to him being perceived as soft. This isn't an organization known for its smarts/comprehensiveness in communications.
The point is that it fits just as well with the evidence that it is what they say it is - he looks good but doesn't feel fully there yet. And it makes no sense to come back given who he is and his importance to the franchise until he's fully there. And that's much more consistent with everything we've seen from Derrick in the past. The only way you get the opposite is to think that the hyper-competitive guy we've seen for years is somehow now happy to sit because Reggie/BJ allegedly tell him so. Or that he doesn't see how good this team is, better than anyone thought they'd be. Or that despite all that he doesn't care about winning all that much.
If he looks good but doesn't feel all the way there yet... he should be playing. That's what his doctors have told him. That's what other players - football and basketball - who have torn ACL's have told him: that you don't feel 100% like yourself until you do it in games.
ReplyDeleteAnd like I said... this would all be SO easy for the Bulls to shut down if they wanted to, the fact that they haven't is highly suggestive. I don't think it ever occurred to them that Rose would not play when he reached this point. He is now two months past the point in his rehab where guys come back.
I don't think the Bulls are part of Reggie and B.J.'s calculation, so writing off this Bulls' season doesn't matter to them.
But the fact is, Derrick is not at risk. He has not been at risk for two months now, which is why the doctors cleared him.
And no matter what they say publicly, even though they like Derrick a lot, you can't tell me it doesn't bother Noah, Gibson and Hinrich that they're holding themselves together with duct tape and trying to get out there, while Rose is healthier than they are and is sitting.
Even Deng's tweet about playing if he's medically cleared in Game 7 against the Nets... you can't tell me that wasn't directed at Rose.
I would be surprised if we don't get to this summer and hear from Rip and/or Nazr, once they're gone, that they couldn't understand why Rose wasn't playing.
I'm sorry, but there's simply no way that, at 53 weeks, Rose isn't ready yet - at least by the standard other professional athletes use ro define "ready".
The mistake the Bulls made was in assuming that Rose would use the same "ready" standard as everyone else and that his protective circle wouldn't convince a kid who isn't all that bright that this was in his best interests, no matter how badly he wants to play.