So, it didn't take Jerry Sloan to realize he'd like to be coaching again. While I am assuming this probably means a head coaching position, I would love to see him coaching the Bulls as basically an offensive coordinator. He has coached Boozer before and got solid production out of him, and coached both Deron Williams and John Stockton. The Bulls offense depresses me from time to time and I'd love to see what he could do. Yes, I am aware that this will never happen, as I am sure he wants to be a head coach and Thibs seems like too much of a control freak, but Sloan never did win a championship. He would have a real shot of winning one with the Bulls. It's an interesting story anyway.

The best of the best in the NBA are vastly underpaid is the claim made by Yahoo! Sports Adrian Wojnarowski.  As a citizen making a modest salary, this initially rubs me the wrong way.  How could those making millions be underpaid?  But as Wojnarowski points out

For everything they do to drive TV ratings and gate receipts, the global advancement and relentless news coverage, it’s a farce that the elite of the elite have to listen to so many sorry, sloppy owners tell them they deserve rollbacks on present contracts and deserve future ones to be slashed. These stars are the NBA. They’re everything.

Well, that's probably true.  People don't see the Bulls to see Kyle Korver (except maybe some female fans who thinks he looks like Ashton Kutcher with a jumper).  For the most part, they come to see Derrick Rose.  Even if they do come to see the Bulls as a whole, Rose's jersey sales far outweigh the rest of his teammates.  The difference I'm sure is even greater with guys like LeBron and Wade.  As Woj correctly states

most of their teammates make far too much.

However, if players really made what they were worth in terms of money they brought in, you would have three tiers of players: superstars who made tens of millions of dollars, great (but not superstar players) who make the team as a whole so much better (people like to pay for winning), and everybody else.  This type of salary scheme would make little sense in real life.  Furthermore, a guy like Carmello Anthony might be underpaid by the New York Knicks, but he can more than make up for it with advertising and a budding acting career In the end, while I found this article interesting, I also found it to be a pant load of garbage.  Millionaire players not making as many millions as they should has to be the least concerning thing about this lockout.  The people that this lockout most greatly affects are the average joes.  The people who work for NBA teams at the lower levels.  People that work for the stadiums cleaning up after games or selling beer.  These people are just trying to make it in the world and they are jobless because millionaires can't agree on who should get millions.  Players are talking about having to provide for their families and what's fair.  Learn what an investment account is and you wouldn't be so dependant on this basketball season getting started.  Someone should write about something besides the players and the owners because in the end, all of them will still be upper class at the end of the day.  Let's end this lockout for those who need it to end to simply put more food on the table.

[From the FanPosts]

The "NBA owners made a modest push from their rigid stance on implementing a hard salary cap," Adrian Wojnarowski reported Tuesday at Yahoo.

This actually seems very promising to me. I have yet to here much on either side actually budging and now it seems as if both sides are beginning to do so.  Here is why I see some promise:

 Players Association executive director Billy Hunter has called the hard cap a "blood issue" for the union, and insisted the players would never agree to it.

Well, if that's true, the owners have budged on this issue just a tad. It seems as if they have proposed something similar, but hopefully something that the players could agree to. Any sort of owner budging is helpful.

The owners didn’t budge on a desire to change the basketball-related income percentage (BRI) to a split that takes the players from 57 percent to the mid 40s, sources said. The players had offered to drop from a 57-43 split to 54-46 at a meeting last week in New York.

Ok, so this doesn't seem like much when a 10% swing is still required from the owners' point of view. However, movement is movement. Making concessions is making concessions. Budging is budging. Negotiations are all about those first steps. When one side budges a bit, the other side needs to as well. Hopefully today's meeting will go well and we as fans can begin to see light at the end of the tunnel.

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Every game from now on is about getting closer to securing that top spot in the Eastern Conference.  All of the major players for that top spot are in action tonight as the Bulls (54-20) face the lowly Pistons (26-48) in Detroit, the Heat (52-23) face the Timberwolves (17-28), and the Celtics (52-22) face the toughest test in the Atlanta Hawks (43-32).  The Heat should have an easy one (although they did just lose to Cleveland), so the Bulls need a win in Detroit to hold that 2.5 game lead.  Hopefully the Bulls can come away with a win and gain some ground on the Celtics.  Now, on to the game at hand.

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Let me be upfront about my own opinion.  I have never been on the trade Noah and Deng for Melo bandwagon.  I think going after Melo is great if we can keep Noah, but only if that is the case.  I believe I have found some reasonable evidence that this is the smartest move.

What makes an NBA champion?  I looked at the past two decades of champions going all the way back to the 1990 season.  I looked at two statistics: 3pt% and DRtg.  I wanted to see how both of these statistics were involved in the makings of an NBA Champion.  Here is what I found. 

Here is what I noticed.  Nearly all of these teams were top 10 defensive teams.  That is an amazing statistic.  Furthermore, about half of these teams were also above the league average in three point shooting.  For the most part, it seemed that the teams that were not above average shooting teams were extremely good defensively.  The exceptions are the 2006 Heat (below average from 3 and only 9th defensively) and the 2001 Lakers (wow, how the heck did they win!).  If you look at the 2005 Heat, they stepped up their defense in the playoffs.  Of their players getting >100 playoff minutes, only one player had above a 104 DRtg (their season average).  Wade went from a 103DRtg in season to a 100DRtg in the playoffs.  Haslem went from 105 to 102.  Walker went from a 105 to a 103.  Payton went from a 107 to a 104.  I could go on.  The 2001 Lakers did the same thing.  Furthermore, the Lakers shot the lights out in the playoffs.  The upped their 3pt% to 38.6% in the playoffs.  No mystery how they won

So, here is the "great idea" going around: trade Deng and Noah for Anthony.  Most have conceded that we will give up defense in favor of scoring.  Furthermore we will lose Deng, a career 30.9 3pt shooter whose last three seasons have all been over 36% from deep, and gain Anthony a career 30.8% 3 pt shooter who has had only one season shooting over 36% (although one other was close) and who regressed from deep last season shooting under 32%.  We essentially get no better from deep, and perhaps worse, and we regress defensively. 

This seems like the wrong direction to go in building a champion.  I'd rather see this team focus on defense and try to win that way.  It seems that most NBA champions were great defensively, so let's try and keep the great defenders we already have.

[Thanks to DRose01 for today's game preview. Fatigue will potentially be a factor: Rose, Hinrich, Noah, and Deng all played over 40 minutes last night. The Raptors/Knicks game starts at the same time, 7CST. -ed.]

Procrastination is a bitch.  I have been meaning to do one of these game previews all year, and now I get the privilege (or get stuck with, depending on how you look at it) of writing on the most important game of the season!  

It's quite simple: the playoffs are on the line tonight.  From a purely mathematical perspective, the Bulls have a 75% chance of making the playoffs.  But from a team that lost the season series with the Nets, blew a massive lead against the Kings, and failed to show up against numerous beatable teams, I am not that sure that the Bulls chances are really that high.  However, the Bulls certainly showed up last night, getting huge nights from Rose and Hinrich.  The question is: which team will show up tonight.

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Derrick Rose is the future of this franchise.  After Rose shook off that early season injury, he has looked much better.  But, there are stil some lingering questions about his game.  Will he ever develop 3pt range?  Will he ever become an elite passer?  Will he become one of the greatest players of this era?

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I think this may be a big topic of contention entering the 2010 free agency.  LeBron is the best player available but Bosh is extremely good still and fits the dire need for a post presence that the Bulls so desperately want.  Perhaps two questions come to the forefront:  which player does a better job of making players around him better and which player will fit better with the pieces the Bulls already have?  Let's address question one first.

Above is a list of players that played with other teams before playing with LeBron or Bosh.  I have shown their USG and PER.  Let's start with the Cavs.

Mo Williams seems to have remained pretty much the same playing with LeBron.  He is still a high USG solid PER player.  He had his best and worst PER years with LeBron.  I don't see anything that seems to imply that Williams improved at all by playing with LeBron.  Anthony Parker is a different story.  It is challenging to say whether he has stayed the same or gotten worse.  His USG is certainly way down, which is not a surprise, but his PER dropped with it!  It is possible that this is due to age and it is also possible that since Parker does shoot plenty of threes, that he needs to be getting more attempts to keep his PER up.  He is averaging 6 FGA this year, but has been closer to 10 in previous years.  This is difficult to determine.  Shaq is an even tougher call.  It does not look like he was made any better certainly.  Compared to the previous year (although it may have been a fluke) his USG is up but his PER is down.  This is not a trend one wants to see from a big man.  No on to the Raptors.

Hedo's PER has been declining since before he got to Toronto.  However, he is either getting a bit smarter about it or simply dropping in USG because he has Bosh on the team.  While his PER dropped slightly, his USG dropped considerably as well.  The ratio is better, but he is still not really a better player.  Jack and Bellinelli on the other hand are both very interesting.  It is important to see improvement since both are still relatively young and perhaps this effect was expected, but both players have shown improvements with Bosh.  Jack has expecially.  His USG is down and PER is up!  He is certainly making the most of his opportunities. 

Conclusion:  I'll be the first to admit, there is not much difference seen here.  Perhaps what we can learn is that aside from growing with age and experience, a player "is what they is" and there is not much a star can do to change that.  If I had to give the edge in this first question, I'd give it to Bosh.  Two young players showed improvement when paired with him.  However, I think these results simply put more emphasis on the the last question, who fits the Bulls needs?

What are the Bulls needs?  The Bulls are next to last in Offensive Effeciency. Bulls need effecient scoring.  However they are a pretty solid team defensively, so no downgrades there and we should be ok.  The Bulls are a solid rebounding team, so again, same deal.  The Bulls are dead last in FG% at the rim, near the bottom in long midrange jumpers as well as threes.  The Bulls could use someone who scores well from all three of these places or at least two out of the three and then use another free agent signing to fill the other.  Don't underestimate the value of a good long midrange shooter because while these shots are not ideal, they are often the result of a pick and pop situation.  Let's look at the two players in question.

Player A: TS% - 61.2%; RIM% - 73.8%; Long% - 40%; e3PT% - 54.2% 

Player B TS% - 59.7%; RIM% - 63.6%; Long% - 43%; e3PT% - 60% 

Perhaps you would not have guessed, but LeBron is A and Bosh is B.  LeBron is more effecient and finishes better at the rim.  However, the one thing you notice is that LeBron's attempts are far more likely to be unassisted than Bosh.

My conclusion:  Both players would fill the Bulls needs well, but LeBron is clearly the better player.  However, do we want to players on the team that both take mostly unassisted shots?  Could LeBron and Rose work well together or is the Rose/Bosh tandem easier?  Personally, I think the Rose/Bosh combo is easier to work with.  Rose still gets to dominate the ball, but Bosh gets to be the man.  It will be interesting to see what happens.  I think both players can work well and I certainly hope we get one of them, along with a coach that can mesh their unique skills with players already in place.

P.S. - I am always open to suggestions on better stats to use, better analysis techniques etc.  Hope you enjoyed.

The main concerns over Rose last season was that he was not getting to the line enough and his midrange game was weak.  The midrange game was going to be a concern coming in, since this was not his strong suit at Memphis.

This year, the big concern currently is lack of attacking the rim and consequently not getting to the line enough.  The midrange game seems to have improved.  I am hoping I can ease everyone's concerns a bit, although probably not entirely.

All stats were taken from draftexpress.com and are the per-40 minutes pace adjusted stats, just so everything is as equal as we can get it.

Let's look at Wade.  In his final year at Marquette, Wade averaged 9.2 FTA (again, per 40, pace adjusted).  His first year in the NBA, he averaged only 6 (still good), but every year after that has been right at or even well above 10FTA!  My contention is that he was not getting the calls his rookie year and once he started getting the calls, his FTA were much closer to his college stats.

Again, let's look at Devin Harris.  His last year at Wisconsin he averaged 8.2FTA.  Harris rookie year in the NBA was nowhere near this, but he is now up in the 9 to 10 FTA range!  Again, it took him some time to figure out how to draw fouls in the NBA.

Rose was only at 6.7 FTA at Memphis, but this is still much higher than where he is now.  I believe Rose will learn how to get to the line, it just takes time.  Once his ankle heals, I think we will begin to see the improvements seen in many other NBA players.  He is still young and still learning.

Alrighty, so this is not something I ever thought I would post.  I was never a Lamar Odom fan.  He seems to take lots of plays off and look lost at times.  But, after watching him a ton this season, I think he is a fantastic piece.  Here's why:

1. The guy rebounds well.  He has averaged between 9 and 11.2 per 40/pace adjusted rebounds per game over the past 4 years, topping out at nearly 3 of those being offensive.  Tyrus has averaged between 9 and 10.9 per 40/pace adjusted rebounds, with that number getting worse the more minutes he's played.  Tyrus does do a bit better on the offensive end, but their rebounding numbers aree certainly comparable.
2. The guy shoots well.  He has posted between 53% and 58% TS% in all seasons with the Lakers.  Tyrus has posted between 48% and 52%.  Deng has posted between 51% and 56%.  Plus, Odom has posted above or close to 30% 3pt percentages in all but one season (01/02 with the Clips in which he only played 29 games).  This is also with taking about 2 a game for his career.  Not great, but not bad.
3. He passes decently.  He has put up between 1.5 and 2 Asst/TO ratio seasonsthe last 4 seasons.  He has posted between a -.18 and +2.46 PPR over the last 4 seasons as well.  Tyrus has only once posted an asst/TO over 1 and has never posted a positive PPR.  Deng has averaged about a 1.3 asst/TO ratio but has never had a positive PPR.
4. He played significant time on a team that won the NBA finals.  This can not be overlooked.

Why bring up Lamar Odom?  Word has it that Odom and the Lakers are far away on talks (duh, they just signed Artest).  If we could get him cheap (cheaper than Luol), then Deng becomes expendable, we free up cap space (assuming we then trade deng for expirings) and he would be a significant upgrade over both Deng and Thomas whose minutes he would be eating.  I think a base of Rose, Odom, Noah would also look attractive to several of the 2010 free agents.