Was John's season a fluke? 

I've seen this the question asked quite a few times.  A player suddenly shooting the ball better at age 29 does raise serious questions, but I think there's a decent chance it's not a fluke. Lets take a look his shooting the last few years in Sacramento and with the Bulls courtesy of 82games.

The numbers that should jump out right away is his FG% on close shots.  63% for three straight seasons.  That's impressive efficiency around the basket.  And he's getting to the basket for a good % of his shots.  Gordon had an 80/20 split on his FGA for comparison.  So at the very least John will finish around the basket as well as any Bull.

It is true that he's only put up one really strong 3-point shooting season, but he was consistent all season long with his shooting.  He never shot worse than 37% in any full month this season, and shot at least 43% from 3 in his other 5 full months.  And he shot the ball pretty well from nearly every spot on the floor.  Prior to this season, Prior to this season John was a break even 3-point shooter at 33%, rather than a horrible 3-point shooter.  Visually it looks like he's developed a consistent, but unorthodox, trigger mechanism for his shot, but he obviously doesn't have a Ben Gordon like track record. .

The focus has been on John's improved shooting, but nearly as important was a career best turnover rate.  And the shooting and drop in turnover rate are likely connected.  This season in Sacramento 24% of his FGA were 3PA, and he was assited on 62% of his 3PM.  In 07/08 14% of his FGA were 3PA and 89% of John's 3PM were assisted.  That at least suggests that the pull up three he took often this season either never almost never went in or simply wasn't a part of his game prior to this season

In 07/08 and 08/09 in Sacramento, Salmons took the same % of 2P jump shots, had the same FG% on those shots, and the same assist% on those shots.

And he had the same FG% on side shots with the same AST%, but a quarter of his forays to the basket ilkely became those pull up 3-point attempts.  If he's shooting 40% on 3PA that's a reasonable tradeoff because it was that reduction in drives to the basket that likely led to a signifcant decline in turnovers.  In Chicago he took even more 3PA and his turnovers dropped even more.

Something that caught my eye almost  immediately is how much Salmons was assisted in Chicago compared to Sacramento. It's a fairly large jump, and I wouldn't have thought that Salmons was assisted on half of his shots in Chicago.  For comparison Gordon was assisted on 47% of jumpers and 38% of close shots.  At least part of the reason for the jump is Salmons getting a lot more assisted transition baskets with the Bulls, and the other part is more assisted 3s because he wasn't a primary ball handler in Chicago.

Much of John's game has been very consistent from year.  Improving his shooting allowed him to cut his turnovers, and turned him into a starting caliber player for the 1st time in his career.  So why did he shoot 41% o 3PA this season?  The stats suggest either he made changes mechanically that allowed him to make jumpers with consistency, or that with Artest gone and Kevin Martin out injured he was able to play big minutes as a #1 scoring option for the 1st time.  Which would have meant getting to take those 1 on 1  pull up 3s on a consistent basis instead of being put in catch and shoot situations as a reserve role player.  Salmons shot 41% on 3PA this year, but he still didn't appear to be an effective catch and shoot player.  It's probably a little of both.  He's an odd player, but I don't expect his shooting to be a fluke if he's allowed to do his thing.  If he's asked to conform to a system or asked to play a limited role off the bench where he can't get his 1 on 1 opportunities in the flow of the game there's a much greater chance that he reverts to the 33% 3P shooter and mediocre player.  You can live with John's style of play when it comes within the rythm of the game, but it's not what you really want from a guy coming off the bench.

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For awhile now I've been resigned to Gordon leaving because resigning him looked like it would create more long term problems than it solved from my perspective.  Especially because I wanted the Bulls to have the best possible chance of at least making a run at Wade in 2010.  Today, I changed my mind on Gordon because of discussion on this site.

The salary cap was 58.7 million dollars this season, and to be safe let's assume it remains the same.  I'm not the salary cap expert that other posters are, but the cream of the 2010 free agent crop would make a little over 17 million in 2010-11 if they didn't exercise their opt out clauses.  The Bulls getting Wade would likely ultimately be a result of a sign and trade so that Wade can get his full salary, but the Bulls still have to be a threat to sign Wade out right in order to force Miami's hand.  Bosh might be willing to come out right, but he'd probably prefer getting his max contract through a sign and trade as well.  So I'll assume the Bulls need to be close to 18 million under the cap to offer a max contract to free agent.  Which means they can't be much higher than 40 million dollars in committed salary.   

The Bulls right now have four players in Rose, Deng, Hinrich, and Noah under contract for 2010-11 at just over 29 million combined.  That's four solid pieces to add a star player to.  If the Bulls use 2 of their next 3 1st round picks that will add something around 3 million in salary.  So that puts the Bulls at roughly 32 million dollars in committed salary.  Leaving around 9 million dollars of room to play with.

So that leaves the Bulls will three players to make decisions on: Tyrus Thomas, Ben Gordon, and John Salmons.  I still believe in Tyrus, and in an ideal world I'd rather have Thomas than Gordon long term.  But, I know there's almost no way that the Bulls get a long term contract done with Thomas this summer after the way the playoffs went and that agreeing to a contract with him quickly in the summer of 2010 is just as unlikely.  If Tyrus doesn't sign this summer as expected, the Bulls should probably keep him until the summer of 2010 because the ability to renounce his rights creates flexibility.

So that leaves 9 million that can potentially be spent on Ben Gordon.  If the Bulls can get Gordon to sign a contract that pays out 9 million or less in 2010-11.  They can sign Gordon without it negatively impacting the opportunity to sign a max free agent in 2010 because the Bulls could renounce the rights to Tyrus.  And it would increase the options for the Bulls.  Because the threat exists for Wade to go to Chicago out right,  the Bulls can likely force a sign and trade with Miami.  Ben Gordon could be used in a sign and trade for Wade, which gets Wade to Chicago while still giving him his max contract.  Thomas could be signed and shipped to Miami or traded somewhere else.  The Bulls could just relinquish their rights to Thomas.  Or potentially depending on the numbers they might not have to give up the rights to Thomas in order to complete a sign and trade for a player like Wade.  Allowing the Bulls time to work out a contract with Thomas.  If the Bulls go after Bosh instead then the Bulls have the flexibility to keep Gordon and maybe send other players in a sign and trade.  The key is having the cap space to sign a Bosh or Wade out right in order to force sign and trades from either Miami or Toronto.

Salmons was aquired as Ben Gordon insurance.  Salmons can play the 2010-11 season for 5.8 million or he can opt out in the summer of 2010.  Opinion seems to be split about which option he takes, but it probably doesn't matter in the big scheme of things.  If Gordon doesn't resign then Salmons is good insurance and his contract in 2010-11 isn't big enough to impact free agency even if he doesn't opt out.  If Gordon does resign then Salmons should be able to be moved during the 09-10 season for players with contracts that will definitely be expiring.  San Antonio, for example, was reportedly interested in Salmons last season, and they'll have plenty of expiring deals next season.

The elephant in the room with all of this is of course the luxury tax.  Signing Gordon from my perspective only makes sense if the Bulls don't have to dump Hinrich or Deng for essentially nothing in order to get under the luxury tax.  While signing Gordon pushes the Bulls over the tax, perhaps they can minimize the tax by buying out Tim Thomas and/or moving Jerome James to a team with salary cap space.  Thomas already mentioned a buyout to the press.  I forget how the insurance issue ultimately works out if James is traded.  But, there's some potential to minimize the tax costs.

This is the way I can get fully behind a Gordon resigning.  If his contract doesn't cost more than 9 million or so in the 1st couple of years, and it doesn't require dumping Hinrich or Deng to do it.  Of course it also requires Bulls management having a plan.  And it would sure help if Vinny isn't the coach by the summer of 2010 if the Bulls aren't willing to fire him this summer.  Now go ahead and point out the flaws in my logic and/or math.  Start another Hinrich/Gordon war.  Show off how tough you are by calling Deng soft.  And if you get bored call LaMarcus Aldridge a ninny.

Here's Basketball on Paper stats for March.  I included Feburary as well for easy comparison.

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I started out skeptical of the 2010 plans because of the roster and salary structure of the Bulls, but the coup Paxson pulled off at the trade deadline has made 2010 an almost undeniable fact.  As I've been thinking about future possibilities.  This plan is what I keep coming back to.

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[Note by your friendly BullsBlogger, 03/03/09 9:47 AM CST: From the Fanposts. Scotter comes through yet again, I had nothing for today. -ed.]

Links for previous months: November, December, and January.

The sample size is obviously smaller due to the break, only 12 games. It was the team's best offensive month, but nearly the team's worst defensive month thanks to the last 5 games.

Derrick shot the ball very well this month, and was more aggressive on the offensive boards.  But, no improvement in getting to the FT line or anything to do with defense.

Tyrus posted his third consecutive strong offensive month, and his best rebounding month of the season.  Tyrus was leading the team in minutes played over the 1st 7 games, but hasn't played more than 30 minutes in any of the 5 games with the new additions. 

Brad Miller has been everything I wanted so far.  Unfortunately he hasn't been playing with the people I wanted so far.  Only 32 minutes out of 116 with Tyrus.  Only 42 with Deng.  Only 63 minutes with Derrick, but 45 minutes with Tim Thomas

Neil Paine from the Basketball-Reference Blog calculated statistical plus/minus for this season so far and a projected statistical plus/minus for this season based on the previous 3 seasons.  For more info about statistical plus/minus you should read Neil's blog post, but I'll try to give a brief description.  Statistical plus/minus was created by Dan Rosenbaum, who was a pioneer of adjusted plus/minus, in order to lower the noise of his adjusted plus/minus stats.  So you have fewer cases like Nocioni with terrible stats and a great adjust plus/minus.  Rosenbaum determined weights for the various boxscores stats based on how well they predicted adjusted plus/minus.  So what you have is a boxscore metric like PER, Win Shares, or NBA Efficiency, except it's trying to predict point differential.  In overly simple terms statistical plus/minus is the adjusted plus/minus a player should have based just on their boxscore stats.  It's not meant to be a player rating system by itself, but I think statistical plus/minus is very useful to compare to this season's adjusted plus/minus,and to compare to a stat like PER.

Player          Tm      Pos     G       Min     SPM     projectedSPM
rose,derrick    chi     PG      54      1989    -1.71   -2.16
gordon,ben      chi     SG      54      1944    0.15    0.57
deng,luol       chi     SF      43      1484    -0.66   0.83
thomas,tyrus    chi     PF      51      1307    1.22    0.38
nocioni,andres  chi     SF      53      1281    -1.88   -0.74
noah,joakim     chi     C       52      1115    3.66    1.15
gooden,drew     chi     PF      31      920     -2.81   -2.67
hughes,larry    chi     SG      30      792     0.21    -0.95
sefolosha,thabo chi     SG      43      735     -0.44   -1.68
gray,aaron      chi     C       45      662     -0.83   -0.58
hinrich,kirk    chi     PG      23      611     1.34    1.77
CHICAGO                                         -1.70   -1.99
salmons,john    sac     SG      53      1980    0.09    -1.04
miller,brad     sac     C       43      1358    1.39    1.62
thomas,tim      nyk     SF      36      771     -0.21   -0.33

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I'm going to make some comments about each fo the four primary forwards, but I thought I'd start by putting the postion in context.  SF this season has been played by Deng (49%), Sefolosha (18%), Hughes (17%), Nocioni (10%), and Gordon (3%).  Deng playing less than 50% of the minutes at SF never bodes well.  This means that 1/5th of the time Vinny has been playing a 3 guard lineup.  Even with Deng's injury that's way too much rebounding to give up. 

The power forward position has mostly been manned by Thomas (39%), Nocioni (36%), Gooden (14%), and Deng (6%).  A combined 50% from Gooden and Noc wouldn't have been the worst thing in the world if Gooden wasn't playing center for a good chunk of the time Nocioni was on the floor.  Similarly Deng's 6% wouldn't be bad if Nocioni wasn't playing center for about half that time.

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A few weeks ago I had a few coments on the backcourt players.  Then I couldn't watch the games for a few weeks, but that issue has been solved by a return to Illinois.  Here's a look at the center position with a look at the forwards hopefully coming soon.

According to 82games the minutes at center have been distributed like: Noah 39%, Gray 26%, Gooden, 23%, Thomas 8%, Nocioni 2%, and Simmons 1%.  This has been the worst position for the Bulls in terms of 82games' PER differential, last pl ace in the NBA.  In fact the Bulls are essentially tied with the Warriors for giving up the highest counterpart PER at any position with a 21.8 PER, and looking at that minute distribution it's easy to see why.   When Drew Gooden, Aaron Gray, and Andres Nocioni are playing over 50% of the minutes at center you have a defensive disaster.  Thomas isn't the defensive disaster at center that those guys are, but if he's listed as playing center that means Deng or more likely Nocioni is playing PF another terrible defensive situation.

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Since my own curiosity was peaked and there seemed to be some interest, I calculated the splits for the other two months of the season.  Here's the stats with a few observations.

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[ UPDATE: Scotter's also done the same work for Nov+Dec -ed.

From the FanPosts. I'll even add a couple numbers via David Thorpe (naturally, given the subjects): PER since December 1st (up until the Suns game) for Deng was 18.03, for Thomas 17.57. With Deng's PER over 21 in January -ed.]

There's been a lot of discussion about what's happened in January.  I calculated some of the advanced statistics for the month of January since advanced splits aren't available online.  Here's January:

Statistically this was a .500 team that went 7 and 9.  The one encouraging sign was that the team performed much better on the defensive boards than earlier in the season.  Deng, Sefolosha, and even Nocioni were all back to their career norms after very poor starts by all three on the defensive boards.

It was a terrible offensive month for all the perimeter players.  Gordon, Hinrich, Sefolosha, and Nocioni all had offensive ratings below 104.   Derrick had an especially bad month with a TS% below 48% and a free throw rate that was basically last on the team.  The other guards had serious turnover issues in January.  When Nocioni is taking a shot every time he touches it, a turnover rate of 14% is a serious problem.  And so is getting out rebounded on the offensive boards by Ben Gordon.

If there's a bright spot this month it's the play of Thomas, Deng, and Noah.  Thomas had a solid month.  He was able to make 46% of his FGA.  That's how low the threshold is for him to be an effective offensive player because he gets to the FT line so much.  Deng was pretty close to what he was in 06/07.  Noah's usage rate was up so he was much more involved offensively, while still playing efficient offense.

It's only one month so the usual caveats apply, but there's at least a glimmer of hope.  If those three could maintain their January level of play this team could be what many of us hoped it could be with some improved play by the guards.  And of course if Gooden, Nocioni, and Hughes would just magically disappear from the roster, I could really enjoy this team.  If they were terrible, which I don't believe that they would be, at least they would be terrible with a purpose.