[Thanks to snley for today's game preview. National TV tonight, 7pm on TNT. I'll be in attendance so expect some tweets as well as a fairly-lame recap. Boozer's currently 'questionable'. -ed.]

The Mavericks come to Chicago on the latter half of a back to back.  Last night, they ended a 6 game losing streak by beating the Lakers 109 - 100 at home.  With Dirk Nowtizki and Tyson Chandler both back in the line up, they should be closer to the title contender the Bulls battled back in November.

The Bulls used a strong fourth quarter in the previous meeting to walk away with an 88-83 win.  The pace for that game was a miserably slow 82.6 meaning the offense was better than you might expect from such a low scoring game.  What seems to have won that game for the Bulls was a huge advantage on the glass as Taj pulled in 8 offensive boards and Noah had 5 of his own.  The rest of the team combined for 7 more giving the team an incredible 44.4% ORB% for the game.  With Boozer and Noah out tonight, it's going to be difficult to repeat that performance.

Still, the game is far from already lost as the Mavericks are trying to get their feet under them.  Dirk missed 9 games earlier and upon his return Chandler missed 2 games of his own.  As most know, Caron Butler was also lost for the season.  In last night's game, head coach Rick Carlisle actually started Sasha Pavlovic.  This was a follow up to starting Brian Cardinal a pair of games when Dirk was out.  Still feel like whining about Bogans in the starting line up?  Well, I do, but Cardinal and Pavlovic are pretty bad in their own rights.

Jason Kidd and DeShawn Stevenson round out the starting line up.  Jason Terry, though, is the real SG on this team as he averages 32 minutes/game compared to Stevenson's 18.  The former Sixth Man of the Year is making another push for the award this season, playing the second most minutes on the team despite only starting 10 times. 

The Mavericks are an old team that like to play a half court game.  It'd be nice to see the Bulls push the tempo but that seems unlikely to happen.  With Chandler and Brandon Haywood pairing up to handle the post, going small with Taj and Deng at C and PF is not going to work.  That should mean plenty minutes for Kurt Thomas and, hopefully, Omer Asik.

In the end, I feel pretty comfortable with the Bulls chances tonight.  Dirk's a bad matchup for Boozer on the defensive end, so it may not be a terrible thing for him to be out tonight.  While Dallas has depth, it's mostly older role players, so the Bulls are unlikely to be overwhelmed by talent.  I'd expect the defense to be strong again and the offense relying on the brilliance of Rose and someone else stepping up.  I know, going out on a limb and expecting things to be different from how they've gone the rest of the season.  Anyways, here's hoping Deng or Korver is able to get hot. 

Blogging with the enemy:  Mavs Moneyball

PS Go Bears!

Continue reading this post »

[Thanks to snely for today's game preview. Game is at 7, locally on The U, and nationally on NBATV -ed.]

Reviewing the schedule prior to the start of the season, this game stuck out to me as the potential turning point in the season.  Given the team missing Boozer and what turned out to be the NBA's most difficult schedule, I would have been happy with the Bulls right at .500.  With Saturday's T'Wolves game having been the second of back to back, this is when I really expected the wins to start piling up. 

The Pacers have struggled to be even mediocre seemingly since the Malice in the Palace.  This year looked to be no different.  Standing at 11-11 on a strength of schedule (SoS) of .484, it seems mediocre is what they still are. However, shocking wins over the Heat and Lakers started to draw national attention to the team.   With the benefit of hindsight, we can see those wins aren't quite as impressive as we thought they were.  The Heat were in midst of a slide that resulted in internal turmoil and external cries of failure.  The Lakers have been in a bit of a slump of their own.  Don't get me wrong, those are still two nice road wins to have.

Since that Lakers game, the Pacers have gone 3-4, with their wins coming over dregs of the league Sacramento, Toronto, and Charlotte.  Their losses have come against Utah, Phoenix, Milwaukee, and Atlanta.  They are hardly building an impressive resume to this point.  Just look at the numbers they've put up compared to the Bulls.  At first glance, the teams seem pretty equal.  When you take into account SoS, though, the Pacers come out looking worse.  The Bulls come out looking even better when you consider they have played against primarily the best offenses in the NBA all season.  They have played 11 games against 7 teams currently with top 10 offenses.  In other words, half their games have come against some of the best offenses in the NBA and they still have a top 10 defensive rating.   

The Bulls, then, should appear to be clear favorites.  The team has won five straight and finally seems to be gelling on both sides of the court.  The defense has been stellar and everyone seems to be getting used to having Boozer around on the offensive end.  The NBA, though, is a league of match ups.  The Pacers, I'm afraid, pose a serious match up problem in the presence of Roy Hibbert.                            

The 7'2", 278 lb. Center has come into his own in this, his third season.  Having spent his first two seasons struggling to get consistent minutes, he showed up this year in better shape and continued to cut down his fouling (7.7 PF/36 min his rookie season to 4.0 this year).  He has developed into a fantastic passer from both the high and low posts as the Pacers run much of their offense through him. 

Players of that girth have given Joakim Noah massive problems throughout his career.  While Noah has obviously bulked up the last couple years, we are less than 2 weeks away from having seen Dwight Howard shut him out on the boards.  Hibbert is not good enough to dominate to that degree.  Still, it will bear watching how Noah deals with him.  I think the best option is to let Noah pick his spots and attack him on the offensive end.  We've seen him struggle lately converting on driving lay ups.  However, I'd like to see him attempt to drive on Hibbert and draw some fouls.  If Noah can get him sent to the bench or otherwise keep him in check, the Bulls should be well on their way to consecutive win number 6.  If Hibbert is able to push Noah around, this could be closer than we'd like.  

Continue reading this post »

So, very, very slow day at work and noticed that there's still no Game Preview...

Bulls (7-4) vs Lakers (12-2), 9:30 CT on NBA TV

Breakdown

My goodness those are some scary numbers from the Lakers.  They have become the offensive juggernaut many expected last season.  Even worse, they've largely maintained their defensive acumen from last season despite the absence of Andrew Bynum.  Pau Gasol is being talked about as possibly the most productive player in the NBA.  Kobe looks to have recovered from the injury issues that plagued him last year.  They have 3 players shooting over 50% from 3 on the year (Odom, Brown, Fisher).  They have 2 more shooting over 47% (Blake and Barnes).  Even Ron Artest is hitting 37% of his threes.  Before we start conceding this game, though, these very impressive numbers have been put up against a fairly week schedule.  Their Strength of Schedule is a woeful .437 (compare to the Bulls .566). 

I'm not going to call this team paper champions.  After all, they've won the last two championships and entered this season as co-favorites.  Even before the announcement of the extended slumber party in Miami, I had my doubts about this Lakers squad giving Phil his fourth three-peat.  What was, only a couple years ago, a real strength in their bench had become a serious liability by last season's playoffs.  Their approach to fixing that issue has worked well so far.  They brought in free agents Matt Barnes and Steve Blake to help on the perimeter.  Both have played well so far in addition to the continued improvement of former Bull Shannon Brown.  This team is deep on the perimeter again and killing it from three point land (.434 on the season).

Another historical strength of the Lakers is their sizable advantage inside.  Odom and Pau provide a potent PF-C combo.  However, missing Bynum, those are the only 2 players currently in the rotation over 6'7".  Even with Boozer still out and Taj nursing an injured foot, this still isn't quite the mismatch we'd expect.  I think we should see plenty of small ball by both teams tonight.  I'd love, though, to see plenty of JoMer to try to do some damage on the boards. 

To win this one, the Bulls are going to have to close out on those three point shooters and win the rebounding battle.  Slowing down Kobe and Pau would, of course, help too.  For those of us staying up past our bed times to watch this one, here's hoping for an exciting game and a Bulls win.     

Blogging with the enemy:  Forum Blue and Gold; Silver Screen and Roll

Through all the discussions around here about what to expect from the Bulls this season, one caveat keeps getting thrown out there:  None of this matters if Rose breaks out.  Which got me thinking, how likely is that Derrick would break out in his third season?  After all, most players show their greatest improvements between the first and second seasons.  Shouldn’t we have already seen his biggest jump?  Even if he does “break out,” what kind of improvement could we realistically expect?

I started out looking at the first three seasons of all players drafted since 1998-99 to give myself 10 draft classes to work with.  I further limited the list to players who had played a minimum of 1000 minutes in each of their first 3 seasons (an adjustment was made to account for the lock out shortened 1999 season).  What I found was confirms the earlier assertion: players, on average, have a bigger improvement between the first two seasons than between seasons 2 and 3.  Just looking at PER (but this was true across the board) players improved by 9.01% during year two and followed with a 6.22% improvement in year 3.  That’s still a nice improvement, and if Derrick followed that course, he’d post a 19.76 PER next season.  Good, but far from the great needed to make this team a contender.

Looking for some hope, I broke out groups of players who were under the age of 22 as rookies, point guards, and players who posted a USG% greater than 20 each season and various combinations of each.  There were no significant changes in my findings.  Some groups had greater improvements from year to year, but still not enough to make me think Derrick had a chance to be on his way to a Top 10 player.

My final step was to take a look at a subjectively identified list of players.  I wanted to pick out those that were perimeter players considered to be franchise cornerstones either when drafted or within the first 3 seasons.  That left me with 7:  LeBron; Wade; Melo; Roy; Durant; Paul; Deron.  

This group left me feeling hopeful and concerned at the same time.  The hope came from they’re bucking the trend of greater improvement between the first 2 seasons.  This group improved their PER by a substantial average of 18.88% between years 1 and 2.  Things got better, though, as from year to year 3, their PER improved by 22.24%.  This wasn’t a fluke caused by one or two outliers.  Look at the below second to third year improvements.

Brandon Roy    23.71%
Carmelo Anthony    31.74%
Chris Paul    28.64%
Deron Williams    21.64%
Dwyane Wade    19.48%
Kevin Durant    25.96%
LeBron James    9.34%
 
LeBron’s the lowest, but he was following up a 40.44% improvement from rookie to second year.  If Derrick were to follow a similar improvement schedule, he’d be at a 23.84 PER next season.  Does Derrick even belong being mentioned with this group?  In looking at their second year PERs, I’d say yes.  

Derrick Rose    18.6
Brandon Roy    19.4
Carmelo Anthony    16.7
Chris Paul    22
Deron Williams    17.1
Dwyane Wade    23.1
Kevin Durant    20.8
LeBron James    25.7

So, why does this leave me concerned?  Because I think the course of this season could determine whether Derrick makes that elite jump or is just another high volume, low efficiency scorer.  In other words, this could be a make or break year.  

I followed up looking at the fourth year of the available players from this small pool (minus Durant, obviously).  After big jumps in their second and third seasons, each player saw either a regression or a significantly smaller jump from their third to fourth season.  The percent change from years 3 to 4 was actually -2.51%.  Again, this is a very limited pool, so the conclusions drawn from it probably shouldn’t be taken all that seriously.  Still, it seems that these very elite, perimeter players made immense improvements from years 2 to 3.

One more thing I want to call attention to is Derrick’s FT/FGA ratio compared to this pool.  His inability to get to the line has been much maligned and deservedly so.  It really, though, stuck out like a sore thumb compared to these guys.  The average FT/FGA for the group in their second seasons was .32.  Derrick’s was .19.  The lowest in the group was Deron at .21.  However, he jumped to .29 in his third season.  If we’re going to see that jump from Rose, I think it’s going to be because he’s getting to the line far more than his three point shot.