SB Nation User Blog: wjb1492

82games.com has the 09/10 season pages up now

wjb1492 — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 18:59:39 -0000

82games.com has the 09/10 season pages up now

Something positive for the Ty fans - he has the second highest Roland Rating of the team right now, barely trailing Brad.

(Of course, that probably just makes it all the worse that he's out now, right?)

Game Preview # 5: Bulls at Cleveland Cavaliers

wjb1492 — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:27:39 -0000

[UPDATE by your friendly BullsBlogger, 11/05/09 2:19 PM CST: Tyrus Thomas is flying commercial and going to meet the Bulls in Cleveland tonight. May or may not play. I give up.

Thanks to wjb1492 for today's game preview. My initial thoughts on this game is that the Murder Train A Comin'. Then I figured that the Bulls do have a chance to out-hustle and out-run an especially immobile Cavs team. Then I figured that without Tyrus Thomas they don't really have this especially athletic roster conducive to running. Hinrich, Salmons, Taj, Miller, gimpy Rose.... even though Deng is effective in transition he's not a superior athlete. It's basically just Noah at this point. -ed.]

So I really don't want to relive Tuesday's Milwaukee game, from which the Bulls managed to scrape a W in spite of collectively playing like garbage much of the night. The exception was Luol Deng, who has managed to silence most of his critics with his play so far this regular season. Suffice it to say that, after getting our hopes up with a nice win over a San Antonio team many have predicted to be a serious contender this year, the Bulls' next three games have fans once again predicting doom and gloom for the season. A blowout loss, a 4th quarter choke, and a slim two-point victory over a predicted cellar dweller don't exactly inspire confidence, even with the team sitting at .500 for the season.

Through four games, the Bulls offense is ranked 27th in the league, and guys expected to play key roles in the offense are struggling - Tyrus Thomas (47.1%), Derrick Rose (44.2%), James Johnson (41.0%), Kirk Hinrich (41.0%), and John Salmons (33.9%) all have sub-.500 true shooting percantages so far. John and Kirk have been particularly frightening, as our "3-point threats" are currently shooting 18.2% and 13.3% from 3 respectively. It's no wonder that people are having flashbacks to the miserable 07/08 season!

(I've left out Lindsey Hunter, since he's not expected to play a key role in anything but honorary titles this season - but for the record, Captain Hunter is shooting 0% and sporting a PER of -20. True, he's only played 7 minutes and attempted 2 shots, but anytime you can be in the "Top 5" of something deserves mention, right? Even if the category is Worst PER in the League....)

I tend to be a major optimist where my sports teams are concerned, though, and I'm far from ready to give up on the season. The optimist in me is holding onto the facts that (1) Boston is generally considered the most talented team in the leauge when healthy, and the Bulls faced them on the second night of a back-to-back while Boston was rested, (2) Miami is a good team with a superstar, and Chicago hung tough the entire game on Miami's home court, and (3) the team did not quit in spite of being down 18 points mid-way through the third quarter to the Bucks.

Meanwhile, the defense is currently 11th best in the NBA, in spite of having played 3 decent to great offenses (excluding Milwaukee). The offense is a classic chicken/egg conundrum - does the offense look bad because key guys are shooting poorly, or are key guys shooting poorly because the offense isn't great? In my humble opinion, it's a little of both. The odds of both John Salmons and Kirk Hinrich shooting this poorly all year have to be infinitesimally low, and hitting more shots will undoubtedly improve the offense beyond the mere increase in team FG%. And at least the front court is playing reasonably well.

All that said, tonight's game is likely to be rough, to say the least. After starting a surprising 0-2 (losing to Boston and @ Toronto), Cleveland has won it's last 3 games by an average margin of 13.3 points. The Cavs offense is currently ranked 16th in the league, and it's defense 7th. They have bigs our front court might struggle with, and of course they have Lebron James. Having Tyrus Thomas expected to miss the game with the flu (not "flu") won't help. Last season, the Cavs won 3 of 4 against the Bulls, with an average scoring margin of +7.5, and the W the Bulls did scrape out came on one of Lebron's worst games of the season, without Zydrunas Ilgauskas playing, and with Delonte West leaving early with an injury - and it still took OT.

For the game tonight, looking at the Accuscore simulations, Cleveland won 84% of the time, and won big (by 10+ points) 52.6% of the time, with an average score of Bulls losing 96.8 to 86.3. If the Bulls come out playing and shooting like they did to start the Milwaukee game, it's going to be a whole lot uglier than that. But I always pick the Bulls to win, even would logic would dictate otherwise. Shooting slumps have to come to an end at some point. And, even though Cleveland is predicted to do great things this season, they really haven't done much yet with two of their 3 wins coming against Minnesota and Charlotte. So until proven otherwise (which hopefully won't happen in the first five minutes of the game), I'm going to hold out hope that the near loss and comeback win on Tuesday will have galvanized the Bulls into a great effort, that Kirk and John come out hitting tonight while Luol and Joakim continue their great play, and that Derrick leads the team well even if still somewhat hampered by that dratted ankle. After all, the Bulls went 4 and 1 in Thursday games last year, while Cleveland was a mere 5 and 4 - and Chicago it currently batting 1.000 on Thursday night TNT appearances for this season!

Check out the coverage from the Cavs side on Fear the Sword.

Hollinger PER projections

wjb1492 — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 18:10:59 -0000

Hollinger PER projections

[From the FanShots. Looks like my afternoon just filled up. -ed.]

He's projecting Tyrus as the top-PER guy on the team this season, at 17.04 - it's not a particularly optimistic look at things. :)

Swirsky interview with ol' man Hunter

wjb1492 — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 04:01:49 -0000

Swirsky interview with ol' man Hunter

Not really anything new - more talk of defense. Swirsk does grill him a little on why he's still playing, but Lindsey sidesteps it like the 17-year pro he is! ;)

Turns out Lindsey's a big Tony Dungy fan, so I thought that was kind of cool.

Bulls preview from Golden State of Mind

wjb1492 — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 17:08:10 -0000

Bulls preview from Golden State of Mind

Season record prediction is 40-42, first round playoff loss.

Joe Dumars Q&A - lots of BG stuff

wjb1492 — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 17:44:39 -0000

Joe Dumars Q&A - lots of BG stuff

Recap of live chat with Kirk from Sioux City Journal

wjb1492 — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 16:48:48 -0000

Recap of live chat with Kirk from Sioux City Journal

Not a great typist... ;)

Unofficial Contest Entry: How the '90 Blazers saved my sanity but got me fired

wjb1492 — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 00:50:11 -0000

[I'm sure it's bad form to enter another blog's contest when one is merely the occasional visitor, and for that consider this an unofficial entry. Reading all the other entries has brought back some very fond memories of my youth, and I just can't resist sharing mine.]

The summer of 1990 started out badly. I was home from my first year away at college and chaffing at the return to parental interference with my life. More significantly, I was having trouble finding a summer job. Most kids commuted to Portland (I lived in St. Helens) for temp positions, but I was without transportation - and the best offer I had locally was a daytime babysitting job till the end of the school year. This was actually a decent job, but it wasn't going to pay enough for the next year of college.

And this is how I ended up with the most miserable job of my life, cleaning a local bank at night. I was a janitor other summers as well, but this job was different. They turned the air off after hours, and inside the building was generally too warm for an active job like cleaning. And they complained about everything! One day my vacuum pattern lines on the carpet weren't straight enough. Another day they accused me of stealing cans of soda out of the break room - and actually started a log of how many cans were left at the end of each day to be sure I wasn't! One of the managers used to hide piles of staples around her office as a test of my cleaning thoroughness, and the other manager thought I should sort his single trash can into recyclables and non-recyclables for him. It was a job I never wanted in the first place, and one I quickly grew to hate with every cell in my body.

The only saving grace to the whole situation was a radio in the main lobby. 1990 was an incredible year to be a Blazers fan. Over the previous decade the team had been semi-successful - generally going to the playoffs, but losing in the first round most years. But 1990 was different - the first full season under Adelman, 59 wins, and the team that remains one of my favorites to this day - Clyde, Terry, Jerome, Buck, and Duck. They played fast, and they played both sides of the floor. I had really suffered while away at school in Utah - this was pre-easy-internet-access, so I had to follow the team through short newspaper blurbs in the Salt Lake paper. I still remember watching the games against the Jazz in the boys' dorm lobby and getting heckled mercilessly as the only Blazers fan in the room - but it was worth it to see the men in action. (They split the season series - I might have actually sold my soul for a sweep...)

But back to the sanity-saving radio in the lobby of the bank. I started this job around the beginning of the San Antonio series. And while I carefully vacuumed in ruler-straight lines, and searched high and low for that day's hidden pile of staples, and wished bad things upon the man too lazy to recycle his own junk, and rearranged the sodas in the fridge so it would look like I might have taken some, thus forcing whichever anal employee was so concerned about a can of coke to actually count - during all of this, I would listen to the games. There is nothing so angst producing as following a game on the radio. Dependent on another's words to visualize the action, what seemed like interminable breaks between "he shoots" and "he scores." I had never before understood how addictive it can be to follow sports by sound instead of sight.

And then there was that incredible series itself. A loss on my 19th birthday that left me devastated. A double OT win just a few nights later. I faked shots with every jumper the radio guys described. I shouted semi-obscenities in the radio's direction when things went badly. I jumped and cheered like an idiot for the great plays. And after the double OT win, I actually took a victory lap or two around the lobby. (Fortunately, I wasn't working weekends, so I got to watch the Game 7, 3-point OT win in person. My family is full of wrestlers, and they really didn't get why I was huddled there in a fetal position, chewing on my sweatshirt hem, and periodically uttering unintelligible groans and shrieks. They think I'm weird....)

And then on to the 6-game series with Phoenix, featuring nail-biting wins at home and agonizing blowouts on the Suns' home court. I thought I could endure that job as long as the team was still playing. But a funny thing happened in the middle of the Phoenix series - the bank fired me. Why? The rearranged sodas? The unsorted recyclables? A missed pile of staples? No, I was done in by a surveillance camera I didn't realize existed. It was there, of course, for evidence in case of bank robbery, but my suspicious employers decided to check me out instead. And while I was officially "let go" for "lacking a certain decorum that they expect in their employees" - The janitor? Seriously? - the manager (recycle man, not staple lady) did wonder aloud in our last conversation whether I might be a drug user. He just couldn't understand what else would cause someone to jump up and down at random and run circles around the lobby!

So the '90 Blazers taught me the beauty of sports on the radio, made my roughly 3 weeks of employment at the bank bearable with their thrilling playoff run - and they also got me fired faster than I imagined possible. I'm not sure which of those things I thank them for more. ;)

Bulls guard Kirk Hinrich selling Deerfield Home

wjb1492 — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 23:34:07 -0000

Bulls guard Kirk Hinrich selling Deerfield Home

Speculate away! ;)

A Brief History of Ben Gordon: the Quotes Version

wjb1492 — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 22:13:13 -0000

On breaking Allen Iverson's Big East tournament scoring record:

"When Mek got injured, I got to take all this pressure on myself and that's when I started having fun," Gordon said, referring to All-America center Emeka Okafor. "I didn't look back since then."

On being drafted 3rd in the NBA 2004 Draft:

"Other people may be surprised, but I always thought I should go No. 1," Gordon said.

On winning the 6th Man award as a rookie:

"I didn't know what was going to happen or whatever. It's great to come off the bench and still help my team the way I did," Gordon said.

"Once I got around the team and everything like that, I pretty much accepted my role. Especially after the slow start, I was not really thinking about starting, I was thinking about how can I help my team get the first win."

Defending Kirk against Pat Riley's "dirty player" accusations:

"I think [the coach's accusation] was very unnecessary," Gordon said, according to the Sun-Times. "He should be worried about his players. Posey's always in the middle of something. I think that was a cheap shot at Kirk. Kirk was just playing his normal defense. It was a freak accident."

On hitting the big shot:

"I take a lot of pride in it," Gordon said. "It is not really something I say to myself, I'm going to hit every big shot, it sort of happens that way," Gordon said.

On not getting the ball enough:

"Not as many touches as I wanted," Gordon said. "It's pretty easy to play someone who doesn't have the ball."

On contract negotiations as an RFA last offseason:

"I guess it's safe to say I've played my last game in a Bulls uniform," Gordon said.

On signing with Detroit and leaving Chicago:

"To all the true Chicago Bulls fans, it's been great," he added. "I loved playing here; it's one of the greatest sports cities in the world. It was a great time. But it's time for me to move on."

In honor of Ben, add your favorite quotes. There have been ups and there have been downs, but it was rarely boring with Ben around.