Saturday, March 4, 2017

NBA Purgatory

March 3, 2017

Paraphrasing a Who song, Meet the new Bulls, same as the old Bulls. Things won’t change much as long as GarPax is in charge, and with Reinsdorf’s loyalty thing, that's not happening.

Let’s take a look at the puzzling trade before the deadline. GarPax made many moves to acquire lottery pick, Doug McDermott.   He never developed into the player they envisioned, leading to his departure. It looks like they are giving his minutes to Denzel Valentine. His inconsistent three point shooting and lousy defense makes it seems like McDermott never left.

At the start of the season their aim was to make the playoffs. I don’t how trading Taj Gibson will help accomplish this goal. Granted, Gibson is going to be a free agent and the Bulls would get nothing when he left. Hence, they traded him and still got nothing.  You know how bad the players they received are when two can’t get in the rotation, which sometimes goes eleven deep. The key player, Payne, needs to be developed, which is not something this organization does. In the mean time in the last two games, in limited minutes he is 4 for 15, so he fits right in. The only positive from this is Bobby Portis got a chance. He has played well and should improve.  The fact that this took so long is a result of GarPax’s "puppet coach" [Fred Hoiberg].

However, since the last time I wrote about the Bulls they are 4-1 with impressive victories over the Toronto Raptors, Boston Celtics, Golden State Warriors, and a Lebron-less Cleveland Cavaliers. The only loss was to an under .500 Denver Nuggets. They have moved into sixth place in the lousy Eastern Conference. This puts them in a position for a first round knockout and a lower draft selection a.k.a. NBA purgatory.

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