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By Sam Smith | 12.5.2014 | 9:30 a.m. CT
A lot of hype has been made about this Bulls team, and I suppose there should be. I know there had been injuries but a quarter through the season is a little late to be still saying... "it will come together." Imagine if Jimmy hadn't emerged! Anyway, is the issue continuity and acclimating to each other? After much hype about Cavs and Bulls it seems like it will more likely be next year than this for the Bulls and Cavs.
Darren Rowe
At the beginning of the year you, like many others, thought McDermott would be getting more time than Mirotic and it's gone completely the other way. I know Taj's injury played a part in it but Mirotic just looks much more ready for the NBA. He may be this year's best rookie! (BTW the Bulls struck gold in the 2011 draft with Butler and Mirotic which was a very good draft). With players like Emmanuel Mudiay, Brandon Jennings and now Mirotic, do you see some of these top prospects playing overseas instead of college? Is money enough of a motivation to skip the big school experience? Competition and coaching wise there doesn't seem to be much of a difference.
Serafin Sanchez
Rose takes 3s more than he takes floaters and yet he misses most of them. I hope he'd drive and take floaters. Those were his shots in his first few years.
Josiah Regencia
I’m surprised about Nikola Mirotic's rebounding prowess. I thought he would be just any soft european player who cant bang bodies inside and get rebounds. With his current play, do you think Taj Gibson would be availble for a trade if some interesting offers come?
Rollen Decuzar
Although you have mentioned repeatedly in your columns that the Bulls want Jimmy Butler and he wants to stay in Chicago beyond June 2015, it is fact that an agreement could not been reached before the start of this season. So, Jimmy will be a restricted free agent. Now Jimmy seems to have a career season, he has morphed into the go-to scorer of our team, having even double digit free-throw attempts in the majority of games lately. After being on the All-NBA second defense team last season, he now has been honored as the player of the month November of the Eastern conference. I guess it can be said that he is one of the very top two-way shooting guards in the whole NBA. I am pretty sure that he will be offered more than 40 million for four years by another team during free agency. What do you think, if Jimmy stays healthy and plays on the same level for the whole season, other teams might offer? What cap space are the Bulls having as a maximum after this season – will they be able to offer near to max contract figures to Jimmy?
Michael Jaeger
I've sent you an email about Hinrich and Deng having their names in banners on the UC. Deng is gone and probably wont come back like Hinrich did. Where does Hinrich rank in the Bulls History? I know the honor of having the name in a banner is literally through the roof. But I can't really see another player, after the Michael's and Scottie's teams, that represent better the Bulls than Hinrich. Apologies to Derrick, not a question of talent, I'm pretty sure if Rose continue to do his thing he will get a banner, but Hinrich represents the toughness and resiliency that every Bulls fan love in the last decade. We sure werent the best team in the league on the last decade but we were a team that always played tough. Since Skiles and the baby Bulls through Derrick draft, Noah passion.... and Kirk was a big part of it for all these years.
Games - 664 (4th) Jerry Sloan is 3rd with 696.
Minutes - 21852 (6th) Probably end up at 4h, maybe 3rd.
FG - 2963 (9th) Probably can pass to 8th.
FGA - 7229 (7th) Probably can pass to 6th.
3FG - 993 (1st)
3FGA - 2624 (1st)
AST - 3664 (4th) Van Lier is 3rd with 3676.
STS - 817 (3rd)
TO - 1362 (4th)
PF - 2039 (4th)
PTS - 8177 (9th) Probably will pass to 8th.
AST/G - 5.5 (5th)
AST. PCT - 27.7 (3rd)
Defensive Win Share - 26.8 (8th)
Win Shares - 46.6 (10th)
Value Over Replacement Player - 14.6 (8th)
I know most of these stats are not as important as titles. But this is a guy that can easily end up with more games and minutes than anyone in Bulls History less Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen. Many may say that the Bulls had already paid him enough. But not many would take less money to be with a team. Ask most of the stars. Do you think he deserves it?
Rui Dias
Is Gasol in the MVP talk for the first quarter of the season? How about Butler?
Jeff Lichtenstein
So I was thinking about how the Spurs model is becoming a model that everyone is trying to copy in the NBA now. Everyone is trying to find that balanced team in which they can rest players and step it up in the playoffs. While this has worked out great for the Spurs, I believe you have to be a team of that caliber to pull that off. Thinking about this made me think of another similar example in the hip hop industry. Nas, a revolutionary and amazing rapper, had released an album titled Stillmatic in 2001. When making an album, the rapper usually writes the lyrics to a set of beats (or the music) that is created by the producer of the song/album. While the lyrics provide the meaning, the beats provided the feel for the song/album. Generally, there would be one producer for an entire album so it would have a uniform feel to it. In Stillmatic, Nas revolutionized the process by having numerous producers for the different songs creating a montage of different beats in one album. While Nas, like Popovich, did something completely different and made it work superbly, so many followed to try the same thing and created disjointed albums that didn't feel like one album. In the NBA, I feel like a lot of teams don't realize that you need that genius to successfully make this balance of minutes in regular season and playoffs. Teams/coaches don't realize how fortunate the Spurs have been to have this work for them, but also how talented the Spurs are to make this work for them. I feel that other teams trying this will also end up having a disjointed regular season/playoff picture in terms of how well their team transitions from one to the other vs teams that are consistent from the beginning.
Jatin Patel
Do you believe Derrick, deep inside, wanted Melo to become or Bull or did not want that? Also, I have a feeling Pau was a better fit, and not having Melo may have made Butler a better, more assertive player.
LongGiang Li
Recently while watching Bulls games I've developed a theory that if Derrick Rose can regain his MVP form, the knee injuries while devastating at the time were quite possibly the best thing for the Bulls championship prospects moving forward for the following reasons: Player Development. With a heathy Rose, I don't believe Jo, Jimmy or Taj would have developed into the players they currently are; Draft Picks with a heathy Rose we would have most likely been a top 2 seed in the east, in effect pushing back our draft picks, possibly losing out on Snell and McDermott; Reliance on the team rather than the player (next man up culture). The Bulls know that if Derrick is out or having an off game they can still win. Am I wrong? Do you think we would have been better off with a heathy Derrick the past two years?
Matt Oldamo
Right now Thibs is splitting the spot minutes between Doug in the first half and Snell in the second. Why not just commit to one of them?
Alejandro Yegros
The Clips and Cavs interested in Kirilenko. We should be as well.
Mike Sutera
If Butler continues to play this way, I'm [going to] have to wage my MVP campaign, and forget All-Star, which I already have going on my Facebook page. If Rose won it with 25 & 8 numbers, why can't Jimmy? His numbers aren't quite high yet but his defense makes up for it. His noted victims are Gordon Hayward, who averages 19.2 but was held to 6. Derozan, who averages 19.4 but held to 10, and Joe Johnson who averages 16 but held to 3, all effective at the time of this post. Again, I know it's waaaaaaaaay too early, so I'm emphasizing "if he continues."
Marcus Anderson
Do you think the Most improved player award is already locked for Jimmy Buttler?
Alexandre Rayel
Good thing the Bulls didn't listen to me about going after Lance Stephenson.
John Leichenko