Second Quarter Surge Propels Celtics to 109-99 Game Seven Win Over Bulls
The Chicago Bulls took an early 11-4 lead but the Boston Celtics weathered that storm, seized control of the game by closing out the first half with a 22-2 run to take a 52-38 lead and held on to earn a 109-99 game seven victory. Ray Allen led the Celtics with 23 points, while Paul Pierce had 20 points, nine rebounds and four assists, though he shot just 6-17 from the field. Rajon Rondo finished with seven points, 11 assists, five rebounds, three steals and two blocked shots, narrowly missing in his bid to join the select group of players who have averaged a triple double for an entire playoff series (he averaged 19.4 ppg, 11.6 apg and 9.3 rpg). Eddie House added 16 points and made all five of his shots--including four three pointers--as Boston's bench outplayed Chicago's bench for the first time this series. Ben Gordon scored a game-high 33 points and made all 15 of his free throws but he shot just 7-23 from the field. Derrick Rose had 18 points, four rebounds and three assists.
It is fitting that Gordon was the Bulls' leading scorer, because shot selection was a major theme in this game: when the Celtics broke the game open they were shooting layups, open jumpers and free throws while the Bulls were shooting contested, off balance shots or simply turning the ball over without even getting a shot off at all. TNT's Doug Collins compared Gordon to Collins' former teammate
Andrew Toney but I have to respectfully disagree with Collins: Toney shot .500 from the field during his regular season career and shot .478 from the field in the playoffs--and those percentages were dragged down by games he played after suffering the foot injuries that ultimately prematurely ended his career. Toney averaged 24.4 ppg in two NBA Finals appearances--the 12th best NBA Finals scoring average ever--while shooting .490 from the field. Toney was a Hall of Fame caliber talent, though he did not play long enough to put together a Hall of Fame resume; Gordon is a dynamic streak shooter (.437 career regular season field goal percentage, .403 career playoff field goal percentage, .388 field goal percentage versus the Celtics in the first round) in the Vinnie Johnson mold but even Johnson (.464 career regular season field goal percentage, .453 career playoff field goal percentage) shot markedly better than Gordon does. Gordon is a much better free throw shooter than Toney or Johnson, so the major difference between him and those guys is that they had better shot selection. Also, even though Gordon has an impressively sculpted physique, Toney and Johnson were much more effective at using their strength to go inside and score in the paint, even against players who were much taller. As TNT's Charles Barkley and Kenny Smith noted after the game, Gordon previously turned down a deal that would have paid him $11 million per year, so the Bulls face a major, franchise altering decision now that Gordon is a free agent again: how much money should they spend to keep a player who is best suited to being a spark plug off of the bench? Gordon thinks that he should be a starting shooting guard earning starting shooting guard money but if the Bulls want to contend for a championship some day then they need for Gordon to accept being a sixth man earning sixth man money so that they have enough cap space to complete their roster; it is not likely that a team will win a championship with a starting shooting guard who is listed at 6-3 but is closer to 6-0, particularly when that player does not create scoring opportunities for his teammates, plays little defense and shoots in the low .400s.
With the injured Kevin Garnett out of the equation, the Bulls' big men were able to hold their own versus the Celtics' frontcourt for most of the series; the difference ultimately proved to be Pierce and Allen and that is how things should be: they are future Hall of Famers, which is something that cannot be said at this point about any of Chicago's players (Rose is a wonderful talent but he cannot be called a future Hall of Famer after one good season). If the Celtics had lost this series despite having homecourt advantage and a significant edge in playoff experience then fingers would rightly be pointed at the two healthy members of Boston's Big Three, particularly 2008 Finals MVP Pierce; you cannot mouth off last summer about being the best player in the NBA and then get outplayed--or even played to a draw--by John Salmons. Pierce had his ups and downs during this series--and certainly did nothing to convince any objective observer that he should be in the same discussion with LeBron James and Kobe Bryant--but he ultimately did just enough to help his team advance, averaging 23.1 ppg, 6.9 rpg and 2.0 apg while shooting .427 from the field. Salmons, who did not play well in game seven (12 points on 3-12 shooting), averaged 18.1 ppg, 4.4 rpg and 2.3 apg in the series while shooting .401 from the field. Allen was horrible in game one (four points on 1-12 shooting as the Celtics surrendered home court advantage) but he played well for the most part the rest of the way, highlighted by a dazzling playoff career-high 51 point outburst in Boston's game six loss and his very steady performance in game seven. Allen averaged 23.4 ppg, 3.1 rpg and 2.1 apg while shooting .451 from the field during the series. It should go without saying--but I'll say it anyway--that the numbers that Pierce and Allen put up would be considered subpar performances for James and Bryant; can you imagine the uproar that would be sounded if Bryant shot .427 from the field while only averaging 2.0 apg in a series versus a .500 team? The standard that is set and met on a nightly basis by James and Bryant is so much higher than even the standard for future Hall of Famers like Pierce and Allen that it does not even make sense to seriously compare Boston's duo with the two best players in the league.
In my
preview of this weekend's two game sevens I wrote, "Game sevens on the road have historically been tantamount to death in the NBA--particularly for young teams that have little playoff experience--and even when earlier games in a series have been close there is a tendency for game seven momentum to snowball into a rout." When the Celtics blitzed the Bulls late in the first half, I fully expected Chicago to get blown out in the second half, so the Bulls deserve credit for finding their bearings at halftime and staying competitive the rest of the way. On the other hand, before anyone gets overly enthusiastic about Chicago's future prospects two things are worth remembering: 1) in 2007 the Bulls swept the defending champion Heat in the first round but the nucleus of that team was never heard from again, with Coach Scott Skiles eventually being fired and other key players either being traded (Ben Wallace, Chris Duhon, Andres Nocioni) or sitting out the Boston series due to injury (Luol Deng); 2) considering how close these games were there is every reason to believe that if Garnett had been healthy the Celtics would have won this series easily and very possibly could have swept the Bulls. Garnett's presence would have shut down the middle defensively and his screens would have made life a lot easier for Pierce and Allen.
I don't know how big a deal the mainstream media will make about a mistake that happened during this game but the NBA is surely very relieved that the Celtics won by a comfortable margin--not because the league office favors any one team over another but rather because if this game had been closer then that would have greatly magnified the significance of a scorekeeping error committed early in the game but not corrected until the fourth quarter. At the 8:32 mark of the first quarter, Gordon hit a jumper from well behind the three point line but the Bulls were only awarded two points. By rule, the referees can consult the video to review such plays at the next timeout and they did just that; according to the NBA, the referees ruled that the shot was indeed a three pointer but somehow this was not communicated to the scorekeeper. Apparently, no one realized this until the 5:44 mark of the fourth quarter, when the referees consulted with the league office, were informed that they had the power to correct this mistake and then added one point to Chicago's total, making the score 89-84 Boston. Gordon made two free throws to cut the lead to three but that was as close as the Bulls would get, so the scorekeeping mistake did not change the outcome of the game but afterwards Kenny Smith made two very important points: 1) The NBA set a precedent in this situation by making a correction long after the original mistake happened; 2) such a correction could have a significant impact on the outcome of a closer game by making a two possession game become a one possession game, thus altering the strategies for both teams. Smith asked what if any rule the NBA has in place regarding how much time can elapse before an error can no longer be corrected. My understanding of the NBA's rule about these situations is that such plays are supposed to be reviewed at the first timeout after they happen and that any corrections are supposed to be made at that time, not later. The statement that the NBA issued right after this game ended--as read on air by TNT's Ernie Johnson--indicated that the correct procedure had been followed, the referees ruled that the score should be changed but that there was a communication breakdown. In other words, the referees did not make a new ruling in the fourth quarter but simply made sure that their original ruling was enacted. This begs all sorts of questions. It is reasonable to wonder, as Charles Barkley did, how anyone could not have seen that Gordon's shot was a three pointer: Gordon was well behind the line. Furthermore, how could such a glaring communication error happen at all, let alone in such a critically important game? How could the referees not notice that one point had not been added to Chicago's score after they reviewed the play? It would also be interesting to know when and how exactly the referees did become aware of this. That communication error really put the league office in a no win situation, because if they stuck to the letter of the law then they would have robbed the Bulls of a point but by making a change so long after the fact they did indeed open up a Pandora's box, as Smith suggested. I suspect that NBA Commissioner David Stern will be issuing a statement of his own about this in short order and that the league will have to clarify this rule as well as institute some kind of back up communication procedure to make sure that nothing like this ever happens again.
Labels: Ben Gordon, Boston Celtics, Chicago Bulls, Derrick Rose, Eddie House, Paul Pierce, Rajon Rondo, Ray Allen
posted by David Friedman @ 1:57 AM
Explosive Rose Dazzles as Bulls Stun Celtics
In his first career playoff game, Chicago Bulls rookie point guard Derrick Rose provided a performance for the ages: 36 points on 12-19 field goal shooting and 12-12 free throw shooting, 11 assists and four rebounds in a 105-103 overtime victory over the defending champion Boston Celtics. Rose tied Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's 39 year old NBA record for most points by a rookie in his playoff debut, repeatedly blowing by hapless Boston defenders to either finish strongly at the rim or dish to his teammates for easy scores. The only blemishes on Rose's line were his game-high five turnovers and his six fouls (Rose fouled out with 10 seconds remaining in overtime). Ben Gordon shot just 6-17 from the field but he produced 20 points and five assists, including 12 big fourth quarter points; Gordon is the ultimate feast or famine streak shooter and the Bulls definitely feasted on his clutch buckets down the stretch in game one. Joakim Noah (17 rebounds) and Brad Miller (12 rebounds) dominated the glass as Chicago outrebounded Boston 53-45.
Lost in the deserved superlatives already being heaped on Rose's playoff debut is the fact that in a losing effort his young Boston counterpart nearly matched him point for point and assist for assist: Rajon Rondo had 29 points on 12-21 field goal shooting while also accumulating seven assists and nine rebounds. Rondo only committed one turnover. He certainly shouldered more than his share of the load for the Celtics but Rondo could not overcome the total disappearing act by Ray Allen (four points on 1-12 field goal shooting, including missing a potentially tying jumper as time expired in overtime) and the up and down performance of Paul Pierce: "The Truth" only had four first half points and even though he rallied late to finish with 23 points he shot just 8-21 from the field and missed a free throw with two seconds left in regulation that could have won the game (Chicago had no timeouts left and would have had to immediately inbound the ball and traverse the length of the court had he made that shot). Glen "Big Baby" Davis--who self-deprecatingly called himself "the ticket stub" prior to the game--scored 18 points on 6-15 shooting while starting in place of "The Big Ticket," Kevin Garnett, the 2008 Defensive Player of the Year who is expected to miss this year's playoffs due to a knee injury.
The significance of winning game one should not be minimized; game one winners advance nearly 80% of the time in the NBA playoffs. That said, there are some mitigating factors that suggest that it is premature to write the Celtics off just yet:
1) The Bulls needed a historic level debut by Rose, Tyrus Thomas' best shooting game in the past three weeks and Noah's second highest rebounding total this season in order to win by two points in overtime.
2) Even though Chicago had the aforementioned great performances by several key players, the Celtics still came within one missed free throw from winning in regulation and one missed midrange jumper from extending the game to a second overtime that would have been contested without the fouled out Rose.
3) If you project a Bulls series victory from this one win then you are saying that it is more likely that the young Bulls can duplicate their high level of play three more times than it is that future Hall of Famers Pierce and Allen will not perform that poorly again versus Chicago.
Game one definitely indicated that this series will be more closely contested than I--and most other observers--expected. However, don't put it past the Celtics to tie the series by winning at home in game two and then retake home court advantage by capturing game three in Chicago.
Labels: Ben Gordon, Boston Celtics, Chicago Bulls, Derrick Rose, Glen "Big Baby" Davis, Joakim Noah, Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce, Rajon Rondo, Ray Allen
posted by David Friedman @ 2:48 AM
Gasol, Bryant Lead the Way as Lakers Stampede Past the Bulls
Pau Gasol scored a season-high 34 points on 14-21 field goal shooting as the L.A. Lakers beat the Chicago Bulls 116-109 to improve their league-leading record to 8-1. Kobe Bryant added 21 points, a team-high six assists, five rebounds, three steals and two blocked shots, while Andrew Bynum contributed 18 points, nine rebounds and three blocked shots. Bryant twice drove to the hoop, drew the defense and then fed Gasol a behind the back pass for an easy dunk, including a first quarter move in which Bryant split the trap a la
Mark Price before penetrating into the lane and passing to Gasol; Bryant also had several feeds to Gasol and Bynum that were not assists because they resulted in free throw attempts instead of made baskets.
Derrick Rose led the Bulls with 25 points and a game-high nine assists. It is obviously very early in the season but Rose has impressed me more than any other rookie so far: he can shoot, pass and rebound, his defense is adequate--particularly for such a young, inexperienced player--and he plays at his own tempo, not allowing other players to force him to slow down or speed up. Rose is very quick, handles the ball well and has already mastered his own variation of the teardrop shot used by penetrating guards as diverse as Mark Jackson and Tony Parker. Point guard is probably the toughest position to play as a rookie, so Rose's performance so far is that much more impressive.
Ben Gordon scored a highly inefficient 23 points on 6-22 field goal shooting, including 3-11 from three point range. Is his salary based on field goal attempts per minute? Gordon would actually be a great sixth man for a strong team that could control his minutes and shot selection but injuries to other players have forced him into a starting role for the Bulls and that is less than ideal because he is an undersized shooting guard who is not a great ballhandler or defender.
Gasol scored 18 of his points in the first quarter, becoming the first Laker other than Kobe Bryant to have that many points in a quarter since Shaquille O'Neal scored 18 points in a quarter in a March 21, 2003 game versus Boston. The Lakers exploited the obvious size advantage they enjoyed with Gasol and Bynum matching up against Drew Gooden and Joakim Noah; Gasol scored 13 of the Lakers' first 15 points. Bryant did not score a point in the first quarter and despite Gasol's outburst the Lakers only led 30-29, a score that is not good for L.A. for two reasons: the Lakers gave up far too many points and they were only up by one point at home against an inferior team. The Lakers played poor defense on several possessions--giving up wide open jumpers and, even worse, easy layups--and they also blew several point blank scoring opportunities at the front of the rim; if they had been a little sharper the score could easily have been 40-21 in their favor.
Sometimes it is hard to figure out what--if anything--Lamar Odom is thinking about. He had good boxscore numbers (10 points, eight rebounds, five assists) but fouled out after only playing 22 minutes. At the start of the second quarter he missed a layup, grabbed the rebound, made the putback--and then grabbed the ball and shot another layup, earning a delay of game warning. That did not have an effect on the outcome of the game but could have been a critical gaffe if it happened in the second half of a close contest; a second delay of game call is a one shot technical foul. Also, teams like to preserve that first delay of game call in order to use it to get a look at the opposing team's inbounds play late in the game and then stop the action before the inbounder passes the ball. Odom complained about every foul called on him even though most if not all of the fouls were obviously correct. This is why the Lakers are so much better off having him in a reserve role as opposed to perpetuating the dream that he could be Bryant's Pippen-like sidekick; the more that you have to rely on Odom on a game to game basis, the more you are going to be disappointed but as a reserve player the Lakers don't need as much out of him and on those occasions when he breaks out with a 20 point, 10 rebound game it will be icing on the cake.
Bryant took his usual rest at the start of the second quarter and when he returned to action at the 8:37 mark the score was tied at 36. In less than three minutes, he scored eight points as the Lakers went on a 15-2 run. The Lakers pushed their lead to 57-40 after Bryant's behind the back pass to Gasol for a dunk but then Gordon and Rose helped the Bulls close the half with a 16-4 run to pull within 61-56 at halftime.
At the start of the third quarter, Bryant again asserted control over the game, hitting a jumper and a three pointer to make the score 65-56. After Gasol missed a jumper, Bryant stormed into the lane and tipped the ball toward the basket; he missed the mark but kept the ball alive long enough for Bynum to reel it in and convert a three point play. Lakers' announcer Stu Lantz noted that Bryant receives no boxscore credit for that kind of hustle but Bynum would not have scored without Bryant's extra effort (a glance at the official play by play sheet actually shows that Bryant was credited with an offensive rebound and a missed field goal attempt). It is still early in the season but so far we are seeing that two of the themes that I repeatedly mentioned in the offseason were right on target: (1) Phil Jackson is not going to play Bynum, Gasol and Odom together at the same time because none of those players is a legit small forward; (2) Bynum is not a franchise-level center who creates his own offense but rather a young, athletic big man who rebounds and defends but whose offensive game at this stage mostly consists of catching lob passes, scoring on putbacks and occasionally using his developing repertoire of post moves. Bynum's minutes are up slightly compared to last season but his scoring average, field goal percentage and rebounding average have each declined (his shotblocking and turnover numbers have improved, though the latter can mainly be attributed to him not being relied on to do much more than dunk the ball). He is still rounding into shape after recovering from the injury that cost him the second half of last season but it should be obvious that he is not, as some laughably suggested, the best or most valuable player on the team.
After that initial Bryant-fueled burst to start the third quarter, the Lakers only managed to add three more points to their lead, enjoying a 90-74 advantage going into the final 12 minutes. Bryant was on the bench at the start of the fourth quarter and when the score reached 97-78 it seemed like his services might not be required for the rest of the night--but even with Gasol and Bynum on the court, the reserves were not able to maintain that comfortable margin. The Bulls cut the lead to 107-97 by the 3:50 mark--a very workable margin at that stage--and Bryant was forced to shed his warmups and finish the job. He came into the game with the Lakers on offense and seven seconds remaining on the shot clock and coolly drained a three pointer to let the Bulls know that playtime was over. The Bulls never cut the margin into single digits and a couple minutes later Bryant was able to go back to the bench. When a star player has sat out the first eight-plus minutes of the final quarter, you can be sure that his coach did not want to have to put him back in the game--but Phil Jackson understood just how tenuous the situation had become. I know that some people think that this Lakers' team would be very good even without Bryant but if you believe that then you need to focus more intently on two things: (1) How exactly Gasol, Bynum and others get wide open shots when Bryant is in the game; (2) how often large Lakers' leads shrink to dangerous levels when Bryant is on the bench. According to the definition of "clutch" used by "stats gurus" (less than two minutes remaining in a game that is closer than five points), Bryant's fourth quarter three pointer was not "clutch"--but that may have been the biggest possession of the game. If Bryant had not been brought back in and the Lakers failed to score, the Bulls would have been very much alive and would have had a ton of momentum. Although the Lakers have the best record in the NBA, several of those wins are directly attributable to Bryant either hitting a key shot like that and/or going on a scoring run at a key juncture--and Bryant's ability to consistently be productive at those important moments clearly demonstrates that he still has the same skill set that earned him last year's MVP and that, on lesser teams, enabled him to set numerous records while winning back to back scoring titles.
Interestingly, although Gasol was easily the highest scoring player in this game, his plus/minus number was just +1, while Bryant's plus/minus number was a game-high +22; incidentally, we can also see the limitations of looking at unadjusted plus/minus numbers by considering the fact that Vladimir Radmanovic--who was nearly invisible while scoring five points on 1-4 shooting--had the third best plus/minus number (+16) just because most of his minutes coincided with Bryant's. What Bryant has done so far this season is just lay in the cut, so to speak, as a scorer; he's not trying to go out and get 40 or 50 points and often he is hardly even attempting a shot in the first quarter as he surveys how the opposing team is defending him and sees which of his teammates may have the hot hand--but if and when things get tight or the Lakers hit a lull then Bryant drops about 10 points in a brief run, like a sniper picking off several targets in rapid succession and then calling it a day. I'm not sure which role is more difficult--sustaining production over a whole game to score 40 points (but also knowing that even if you miss some shots you are going to get up 25 or 30 attempts) or having the ability to seemingly turn your scoring off and on at will.
The Lakers played nine games in 23 days to start the season but will play six games in an 11 day stretch that started on Tuesday, so the upcoming week and a half will be an excellent test for them. They suffered their first loss of the season on Friday night versus Detroit and the most disturbing aspect of that game was how the Pistons pushed the Lakers' big men around, including a 10 point, 10 rebound performance by Kwame Brown, the former Lakers' starting center who has been thrust into a temporary starting role for Detroit due to injuries. Brown outplayed Bynum and Rasheed Wallace had his way with Gasol in a game that surely reminded Lakers' fans of how the Celtics overpowered Gasol in the NBA Finals; no one can question that Gasol is a very skilled player but he still has to prove that he has the necessary mental and physical toughness to be a key contributor on a championship level team--I had thought that he passed that test last year versus Utah and San Antonio in the Western Conference playoffs but Gasol had a setback against Boston.
Labels: Ben Gordon, Chicago Bulls, Derrick Rose, Kobe Bryant, L.A. Lakers, Pau Gasol
posted by David Friedman @ 3:13 AM
Blazers Outlast Bulls in Double Overtime
The surprise team so far this season, the Portland Trail Blazers, earned yet another win on Thursday, outlasting the Chicago Bulls--arguably the most disappointing team this season--115-109 in double overtime. Brandon Roy had 25 points, 11 assists, six rebounds and two steals. A bruised tailbone slowed Roy down in the second overtime but Jarrett Jack (17 points, five assists, four rebounds) then took over, putting Portland ahead for good with a three point play with just :19 remaining in the second overtime. Travis Outlaw added 21 points for the Blazers, who had six players score in double figures. Ben Gordon, thriving in his new sixth man role, had a game-high 32 points, shooting 15-27 from the field, but his late turnover led directly to Jack's game-clinching play. Joe Smith had a season-high 31 points plus 11 rebounds and Ben Wallace contributed 12 points, 14 rebounds and four blocked shots. Kirk Hinrich had 12 points, nine assists and seven rebounds but he shot just 5-18 from the field and his late game efforts to defend the larger Roy
reaffirmed Scottie Pippen's assessment that Hinrich should not be guarding the league's top shooting guards because, quite simply, "he's not that talented...Little guards always put you in a vulnerable position. You've got to send help. It puts too much pressure on the defense."
The Bulls suffered a damaging blow in the first half when Luol Deng tweaked his left Achilles and was not able to return to the contest. That forced other players to play more extended minutes and also led to stretches during which the Bulls did not have many offensive options on the court. This was the fourth game in five nights for both teams and by the second overtime the game looked like the last round of a heavyweight bout between two out of shape boxers who spend more time clinching each other than throwing punches; neither team scored for the first 1:53 until Jack made a layup. The Bulls' Andres Nocioni answered more than a minute later with a jumper but most of the concluding points down the stretch came from the free throw line.
Prior to this loss, the Bulls had won three of their four games since firing Coach Scott Skiles but, as TNT's Doug Collins noted, time is running out for Chicago and the Bulls really needed to win this home game. New Coach Jim Boylan is essentially undergoing an extended job interview, while several Bulls players who think that they are worth large contracts need to step their games up. This team is too talented to have such a bad record. Since Boylan took over, the Bulls seem to be playing with greater energy and purpose, which simply reinforces the perception that the players essentially quit on Skiles. Supposedly Skiles was too tough of a disciplinarian but I think that his real downfall is that he was too soft with several of these players. It is obvious that Gordon should be the sixth man, not a starter, and that young players like Tyrus Thomas need to earn their minutes. Skiles kept giving his players opportunities to get out of their slumps when he should have simply made the correct moves without worrying about upsetting people. As soon as Boylan took over, he removed Gordon from the starting lineup and Gordon is now playing better than he has all season. Gordon is a one dimensional player, a gunner. As a starter, he tended to force things and his liabilities in other areas were very evident, but as a sixth man he gets to play a lot of minutes against either tired starters or against second unit players. Either way, if the team needs offense Gordon will be on the court at the end of the game.
Boylan is also emphasizing the importance of pushing the ball up the court and initiating early offense so that the Bulls can get some easy baskets before the defense gets set. Under Skiles, the Bulls were prone to going through long scoring droughts and were putting up some of the worst shooting and scoring numbers in the league. Thomas averaged more than 20 mpg during the first month of the season. His minutes declined in December but they have been slashed since Boylan took the reins; Thomas has not played more than six minutes in a game since Skiles was fired. Collins said that young players have to learn how hard you have to work on a daily basis to be a good pro basketball player and that you earn your minutes by how well you practice. Thomas shoots just .423 from the field, which is inexcusable for an athletic player who gets a lot of dunks and easy baskets; as Pippen rightly noted, Thomas should be a "fetcher," a guy who rebounds and hustles, not someone who takes many shots outside of the paint.
Collins and play by play announcer Kevin Harlan talked a little bit about the awkward position that Boylan is in, taking the place of someone who hired him to be an assistant coach, but I would have liked to hear Collins discuss how Skiles must feel. Collins just touched on this briefly, saying that Skiles did a good job building the team up but won't be around to see everything come to fruition, but Collins never mentioned how this mirrors his own experience; two decades ago, Collins--who was an intense, demanding coach much like Skiles is said to be--led the Bulls to a 47-35 record but was replaced by Phil Jackson, who had been an assistant on his staff. Obviously, these Bulls do not have a transcendent player like Michael Jordan but Collins knows exactly what it feels like to be fired after leading a team to the playoffs and then be replaced by a member of your own coaching staff. It would have been interesting to hear Collins' thoughts about this but maybe the issue is too raw and hits too close to home, even after all of these years. Collins' players supposedly grew weary of his demands but Jackson turned out to be no less demanding, instituting a Triangle Offense that was hardly popular with Jordan at first and placing great emphasis on defense. Much like Skiles is perceived to be tough but may not have actually insisted on the right things in the right ways (i.e., failing to make Gordon into the sixth man and not benching players who were not performing up to par), Collins developed a reputation for being difficult but he actually did not confront Jordan and others as much as perhaps he should have. In
The Jordan Rules, Sam Smith describes how Collins rued that Jordan took too many bad shots and did not pass to his teammates. Jackson, then an assistant, said that Collins should say this to Jordan directly but Collins felt that it would not make a difference and told Jackson that he was welcome to try communicating these sentiments to Jordan; Jackson did exactly that, telling Jordan about how the Knicks in the early 1970s became champions by playing as a cohesive team. Jordan respected someone who would challenge him and make him play better much more than someone who might yell at him at times but would not really confront him in a meaningful way that would guide him down a different path. I've always thought that this little story goes a long way toward explaining how Jackson has been able to win so many championships with Jordan, Pippen, O'Neal and Bryant--and why those championships were not a sure thing just because those players were on the roster: even the greatest players need to be coached and it takes a deft hand (or, more precisely, a clever, determined mind) to find the right way to help such gifted athletes to maximize their talents within the context of the team being successful.
Labels: Ben Gordon, Brandon Roy, Chicago Bulls, Jarrett Jack, Joe Smith, Portland Trail Blazers
posted by David Friedman @ 5:24 AM
Scottie Pippen is No Diplomat, but He Knows Basketball
Scottie Pippen would like to coach the Chicago Bulls, the team that he helped lead to six NBA titles, and he does not understand "the key to the good 'ol boy system" that he believes is preventing him from getting a coaching job: "What's my disadvantage? No NBA coaching experience? Skiles' record with the Bulls wasn't that great. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to do what you've done your whole life. I've played basketball, run teams and won. They didn't put me at point guard because I could dribble good. They put me there because I could run a team. I wasn't the best dribbler, the best shooter. I wasn't a point guard. But I knew how to run a team."
Pippen told the Chicago Tribune's Sam Smith, "What experience do you need? You have assistants who have been there. If I made a mistake, I wouldn't be the first coach to make a mistake. I'd love the opportunity to be part of the organization now that Skiles is gone. I've won championships with this organization and been in the competition when everything was on the line. I was a coach on the floor. Why isn't that experience?"
Pippen also offered some blunt assessments of the skills and limitations of some of the current Bulls' players:
***Tyrus Thomas "dribbles better with his left hand than his right. He must have broken his arm when he was a kid. He shouldn't be dribbling. He should be a fetcher. Like Ben Wallace, (Joakim) Noah, go get the ball."
***Ben Wallace "doesn't know the game like Dennis Rodman did. Dennis knew how and why he got rebounds. So you keep on him (Wallace) or he doesn't play."
***Ben Gordon "(is) out there shooting for a contract...If there's two, three guys running at him, he still wants to make a shot. Those shots are out of position, your teammates don't expect them, you are not in position to rebound and get back. Taking bad shots is a sign of a lack of respect for your teammates. You think I'm going to run back if I know B.J. Armstrong is jacking it up? My shot is just as good as his. That's what players think."
***Kirk Hinrich "(is) guarding Kobe, Tracy McGrady, the best players. He's not that talented. Let him run the offense. But you can't have midgets running your backcourt. Little guards always put you in a vulnerable position. You've got to send help. It puts too much pressure on the defense."
***Luol Deng "(is) solid. But he doesn't have enough speed. He plays more upright, so it's tough for him to go out and guard smaller guys. I think Deng is on the verge of being a star. But all that money talk added pressure. Now he's trying to show 28, 29 teams what he's about instead of going out and playing."
***Andres Nocioni "(is) turning into Rasheed Wallace with the kinds of things he does on floor. It makes the officials turn on the whole team. And you stop getting calls."
Obviously, diplomacy is not Scottie Pippen's strong suit. I stood right next to him during the 2007 All-Star Weekend when he told a group of reporters, "If you ask people who understand the game, the GMs and the coaches, they'd rather have a Scottie than a Michael." As I explained, "there is in fact some truth to what he said--not so much that GMs would prefer Scottie to Michael but that they would prefer the way that Scottie played. Jordan was a more naturally gifted scorer but as a rebounder, playmaker and defender Pippen did not have to take a back seat to any midsized player--even MJ--and he consistently played, as Larry Brown would say, 'the right way,' supporting his teammates and trying to get them involved. He never felt the temptation that MJ often did to try to simply shoot his team out of trouble single-handedly."
Someone who hires Scottie Pippen to be a head coach may cringe once in a while at Pippen's blunt, brutally honest way of expressing himself--but isn't that a small price to pay in exchange for the wealth of knowledge and experience that Pippen has?
Labels: Andres Nocioni, Ben Gordon, Ben Wallace, Chicago Bulls, Kirk Hinrich, Luol Deng, Scottie Pippen, Tyrus Thomas
posted by David Friedman @ 6:15 PM
Great Players Can Never Play in Fear of Turnovers
The Phoenix Suns beat the Chicago Bulls 112-102 in fairly routine fashion: they pushed the ball up the court, they made a lot of three pointers (10), they built a big lead (15 points), they squandered the entire lead in the second half and then they put the Bulls away with a barrage of jumpers and backdoor cuts. The Suns are a hard team to handle in the regular season, particularly in Phoenix; the Bulls outrebounded them by seven and still lost by 10 points. The eternal question is can the Suns beat the Spurs in a seven game series and the answer so far has been, "No." Leandro Barbosa had a game-high 25 points, while Grant Hill scored a season-high 24 points and Shawn Marion had 21 points and nine rebounds. Steve Nash shot just 3-11 from the field but finished with 10 points, 15 assists and four steals. Ben Gordon led Chicago with 24 points.
Chicago is a very puzzling team this year because the Bulls play well in stretches and then go through periods in which they look completely clueless. Anyone who thinks that Kobe Bryant could not help this team is delusional--the Bulls go through major scoring droughts in nearly every game and he would be the perfect antidote to that, not to mention the fact that his defense would also make the Bulls much better. The problem for the Bulls now is that the Lakers' bench has played very well in the early part of the season, so Bryant is not likely to accept a trade to a team that plays as lethargically as Chicago does. I still think that there is too much talent on this Bulls team to play like this all season but I am less convinced of that now than I was a week ago. Ben Wallace has clearly aged, while Luol Deng and Ben Gordon may be preoccupied with their contract situations.
This game had a real air of inevitability about it: the Suns' running game wears down most teams during the regular season and the Bulls hardly seem like a mentally strong enough group to overcome that kind of pressure right now. The most interesting thing about this contest is something that TNT's Doug Collins said late in the game after Nash threw the ball away. Referring to Nash and New Jersey's Jason Kidd, Collins declared, "There are two point guards in the league who never fear a turnover...They're going to thread the needle and trust their teammates. They never fear the consequences of a mistake, especially under pressure." This dovetails with my view that it is not a big deal if a great player--particularly one who handles the ball a lot--averages three or four turnovers a game. Obviously, careless turnovers should be minimized and throwing the ball away in a crucial late game situation is bad but the point is that players who are responsible for creating a sizable portion of their team's offense will inevitably have a few turnovers. What you don't want is to have a player who has few ballhandling duties but commits several turnovers a game; if one player handles the ball most of the time and commits three to four turnovers a game it is likely that the rest of the team will commit very few turnovers, so the team total will fall within acceptable levels. Does anyone think that Kidd or Nash hurt their teams by committing too many turnovers? There may be one or two games a year in which they have eight or 10 turnovers--but those games are more than offset by their positive contributions in most other games.
Labels: Ben Gordon, Chicago Bulls, Grant Hill, Leandro Barbosa, Luol Deng, Phoenix Suns, Steve Nash
posted by David Friedman @ 6:58 AM
