hey fellas, just wondering what your take was on the latest Simmons rant. Actually has a bit of merit"With a 12-man roster, you'd only need to train five or six guys to pull off that press. Let's say next season's Bulls trained the following five: Joakim Noah, Ty Thomas, Kirk Hinrich, Lindsey Hunter and Generic Athletic/Hungry Swingman X. They practice and practice until they become a well-oiled pressing machine. For the first five minutes of every second and fourth quarter, they unleash that killer press on their opponents … who, by the way, would be playing backups during that time, making it even more effective. Wouldn't that be an ENORMOUS advantage? Wouldn't that swing a few games? Wouldn't opponents dread playing them? Wouldn't opponents have to waste practice time preparing to break that press? Wouldn't it be even better at home with the Bulls flying around and their fans going bonkers? The key would be not putting "press miles" on your top guys and your wealthiest guys (who would never be totally invested because, again, they're really, really wealthy and don't need this crap). In this scenario, the Bulls wouldn't press with Rose, Deng, Brad Miller, Ben Gordon or even John Salmons if they could help it."
whole article pretty interesting - http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/090513/part2
First, the whole article (all 3 parts) is worth the read, some interesting stuff in there.
Second, I understand why he's included for defensive/athletic reasons, but I have a problem with JoaNoah as part of the press unit. Simmons says "the key would be not putting "press miles" on your top guys and your wealthiest guys" so it defeinitely wouldn;t make sense to include our starting center.
Third, as for the actual idea of using a press. It's never really been done in the NBA for the reasons in the article: hard (or impossible) to convince NBA players to actually do it. I do think it could work in the right circumstances, but it would be hard. For instance, with the 5 guys Simmons listed ... JoaNoah is the energy/intangibles guy in the first unit - so if he's killing himself in the press we need to replace that. With an 8-man rotation and a 5-man "press unit" there must be some overlap, but it cannot be your starting center.
Other than that I would love to see it - it would make games much more exciting/interesting if it could be done right. And it would be a great way to use the 11 and 12 bench spots - rather than using them as just glorified cheerleaders.
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Some excellent BG analysis (via BlogaBull) -
Does Ben Gordon go one on one too much? This is a common complaint put forth by Gordon detractors. Since I have the means, the time, and the intense desire to find out the truth I decided to research this topic by the numbers.
First, let’s look at the Bulls perimeter players themselves, here’s a list of the percentage of times each guy goes 1 on 1 followed by the NBA percentile in their effectiveness of doing so.
Bulls players isolation usage and effectiveness:
John Salmons 25.65% / 51%
Ben Gordon 20.34% / 69%
Derrick Rose 14.24% / 47%
Luol Deng 9.09% / 6%
Kirk Hinrich 9.02% / 52%
What does this mean? Well first, it means supporting John Salmons to take over for Ben Gordon because Gordon goes one on one too much is ridiculous. Salmons goes one on one more and is a lot worse at it. It also means those who feel Rose is the best scorer in an isolation appear to be wrong. His 47th percentile in the league makes him an average scorer one on one.
Luol Deng should never have isolation opportunities as his numbers are scary bad, and Kirk Hinrich looks like he does a decent job for the limited chances he has. This also backs up my assertion that the Bulls were better off giving the ball to Gordon at the end of a game than Rose as Gordon was a substantially better scorer in an isolation situation.
JD suspended -
Earlier in the day, Major League Baseball suspended Dye and fined him an undisclosed amount after he threw his helmet and it bounced off an umpire in Wednesday's victory at Cleveland.
Dye was ejected by plate umpire Mike DiMuro after being called out on strikes with the bases loaded in the sixth inning. Dye argued briefly with DiMuro and was ejected after slamming down his helmet, which bounced off the umpire.
"I didn't turn around so I didn't even know it hit him," Dye said. "I still haven't seen the replay so I don't even know what it looks like."
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