If Mike D'Antoni resigns from his position as head coach of the Phoenix Suns, he immediately becomes the Bulls best choice to fill their own head coaching vacancy. The Bulls would be foolish not to snatch him off the market asap.
In Phoenix, D'Antoni coaches an open, high-scoring brand of offense that would fill the Bulls requisite for new philosphical approach to basketball from its coaching staff. D'Antoni is an underrated X's and O's coach who would easily hold his own in the Eastern Conference.
Defense isn't a top priority if Phoenix, but the Bulls didn't take it too seriously this year either. A new offense would invigorate and re-engage the Bulls players.
With the youngest roster in the league, full of fresh legs, why not get out and run? Kirk Hinrich can run up and down like he did at Kansas. Ben Gordon won't have to work as hard for shots as he did in the half-court offense. Larry Hughes becomes more of a slasher (his best skill) instead of a jump shooter. Big men Tyrus Thomas and Joakim Noah can run out and attack the rim.
If anything, D'Antoni's system...more
Running with the Bulls
Matt Cobb searches high, low and somewhere in between for all things Bulls
The Milwaukee Bucks wasted no time finding their new head coach, Scott Skiles. Skiles appears to be the perfect remedy for an underachieving, poor defensive team filled with high draft picks. Sound familiar?
Don't be surprised if the recently fired, Bulls coach Jim Boylan winds up on the sidelines with Skiles in Milwaukee next season.
Meanwhile, the Bulls search for their own head coach hasn't produced any serious leads. It's somewhat disturbing that Bulls GM John Paxson doesn't have a short list of top candidates he is pursuing. Instead, he sounds open to listening to whoever sells themselves the best to the Bulls organization.
The Bulls season mercifully comes to an end tonight against the Toronto Raptors. The Raptors are a .500 ball club in the Eastern Conference, thereby making them the 6th seed in the playoffs. So expect them to put up a little more defense than Milwaukee did last Wednesday, when the Bulls erupted for 151 points.
Joakim Noah wasn't fooled by the disparity between meaningless games and having something to play for:
""It definitely wasn't a playoff atmosphere. Put it this way, if people were playing for something right now, like a playoff berth, the score would have never been like that."
Unfortunately, fans are still obligated to pay full price for tickets to a game where the effort is anything but full.
Prior the last night's game against the Miami Heat, the Bulls
were still mathematically alive for the playoffs. Realistically,
they've been out of it since the end of March. And after last
night's loss to the NBA's worst team, the Bulls can officially say
they've thrown in
the towel.
Check out this world beater lineup the Heat trotted out:
- Ricky Davis SF
- Earl Barron C
- Mark Blount C
- Daequon Cook SG
- Chis Quinn PG
Let's not forget the bench players for the Heat, most notably
Kasib Powell, who torched the Bulls for 18 points. Stephane Lasme,
Joel Anthony, Jason Williams, and a bag of potato chips also
contributed to their glorious 95 - 88 victory.
In a game that was somehow both comically depressing and positively
irrelevant, the Bulls players appear just as anxious as their fans
to see this season over with. Only 5 more games to go. I will now
go vomit.
A fourth quarter comeback victory on the road against Lebron? Surely you jest. But tonight's heavy weight title match of coaching prowess between Jim Boylan and Mike Brown came up in the Bull's favor 101 - 98.
Joakim Noah logged 40 minutes of play tonight and singlehandedly contested Cleveland's final two shots. First, he altered a driving fade away shot by Lebron. Moments later, he ran out from under the basket to close out on Daniel Gibson's last second three point attempt. Two misses later, the Bulls walked out with an improbable victory.
Trailing by as many as 17 points, the Bulls caught fire in the 3rd quarter and finished the fourth quarter with a 24 to 13 point advantage. The rare display of offensive potency lead to a 53.5% shooting with 40% on threes.
Welcome to the NBA. Where Eastern Conference basketball happens.
Last week, Miami Heat center Alonzo Mourning was in attendance at the McDonald's High School All-America Game. Next season, it would be nice to see him on the Bulls bench as their big man coach.
Mourning has been out for the season since suffering a knee injury in December. Assuming he opts to retire after 16 years in the league, he might be persuaded to join a team's coaching staff as a big man mentor.
With Joakim Noah, Tyrus Thomas, and Aaron Gray, the Bulls have three young big men that would greatly benefit from the teachings of such an acclaimed player. Mourning was a two-time Defensive Player of the Year and was perenially a member of the NBA All-Defensive team. But he also had offensive scoring ability to match his tenacious defense.
Compared to some of the other less heralded, former big men brought in by the Bulls to teach their forwards and centers, Alonzo's career resume instantly commands respect.
Perhaps his presence at the Mickey D's basketball game demonstrates Alonzo Mourning's appreciation for the game itself. So perhaps he wouldn't mind passing some of his sage wisdom down to its next generation of players.
There really isn't any other choice, is there? If this season is going down in flames, we might as well make it entertaining. This Bulls team has struggled so mightily, both on the court and off, that the masochist in me says why not see how fall we can push this envelope of insanity.
Signing Oakley to the Bulls roster would be the equivalent of GM John Paxson tossing a live hand grenade into the Bulls locker room. At 44 years old, the Oak Tree still thinks he can play.
While Oakley might not start for the NBA's "All-Crazy" team, he's definitely coming off the bench. And I couldn't think of a better mentor for Tyrus Thomas and Joakim Noah. If you're going to fued with fellow players and coaches, then you better learn from a master. Plus, he once appeared in a music video for Hootie and the Blowfish, at least according to Wikipedia.
As a much needed bonus, Oakley would administer old-school beat downs to any team that dared put on a slam dunk...more
The latest chapter in this soap opera season for the Bulls brings us another 4th quarter collapse, another player outburst, and an interim coach campaigning to be retained as the head coach next season.
Earlier this season, Joakim Noah was suspended for two games after cursing out assistant coach Ron Adams, in practice. Now Andres Nocioni gets fined an undisclosed amount for cursing out the head coach in a game.
Inconsistent? Absolutely. But doesn't this make the Bulls train wreck all the more watchable? Probably not. The Bulls should be thanking the Knicks for diverting media attention away from what may be the most dysfunctional NBA team this season.
The saga continues tonight when the Bulls look to avoid further embarrassment againt the Atlanta Hawks. Here we find the Bulls still fighting for the 8th playoff spot in a most pathetic stumble towards the end of the regular season.
We sports bloggers are a deplorable lot, laying on couches in our ragged clothes, staring into our televisions, and pulling bong hits from plastic honey bears before typing up some half, no fully, baked post.
Floyd taking a break from his sports blog.
Just ask Sam Smith, for he is not blogger, as he so proudly declares in his latest mail bag.
"I am not a blogger! OK, it's time to explain this. I have expressed my opinion about blogging before and I'm told got considerable heat about it on the blogosphere. Though since I believe that is beyond Uranus, I had no idea where to find it."
While I have always enjoyed reading his columns for NBA league news and rumors, aging dinosaur journalists like Smith are increasingly belittling the bloggers of the world.
Some of it might come down to ego. Newspaper sportswriters typically have earned degrees in journalism and have invested a career's worth of time and energy for their voice, their thoughts, to be communicated to the world in print. The internet gives everyone...more
If you've ever asked yourself why the hell Joakim Noah isn't on
the court, what Luol Deng is doing at power forward, or how the
Bulls blew yet another 4th quarter lead,
welcome to the Popcorn
Machine.
For NBA stats junkies, this site is a treasure trove of game
analysis. Going beyond simply the box score, game flows are
charted with player +/- numbers as well as their stints of playing
time.
The game flows make it pretty easy to dissect which players Jim
Boylan had on the floor when the lead was built, and which players
were on the floor when the lead evaporated.
MOST viewed
