Bulls offseason Thread

AntBanks81 said:
I thought it was releasing last week after they leaked opening game and heat vs lakers.
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It was only "leaked" because the networks get to review it before it's made official, and someone was made aware of a couple marquee games. I think it releases Tuesday.
 
Im glad others share the same hatred for the Knicks that i have. Hate that team. I wont even rock kicks with their colors. Im an af1 head and liked the Lins but couldn't bring myself to get them.
The Heat ive hated after Riley left ny to coach them and taking that pistons/Knicks style of play down there
 
Yea I have hate for the Knicks.

But it's not a team I hate more than the Pacers. Just off the strength of the bastard Reggie Miller.
 
Derrick Rose's answer was his only choice
July, 27, 2013

By Scoop Jackson | ESPNChicago.com

You expected something different?

You expected a humbler, less Jay Z (“My presence is charity”) response when asked who he, Derrick Rose, feels is the best player in the game. You expected a little more humility mixed with reality mixed with a little less gall. You expected him to remember he hasn’t really played ball at the “global icon” level for almost two years.

You hoped that he would remember what he just went through. You hope his comments do not come back and slap him in his face once he officially returns.

But what else would you want him to say? What would you really want to come out of Rose’s mouth and heart other than the mentioning of his own name?

When asked by CNN’s Pedro Pinto who he felt was the best player in the NBA, Rose said "Derrick Rose." It was -- contrary to seemingly popular response -- the one answer unexpected coming from him. Or anyone for that matter.

How could he? Is he stuck in his own Pooh reality? Was growing delusional part of his rehab? Did he even watch the NBA Finals six weeks ago?

According to the immediate (albeit quiet) street-level, non-Twitter/Facebook reaction, the only person who could have been excused or had the right to answer that question that way was Brenda, Derrick’s mother.

Two reactions come to mind in the immediate aftermath of this new Rose newsfeed: 1) Knowing him, was there a chance for there being any other answer? And 2) For Bulls or D.Rose fans, what other answer would you want to hear?

Those who know him know that if he had been asked that question when he was being wheeled into surgery after he tore his ACL/MCL that he would have answered it the same. This is why a huge part of his rehab was overlooked by so many. No one took into full consideration how much Rose’s supreme belief in what he can do plays a supreme role in what he actually can do.

Partial D.Rose is selfishly good for us only in theory. Never for him.

In order for Rose to be who he is, whom we have grown accustom to him being, whom we know he can become, he has to feel and believe at all times that he is without question in his mind the supreme player on the court every time he steps on it. That is the way he functions. That is the way he always functioned. That is what he knows to be true when it comes to the game we call basketball, but one he looks at as his canvas.

And he has to be able to say it aloud.

The only time -- again, if you look back and revisit his entire career -- where he may have felt differently was during the 2011 playoff series against the Miami Heat. And even then, Rose may have internalized that 4-1 series outcome as LeBron James & Co. having more help, not that James was actually better than he was.

Understand that in Rose’s mind he is still the reigning MVP. The only thing that has stopped him from repeating or reducing LeBron’s MVP total from four to two is injuries. Whenever Rose hears or sees his name as the “interruption” of LeBron having five straight MVP awards, he doesn’t hear or see what we do.

To him, LeBron interrupted his flow. In Rose’s basketball mind, like most of ours, LeBron may be the sun, and in that the world and all other planets (players) revolve around all things LeBron, but to Derrick, Derrick is the universe. Greater than.

That line of thought is what you want from a franchise player, the player you are banking on (literally) to get your team past the sun. Even if it’s a lie.

Which leads us to the second universal question: What other answer would we want to hear from him?

Look, there’s a fine line between arrogance, confidence and what someone needs to achieve greatness. Sometimes that line is blurred: Robin Thicke. Sometimes that line is crossed: Yeezus. But in the case of Derrick Rose, if he did not publicly state that he felt that he is still the best at playing this game at its highest level, why would a lesser or different answer be accepted?

At the beginning of the 2010-11 season, a journalist asked Rose about the expectation he set for himself entering his third season, and he said, "It's high. The way I look at it is why not, why can't I be the MVP of the league?" He feeds off media questions asked by those who don’t really know him, who don’t know what he’s capable of, and waits (and baits) for that one question to be asked so he can put the pressure on himself to make himself out to be a prophet.

With that mentality going into what could be the Bulls' final season before this current project/team is disbanded or destroyed, what other words out of Rose would any of us have liked to have heard?

In other words: If he doesn’t believe he’s that dude, why should we?

The problem seems to be that he said it. In his out-loud voice. When the microphone was hot. And in a city that just watched the Blackhawks have one of the greatest seasons ever and crown themselves champs for the second time with no player -- not Jonathan Toews or Patrick Kane, who are close to being Rose’s equal in hockey (think about it) -- saying anything close to what Rose said. It comes off as extreme arrogance as opposed to necessary confidence.

But I ask again: What else would you want him to say?

If we are honest, that answer stays unanswered. Nothing. Nothing different.

We should want, need and appreciate Rose for finding a way through all the rehab, pressure and bad press to keep James, Kevin Durant, Kobe Bryant, Chris Paul, Tony Parker and Carmelo Anthony behind him in the “best basketball player alive” race.

This game, at the level Rose competes, battles and wants to prove himself, chews up and spits out players who think any less of themselves. It makes becoming the leader of championship squads impossible. Greatness never embraces weakness.

Especially in those who don’t have the courage to openly speak truth to their personal power. Agree or disagree with the introspective assessment Rose made, for what this city is expecting out of him, any other answer would have opened a possible dose of realism we are unprepared to confront. Because if Rose is to return to who and what he once was, he had no other answer to give. There is no alternative realistic answer living inside of him. The best basketball player alive to him has to be him. Nothing else works. Not for what he feels he has to face, not for what he has yet to prove.

Not for what we have been conditioned to expect from him, even when his self-honesty is put into question.

If anyone reading this has a problem with that or expected a different response from Rose after getting his confidence back to where it naturally is supposed to be, then you had no idea who Derrick Rose really was to begin with.
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All this flak he's been getting from a number of Bulls fans should provide him with PLENTY of motivation as if the didn't have enough already. Remember his "Why can't I be MVP?" question?

I'm really looking forward to this upcoming season.
 
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great article, thanks for sharing.

What blows me is that people really expected him to say another players name. **** if you ask me who the best salesman is, I'm gonna say me. This will all be resolved when they tip off in October. He wins MVP and Finals MVP. PERIOD
 
Very interesting article...

Getting the green light
July, 30, 2013
11:31 AM ET

By Steve McPherson and Andrew Lynch
TrueHoop Network

"Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us ..."
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald


It all started with a little green light.

On the first night of the NBA's summer league in Las Vegas, the San Antonio Spurs played the Charlotte Bobcats. As Spurs center Aron Baynes prepared to inbound the ball from the baseline, a small green light was visible, blinking steadily through the white mesh of his jersey.

First question: Is he a cyborg?

Second, more sensible question: Is that the biometric monitoring the Spurs have used in the D-League?

A stroll behind the bench confirmed every Spur had a small bulge, just between the shoulder blades, blinking green.

Fascinating. Mysterious. And as it turns out, loaded with potential: It's part of a system that has led to a huge reductions in injury, and dramatic improvements in performance, in a professional league half a world away.


After the game, the Spurs communications staff opted to "politely decline" the opportunity to talk about the green light.

We learned from 48 Minutes of Hell’s Andrew McNeill that the Austin Toros -- the Spurs’ D-League affiliate -- were trying out some technology made by Catapult Sports.

"It’s a load meter and it’s a new sports science thing," Toros coach Brad Jones explained to McNeill. "It's like a vest you put on underneath [your clothes] and you wear it in practice and it keeps track of the energy you’re burning."

The key term here is "load," the aggregate energy put into and stress placed upon the body during athletic activity. In basketball terms, this may mean -- according to the Catapult Sports site, which confirms the Spurs as clients -- measuring "the speed of a shooting guard coming off a down-screen, the impact force of a center banging on the low block, or the total distance covered by a point guard over the course of a game, week or season."

Was this what the Spurs were wearing? An article on the company by Forbes’ Alex Konrad noted that "[w]earable sensors are still banned in the U.S. during official game play."

Konrad put us in touch with Catapult's Gary McCoy who, it turned out, was in Las Vegas, ready and willing to sit down to talk about what Catapult Sports does.

An Australian company, Catapult Sports first began working with Australian Rules Football, and McCoy makes some impressive claims about the company’s effectiveness there. “Where we’re at with sports science in Australia," he told Lynch, "is that we’ve reduced injury by almost 30 percent, and we’ve increased outputs by almost 25 percent." These numbers come from the extensive injury research the Australian Football League conducts (see, for example, this 2012 report) and from the company’s own measurements of an increase in fourth-quarter speeds and accelerations. The net effect for these athletes has been to "extend and enrich a player’s career. That window is always closing on you, whether you’re a team or a player.”

The way McCoy talks about the company reflects Catapult Sports’ core mission: to maximize athlete effectiveness by minimizing injury and the deleterious effects of exhaustion. “We’re getting questions from one of the biggest profile [NBA] teams that has an aging athlete,” McCoy said. “And one of the questions coming from their training staff was, ‘Can we look at his physiological matrix and what makes up his exertion level and know that we might have to pull him every six minutes or so to sustain his output in the fourth quarter?’”

How to extend an aging athlete’s career is a vital question as teams work with players like Tim Duncan, Kevin Garnett and Kobe Bryant, but it can be just as important for younger players to start making the most of their bodies now.

The directions players move have a surprising amount to do with injury prevention. McCoy refers to this as asymmetry, and it’s something most basketball fans know: athletes often move better in one direction than the other. When someone says, “Force him left” or, “Don’t let him catch it on the right block,” this is what they’re talking about.

“It’s just like wheel alignment in a car,” McCoy said. “It impacts return to play [from injury]. We had a very prominent NBA player’s ACL rehabilitation we measured last year. Phenomenal athlete. Left ACL was the rupture." Catapult is constrained from discussing its clients, but a survey of injury reports shows Derrick Rose, Danilo Gallinari, Ricky Rubio, Iman Shumpert, Nerlens Noel and Leandro Barbosa to be among those who have torn left ACLs in recent years. Rajon Rondo also suffered a partial tear. "And [the training staff] said 'Based upon strength, we think he’s close to being ready.’ When they actually measured him with a Catapult device, they could see his accelerations to his right were at about a 60 percent deficit off of his left leg compared to what they were to the other side. And you can’t see this stuff with the naked eye.”

Injury rehabilitation has long been a dark art in professional sports, with players assigning whole number percentages to how ready they are based on feeling. Adding a level of precision to the measurement of strength and stress under different conditions isn’t the entire answer, but it’s still a step toward a clearer understanding of each athlete’s unique timetable for recovery. A player might feel 85 percent ready, but with what degree of confidence can that number be trusted?

Catapult can also help indicate when an athlete’s movements simply aren’t that efficient. There are players who expend a lot of energy on the court -- the “hustle guys” -- even if they’re not scoring. But what if they could do their job more efficiently? “I often refer to the Catapult monitor that we place on the athlete as ‘the little orange jockey,’” McCoy wrote in an email. “Take him for a nice ride,” he tells the athletes. “The more that unit is bouncing around -- the less efficient the athlete’s movements are -- the more it’s increasing their individual load.”

McCoy has worked with Toronto Raptors trainer Alex McKechnie and a player like Rudy Gay, whom McCoy cites as one who “appears to glide effortlessly,” gives the monitor a smoother ride. As a result, his total load might be less than another player, but it doesn’t mean he’s working less. He’s just doing his job with greater economy of movement. Of course, the Catapult monitor can’t tell you anything about Gay’s shot selection, but just as analytics confirmed strategies about the value of the 3-pointer or free throws, the system can help bring evidence to what trainers like McKechnie often sense intuitively.

Maximum fitness is the product of interlinked systems: the neurological and the physiological, the metabolic, musculoskeletal and nervous systems. So Catapult is gathering everything, from simple measurements like heart rate to more intricate ones like acceleration, direction of movement, stops and starts, and the associated force -- more than 100 data points per second. It's more than most teams can put to use -- for now -- and one of the key tricks is figuring out what, out of all that, matters most.


There are hurdles to this kind of monitoring coming to regular season NBA games. For instance, the players and their agents may have good reason to resist. Although McCoy stresses the data should always be applied to compare a player to himself, it’s not hard to envision teams wielding their findings during contract negotiations or when reducing a player’s minutes when it confirms the perception that he’s dogging it on the court. “It’s CARFAX for the athlete,” he said. A consequence of this system being fully implemented would be teams simply knowing a lot more when it comes to signing players or trading them to other teams.

So the Spurs have more than just their usual Spurs-ian reasons for keeping quiet on this. While four NBA teams are Catapult Sports clients (the Rockets, Knicks and Mavericks being the others), the monitors have generally been used only in practices and scrimmages. The Spurs’ use of the monitors at the Las Vegas Summer League is perhaps the closest the devices have come to actual league competition so far.

This kind of technology -- especially when it’s not well understood -- can be scary, even threatening to the established order of things. It can also dehumanize athletes, on a spreadsheet, a human appears to be an asset to be monitored and controlled from afar. A certain amount of skepticism, a concern for best practices, is well-founded.

But the information, new perspectives and, eventually, results this kind of monitoring can produce can break down resistance. The edge teams constantly look for doesn't always come from the most likely sources. Biometric monitoring isn’t a cure-all, but it’s a logical next step, particularly when it comes to the most human of pursuits: keeping people healthy and functioning at their best. As McCoy said, “What we can measure, we can manage. If you can’t or aren’t measuring it, you can’t manage it. It seems really, really simple.”

Gatsby believed in the green light even though it was something he could never reach, maybe because it was something he could never reach. But that green light on Baynes’ back signals something different: that we can stretch out our arms farther and grasp a better understanding. That tomorrow, we will run faster.
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Seymore CAKE said:
How do you guys feel about the fact that Taj basically has the same contract that Steph Curry does??
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We was juuuuuuuuust talmbout this.....
 
Seymore CAKE said:
How do you guys feel about the fact that Taj basically has the same contract that Steph Curry does?? :nerd:
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Hindsight is always 20/20.
The only thing that comes to mind is that GS got a steal.
The real question is why did Curry even sign that, he must not have the right people advising him. That boy could've got a lot more......a lot more!
 
Steph Curry wasnt STEPH CURRY till the later part of the 2013 season. Looking back when he signed the deal that was probably around the going rate for players who at that point accomplished what he had.
He really took his game to superstar level during the season. It's possible if he goes ballistic this season he may want superstar money before that contract is up.
 
DthAngel said:
Steph Curry wasnt STEPH CURRY till the later part of the 2013 season. Looking back when he signed the deal that was probably around the going rate for players who at that point accomplished what he had.
He really took his game to superstar level during the season. It's possible if he goes ballistic this season he may want superstar money before that contract is up.
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This.
 
i thought he did pretty good. he came up big when Noah went down and played the entire games.

 his stats were even a little better than the previous, plus he plays good defense.

he probably would have gotten more from some place else, look at Omer.
 
Taj had a suspect year and battling injuries let that man prove him self this year before we say that contract was terrible. I think we will see a much improved Taj
 
It probably won't happen but...Antawn Jamison, anyone?

IMO if we do get him it's a better option as a stretch 4 than Murphy.
 
How mad would you guys be if we let Deng walk and then he goes and plays off the bench for the Heat?
 
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