2007-08 Game 45: Chicago Bulls @ Minnesota Timberwolves
Posted by SBG on Wednesday, January 30th, 2008 at 6:00 pm
The Bulls and Wolves got on a plane last night and flew from Chicago to Minneapolis for a rare back-to-back home and home series. I don't know if I recall the Wolves ever playing the same team on consecutive nights. It's a good thing, too, because the Wolves will have a chance to get the foul taste of last night's blowout loss to the short-handed Bulls cleansed from their palette.
Riding high upon their first real good streak of basketball this season, the Wolves got Randy Foye back and promptly laid an egg. Apparently, they forgot that BAJ was their meal ticket, an unforgivable memory lapse. Instead, they jacked up threes all night (1-14 from range) and let the Bulls get to the basket repeatedly. Even with countless close range shots, the Bulls shot just 42% from the floor, but also collared 17 offensive rebounds. The Wolves outshot the Bulls at both the line and from the floor, but ten extra offensive rebounds and a 5-10 showing from range allowed the Bulls to easily outdistance Minnesota. The final margin was 11 points, but the Wolves scored the last seven points of the game to make the game seem closer than it was.
BAJ had 20 and 12, but he also "led" the team with a -26, even though he was assigned to non-scorer Ben Wallace. Ryan Gomes was held scoreless, attempting just 4 shots from the field. McCants and Telfair combined to go 0-9 from three. There was a Doleac sighting at the end and "that can't be good."
The Wolves start a five game homestand tonight and have 10 of their next 11 in Minneapolis. They are favored by 5 with an O/U set at 185. I think they might win, but I'm not going to give the points. I'm taking Chicago with a final score of 92-88, Wolves. A loss tonight would work to take the wind out of the Wolves sails, for sure.
<GreekHouse>One of the nice things about baseball is that if a team has a poor outing, it usually has a chance to go out there the next day and redeem itself--frequently against the team they just lost to. This prevents the team from dwelling on a poorly played game for too long. In basketball, a team usually does not have this luxury. They'll usually have the next night off and might not play the same team again for half the season.
Fortunately for the Wolves, they have a chance to go out and redeem themselves tonight. The Bulls announcers last night noted that this is actually the first home and home series on back to back nights in Wolves history. After 5 solid outings in a row, the team came out and played really poorly. They played one-on-one basketball for the first 3 quarters and basically forgot about the one guy on the team who is actually really good at playing one-on-one basketball on offense. The results were typical of this play and were evident in the box score. The team shot less than 44% from the field and was 1/14 from 3 point range inculding 0/5 from McCants and 0/4 from Telfair. Take away the 3 pointers and the Wolves were 53% from the field. In addition, they got to the line 27 times and made 22 free throws.
The moral of the story is that the Wolves can probably win tonight without taking a single three point shot. I'm ok with McCants and Foye taking them if they're wide open, but against this beat up Bulls squad, there should almost always be a better shot available. They also need to dump it into BAJ in the low post early and often. There's nobody on the Bulls who can guard him.
I'll take the Wolves I guess.</GreekHouse>
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Sometimes it's fun to look at the popcorn machine.
http://popcornmachine.net/cgi-bin/gameflow.cgi?date=20080129&game=MINCHI
You can see at the end of Q1/beginning of Q2 that the Wolves went on a +10 run with a motley assortment of players. Then the Wolves closed the gap a little bit at the end during garbage time.
The garbage time run certainly made BAJ's +/- number look worse than it was. Plus, when he's in the game and he's not getting the ball on offense, it's just gonna be bad.
Still, though, he was a minus in each of his stints.
My point is that when he's in the game and not getting the ball, of course he's gonna have a terrible +/-. He's a scorer and not a great defender, so you're taking away the one thing he does well. While his number looks bad, it was basically gonna be awful for anybody who played most of the game last night.
Check out Nocioni's numbers with Shaddy on him compared to Brewer.
I think someone put the small rims on the hoops for tonight's contest.
What the hell is going on? 5-2 with less than 5 minutes left in the 1st? Did the league do away with the shot clock last night?
After one quarter, Chicago leads 14-8. That is some excruciatingly bad basketball.
compare to last night's Suns' starting front line: 25 for 29 from the field for the game.
8 points!!!! Yaaarrrrrgggghhhhhh!!! 3-21 for 14%.
I think my favorite moment was Corey Brewer losing the dribble out of bounds with no one on him.
So, I have to ask the baseball folks since I'm just a casual Twins fan and I don't want to seem like a know-nothing in a baseball thread: was the Johan trade worse than the KG deal? As a casual observer it seems to me like they got jobbed and received neither a top-line prospect or mlb-ready starter. It looked like nothing but Gerald Greens.
BTW: For all the talk of Chris Richard being a possible center for the Wolves, Aaron Gray was available with the Richard pick in the 2nd round.
Oh I think so. The KG trade netted BAJ, who looks to be a very good player in this league. He's young and now under contract for several years. The Santana trade netted no sure things. Now, maybe this will work out well, but at first glance, it looks bad. The guy with the highest ceiling is also the furthest away from the majors.
Joakim Noah was available when the Wolves took Brewer, too.
so was Chris Richard, who's been about as effective with the Wolves as Noah has been with the Bulls.
On the other hand, Noah is making the Ty Thomas pick look better through obfuscation.
Noah's been pretty good, I think.
Plus, this is freaking great.
Noah has 11 and 10 with his 36 minute numbers and he's got the 3rd best PER on the team behind Smith and Deng. His rebound rates are about double that of Big Ben and he's been the big man in the middle during the 4th during recent Bulls games. He's twice the player as Big Ben at 1/10th the cost.
well, 4th currently. also behind Joe F. Smith.
per 36 minutes, he's averaging 11.7 pts (10th), 10.8 reb (1st), 1.3 blks (3rd), 1.9 steals (3rd), 4.7 fouls (3rd). Decent numbers, I suppose.
His minutes have roughly doubled in January compared to Nov-Dec, to 20 min/g, with 6.3 ppg, 7.2 rpg.
He's certainly been better than the players picked immediately before (Brandan Wright) and after (Spencer Hawes) him.
but to put some more perspective on his performance, he hasn't been any better than Sean Williams (17th, to the Nets).
Gerald Green getting a lot of burn here.
I like Green and Brewer on the court at the same time. If their games could be mushed together, they would be a perennial all-star. Apart, they make up for each other's weaknesses while allowing the Wolves to have some athletic size on the court with the small ball lineup rounded out by Gomes, Big Al, and Bassy.
this has nothing to do with this game but I was watching the game yesterday (what a way to spend some vacation time!). It annoys me that anytime the FSN crew would talk about BAJ, the said BAJ. Is 'Big' a legal part of Al Jefferson's name? When they are laofing around before games and such, does Jim peterson call out 'Hey Big Al!'
To me, it seems saying BAJ all the time is a bit homerish. But homerish saying have never stopped FSN announcers before
And that's why he's always referred to as BAJ around here. It's not like he's the biggest guy in the league or anything. I don't get it.
There's really only one "Big Al".
I thought you were going here.
That was my thought too.
Now that's just sad.
(Looks like some NRBQ goes onto the play-list.)
My parents used to think that the old billboards proclaiming "Don't Go To Bed Until You've Gotten Married" was an anti-wedlock advertisement. 'till I 'splained it to them.
How did they lose to this team last night?
Ryan Gomes last night: zero points. That's how. With no Shaddy, Gomes gets the ball.
A 20/20 night for BAJ.
Should the flu bug that took Shaddy down get the MVP? Someone should write a poem about that little critter. It's my hero.
Roses are red
Shaddy has the flu
All the other Wolves
Beat the shit out of the Bulls
or Haiku:
Shaddy, in bed sick
Flu bug manning the 2 guard
Beats the shitty Bulls
The flu bug nailed poor old number one
His stomach was weak, that ain't no fun
Tonight he was a scratch
Missed the Chicago match
With him they lost, without him they won.
very nice
Shaddy McCants had the flu
Which left him at home going poo
He turned on the tube and thought "Hey, I'm a boob!
The other players may just start a coup!"
Well, after that first quarter, the Wolves actually were pretty good offensively.
A MadDog sighting!
Ugly first half, but the Wolves turned it around and played really well in the 2nd.
For all the talk about horrible contracts and rotten trades, has any franchise of late f*cked up as badly as the Bulls. The one-two punch of trading Chandler and then flushing all that money down the toilet on Big Ben is an epic boner.
Yeah, I never liked that signing for the Bulls. Big Ben is very popular, but not very good.
Big Ben
iswas very popular. IHis play as a Bull hasfixed that for you.I guess this means the Wolves aren't going to be "beat" the 76ers for worst all time record. And unless they have a 36 game losing streak (ouch) not going to tie either.
I had forgotten about that. The way the Wolves have started playing lately, it just became a non-issue and I didn't really think about it.
I noticed that Telfair had 10 assists tonight. He seems to have good assist numbers, especially for his age. The only guys 23 or younger that are ahead of him in assists/game are Raymond Felton, LeBron James, Deron Williams, and Chris Paul. Is that an illusion, or can we expect Telfair to be a decent distributor? Also, can he defend? His shooting is abysmal, obviously, but if he can handle the ball and play good defense it seems like he could play some role with the Wolves going forward.
Felton is actually a pretty good comparison to Telfair (at least offensively). They're both small PGs who can't shoot but are very good passers. Felton seems to get a lot better press however, probably because he wasn't the subject of so much hype when he came into the league.
I think his assist numbers are sustainable, particularly if the Wolves get some better jump shooters. He's really good at penetrating and then kicking the ball out. I have absolutely no problem with him as a semi-longterm starting PG as long as he's the weakest link in the starting 5.
While they're probably similar quickness-wise, Felton is much stronger and more athletic than Telfair. As such, he's able to finish at the rim, something Bassy has shown little aptitude for. I'd trade them straight up in a heartbeat. That said, I think Telfair can be a valuable backup, good for 15-20 minutes a game.
I'm going to start the lonely chant for Bassy as a starter. Point guards are nice but they are not what make this league go around. All he has to be is proficient. He's not far from being an above average point. He's 3-5% on his jumpshot away from being a top flight point. Telfair doesn't need to be able to finish at the rim, he doesn't need to be able to shoot the 3...he needs to be able to control the pace of the game and limit his outside shot so that his mid-range game can keep his FG% in hte 43-45% range. As long as he keeps his PPR and ast-r where it is (see Knickerblogger) he's fine.
The Wolves can get away with Bassy if they have a perimeter player who can hit 3's and take his man off the dribble. No points. Michael Beasley, Donte Green, Danilo Gallinari...wing players who demand double coverage are what this team needs the most.
I agree with this sentiment.
Henry Abbott on all-star "snubs":