Dec 2, 2015

Steph just dropped a casual 28 POINTS in the 3rd quarter... Unreal Steph. On Dell Curry night too

 

Dec 2, 2015

KOBE BRYANT

 

Dec 2, 2015

Vintage Kobe 4th quarter performance, d--- that was fun to watch. Wasn't sure I'd get to see that again before he leaves lol, some very nice shots in there. Crowd was going crazy and Kobe stepped up to win it for them.

 

Dec 2, 2015

Nice performance by Kobe. I Hope he'll keep that way for more games.
Curry does what he do best, that's crazy.

 

Dec 2, 2015

@Ordinary Joel our boy went down tonight.

 

Dec 2, 2015

 

Dec 3, 2015

That Simmons stat line reminds me that while tonight's win was fun, Lakers gotta get back to business and can't have too many games like tonight. Sixers are gonna be hard enough to pass, maybe d--- near impossible since they're tanking experts. But Lakers gotta hope for that 2nd spot at least, gotta keep on losing but having the youngsters play well.

 

Dec 3, 2015

Surprised LSU even managed to squeeze by North Florida, they stink.

Lakers don't deserve Simmons, they just moved up 2 spots in the last lotto from 4 to 2. Celtics haven't moved up a single spot since 1986 when they got Len Bias(then he died 2 days later).C's got hosed out of Tim Duncan in 97 big time and Durant in 07(Ainge was all in on Durant over Oden).

Hopefully the league rigs it so that our Nets pick ends up #1. If they can give the Cavs the #1 pick in 2014 when they finished with the 9th worst record and basically the same thing with the Bulls in 08(most blatant rig, Rose is from Chicago) then they can let the C's win it.

 

Dec 3, 2015

I think the Sixers, Lakers or Celtics are very likely to draft Simmons. 3 teams who have historically had great players play for them in the past (1 of them with nowhere near as much championships ).

Yeah the front office are tanking hard in Philly, but Brett Brown and the players are really trying the hardest out there. It's just that their list is so young/not good enough to win. I think Tony Wroten comes back next week which means they have a point guard, so hopefully some wins will occur more regularly than every 18 games!

 

Dec 3, 2015

Yeah the diffeerence between them is at least the Lakers TRY to field a respectable team. Half of the players on the Sixers should be in the D-League.

My boy Pooh is still struggling. IMO he's playing great, defending & facilitating at a high level, but his shooting has been awful. He isn't having problems getting where he wants to go on the court, but he can't seem to knock down shots that were routine as recent as last year. I give him credit for not using his eye as an excuse, but I think it is. Here's his post game comments from last night.

"It doesn't have anything to do with the eye. I'm just missing."
"It's not an excuse at all. I adjusted a long time ago. It's all about rhythm now."
"Once I catch that rhythm, it's going to be scary."
"I'm getting good looks. It's not frustrating at all. We’re winning games and I haven’t reached my full potential or scratched the surface of the player I can become. It’s cool"

 

Dec 3, 2015

Think Rose will be the first MVP to not make the HoF? @Poohdini

 

Dec 3, 2015

Hard to say. He's definitely the #1 contender for it. His progression until his MVP season was as good as anyone in league history. He lost 2 seasons to injury. I thought he played close to an all star level last season, which is impressive considering he was out for such a long time. Earl Monroe, Bill Walton, Gale Goodrich, Sabonis, Petrovic are all HOFers. At their peaks none of them came close to the player he was, and his career averages of 20-7 are better than all of them. Grant Hill is an interesting guy to watch. He had a similar rise and fall to Derrick's so if he gets in I'd say Derrick definitely will. It's close but Rose at the top of his game was > Grant at the top of his IMO. He was on track to be 1st ballot pre-2012-13. No PG in the league was safe.

 

Dec 3, 2015

I haven't been in this thread but why do you think Kobe fell off so badly between this season and last season? I mean last season he was no Kobe of old but he was still getting to the hoop and dunking in traffic. I mean Christ he tore his shoulder on a dunk.





This season he literally can't get by anybody much less get to the hoop and finish with a dunk. It's not like he had another lower body injury so if anything his legs should be even better than they were last season but this year they are completely shot. I haven't seen anybody else mention this but I personally think it has a WHOLE lot to do with the NBA testing for HGH this year. Anyways just wanted your two cents.

 

Dec 3, 2015

Follow up question, can you break down your experience as a Bulls fan during the Rose era year by year?

 

Dec 3, 2015

Sure. Obviously being in Chicago I'd known about him since his days at Simeon. Followed him closely at Memphis and was excited that the kid from Chicago was looking like the #1 pick in the draft.

07-08 The Aldridge/Tyrus Thomas swap the year before set us back a bit. We drafted Noah in 2007, and were average to mediocre in 07-08. We had a 1.7% chance at the number pick, so getting a top 5 pick, let alone the #1 pick just seemed to good to be true. Winning that lottery was a dream come true for Derrick and the city.

08-09 He instantly re-energized the team. It didn't take us long to figure out this guy was gonna be special. We had a solid squad, but with Derrick they had direction and a go to scorer who opened up the floor for everyone. His game was far from perfect. He was ruthless attacking the rim and was a gifted passer. Didn't have much of an outside shot though. He had the highlight dunks & crossovers, but that 1st round series against Boston was his formal introduction to the rest of the world. He set the playoff scoring debut for rookies with 36 against the defending champs. Nobody here really thought we had a shot, but after game 1, we all believed because of Derrick. We ended up losing in 7, but there was no question he was a superstar in the making.

09-10 He made slight improvements, but was still pretty limited as a jump shooter. The biggest difference in his game came in the playoffs, where he put up 26 ppg, up from his regular season average of 20. We ended up losing to the Cavs in a pretty competitive series, but again we were very optimistic for the future of the team. We finally had a clear building block for the future.

10-11 MVP season. He'd famously not recruited LeBron and other FA's because he felt it was disrespectful to the guys on the team since we would've had to make moves to get him. Some were upset, but I think it just speaks more to his competitive nature & loyalty to his guys, something that gets lost amid the injury news nowadays. In his pre season presser, he made waves by saying "Why can't I be the best player in the league? Why can't I be MVP?

I don't want to say we laughed at the comment, it just caught us all off guard. Season rolls around and not only does he pick up where he left off, he turns into one of the best players in the league. He destroyed every top PG in the league, nearly tripling his 3PFGA, and we finish the year with the top seed in the east. His MVP speech was like everything coming full circle. This was a kid straight out of Englewood. He'd tell stories about how he'd be hooping at the park and as soon as he heard gun shots he'd pick it up and run home as fast as possible. He wasn't just the MVP, he was OUR MVP and we had 100% confidence that he could lead the Bulls to a championship one day. With Derrick, the team had hope.

He continued to roll against Indiana & Atlanta and finally in the conference finals we got to see Miami vs Chicago. At the end of the day, they were just too good of a team. As soon as Lebron switched on Rose the other guys weren't capable of picking up the slack. If you have a chance check some of the box scores from that series. Rose's numbers were down, but the rest of the team played pretty awful. Not much you can expect out of guys like Bogans, Brewer etc. Some of his best plays ever came in that series. 4-1 was disappointing, but every game was close, so again, we still had hope.

11-12 Lockout season. We had a lot of time to speculate on how far the Bulls could go. He ends up hitting a game winner in LA on Christmas day, not a bad way to start the year off.

He went through a lot of nick nack injuries and missed about half the year. Nothing major, but enough to keep him out. Nonetheless he was 100% come playoff time. This was the year we thought we could push past Bron and make it to the finals. We end up dealing with Philly in game 1. Derrick played well. Thibs decided to put him back in the game, up 12, with a minute left. Again, this was a guy who was constantly injured. The move he made was pretty crazy and unnecessary. It completely s----d the air out of the arena. I remember heading to the gym after, and in between a break of 21 we found out he'd torn his ACL. The team really couldn't recover from the emotions of seeing him go down, and we lose to a Philly team that we probably sweep if Rose is healthy. I can't find it atm, but there was a commercial of the city with ppl watching the game every where, and as soon as he goes down, it freezes. It was a really accurate description of how everyone felt.


12-13 Nothing very notable this year, besides the "leak" that Rose had been declared healthy in may. I put that in quotes because a lot of ppl here believe that the source of the leak was the team, who wanted him to get right back into it as the playoffs start. He didn't feel he was ready, and a lot of folks took that the wrong way. I didn't think it was right to make your hometown MVP susceptible to that kind of criticism coming off an ACL tear. This is a major injury to a guy whose speed and athleticism were huge parts to his game, if he doesn't think he can play to his standards, why put him in harms way? He was only 23 with a long career ahead of him, there was no reason to rush.
This is from the preseason, crying at launch of the D Rose 3 because of all the love he'd been getting during rehab. Easy to forget how young he was at the time.


13-14 No more recovery nonsense, THIS was the season we were ready to challenge Miami for the top spot in the east. He started the season slow, but it was clear he still had all the gifts that made him a superstar. He's said since that he felt he "wanted it too much" and didn't make the necessary adjustments to his game. He tears his meniscus in his other leg in Portland, and our season is virtually over a that point. He went toe to toe with Lillard, at the time a ROY candidate, and hit a game winner against NY. We'd seen enough from him that year to think maybe with more time to recover from a much less significant injury, he could come close to the player he was in 2011.


14-15 Finally the front office made some big improvements to the team. Pau Gasol was the post presence we were looking for when we signed Boozer. This was Jimmy's breakout year, but it wasn't fully clear until about 2 weeks into the season. It felt like we might have all the right pieces to contend for a championship. This was the best Derrick had played since 2011.

His meniscus was pretty scary, but the injury was minor, and guys like Eric Bledsoe & Westbrook had gotten similar procedures, so the worry wasn't as high as previous years. He got healthy before the playoffs, and played some of his best ball of the year that post season. With the highlight obviously being his game winner vs the Cavs. :drose:


15-16 The shooting numbers aren't kind to him this year, but the team is playing well. IMO he's playing great, just can't seem to knock down shots. One of my earlier posts has comments from him saying the vision isn't an issue, but if you look at the way he's shooting it's clear it's bothering him. I think eventually he'll get out of this slump, and hopefully we get to see another classic series from the Bulls/Lebron. There's nothing better than watching him get it going at the UC, Barkley mentioned there's nothing like it when he called the OKC game early in the year.

Overall, it's been a roller coaster. In Noah's words "sometimes he says some crazy s--- and it gets him in trouble, but at the end of the day, he's a competitor." I don't think people realize how much worse it could have been for him. It's an accomplishment that he's even made it this far back. He gives the team & city hope because of his heart, hard work and belief in himself and his teammates, which is why I'll never turn on the guy.

 

Dec 3, 2015

Yeah mentioned it to my brother yesterday, he's got 0 lift. It's really noticeable on his jumpers. Like you said, last year he was still getting to the rack and slamming on people, so it's been odd to see his explosiveness fall off so much without having a lower body injury.

 

Dec 3, 2015

d--- @Poohdini with the quality post

 

Dec 3, 2015

Thanks man. I hate how there's this misconception about who he is. There's a reason why his teammates have never turned on him and players in the league respect him so much. That video of him crying at his shoe release in 2012-13 sums it up perfectly. He's just a kid from Englewood that's not supposed to be here who's grateful for his fans and being able to make it this far.

 

Dec 3, 2015

I feel like Reggie Rose is responsible for most if not all of the negativity Derrick receives.

 

Dec 3, 2015

Big time. He's coming from a good place but some of his comments are so out of touch. The guy has no idea how the NBA business works. BJ Armstrong is his agent so he probably deserves some of the blame as well. He always thought he deserved the GM job given to Paxson so there was a bit of tension there early in Derrick's career.