I'm not sure we can. It used to be Gragic powered 6 of the 8 Phoenix Cylinders, or maybe 4 or the 6 is a better metaphor, but without Rose I do not like the way we matchup with Phoenix backcourt. Bledsoe/Knight is nasty.
Thats two point guards who have not accomplished what Rose has in his career, but if I had to rank them right now today....(not 6 months from now), but today rank these guards.
1. Knight 2.Bledsoe 3. Rose
Now I am severely disappointed in several of you, and its part of why I am breaking my fast to log in today and write. I just can't believe how down some are on this Bulls team. I don't understand the need to poo poo their 7-3 start where they have struggled at times.
Look at the standings, that is good for 4th in the NBA and we haven't come anywhere close to playing our best basketball yet. Rose is clearly not yet confident in his body, he just doesn't look like he knows how to condition either now that he isn't 23 and full of testosterone and automatic fitness. He is going to have to learn, but I can live with it for now because he will play himself into basketball shape as the season progresses and begin to trust his body.
Gasol is out of sync because we do not get him the ball in great spots. We aren't making any easy plays for him, and that falls on Rose. Its a long season, which Hoiberg understands as well as any coach, and about 10x better than Thibs. Is Hoiberg the right guy for this team? I don't know, but he isn't bad and I KNOW Thibs was not any longer.
I may have gone with a Gundy personally, or gotten Rose a PG savant like Mark Jackson, but I loved Hoiberg at Iowa State and he is right in that upper eschalon of top candidates, he just isn't the "safe" pick. Its a risk taking a first year NBA coach.
He has a massive roster to master, and many old and young moving parts to figure out how to play together. This is a huge challenge to sift out the best 9 guys the Bulls want to roll into 2016 with.
I don't think all the pieces are on the roster, changes will be made, this is a work in progress and we have a ton of clay. Lets be patient and see what we are at the Christmas game, and assess again at the trade deadline.
7-3 might be a little kind for how we played, but we did it playing 12 guys deep many minutes, without our top guys playing great other than Jimmy, and we have a top 5 core in the NBA along with a bunch of tradable assets to trim down. Our window is not that long anymore with the Rose/Gasol situations, but believe me we are well in the window and should be part of the championship discussions THIS YEAR. !! THIS YEAR!!
and some of you act like we are trash, our bench is trash, and we suck, and Rose is done.
I just don't get what is wrong with you. Rose is awesome, he is our only hope. Unless you can trade for one of these two guards we see tonight I just don't know how you think you could replace the upside of Rose. We don't need to dog Rose and run him out of town, we need to build him up and be patient while he begins to trust his body. He turned it up in the playoffs last year, he will surely do the same. The guy competes when it matters and has at every level. He is in a crisis, he needs our support not attacks. Its disgusting.
That all said to insulate you from your reactions over the next two games. I hope we beat Phoenix, I think maybe its interesting to see our front court possibly give Golden State some trouble and see if they are vulnerable if they play Bogut more.
Without rose...the next two games are going to be very tough. They would have been tough losses in all liklihood WITH Rose. We saw our slow footed front court struggle against Phoenix some last year.
So the styles we are about to see are not great match-ups to take our barometric pressure against. We are going to get run out of a couple road buildings, McBuckets/Mirotic, Hinrich, Gasol, Moore, Gibson, Noah.
That is a lot of slow feet guys. These offenses we are about to face are not joking around. We are going to have to shoot amazing on the road to hang.
We need Brooks big time in the next two games. I would start him against Knight and not captain Kirk who is too old to face the guard onslaught we are about to step into this week.
I see all this ahead of time but I am not panicked because I see a lot else that makes me believe we will have our chance at the end of the year and be one of the final 4 standing in the Conference Championship games. At that point we may need a "little luck" from opponent injuries, or the MVP caliber Rose to show up.
But its possible.
I know that was long winded, but for every 3 sentence breath you fuckers waste bashing this very good team you accumulate a body of pointless work repeated the same tired bullshit and tired hate that adds nothing correct or positive to any discussion.
tirade not directed at scoot
But to scoot and my quoted comment, Cover.com matchups has Rose listed at not playing tonight.
