Chicago Bulls must improve road success in playoff

[??? ??????]

We interrupt the playoff fever enveloping the Bulls for this brief announcement from Kirk Hinrich.

"We haven't been a good road team this year," Hinrich said.

Ah, yes, that.

The Bulls leave their cocoon of the United Center, where they've won seven straight and 14 of 15, for the hostile, annoying environment that is the Palace of Auburn Hills. Monday night's road game against the Pistons has huge seeding implications for the Bulls' first-round playoff series that will start, well, on the road.

"It's definitely going to be tough," said Hinrich, ever the realist.

"We have to play with more toughness if we're going to have any success."

Indeed, those fourth-quarter comebacks that seem so natural now at home haven't happened on the road, where the Bulls are just 12-28 overall and 0-5 in overtime games. That's why Monday's game can serve as a litmus test.

"It seems like on the road sometimes we get down a little bit," coach Vinny Del Negro said. "We start rushing things. When we get down at home, we have more toughness, grit and resiliency. On the road, we have to guard better. We can't always rely on our offense. And that's the next step for us."

"Avoiding LeBron [James] would get us the Celtics," forward John Salmons said. "Avoiding the Celtics would get us Orlando. It doesn't really matter at this point. We know we can beat good teams, and we'll have to do so on the road."

The Bulls average 4.3 fewer points per game on the road and allow five more points.

"When we get on the road, we're not going to have the crowd to feed off of so we need the intensity right away," guard Ben Gordon said. "We've been turning it up in the fourth quarter lately, but we need to have better starts."

http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/basketball/bulls/chi-13-bulls-chicago-apr13,0,1339774.story

 

[dougthonus]

Tonight will be a big win if they want to build up confidence for the playoffs though I wonder if it will really make any difference to the players or if they're already supremely confident.

 

[??? ??????]

I don't think a loss here will really shake us after how well they have been playing for such a big stretch. Similar to how we swept the Heat after losing to the Nets.

I just fear that they will blow this one, just like they did that New Jersey game a two years ago. Hopefully they prove me wrong, but I don't feel good about them getting the win tonight.

 

[cool007]

Re:Chicago Bulls must improve road success in play

IMO, Loss wouldn't break their confidence but a WIN will be HUGE for their confidence going into the playoffs, thinking with confident that THEY CAN WIN ON THE ROAD.

They just need to come out with focus and determination and be physical. Once Pistons get rattled, they are not too good.

If you ask me (or any Pistons players) they still think they are pretty good and coast and go into the playoffs. In other words "Overconfident" This is why they say "we don't care who we face in the 1st round...etc...blah blah blah"

For Bulls, they just made the playoffs with not many thinking about it anyways and we already exceeded the expectations, we have nothing to lose on grand scheme of things - I just feel better for this game than other games.

 

[dougthonus]

I just fear that they will blow this one, just like they did that New Jersey game a two years ago. Hopefully they prove me wrong, but I don't feel good about them getting the win tonight.

I agree, I don't have a lot of confidence tonight. I don't have any confidence in any road game we play. We've basically been a train wreck on the road.

 

[cool007]

Re:Chicago Bulls must improve road success in play

dougthonus wrote:

I just fear that they will blow this one, just like they did that New Jersey game a two years ago. Hopefully they prove me wrong, but I don't feel good about them getting the win tonight.

I agree, I don't have a lot of confidence tonight. I don't have any confidence in any road game we play. We've basically been a train wreck on the road.

I disagree. The Nets game 2 years ago was HUGE because of BIG TIME expectations and with Wallace signing and how good we were that year and it backfired.

This year, IMO, the pressure is on Pistons more than us. That Nets team was really good at home and they were NOT OVERCONFIDENT - while this pistons team is not all that good, and are overconfident most of the time.

Besides, the pressure is on Pistons more than us. We made the playoffs and weren't expected to, they have been slumping and are a mess.

Maybe it's just me but I think we will win tonight.

 

[Ralphb07]

Re:Chicago Bulls must improve road success in play

I think the Bulls come out and win this game. I just have a good feeling.

 

[chi_hawks_23]

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I just fear that they will blow this one, just like they did that New Jersey game a two years ago. Hopefully they prove me wrong, but I don't feel good about them getting the win tonight.

I still have nightmares about that game. That close to a 2 seed, and New Jersey plays great, Bulls play like crap, and we get the 5 seed and a date with the defending champs.

I'm not expecting much tonight....the fact that we hit 40 wins has me pretty satisfied, considering where we stood in January. Now, Id love to see us beat Detroit, as that guarantee's we don't have to play cleveland. But I really don't think beating a crappy Detroit team in Detroit is going to change this teams confidence at all right now.

Winning a road playoff game at Boston will though.

 

[dougthonus]

Re:Chicago Bulls must improve road success in play

This year, IMO, the pressure is on Pistons more than us. That Nets team was really good at home and they were NOT OVERCONFIDENT - while this pistons team is not all that good, and are overconfident most of the time.

We just recently lost to the Raptors and Indiana on the road. Both are as bad as Detroit. I'm not saying we can't win. I'm just saying the Bulls have shown anyone can beat them on the road even while they've played hot at home.

 

[bri]

http://gma.yahoo.com/sepsis-blood-p...-drugs-help-224109669--abc-news-wellness.html







I realize that my posts are not considered news worthy, as was pointed out to me yesterday, but I felt this is an important topic and something people should be aware of. i admit I was ignorant about Sepsis and thought of it as being something people got during the Civil War and not in this modern age. If you get it

your chance of survival is not great cause there are no specific drugs to treat it. I hope at least some of you will read it to keep yourselves informed.

 

[BigPete]

Don't let 'em get you down Bri.



As to this story, I am utterly disgusted with the profit motive behind big Pharma. I understand it is a business and costs must be managed but I was shocked to recently hear how the development of many drugs or treatment methods are not fully realized because the return on investment projections are too low. In other words, if there aren't thousands of people suffering from sepsis AND willing to pay for treatment, then big Pharma is not going to waste their time finding a solution.

 

[sth]

You would think that something that killed 250,000 people a year would get more attention from drug companies. But somehow I'm not surprised. Hopefully some public attention will help. I'm with you Bri I thought this was like a civil war era issue. I didn't think blood poisoning was such a big thing.

 

[MassHavoc]

1.) Just because people are dying from it doesn't mean it has a simple cure that big pharma just refuses to make because of the profit.

2.) It's not all big pharma's fault that it takes billions of dollars to create a drug for 2000 people, the FDA have a very strict saftey process that ever drug has to go through. How can you justify a company spending billions of dollars on a small minority of people who wouldn't even be able to afford the drug when it came out because it cost billions of dollars. Plus they'd be dead by the time it is approved.



You can't have it all folks, for every dollar they spend on a cure for a lesser known disease, is every dollar they can't spend on diseases that afflict hundreds of thousands. You expect them to go out of business trying to cure diseases they cant' be profitable on? And for the record, there are several biotech and pharma companies (Yes, they are not the same thing) out there that are specifically focused on buying niche market drugs and bringing them to market on razor thing margins, one of the most famous ones is right here in Deerfiled, Ovation who was bought a few years back by Lundbeck.



What do you want drug companies to do? Not be successful? Not have money for R&D? Not have safe products by bringing them to market faster without the FDA? Explain to me how this is supposed to work?

 

[BigPete]

250,000 people a year is not 2,000 Mass.

 

[BigPete]

From wiki:

For the first time ever, in 2006, global spending on prescription drugs topped $643 billion, even as growth slowed somewhat in Europe and North America. The United States accounts for almost half of the global pharmaceutical market, with $289 billion in annual sales followed by the EU and Japan.(pdf) Emerging markets such as China, Russia, South Korea and Mexico outpaced that market, growing a huge 81 percent.[sup][27][/sup]

US profit growth was maintained even whilst other top industries saw little or no growth.[sup][28][/sup] Despite this, "..the pharmaceutical industry is — and has been for years — the most profitable of all businesses in the U.S. In the annual Fortune 500 survey, the pharmaceutical industry topped the list of the most profitable industries, with a return of 17% on revenue."[sup][29][/sup]

Pfizer's cholesterol pill Lipitor remains a best-selling drug world wide. Its annual sales were $12.9 billion, more than twice as much as its closest competitors: Plavix, the blood thinner from Bristol-Myers Squibb and Sanofi-Aventis; Nexium, the heartburn pill from AstraZeneca; and Advair, the asthma inhaler from GlaxoSmithKline.[sup][27][/sup]

IMS Health publishes an analysis of trends expected in the pharmaceutical industry in 2007, including increasing profits in most sectors despite loss of some patents, and new 'blockbuster' drugs on the horizon.[sup][30][/sup]

Teradata Magazine predicted that by 2007, $40 billion in U.S. sales could be lost at the top 10 pharmaceutical companies as a result of slowdown in R&D innovation and the expiry of patents on major products, with 19 blockbuster drugs losing patent.[sup][31][/sup]

They are choosing to reduce R&D whilst raking in BILLIONS in profits.

 

[MassHavoc]

250,000 people a year is not 2,000 Mass.

SEE POINT 1!!!! Just because a lot of people are dying doesn't mean that there is a cure. And just because one drug failed doesn't mean there are more in the works. For fucks sake, you do realize that it's normally not the drug companies that decide what to produce right? The baseline research usually comes from universities and start ups, then they get acquired when there is a better proof of concept. It's more of the rarity that a drug will be from start to finish in big pharma, it just doesn't happen much, and a lot of times if it does it's because it's an off-label use of a current drug, or a tweak of it that they put through the full process. If you want to blame anyone for not having more options being worked on, blame the research community, not big pharma. Especially with a drug like this where the regulatory and trials is going to be astronomical. You are fucking nuts to think that if there wasn't an easy answer to this that drug companies wouldn't be all over it. Who ever got the drug wins the market. Until the generic comes out three years later.



I don't think people fully understand how long, how much, and how hard it is to get a drug to market. And not only that but if you finally do, the patent laws fuck you. Especially for biotech drugs, by the time you get them to market you only have a few years to get your money back on them, another reason they are so expensive. Did you see why Xirgis was pulled, it fail to show any significant change. So after years of development, the drug didn't do anything. Only 1 in like 100 drugs in a companies portfolio or pipeline ever makes it to market. IT's just the way it is.

 

[BigPete]

While I am not an insider I have done quite a bit of research on the industry recently for school. We had two people on our project team that worked for Abbott.



I know it is not easy to get things done, but the motivation is simply put, misguided. The motivation is on profits, not cures for all.

 

[MassHavoc]

Great, I'm happy for you, I'm well aquinted with execs at Abbott. Baxter, Takeda, ect... There is no cure with out profits, period. I'm glad you are an expert on everything because you took a class once.

 

[BigPete]

Great, I'm happy for you, I'm well aquinted with execs at Abbott. Baxter, Takeda, ect... There is no cure with out profits, period. I'm glad you are an expert on everything because you took a class once.

Fuck off. My point is obvious. It is disgusting that everything in this world revolves around the almighty dollar and not relinquishing people from pain and suffering.



I'm happy for you that you have friends that are 'execs' at these companies. Maybe you can influence their priorities by reminding them that their next Bentley can wait because someone out there is suffering from a horrible disease that their company should be seeking a cure for.



Call me naive and a bleeding heart, I don't really give a shit.

 

[MassHavoc]

Yeah, your point is obviously dumb. I want a company who cant' make money to cure the world. Congrats. Work with that. Probably a billion dollars a day is spend by pharma companies trying to create treatments for diseases... but yeah, they suck.