I have to admit (Tony Snell Thread)

[Scoot26]

Do you not recall how poorly Snell was playing prior to like two weeks ago? Snell got minutes and didn't do anything with them until just recently. So did Thibs stunt his growth, or help his growth?

:shrug:

Butler went through similar growing pains.

Snell played himself out of the rotation last season IMO. He showed some flash early on then died off

Doug showed shit one game, a major blowout game, and went downhill after that then had knee surgery. So he never really showed much in an actual NBA game.

 

[MassHavoc]

I'm not going to be that guy but... yes I am

Feb. 10th

I'm not saying it's a direct parallel in the case of Doug and Snell, but Jimmy is now in his 4th year and through most of last year and even into this year, a lot of people were ready to write him off and ship him away. I think that the Bulls just use longer term developmental plans to work guys into the system instead of trying to fit a system to the guys. Just talking out my ass. I'm not ready to ship any of them anywhere.

haha

 

[clonetrooper264]

:shrug:

Butler went through similar growing pains.

Snell played himself out of the rotation last season IMO. He showed some flash early on then died off

Doug showed shit one game, a major blowout game, and went downhill after that then had knee surgery. So he never really showed much in an actual NBA game.

Right. So it seems like however Thibs is developing young guys, they take a year or two to really find themselves. The exception has been Mirotic, but technically speaking, he's got more pro experience than the typical NBA rookie. Even so, he's had his struggles too. I think that because the Bulls are kind of a "win now" type of team, as opposed to building for the future, if you get minutes, you have to contribute. I think if you stuck Doug or Snell on a team like Philly the past couple years, they'd be putting up decent numbers.

How often do you see rookies being big contributors on a team that made a deep playoff run? The only player I can think of is Courtney Lee, who was starting in the Finals.

 

[Gustavus Adolphus]

Doug's footwork on defense sucks. Plain and simple. Fix that, and he gets minutes.

 

[Scoot26]

Right. So it seems like however Thibs is developing young guys, they take a year or two to really find themselves. The exception has been Mirotic, but technically speaking, he's got more pro experience than the typical NBA rookie. Even so, he's had his struggles too. I think that because the Bulls are kind of a "win now" type of team, as opposed to building for the future, if you get minutes, you have to contribute. I think if you stuck Doug or Snell on a team like Philly the past couple years, they'd be putting up decent numbers.

How often do you see rookies being big contributors on a team that made a deep playoff run? The only player I can think of is Courtney Lee, who was starting in the Finals.

Not very often...

Sam Cassell is probably one of the biggest for the 94 Rockets.

And well.. There was Magic Johnson, but I'd argue that's much much different.

 

[Bear Pride]

Good lawd if management doesn't ride Thibs out of here, perhaps the fan base will.

Well, I was just pointing out the prevalent management point of view. I'd Love to see Thib's lead the Bulls to a championship, myself. I think the Bulls have the talent to compete for one this year. I also have been extremely supportive of Thib's.

I am, however, growing concerned about Thib's management of the deepest roster he's had since he's been here, imo. Hopefully we don't look back at an early exit from the playoffs realizing that shooting was our downfall. :dunno:

 

[clonetrooper264]

Not very often...

Sam Cassell is probably one of the biggest for the 94 Rockets.

And well.. There was Magic Johnson, but I'd argue that's much much different.

lol Magic is clearly a vastly different situation. But yeah, there's not really many rookies who made a huge impact on contending teams. Therefore, Doug not really doing much fits that trend. Even if he was getting like 12 minutes a game, I really doubt he'd be doing anything special based off of what he showed in the beginning of the year.

 

[Scoot26]

Well, I was just pointing out the prevalent management point of view. I'd Love to see Thib's lead the Bulls to a championship, myself. I think the Bulls have the talent to compete for one this year. I also have been extremely supportive of Thib's.

I am, however, growing concerned about Thib's management of the deepest roster he's had since he's been here, imo. Hopefully we don't look back at an early exit from the playoffs realizing that shooting was our downfall. :dunno:

Every season shooting has been our downfall.

 

[Bear Pride]

Thibs wants immediate difference makers.. It is perhaps a flaw that he's not patient with the young guys until he's forced to play them due to injuries (and well there are always injuries). I'd also argue he's not very patient with shooters. Year after year we've seen pure offense guys be benched until injury forces them to play and then Thibs says 'Okay, fine you're in" Nate Robinson played an amazing 2nd half of the season in 2012-13.. Before that 2nd half he was jerked around, given inconsistent minutes, injuries forced him into the role to play. Now Nate hasn't been able to stick anywhere after us, so its also probably some of Nate's own doing.

Marco was another player that got widely consistent playing time until injuries forced him to play.

DJ Augustin isn't having as much success anymore either, but he was pretty much put in right away to begin with. There was no delay there from Thibs.

Granted all these guys listed are just bench players, and rarely do bench players lead you to the promise land (They can help though, and I'd argue the Bulls have a solid bench to help now).

I find your 1st statement very interesting. "Immediate difference makers" are great for the regular season so far. It's 'long term playoff difference makers' that I am concerned about. And as of right now, history and Thib's current body of works somewhat supports my concern. :dunno: Agai, hopefully I'm wrong.

 

[Bear Pride]

Do you not recall how poorly Snell was playing prior to like two weeks ago? Snell got minutes and didn't do anything with them until just recently. So did Thibs stunt his growth, or help his growth?

Not to be disagreeable, but your statement kind of supports what I'm saying. It's only the last couple weeks that Tony has been playing lights out as well as, coincidentally, getting a lot of minutes. His stats for the year seem to support this if you notice his minute average is only 15.8/game at this time. :dunno:

GP	MIN/G	PPG	REB/G	AST/G	FG %
47	15.8	5.1	1.9	0.6	47.1

 

[Bear Pride]

Every season shooting has been our downfall.

Which is why I want to see Thib's accelerate the development of the 'best shooter' in College last year. :dunno:

 

[clonetrooper264]

Not to be disagreeable, but your statement kind of supports what I'm saying. It's only the last couple weeks that Tony has been playing lights out as well as, coincidentally, getting a lot of minutes. His stats for the year seem to support this if you notice his minute average is only 15.8/game at this time. :dunno:

GP	MIN/G	PPG	REB/G	AST/G	FG %
47	15.8	5.1	1.9	0.6	47.1

Sure he's played well when getting 30+ minutes...because he only got that many minutes because he was playing well. More minutes = better stats has not always been the case for Snell. Last season he was pretty bad regardless of however many minutes he got.

 

[Scoot26]

Right. So it seems like however Thibs is developing young guys, they take a year or two to really find themselves. The exception has been Mirotic, but technically speaking, he's got more pro experience than the typical NBA rookie. Even so, he's had his struggles too.

Niko is many ways is like Asik.. He's polished as a Euro player, but needs to adjust to the NBA game a bit... Asik didn't catch on until really late in the season and then was able to get himself plenty of playoff minutes.

 

[clonetrooper264]

Niko is many ways is like Asik.. He's polished as a Euro player, but needs to adjust to the NBA game a bit... Asik didn't catch on until really late in the season and then was able to get himself plenty of playoff minutes.

Good point.

I don't think Thibs hates playing rookies...indeed he is clearly willing to play them if they prove themselves worthy of getting playing time. We saw that with Asik and now with Niko. We saw it with Doug early in the season as he came off a pretty good preseason. Heck, we even saw Snell get time in a lot of games last year (77 games, 12 starts) which at the time would've been considered unusual for Thibs given that Jimmy only played in 42 games his rookie year and supposedly he hates playing rookies. Funny fact: Before the past couple weeks, Snell was averaging more minutes last year (technically, he still is, but it's only like .2 minutes less).

 

[Bear Pride]

Sure he's played well when getting 30+ minutes...because he only got that many minutes because he was playing well. More minutes = better stats has not always been the case for Snell. Last season he was pretty bad regardless of however many minutes he got.

So Kirk and Jimmy getting injured had nothing to do with Tony getting more minutes? :dunno: Seems like you're blindly defending Thib's at every cost. I'm concerned that Tony fell into Thib's lap due to injury. :dunno: Not cuz Thib's decided that Tony was all of a sudden playing well.

 

[Bear Pride]

Niko is many ways is like Asik.. He's polished as a Euro player, but needs to adjust to the NBA game a bit... Asik didn't catch on until really late in the season and then was able to get himself plenty of playoff minutes.

So Niko, who is averaging 17.2 minutes/game, all of a sudden gets 31 minutes against the Bucks and puts up 16 points and 14 rebounds with 2 3 pointers? Did I mention that Taj was out due to illness? The same Taj that has been averaging 28.5 minutes/game, 10.8 pts/game, and 6.7 rebounds/game?

Seems to be a pattern here, imo, and it's NOT Thib's realizing that these other guys can play, or that these players are all of a sudden playing well.

 

[clonetrooper264]

So Kirk and Jimmy getting injured had nothing to do with Tony getting more minutes? :dunno: Seems like you're blindly defending Thib's at every cost. I'm concerned that Tony fell into Thib's lap due to injury. :dunno: Not cuz Thib's decided that Tony was all of a sudden playing well.

Well sure Kirk and Jimmy's injuries gave Tony an opportunity to get more minutes. Though it was really more Dunleavy's injury that opened the door for him. All I'm saying is this: there's a reason why he wasn't getting minutes earlier in the year.

Just look at the game logs: http://www.basketball-reference.com/players/s/snellto01/gamelog/2015/

He doesn't get consistent double digit minutes until Dunleavy's injury at the beginning of last month, but doesn't start to really play well until this month.

 

[RoseMVP1]

I think Tony will continue to play well. You can tell by watching him he's different, he'll get the ball and make a move. He shoots differently....his confidence changed big time and you can tell that if you actually watch the games. Proud of him and glad he's a Bull.

It's hard now to get MCD minutes since Snell had been playing great. There was a stat on espn before the draft that said something like 95% of the shots MCD took in his senior year were contested. And he's one of the most prolific scorers in collegiate history. He won't get his until next year when I believe we let Dunleavy go. I think he'll really come on next year as the 7th guy off the bench.

 

[Bear Pride]

Well sure Kirk and Jimmy's injuries gave Tony an opportunity to get more minutes. Though it was really more Dunleavy's injury that opened the door for him. All I'm saying is this: there's a reason why he wasn't getting minutes earlier in the year.

Just look at the game logs: http://www.basketball-reference.com/players/s/snellto01/gamelog/2015/

He doesn't get consistent double digit minutes until Dunleavy's injury at the beginning of last month, but doesn't start to really play well until this month.

Yes there was, and what better reason than to hear it from Tony, himself. :dunno:

 

[clonetrooper264]

So Niko, who is averaging 17.2 minutes/game, all of a sudden gets 31 minutes against the Bucks and puts up 16 points and 14 rebounds with 2 3 pointers? Did I mention that Taj was out due to illness? The same Taj that has been averaging 28.5 minutes/game, 10.8 pts/game, and 6.7 rebounds/game?

Seems to be a pattern here, imo, and it's NOT Thib's realizing that these other guys can play, or that these players are all of a sudden playing well.

I'm sure you're aware that Niko has also had his struggles this season. There is no magic "play this dude 30 minutes and he'll put up stats" formula. Niko also had a game where he started, played 37 minutes, and only shot 2-10 for 12 points. It's not a 100% correlation = causation thing.