Answer that question for yourself. Two of the three guys I mentioned are post up people(Butler and Gasol). Rose is the only real up tempo guy. This is why the hiring of Hoiberg made no damned sense. The Bulls had a core team designed ofr great defense and a post offense. Unfortunately the GM and owner would not complete the team.
I am so fucking pissed right now because of the incompetence of the management of this team for the last six years. Yeah, some of it was bad luck with injuries but the ownership and management did not do much of anything to go all out to win a championship.
Look, I miss Thibs defense because you had to work and the knock on Fred's defense is understandable. But Thibs had no offensive plays drawn up except isolating up top and getting the pick so they can DRAW defenders in and kick it out to shooters that we didn't have at the time. Even then Thibs liked to jam minutes into his starting two guards, especially in the playoffs. And it didn't help that Pau was kind of the log jam in the offense either, every time you saw Pau in the post, he would face-up and didn't play his game he wanted. And it didn't help he first round we played against a good defensive center like John Henson who was blocking machine, what was he averaging in the playoffs like 1.7 BPG?
Anyway, Fred's offense doesn't play to Pau or Jimmy's strengths; But that's...not totally bad. The problem is that we always got stuck because Pau, as much of a great production player he is, sometimes plays soft in the post. The only guy who plays decent with his back to the basket is Taj and that says something. What our offense lacked for five years was that we had no shooters on this team and now we kind of do. The problem was, how are we gonna create and like I said, I'd sacrifice Tony Snell to the Sun God if it meant I could get Dougie on the floor and spread it out. And as we saw in the Lakers game, spreading the floor? We got Rose cutting to the rim. They jam up the inside, we kick it out to a shooter. Someone's falling asleep baseline? We cut to the basket and go up aggressive. THAT'S what's missing, while defense is PARAMOUNT, you become predictable in the sense that people know you're a good on-ball defensive team, but they also know that you don't have shot creators. And that was our problem.
Thibs, I'll never be ungrateful to him because he set a standard for the Bulls since he got the job and turn this team around when we were young and getting beat first round. And the trials he had to go through to build this team through a FO that is tone deaf when it comes to drafting and building something. Thibs was an amazing coach. But I can understand the situation, and the frustration and it sucks he got axed through petty lobbying. But we got Hoiberg now, who is STILL trying to find pieces and figure out what guys are good at. That comes with the territory of trying to reprogram guys who were coached on HUSTLE and winning the mind games on the defensive side. Now we have a chance to flourish and I want that for the team, and the Lakers game kept me sorta optimistic in the sense that...if we can find our offense and defense in time this team CAN be saved.
