Heat/Bulls Series

Oh you can bet Chauncey would have demanded more than he will probably sign for if he were comparing himself to Ben.

All I know is I'm a proponent of sticking with what works, until it's been proven not to work. Changing for the sake of not knowing if you'll continue to be successful seems pointless and unnecessary to me.

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As far as keeping Wallace around, they could have done that by not so blatantly informing Wallace that they were jumping on the all-offense bandwagon (i.e. freezing him out of the offensive game plan and not focusing on D), coupled with offering Ben a straight 12 or 13 Mil deal. They were already prepared to pay 12 they should have compromised and opened up to 13. They also could have avoided the last straw (at least for Wallace) of coming to the table with that crap nickel and dime strategy of starting at 11.6 hoping to negotiate up to only 12. If they were prepared to give 12, they should have started with that. Wallace deserved at least that sort of consideration given his accomplishments. He's been very straight forward with them and this sort of negotiating tactic is in bad faith.

Negotiating always involves bidding less than you are ultimately willing to pay.

The fact that Ben didn't try to get us to counter means that he was fed up. Maybe his wife was giving him pressure. Maybe she wanted to move to Chicago. Who knows?

If she calls the shots on the fro, then maybe she calls the shots on the dough.

-Ben averaged less points per game this year than every year previous until the first year with Cola. ( You know, the guy Ben disliked so much for "freezing him out of the offense"- only later claiming that he "never had a problem with him" when he wanted to make it clear that Flip was the real bad guy all along)


- Not focusing on D is not a factual statement. Prior to the Flip/Ben public rift, many of the players had stated to the media that they spent more time on defense in practice than any of the years with coach Brown.

To make that statement true you would have to amend it to say that Flip didn't focus on defense the way Ben Wallace wanted him to.

I have to side with Max on that one. If Ben wants to make those kind of calls he needs to take a coaching job somewhere. It's completely unfair to expect the coach to cater to whims like that and in the end still be the fall guy when the team doesn't win it all.

Want to blame Flip? Fine. But don't expect him succeed or fail on someone elses terms. I think the coach deserves to make the bed he sleeps in, don't you?

The very fact that Ben avg'd more points per game and our team enjoyed greater overall success tells me all I need to know about whether or not it's a good idea to involve Ben Wallace in your offensive sets (and I'm not going to start this whole argument from square 1 about it not having to translate in number of shots...If I have to do that again, then I have to admit that A) no can grasp the concept or B) no one wants to admit that it's possible. Either way, I'm spinning my wheels.

Whether or not Skiles is able to get more point production out of Wallace over the length of a season is of no concequence to me because Skiles does not also have Billups, Hamilton, Sheed, Prince, Dice, Williamson, Okur, Mike James, Lindsey Hunter, or Arroyo on his roster. We did.

I only have one thing to say. Saunders himself said he was unconcerned with the defense of this team the day he was hired. By his own admission, he was going to focus on offense. Now if the same people here that don't believe anything Ben Wallace has to say about the situation believe everything Flip has to say, then either our players were lying to the media to paint a rosy picture or Flip was lying and he actually did focus on D....which is it?

It's less about how Ben wanted him to do it and more about how this team made it to two straight NBA Finals appearances. Besides, if a guy says he wants to come in and "build" on the success of the existing circumstances (again by his own admission) then why the hell would he proceed to remove the foundation of the very success he's claiming he wants to build on? Whether or not I want him to, he is definitely making his own bed.

True, but part of being a good negotiator is the ability to recognize when traditional negotiating tactics may not be the correct course of action....unless, of course, you are hoping to get the expected result of using said tactics for the situation in question.

Don't you mean Brown did?

Flip didn't have that roster. Doesn't that allow him the same excuse you are granting Skiles?

Yes, which IMO it became that much more important to maintain at least one of those factors than to chase both of them out the door.

No,

Of our roster Flip still had ALL of the major pieces of the puzzle:

You are using that out of context.

The question of "Concern" for Saunders pertained to what he could bring to the table to improve upon the current Piston team. His being unconcerned with the defense was specifically subtexted with the reason being that the defensive principles of the team he was taking the reins of was just fine.

The offensive stagnation was what he was claiming to have a fix for, and that is why he was brought in.

In the proper context this in no way implies that Flip quit playing defense. If he didn't care about defense he wouldn't have so many zone ideas dancing around in his head.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. People have laughed at Don Nelson, and the minute a team like Phoenix wins the Championship he will be hailed as one heck of a visionary.

Greg Popovich is planning to utilize alot of Fliplike defensive schemes to get the Spurs past the Suns. If he pulls it off, what does that make Flip for being one of the first guys to see the way the league was heading?

When you highlighted Arroyo as a "major piece" and totally dissed on Okur, Williamson, and James was sort of when I knew that you were dead set on this regardless of anything else.

The defensive principles were just fine because they were worked on and a focus of the coaching staff for years. Coming and just saying they're fine doesn't maintain the level of excellence this team had been crafted to exhibit. It allows for the very thing that causes most of our problems....simply allowing the players to decide for themselves what they will and will not work hard at. Saunders essentially gave our guys a free pass for the lax efforts and the overall overconfident behavior we are seeing out of this bunch present day. Nevermind the fact that we don't appear to have solved some sort of perplexing offensive quagmire since his hiring. As fans have been complaining about our offensive flow just as much over the past two seasons.

As far as Nellie, PHX, and the like go...The day they win a title will be the day the exception proves the rule. No revelations there for me, simply a run and gun team's hit on the roulette wheel. Kinda like a lightning strike...s'gotta happen sometime. Now when run and gun style teams are winning the title 3 or 4 out of every 5 years...then, I'll believe there's a new era at hand.

Lastly, a goal of maintaining existing defensive strength by employing a stationary, reactionary form of defense that allows no one to be held responsible for their assignments, and makes it easy for the offense to dictate what you are going to do does not give me reason to breathe a sigh of relief. If Pop DOES put the zone to use, it's the equivalent of using a gimmick to cancel out a gimmick. It's not a sound strategy that he plans to use on a full-time basis and therefore is not the trend to a new style that people are making it out to be.

lol....hardly, as we don't have to go very far to find millions of complaints of LB's shortening of this group's minutes during the postseason.

DETROIT BAKSETBALL!

Sorry, I needed to get that out.

I just keep thinking what a great bench we had in the title year.

Okur, Corliss, and Mike James.


Maybe the loss of those guys has more to do with a drop off than any coaching philosophy.

He also averaged a career high in assists. He's frequently used as a release to reset their halfcourt offense after their opponents successfully trap the ballhandler, which lets him operate out of the high post a lot more than he did in Detroit even under Larry Brown. Even though his shot attempts are way down, Ben might be more involved in the offense in Chicago than he ever was in Detroit, for a certain definition of "involved".

The funny thing is that it's looking like Antonio McDyess and Carlos Delfino will absolutely dwarf the minutes (and likely the impact) any of those players had in the 2004 playoffs.

Okur and Corliss were foul-magnets and Mike James didn't do a damn thing in the playoffs. I guess depth is the price that we're now paying for fielding an old, unenergetic team that's been fully scouted.

Here is what they did (Okur + James + Corliss) in the '04 playoffs:

Min/game = 35.3
Points = 12.0
Rebs = 6.2
Ast = 2.2
Stl = 0.7
Blk = 0.5

So, yeah, they were doing a good job, but didn't get much of a chance to contribute.

Here is how (McDyess + Flip Murray + Delfino) have done in '07 playoffs so far:

Min/game = 57.9
Points = 12.0
Reb = 11.6
Ast = 2.8
Stl = 3.05
Blck = 1.00

They are getting more minutes, scoring at a lower rate, but rebounding better and stealing the ball more.