Nice way to start the offseason. Am I being sarcastic? I don't even know anymore..

http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/news;_ylt=AlBl...o&type=lgns

Pistons reach deals with Gordon, Villanueva

By Adrian Wojnarowski, Yahoo! Sports 1 hour, 44 minutes ago

Yahoo! Sports

The Detroit Pistons have reached agreement with free-agent guard Ben Gordon(notes) and forward Charlie Villanueva(notes), a source with knowledge of the talks told Yahoo! Sports Wednesday evening.

Gordon will receive a five-year contract worth around $55 million while Villanueva’s five-year deal is expected to be worth about $35 million.

Gordon and Villanueva, who played together for a year at UConn, traveled to Detroit on Wednesday morning to meet with Detroit president Joe Dumars and other Pistons front-office officials. They took a tour of the practice facility in Auburn Hills, had lunch with management and both ultimately came to terms on an agreement. Gordon agreed first and Villanueva followed soon after.

The loss of Gordon is a blow to the Bulls, who tried to re-sign the shooting guard. Gordon turned down contract extensions for $54 million and $50 million in the past two off-seasons as a restricted free agent. It is believed the Bulls were willing to go to $10 million a season for him, but were outbid by the Pistons.

No free agents can sign until the league-mandated moratorium ends on July 8.

The signing of Gordon, 26, could make another former UConn player, Richard Hamilton, expendable in a trade. Hamilton, 31, could be used to bring back another low-post presence: perhaps Utah Jazz forward Carlos Boozer, Los Angeles Clippers’ center Chris Kaman or New Orleans Hornets center Tyson Chandler. Gordon averaged 20.7 points a game last season for the Bulls and 18.5 in his five seasons in Chicago. He was the third pick in the 2004 NBA draft.

Dumars is remaking the Pistons, who are expected to lose Rasheed Wallace and Antonio McDyess to free agency. Dumars fired coach Michael Curry on Wednesday, and ex-Pistons coach Doug Collins is considered the frontrunner for the job. Sources say Collins still has to sell his staying power and stability to Detroit management. Former Dallas Mavericks coach Avery Johnson will be considered, too.

so uhh.....who's the bulls starting two guard next year?

Fish.

ok. hmm....idk. i'll miss Ben. i'm guessing Bulls will still be pretty bad overall in 09-10

I'm apathetic about this. I'm sure there will be games where I wish he were on the bench, but I remember the shots he took with 20 on the clock in games where they were only down 2-3, with no one in position to get a board, that led to a fast-break and a growing deficit...

i agree with that. but when you look at how miserable this team is now in terms of go-to scoring, Ben is such an asset in comparison. there is no one on the team who can really come close to what he accomplished consistently in that Boston series

Ben has big flaws but i'll miss him. guy was a threat to drop 40 on any given night

will miss ben gordon very much. very under-appreciated by chicago media and i'll always wish him success in his career.

This is my favorite analysis on Ben Gordon, though I can't remember now who said it:

Ben Gordon is awesome because when the Bulls are down 8 with 3 minutes left, he'll start raining 3's and give the Bulls a remarkable come-from-behind win. However, maybe the Bulls wouldn't be down 8 with 3 minutes if Gordon could ever keep his man in front of him.

This is generic, vapid criticism of Ben that I loathe from his detractors. This past year, Gordon had the highest PER differential of any Bulls starter when looking at the league average. If the Bulls are down by 8 with 3 minutes to go, the vast majority of the time, it's because the Bulls lack good interior defense and the Bulls lacked an inside scoring threat.

Can't say that I'm surprised, but I still really hate the Bulls management right now for letting this guy go. Btw, BG stays in front of his guy just fine. He's not a great defender by any means, but he's about average.

Feels great to know that the Bulls failed to keep the best guy out of their "core" cause they didn't want to pay him $9 mil per last year.

oh this picture is awesome.

i'll miss ben too, but it was one of a handful of likely scenarios that had to happen this offseason, so i can't say i'm shocked. perhaps we'll sign someone rad.

They did want to sign him-- the offer was out. Brothers and Gordon didn't want to do it-- then after the deadline Reinsdorf laid out, BG changed his mind. Unfortunately or fortunately, however you look at it, JR pulled the deal and seemingly left Gordon cold judging by how quickly he defected.

Rumor was some other shit went down too. KC Johnson was e-mailing back and forth w/ people saying there was a bit of irreparable damage that he couldn't talk about.

Detroit is gonna suck, though. Giving 40 mil to Villanueva is fucking foolish. Dumars is just straight up a bad GM, with a couple of exceptional moves (namely Sheed+Billups).

But that's just a horrible move both basketball-wise and business-wise. Why wouldn't you sign a young, talented scorer to $9 mil per? Why were the Bulls so damn paranoid about even slightly overpaying for BG, where they so eager to hand out money to Kirk and Luol? I don't know who's even calling the shots anymore, whether its JR, Pax, or Forman, this organization disgusts me right now.

Great job by BG and his agent getting signed on the first day of free agency before GMs realize that like baseball and football, everyone's wallet is going to tighten and the free agent market is going to be very much a team's market. Foolish signing by Detroit. Way too much money drop on a player with a plus/minus ratio of 24.

As for the Bulls, one more year till Bosh and Wade are available....

Where's Biggie?

Bulls talk is wobbly without Biggie.

if the bulls wanted a player like ben gordon around they would have drafted wayne ellington...the two are carbon copies of each other... i dont know if the bulls are looking to sign a pure shooter...

that being said if i were running the team i would have let ben go and drafted ellington with that second first round pick...dudes gonna be stellar and would have been able to step into BG's spot sooner rather than later and far cheaper too

bulls gotta keep cap space open for 2010 so im not suprised to see him go

I can't believe people like Dumars as a GM. Villanueva was an awful move, and as it stands now, Gordon at that amount is not very good either.

Detroit's current team has no center, no real PF to speak of unless you count Maxiel or McDyess (who has yet to resign).

So they will be undersized @ every position and probably play Kwame Brown for more than 20 minutes a game as it stands. This is barring a trade I think everyone sees coming; some combo of Prince/Rip and one of the younger front court guys, maybe Daye, for Boozer. Even then, they will not be very good.

Reinsdorf does not like Ben Gordon. I've read way too many fan encounters where he's asked about BG and gives a snide remark to believe JR wants BG.

Seems to me to be another Elton Brand situation where JR's discontent with the agent plays a big role. It makes sense though- every report I read has Raymond Brothers sounding like a dumbass. Apparently this year he called the Bulls back after Ben got the offer and asked them to match. Bulls asked what the offer was and Brothers refused to give the numbers. Does not make sense-- they could obviously still make an offer, but why not give the number or range to see if you can at least get a match or drive up the price?

BTW- and take this with a gigantic grain of salt- but a CBS Sports blogger is reporting the Bulls are trying to get AI from the Pistons in a s+t with Ben. This would net Gordon a 6 yr $66 mil contract. I call bullshit, as does KC Johnson at the Trib, as does probably just about every other Bulls fan who has seen AI play the past three years.

i wonder who the bulls were gonna deal in this supposed 4 way trade they backed out of...also in reading about this thing i cant understand...was hedo signed and dealt...or did they deal someone in order to make room for his signing?

Pargo.

Come on, Bulls.

Sometimes I find this team hard to love. But I do it anyways.

Supposedly the only player involved was Tim Thomas getting shipped out to make the money match. Good riddance.

Good riddance to Ben Gordon. I'm glad he's gone.

BG turned down a good offer 2 years ago and probably rightly a pretty mediocre one last year (which then i guess he reconsidered?). i dunno. certainly not worth matching the pistons offer this time around

kirk was not overpaid at the time he signed the contract. many considered it a bit of a bargain, in fact. luol, on the other hand...and you left out noc

but once deng signed last year BG was squeezed in terms of what the bulls could reasonably pay him. may have been part of the reason deng was given so much - an excuse to lowball BG

anyway, salary cap will be dropping significantly apparently after next season. think that makes it more likely the big boys like 'bron, bosh, and wade will stay put. the rumored 3 team deal for boozer that is in the works might make sense at the moment (kirk+tyrus+future 1st outgoing). booz would also be a free agent after the coming year though. it'd be a 1 year tryout

the former. orlando got a trade exception and cash in return

all of this stuff is discussed ad nauseum at realgm

i dont know about that...every expert i ever heard or read said heinrich was always a mediocre point guard with good defensive skills...especially at the time he signed that ridiculous contract

in 07-08 he was one of the top 50 paid players in the nba...he wasnt worth it then and sure as shit isnt worth it now

I've just started to familiarize myself plus/minus ratios after reading that Michael Lewis article on Shane Battier. I'm not sure how much significance they actually hold, but I do find it interesting that Kirk is +203 and Derrick Rose is -124. Does anyone know why that is? I perceived Hinrich to be kind of overrated and soft defensively. I guess the conventional wisdom has me beat on this one.

Your perception of Hinrich is a bit flawed. He is a very strong defensive player who is underrated and strong offensively. A mid-range starting PG, and elite PG bench player.

I can see it's off. I just don't understand why opponents scored 124 points more than the Bulls in the time Derrick Rose was on the court last year the Bulls outscored opponents by 203 points when Hinrich was on the floor. I guess his defense really must be that good because he's not a great offensive player.

my guess is because heinrich is typically on the floor against a teams bench players as opposed to rose facing a teams starters

plus the bulls didn't get good until the second half of the year, which was when kirk returned from injury

plus/minus is a very flawed statistic

hinrich's +/- is exagerrated because of his injury, as well. The majority of
his minutes last season came after the trade deadline, when
the bulls were one of the better teams in the conference.

over an hour since the last post and i beat you by less than 2 minutes

boozer to the bulls dumping gordon and tyrus

http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/news/story?id=4317515

i love thomas, but man if we got boozer i would be one happy motherfucker. can we let noah play center to boozers PF though?

Haha. I was typing on my phone.

Yes.


I'm skeptical about this trade talk, though. Yahoo, Sam Smith, and Portland beat writer are all saying nothing's happening.

Biggie: I heard Tyrus was an animal in the gym again this summer. Working from 7 AM every day. I am thinking this is going to be his year with Derrick and him doing a Paul/Chandler kind of thing.



If we got Boozer I'd shit my pants.

I love Rose but he's not a great player yet. People will point to his 47% fg and 17 ppg to support that his rookie year was great, but he was actually pretty inefficient offensively. He's a poor 3-point shooter and he rarely got to the line last year. I mean, I expect his efficiency to improve in the future with more calls and as he improves his ability to draw falls, but in 08-09, he averaged less than 1 point per possession. His assist average was essentially mediocre considering his 35 mpg. Lastly, his defense was below average to poor. As much as some like to harp on BG's defense, I thought that Rose's was worse last year.

I still expect Rose to be a "tier 2" star, but I do think that people inflate the greatness of Rose's rookie season. Also as others have already stated, the +/- stat is really flawed (it's really akin to judging a pitcher based on his wins-loss record), and Hinrich played the majority of his games after the Salmons & Miller trade. All of these reasons probably attributed to the great difference in this stat.

I just heard a dude from Detroit say on Monsters in the Morning that Ben Gordon is coming off the bench in Detroit. He's a bad defensive player. If you look at last year against Boston, he gave up as much as he gained the Bulls.

Sort of. His plus/minus in the playoffs was -17. But that's relative to Kirk Hinrich's -12, Derrick Rose's -31, Salmons's -54, Tyrus Thomas's -58, and Noah's -74. So while that's kind of true, I suppose, the Bulls did relatively better while he was in in the playoffs.

except that chandler knows his limitations offensively

supposedly the bulls are pushing for bayless to be included in the trade. bayless would definitely be a nice add, but he better not be the roadblock to getting this deal done.

Well, you can bash Tyrus offensively and I can't stop you. But, I am the only person in the world besides the Bulls who still believes in him offensively. He's a natural 80% at the line and I think he can improve his shot as well as his under the basket offensive moves.

I think that he just needs to learn his limitations and find certain things that fit, which he can repeat over and over.

In short, I think he can put up respectable numbers with a mid-range jumper.

But, yeah, this year proves me right or wrong. If by the end of this season, he hasn't improved, I'll be wrong. But, the 2nd half of last year, and the playoffs, made me think that a really strong summer and, if he can pick right up where he left off, he might be better offensively than people think he can be.

Summer league is meaningless, but James Johnson looked great tonight.

Bring on the Boozer.

Why? The top teams in the east are so consolidated this year, just save the money and get a real superstar to play with Rose in 10-11.

Vinny Del Hitler


Preseason starts tonight! Everybody ready!?

Noah is 2nd in the NBA in rebounds and isn't even on the all-star ballot. Rose looks hobbled and I wonder if he should take some time off, even thought their rotation is real slim right now. Will Rose be considered the best PG in the Central by the end of the year?

I really don't think that Rose's injury is the entire reason for his subpar play. Our 3-point shooting is atrocious right now (Salmons and Kirk are fucking shit) and as a result, the other team's defenders are all crowding the lanes. Add to that, the fact that Rose is ridiculously passive at times, and for some reason continues to avoid contact like the plague (thus never getting to the free throw line), which has all led to his mediocrity so far.

We scored less than 90 against one of the worst defensive teams in the NBA. Nice job Bulls management on choosing Kirk over BG and putting together this pathetic offensive team!

not like he'd be voted in over howard and shaq anyway