Basketball Prospectus on Rose's first games Options

[Balta1701-B]

Very good read. Her'es a sample.

This part, the style of play and the situation in Chicago, contains the most compelling reasons for Rose's early-season successes. The rookie point guard shares his relative lack of experience with the Bulls' new head coach, Vinny Del Negro. Del Negro spent recent years in Phoenix, watching Mike D'Antoni put the ball in the hands of Steve Nash and asking him to "figure it out." In some ways, Del Negro has given the same kind of freedom and control to Rose. The early part of this season has been a story of Rose tending to over-dribble, then compensating with his athleticism and quickness to create a shot for himself or a teammate. As he learns the balance, he will get better.

The Bulls' style is open, with at least good spacing, and it is designed as a penetrate-and-pitch scheme, which again favors the skills that Rose brings to the table. Similar in scope to the offense used by John Calipari at the University of Memphis (dribble-drive motion), the Bulls are still discovering the actions that will yield real results. This gives Rose a lot of the responsibility as the Bulls figure out what will work best. With willing (and sometimes capable) perimeter shooters like Kirk Hinrich (when healthy), Ben Gordon, Luol Deng and others, there is not a lot of help on dribble attacks from Rose. Instead, the defense forces him to finish, and since that is one of his true strengths, he is more than happy to oblige.

The biggest question early this season is whether this type of play truly helps Rose in the long term. Right now, he is called upon to attack and score and he is more than capable of doing that. However, can he both score as he has been and make his teammates better at the same time? Chris Paul of the New Orleans Hornets typifies the best kind of answer to this question. A gifted scorer, Paul can dominate one game without scoring a point, then score 45 the next night. Will Rose be able to approach that kind of production on behalf of his team? Only time will tell. He should not change his style--rather, he must continue to aggressively seek out and take what the defense gives him. Right now, it is giving him scoring opportunities.

As teams gameplan for Rose and his teammates and scheme, expect defenders to slough off of him and force him to make perimeter shots rather than expose themselves to his ability to drive. In addition, teams will start to run doubles at him as he penetrates further toward the basket. By doing so, they may expose the occasional poor decision-making that is sometimes covered up, right now, by his freakish athleticism.

[Sanitarium]

Man, all these things saying how we should be like the suns are so depressing. Because if Rose is our Steve Nash, we have nothing close to amare.

[MB33]

agree up to pax to make some moves if he really wants to take a step fwd if not were just an average team

[Steve9347]

Man, all these things saying how we should be like the suns are so depressing. Because if Rose is our Steve Nash, we have nothing close to amare.

And Phoenix has nothing close to a championship.