Griffin isnt a shooting guard. Isnt he a small forward? Even so, I still start Thabo over anybody right now, its not like we would have an extremley young lineup. Kirk,Deng,Noc, and Big Ben are all vets and we can live with a rookie in the starting rotation I think.

I noticed...
Hinrich's offensive numbers are up this year. He is averaging 17.2 ppg, shooting 50% from 3pt land and 50% overall from the field.

Hinrich can be an effective enough scorer that starting him with deng and noc as the only real offensive players will be fine. That is, if griffin starts at the 2. The two numbers that don't look good for kirk this year are minutes played and fouls per game. He's averaging 4 less minutes than last year (32.8 vs 36.5) but still fouling more (3.3 vs 3.1) per game.

Basically, let hinrich guard pgs, he won't foul as much, so he can stay on the floor more and become a threat to score and play make more. He has been our most effective player so far, so the bulls should focus on taking bigger advantage of the variety in his game. He has always had an oddly low fg%, so the bulls need to really take advantage that he's shooting well now. The increased percentage is also a testament to hinrich being more aggressive, as he is getting off more of his shots at the basket.

Griffin was the starting SG for one of the best, if not the best, team in the league last year for 45 of the 52 games he played for them. He is a very good defensive player and while he doesnt offer much on the offensive end, rewatching the pacer's game reveals that he posted up a few times, leading to a couple baskets and one nice dish to wallace (that wallace turned over a second later) as well as one nice back door cut. He also was good on D agst a quicker daniels and a much taller (6'9) Granger.

Hinrich will be an all-star if you have a starting lineup that is as excellent on defense as krich, grif, deng, noc, and wallace would be and can rely on kirk playmaking and shooting and deng cutting, with a little bit of everything from noc, this team can go far. This, i think, is the bulls plan for the future with thabo, and until he's ready griffin is the answer.

I know 6 games is a small sample, but there is no denying that kirk has improved his game. Also, this sets a smooth transition to the future with BG7 as a 6th man/crunch time player with the team playing a tall 2 to start. Also, i dont think that noc needs to replace PJ, but if you take out gordon for a below average offensive player you have to plug in more O somewhere, and I would fully expect Noc's numbers to go up as he'd be more featured on offense.

this year with a first unit relying on kirk, deng, and noc to score and second unit defering to ben, helping all improve their stats and help the team.

Kirk-20pts 6.5 assists
griffin-5.5 pts-our redd, vince, kobe, pierce etc stopper
deng-18 pts 8 rpg
noc-16 pts 7 rpg
wallace- 7pts 11 rpg

gordon 6th man-16 ppg

'08-'09 Championship bulls (assuming we can resign everyone, and making gordon a bench player will lower his value and make him more signable)
kirk-20pts 8 assists
Thabo- 13 pts 5 apg 5 rpg
Deng-21pts 8rpg
Tyrus-15 pts 10 rpg 3bpg
wallace (or someone else?)-?????

Gordon 6th man- 16 ppg
Noc-13 ppg

great defense, a couple stars, and bonafide quality depth, scoring and d off the bench....if these rooks live up to potential they've flashed and we can re sign everyone, we will be champs soon with this approach