Skiles said he plans to alter the starting lineup for tomorrows exhibitioin game agst memphis. He also said that Hinrich, deng, and wallace were definately starting.

Is Ben or PJ grabbing some bench?

Ben has been shooting awfullly, but i don't think we can have another year with a revolving door at the SG position. It is possible that noc will start alongside deng at the forward spots, giving more of an offensive punch to right out of the gate, like at the end of last year.

SKiles said the reason is because he wants the team to get off to good starts at home, citing several times the team would get down immediately something like 18-4 and have to go straight to the bench. He doesn't want to do that, but he also wants to have his lineup set by the opener next week.

Who's being benched? Don't know...............

With all the SF's on this team, I don't know why Skiles doesn't have Deng start at the 2, with Noc starting at the 3.

Ben could then come off the bench as he's accustomed to and provide that scoring punch. You still have Kryp, Thomas and Griffin that could fill in at SF.

That would be a really bad idea defensively. Deng just isn't quick enough to guard most NBA 2's. His ball-handling isn't exactly stellar either, and we lose a lot of perimeter shooting with Deng instead of Gordon at SG.

My personal guess is that for this particular game he is going to try a lineup of Hinrich, Gordon, Deng, Noc, and Wallace. That makes a lot of sense, it gives us a solid defensive lineup and lets us create a matchup problem with PF's trying to keep up with Nocioni. He could alternate between that lineup and a Hinrich-Gordon-Deng-Brown-Wallace lineup depending on the matchups during the regular season.

He said he wants to get off to faster starts at home so maybe it could be

Tyrus or Nocioni for P.J. That would make the Bulls a better running team so they could try and take early leads (push the ball). I don't see how you can say you want to take the lead earlier but then not have Gordon in the game. I would think he would do Nocioni before Tyrus but who knows.

Either way, the Bulls have been letting big men score in the post at will in the last few games.

just read in tribune that hinrich gordon deng noc and wallace worked as the first unit and skiles said he'll start that group for the game tonight

Hate to brag (no actually I love it) but was I right or what? Anyway, I hope this lineup gets utilized a lot this year b/c I think it is by far our most dangerous offensive lineup. Then you add the human pogo stick into the lineup later in the game and the opossing defense won't know what to do.

does anyone think it might be a better idea to have deng as the 4 and noc as the 3? Deng is taller, and the better defender IMO. Or would it really make a difference?

Thoughts?

No. Deng gets shoved around by an awful lot of bigger small forwards in the post, putting him at PF would make it a whole lot worse. Noc is tougher and is a better rebounder.

According to Skiles the final preseason game of the season will be the glimpse of our starting lineup. It was odd to see him go with the ultra small lineup of Kirk, BG, Deng, Noc, Ben Wall last night.

However, thats a lineup that I could see working when we match up against teams that aren't very tall or only have one offensive threat in the low post. In the case that a team has two threats or are very tall we'd just shift PJ Brown into the starting lineup with Noc or Deng coming off the bench.