The Bulls have played over a quarter of their games for the 2009-2010 season and currently stand at 8-14. Here is my grades for each individual player on the Bulls.

Luol Deng - A-

Luol Deng has been able to get his game back on track, scoring 17.5 points on 51.9 TS% and grabbing 7.8 rebounds per a game. Deng is only scoring the ball at a mediocre efficiency this year, but I think this is largely a result of Deng being asked to be option 1B (Derrick Rose is 1A) in the offense, rather than as the 3rd or 4th scorer, a role which he would fit very nicely. Where Deng has really excelled so far this year is on the defensive end of the court. Luol Deng has been the one Bull that can be depended on this year to give a good defensive effort on his man, while also rebounding the ball well. With Deng’s performance so far this season, and his ability to stay completely healthy, the Bulls should be able to move him with little difficulty.

Joakim Noah - B

If Joakim Noah keeps his averages of 10.2 points and 11.8 rebounds per a game to the end of the season, he will be the first Bull since Elton Brand to average a double double. That is a big if, however, as after a hot offensive start, Noah’s offensive production has tanked. Noah has been one of the best rebounders in the league, which is valuable to a team, but he has struggled defensively at times when matched up against bigger centers. Overall, Noah has been a net positive for the team.

Taj Gibson - C+

Taj has done a good job offensively for the Bulls, consistently knocking down the midrange jumper. Unfortunately, Gibson possesses little ability to make a free throw or defend the ball, and the latter really hurts the Bulls when they have Gibson out on the court. Still Gibson has surpassed all expectations.

Brad Miller - D

Age has caught up with Brad Miller too fast, and this even slower version of Brad Miller isn’t all that effective. Still, Brad Miller can make nice passes to setup his teammates, and provides better interior defense than anyone not named Joakim Noah on the team.

Derrick Rose - D-

Rose is the definition of raw talent right now. Every time it seems like he is going to break out of his bad play, he follows up his good play with some terrible games. While Rose has shown more ability to create for his teammates this year than last, it is still not something he excels at doing like someone like the elite point guards in the league, and the overwhelming majority of his assists are just passing to someone who hoists up a jumpshot. The assists he are getting are no different than the one’s Kirk Hinrich would get a few years ago, when he would just pass the ball to Deng and Gordon, who would hit a jumpshot. Anyone can make that pass. While Rose has shown some improvement on the defensive end, he is still a bad defender.

The Bulls didn’t make life easy for Derrick when they got rid of Ben Gordon, but that doesn’t excuse Derrick Rose for playing as poorly as he has. It’s unacceptable for a team to have their leading shot taker scoring at 48.7 TS%. That is a recipe for a bad offense. While the driving lanes are more clogged than last year, Rose is still getting to the basket. Rose would be having a much easier time on the basketball court if he had put in the work this summer to make his three point shot respectable. Given that he is shooting 12.5% from three, and looks scared to even attempt a three point shot, I am going to guess that he didn’t put in the necessary work this summer, and because of this, rendered himself as a bad offensive player.

Don’t believe Derrick Rose is a bad offensive player? He has -0.1 offensive win shares on the season.

Kirk Hinrich - F

While Kirk Hinrich has been solid defensively, he has been one of the worst offensive players in the NBA. He is scoring at 40.6 TS% and has -0.8 offensive win shares on the season. There is no level of defense that Kirk Hinrich can play that warrants him seeing an NBA court with offense this well.

John Salmons - F

John Salmons has been ineffective scoring the basketball in the early going of the season. While he is averaging 13.8 points per a game, he is doing it on an unacceptable 48.0 TS%. A basketball team can simply not be competitive when one of it’s main offensive players, in Salmons, is performing this poorly on the offensive end. Unfortunately, Salmons brings little on the other side of the court, as he is one of the worst defenders at the shooting guard position in the entire league.

Jannero Pargo - F

And there’s the sweep. All three guys who Jerry Reinsdorf said Ben Gordon would struggle to get playing time over get failing grades for the first quarter of the season. When you have a reputation of being a player who can’t play defense, but is valuable to a team because of your ability to score, you better be able to score. Pargo, however, is scoring at 45.1 TS% and has -0.3 offensive win shares on the season.

Aaron Gray - F

While Aaron Gray has been injured most of the season, he has used his five games back to show fans his best Dalibor Bagaric impression.

James Johnson - F

Johnson, like Rose, is an example of raw talent. He has shown some flashes on both ends of the court, but has struggled to put together a good performance on both sides of the court. On most nights, he is bad on both sides of the court.

Lindsey Hunter - F-

I’m not sure if you can actually give someone an F-, but I am going to try here. I’m not a fan of John Hollinger’s PER statistic, but when you have a -2.0 PER, that has to be bad, right?

Tyrus Thomas - Incomplete

Tyrus Thomas only got to play in four games before breaking his arm in a freak weightlifting accident. Thomas struggled offensively, but it is too small of a sample size to really judge him on. In his four games this season, Thomas played really good defense. Thomas probably deserves a B grade for the small set of games he played this year.

Closing Comments

The grades may seem a little harsh, but they are a reflection of the reality of the Chicago Bulls. The Bulls have the 24th best record in the league, are ranked 27th in the Dabullz.com Power Rankings, are ranked 28th in SRS, 28th in Pythagorean W-L, and are ranked 29th in John Hollinger’s power rankings. When you are receiving marks that low as a team, there are going to be a lot of players failing out.

The Chicago Bulls defeated the Detroit Pistons 92-85 at the United Center, snapping their five game losing streak.

The story of the game of course was Ben Gordon’s return to the United Center. When he first checked into the game he was greeted with a mixture of cheering and boos.

It was good to see a sizable portion of the United Center crowd cheering for the guy. Unfortunately, I don’t think this crowd is necessarily representative of what would happen with a normal United Center crowd. I suspect that a lot of Ben Gordon’s bigger fans among the Bulls’ fan base purchased tickets for this game. A normal United Center crowd probably would have been full of more of the non-informed fans who booed Gordon, who don’t really understand basketball and the contribution that Ben Gordon brought to the Bulls’ basketball wise, as well as his great conduct off the court.

It’s impossible to support fans who decided to boo Ben Gordon. Gordon was the Bulls’ best player for almost his entire time in a Bulls uniform, and did nothing but work hard his entire time in a Bulls uniform. His Bull career ended with him scoring 33 points on 55.7 TS%, as he tried to gut out a victory for the Bulls while playing on a torn hamstring.

Ben Gordon ended up having a mediocre return to the United Center, which is not really surprising, given that he was coming off an ankle injury. Gordon still finished with 18 points on 6-16 shooting. To put Gordon’s performance in perspective, he scored on a greater volume and scoring efficiency in this game than John Salmons, Kirk Hinrich, and Jannero Pargo, the three players who are replacing his minutes on the court.

Defensively, Gordon stuck his man pretty well. Derrick Rose and John Salmons had some pretty good nights, but very few of their points came against Gordon.

Defensively, the Bulls were a mixed bag defensively on Gordon. John Salmons and Lindsey Hunter were a complete failure in guarding Gordon. Gordon missed a lot of shots that he would normally make against those two. Neither could keep him from getting clear looks at the basket, and Salmons especially had trouble stopping Gordon from getting to the basket.

Where the Bulls excelled defensively on Ben Gordon was in their help defense. That is because of Luol Deng and Joakim Noah. These two guys were frustrating Ben Gordon all night. I think this shows that Luol Deng and Joakim Noah are some high basketball IQ players. They seemed to know Gordon’s game as good as one can. Whenever he burned John Salmons, Noah or Deng were right there helping, making the correct reactions to frustrate Gordon’s shots.

I think Ben Gordon definitely has the potential to be a Bull killer in the future. He can get any shot he wants at will against John Salmons or Lindsey Hunter. Things might be a little different when Kirk Hinrich is guarding him, but with Hinrich’s physical play, it’s easy to see Hinrich getting into foul trouble. Ben Gordon also has a history of completely burning smaller guards, so that also works in Gordon’s favor in the potential Ben Gordon vs. Kirk Hinrich matchup.

As for the rest of the game, this was a win the Bulls needed, as they were coming off a five game losing streak from their road trip, and they were also playing a bad Detroit Piston’s team. The Pistons were without Richard Hamilton, Tayshaun Prince, Charlie Villanueva, and Ben Gordon was coming off of an injury. The Bulls better beat a team who features Chucky Atkins, Jonas Jerebko, and Jason Maxiell in their starting lineup.

The Pistons starting lineup finished with only 33 points on 11-37 shooting. No team is going to win when their starting lineup performs that poorly.

This is not to say that the Pistons will be a bad team all season. If they get all of their guys back, they can probably make the playoffs. As bad as they have been, they’re only 1.5 games behind Charlotte for the final playoff spot, and are only 4 games behind Miami for a playoff seed that features home court advantage.

The Bulls seemed to be in control of the game nearly the entire time. The Pistons made some runs to close the gap some throughout the games, but the Bulls would repeatedly build their lead back up.

Derrick Rose had a good game, scoring 19 points on 6-9 shooting along with 6 assists. He did have five turnovers in the game, but his highly efficient scoring mitigated the effect of those turnovers.

John Salmons did great offensively, scoring 22 points on 7-12 shooting, but he had trouble defensively, stopping Ben Gordon from getting good shots.

Luol Deng struggled a bit, scoring 14 points on 5-15 shooting, but his defense was superb.

Joakim Noah had another great night, finishing with 7 points, 14 rebounds, 5 assists, and 3 blocks.

Brad Miller finally had a good game, finishing with 16 points, 7 rebounds, and 6 assists.

For the Pistons, Rodney Stuckey finished with 17 points, but did it on 4-16 shooting. Stuceky struggled to score efficiently tonight as he is very much a one dimensional scorer, who gets his points by driving to the basket. The Bulls set up with good help defense when he drove, and that forced him to score inefficiently.

Willy Bynum and Kwame Brown finsiehd with 10 points each.

The former Bull, Ben Wallace, finished with 0 points and 7 rebounds.

With the win, the Bulls improve to 7-9 in the season, and are slotted as the 7th seed in the East.

The Chicago Bulls were blown out for the fourth straight game of the circus trip, losing to the Utah Jazz 105-86.

One of the key issues of the game was the Bulls’ lack of depth. The Bulls were without Kirk Hinrich, who was forced out with an injury to his hand. Without him, the Bulls are forced to play Jannero Pargo (or Lindsey Hunter) significant minutes, and neither of those options are conductive to winning basketball.

The other main problem with the Bulls last night was a complete defensive breakdown. The guards failed to close out on shooters, giving the Jazz good looks on their jumpshots. Additionally, the Bulls guards failed to stick with their men in motion. Up front, the Bulls were just as bad. Brad Miller, Taj Gibson, and James Johnson were often out of position, leading to Utah getting a lot of easy looks right at the basket.

The Bulls were completely dominated by the Utah Jazz front court. Carlos Boozer led the way, finishing with 28 points on 12-14 shooting, 8 rebounds, 5 assists, and 3 blocks. Mehmet Okur chipped in 14 points on 5-9 shooting, and Paul Millsap finished with 12 points on 6-8 shooting and 9 rebounds.

Conversely, the Bulls front court produced little. Joakim Noah had 6 points on 3-9 shooting and 9 rebounds, Taj Gibson had 8 points on 4-5 shooting, and Brad Miller had 0 points, and James Johnson had 10 points on 3-6 shooting, but all of those came in garbage time.

I think it is time for the Bulls to end the Taj Gibson experiment. He can hit the the midrange jumpshot pretty well, but he is too much of a string bean to compete on the low block.

If the Bulls are going to suck without Tyrus Thomas, which it looks like they will, they might as well take advantage of the opportunity to develop James Johnson. Because of his strength, Johnson is more apt to playing downlow than Gibson. Johnson also could open up the Bulls offense, as he shows a willingness to try to create his own shot, and Johnson would also improve the Bulls’ dismal fastbreak.

That was one of the Bulls biggest problems last night. They could not finish on the fastbreak. Multiple times last night, John Salmons tried to finish on the fastbreak by himself only to be blocked.

Salmons had another bad game, scoring just 9 points on 4-11 shooting.

Ronnie Brewer scored 15 points on the Bulls, many on easy baskets near the rim off of backdoor cuts.

The Jazz also won the point guard matchup. Rose finished with 19 points on 9-17 shooting, while Deron Williams finished with 21 points on 9-11 shooting, and 6 assists.

Luol Deng played pretty well last night, finishing with 26 points, 8 rebounds, and 4 steals. His scoring efficiency wasn’t the greatest, but he played hard all game.

Aaron Gray returned to the court last night for the Bulls.

With the loss, the Bulls fall to 6-8 on the season, and their losing streak is extended to four games.

Closing Comments

It looks like the Bulls ship is sinking fast. It was always going to be a challenging season because of the Bulls’ offensive struggles, but now it looks like the season could become a shipwreck, because of their newfound defensive struggles. The Bulls, who were one of the elite defensive teams at the beginning of the season, have now fallen down to the 15th best defensive team, and they have been getting worse with each progressing game. If the Bulls can’t score or defend, this is going to be a very tumultuous season.

The most disheartening part of the game is the Bulls complete lack of effort. Luol Deng and Joakim Noah were the only two players showing any kind of hustle last night.

The other thing that needs to be considered is the extent that Kirk Hinrich. It is unacceptable for the Bulls to trot out Jannero Pargo and Linsdey Hunter for a prolonged period of time. Bulls fans should not accept it, especially when there is a bit of an Answer out there for the Bulls guard problems.

According to the Chicago Daily Herald, Kirk Hinrich, Luol Deng, and Lindsey Hunter have been named the 2009-2010 Captains of the Chicago Bulls.

Hinrich joined Luol Deng and Lindsey Hunter in winning this year’s player vote, which wasn’t at all surprising. Hinrich and Deng are repeat captains and Hinrich has served in the role several times since joining the Bulls in 2003.

I am not all that thrilled about the Bulls captain choices. The one selection that I am very pleased with is Kirk Hinrich. He is the longest tenured Bull and he plays hard every night, and plays tough defense. He had that one bad year in 2007-2008, but bounced back last season, showing resiliency. He is a good role model for the other players on the team.

I am indifferent in regards to Lindsey Hunter as a captain. He has been in the league for a long time, so he probably has a lot of the players’ respect.

The one I am upset with, is Luol Deng being named a captain, as I don’t see Deng as being a strong leader. Deng has always seemed mentally weak to me and is often out of the lineup. He seems like a generally bad fit to be one of the leaders of your team, even if he is the second longest tenured Bull.

It would have been nice to see Derrick Rose be named a captain, given that he is the starting point guard, and is the franchise player.

However, captains don’t really mean all that much. Once these guys hit the court, I’m sure Derrick Rose will be the one leading the way.

According to Zach Bissonnette of Wallet Pop, Lindsey Hunter was a partner to a company investigated by the FBI for mortgage fraud. No charges have been brought against Hunter, and he has maintained that he did not know about the wrongdoing.

Current Chicago Bulls point guard Lindsey Hunter was a partner in a company that was investigated by the FBI for mortgage fraud. He has not been charged with any crime, and his lawyers have maintained that he was a silent partner and was unaware of wrongdoing and terminated his involvement when he became aware of untrue representations.

It’d be interesting to hear more on this. I don’t think this is any big knock on Hunter, just sounds like he got involved with a shady financial company, which happens to lots of athletes. I highly doubt that Lindsey Hunter was doing any of the mortgage fraud. His part in the partnership was likely providing some money, and then he probably left it to those in the company to work their magic and make him some money.

Earlier today it was revealed that Rashard Lewis tested positive for DHEA, which resulted in a 10 game suspension.

The ESPN article says that DHEA is commonly used to recover from fatigue. Rashard Lewis was recovering from knee tendinitis at the end of the season, so he may have been using the DHEA in an attempt to recover from the injury.

Rashard Lewis used the time tested excuse that he didn’t know he was taking anything illegal. I actually believe Lewis, and here is why. The ESPN article states that Rashard Lewis went back to his team, the Magic, to help him figure out why he failed the drug test. Those are not the actions of a man that is trying to break the rules and get away with it.

I think what probably happened was that Lewis was looking for some assistance in recovering from injuries and fatigue, and he thought he found a supplement to help him in that. I think that Lewis thought this was an okay substance to use for such purposes because he was able to purchase it over the counter at his local pharmacy.

Since the NBA began testing in 1999, Rashard Lewis became the sixth player to fail a drug test. Matt Geiger, Don McLean, Soumalia Samake, Darius Miles, and our very own Lindsey Hunter have also tested positive under the NBA’s drug testing. Rafael Aruajo also tested positive for steroids at the 2002 World Championships.

Will the use of performance enhancing drugs become big in the NBA? I don’t think so. Looking as far back as high school sports, you just don’t see a steroid culture around high school basketball that you see around high school baseball and football.

I think how much of a skill based game basketball is has a lot to do with the lack of a drug culture (well a PED culture that is) around the sport. In baseball and football, the benefits of steroids are obvious. Taking steroids won’t help a ball player become a better ball handler, passer, or shooter.

Where steroids can help in basketball is in play in the paint. Steroids could help a player become stronger, allowing them to finish through contact better, or hold position when boxing out or when an opponent is trying to back them down.

The other benefit, which can affect all players, is the ability to recover faster from injuries and fatigue, which appears to be what Lewis was after.

Will performance enhancing drugs become a major problem in the NBA like it is in the MLB? We’ll have to wait and see, but I personally don’t think it will become a major problem.

According to ESPN.com, Lindsey Hunter has come to contract terms with the Bulls to play one more year.

Sources with knowledge of the deal told ESPN.com that Hunter is receiving a one-year contract for the veteran minimum of $1.3 million, similar to the one-year deal for $2 million that the Bulls just completed with Jannero Pargo.

I think that the Bulls wanted Lindsey Hunter back in a player role so that the players don’t tune him out. As a player, he will be one of the guys, and his teammates will be more likely to listen to him. If he is on the coaching staff, and things go bad, players may begin to tune him out. It seems to be pretty common for players to tune out the coaching staff when things go poorly.