[maravich44Participant]

Now that the draft has come and gone and the Ben Gordon situation appears resolved, it looks like the team’s roster is pretty much intact. Yes, a trade could still be made and there are free agents out there, but this doesn’t look like the year we’re going to sign anyone of significance and no rumor of substance have surfaced. Looks like in a nutshell, we lost Gordon and gained Johnson. Doesn’t sound like an improvement in terms of talent on our roster to me.

Lineup looks like:

Rose
Salmons
Deng
Thomas
Noah

Bench consists of Hinrich, Johnson and Miller. Couple of other bodies will be able to contribute bits and pieces, but this for all intents and purposes will be what the Bulls will go to war with.

The keys to a successful season if this is in fact our roster are:

1. Continued development of younger players like Rose, Thomas and Noah. With a year under his belt, you know Rose will be better. Noah has worked hard this off season to get into better shape, and Thomas improved greatly last season. His progress is probably the greatest barometer of where the Bulls will stand in the near future.

2. Health of Deng. If he continues to be injured, we have no depth at 3-4 except an unproven rookie.Our rotation is short to begin with and Deng not only needs to be healthy, he needs to play at the high end of his possible level of performance.

3. Hope that we have built some momentum from 2nd half of last season and a good showing in the first round. Vinnie also has a year under his belt and maybe he will actually know when to call a timeout. I doubt it too. Sad to thionk how important Gordon was in the Celtic series and the fact that they played without their best player, so I’m not putting too much stock in this key.

I’m thinking the Bulls will be about a 7-8 seed right now. If we can make a good trade and/or sign a decent player perhaps we could do better. If we have injuries or Thomas doesn’t continue to improve, we could be in for a long year. The good news is that next year’s draft looks to be very strong. The bad news is that if Gar and Pax don’t do better than they did this time around, we’re in trouble. Sure would be cool to get a high pick, make it count and sign Bosh and Wade!!!

[ksoezoaooParticipant]

The Rockets, at least, have some talent on their roster. Overpaid though they may be, Jeremy Lin and Omer Asik are certainly skilled, and there are a surprising number of promising rookies and second-year players on this roster, as well. Head coach Kevin McHale hasn’t done a great job developing his kids, however, and on his way out of Houston, Kyle Lowry insinuated that he wasn’t a particularly adept coach in general. With this hodgepodge of extremely young players under the leadership of a coach who might not be the best guy to make something of it, there’s a possibility that the Rockets end up very, very disappointing next season.

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