a Tom Thibodeau coached team will never struggle

[ThemBombs]

thread title. this new Bulls team is considerably stronger than the team that won almost 50 games last season. there is absolutely no way that they don't end up with a top 2 seed this season.

they will be competing with Cleveland for the best record in the NBA and both teams will win 60+ games, barring injuries. Guaranteed.

[Jameerthefear]

No Flex
Zone

[I<3NBA]

a Tom Thibodeau-coached team will never be fully healthy in the playoffs.

[Big Cheese]

they will overachieve in the regular season but will break down in the playoffs

[Cocaine80s]

pretty sure no one is expecting them to struggle

[Lebron23]

Thibs will wear our top players out in meaningless January games like they're mid June NBA Final bouts. Guy can't see the forrest through the trees to save his life. Doesn't know how to ramp it up gradually. It's a marathon not a sprint, yadda yadda and all those other cliches.

In essence, he's a defensive guru, an assistant that's it. He knows how to get after it, but isn't head coach material of a championship caliber team. He doesn't know when to pull back, or how to pace his team.

This

He's a good coach, but he needs to manage the playing time of the players during the regular season.

[coin24]

Thibs will wear our top players out in meaningless January games like they're mid June NBA Final bouts. Guy can't see the forrest through the trees to save his life. Doesn't know how to ramp it up gradually. It's a marathon not a sprint, yadda yadda and all those other cliches.

In essence, he's a defensive guru, an assistant that's it. He knows how to get after it, but isn't head coach material of a championship caliber team. He doesn't know when to pull back, or how to pace his team.

Nailed it:applause:

[Cold soul]

Thibs will wear our top players out in meaningless January games like they're mid June NBA Final bouts. Guy can't see the forrest through the trees to save his life. Doesn't know how to ramp it up gradually. It's a marathon not a sprint, yadda yadda and all those other cliches.

In essence, he's a defensive guru, an assistant that's it. He knows how to get after it, but isn't head coach material of a championship caliber team. He doesn't know when to pull back, or how to pace his team.

Well said. :applause:

[buddha]

Derrick Rose is a bitch tho

[poido123]

The big question of the year.

Will thibs shake off this reputation for overplaying his starters?

He has the depth now. Theres no reason to be playing anyone more than 35 minutes a game.

[Thorpesaurous]

Samarai is spot on. But I do agree with the OP premise. He's just too good at certain fundamentals, especially defensively, to ever coach a team that is bad.

There's a couple guys like this that he reminds me of. The Czar Mike Fratello had a bit of this. He could get a bad team to compete with anyone. But probably wasn't creative enough to put a good team over the top. And in his last run in Memphis, Hubie Brooks did it too. Taking a pretty mediocre team, controlling the tempo, teaching big time defense, and keeping the mistakes down on offense limited the variance talent can create because over 10 possessions talent may not always play out. It's the same reason Princeton used to suck the life out of games and scare the hell out of the big guys in the NCAA tournament, it just can't be done at the NBA level to that extreme.

Another guy who was a little like this to me was old Riley. Riley got a great rep from drastically changing styles after winning five rings playing crazy up tempo. Then he adjusted and fed off the Piston's tough guy image to turn both his Knicks and Heat teams into sluggers. But I wonder how much of his title success was the unsurpressable impact of Magic, along with some of Kareem's scoring and Worthy's end changing that he just was never going to keep in check. We know the Knicks teams never got over the hump, but they also ran into historic level Bull teams. But when his Heat teams seemed to underachieve, there was beginning to be a sense that he was so intense, in part mixing with Mourning who was borderline psychotic as a competitor, that when the playoffs kicked in, and teams stepped up their game, that the Heat teams didn't have another gear to go to because they'd been running themselves into the ground for 5 months.

Anyway, I do worry weather Thibs has some of that in him. And killing guys on minutes is definitely part of that. And I know I talked a little about this in another thread, but I agree this Bull team has more depth than it has in the past, but in addition to that there's a ton of flexibility and weirdly diverse stylistic things that they can do with the types of players they have on their roster. The only guy who's really critical to whatever style they are going after is Rose. I'm really curious about how this team runs this year. I don't know if Thibs has the creativity on offense to really mix things up. Especially with the lineups that would come at the expense of what he does on the other end. I also don't know if there's an assistant there with that type of vision, that would also have enough pull with Thibs to push him.

[juju151111]

Thibs will wear our top players out in meaningless January games like they're mid June NBA Final bouts. Guy can't see the forrest through the trees to save his life. Doesn't know how to ramp it up gradually. It's a marathon not a sprint, yadda yadda and all those other cliches.

In essence, he's a defensive guru, an assistant that's it. He knows how to get after it, but isn't head coach material of a championship caliber team. He doesn't know when to pull back, or how to pace his team.
The thing is he saw The Bulls,Spurs etc.... Where there star players play huge minutes, but not every team is the same. Its not like he wrong most teams that have won chips have stars playing some massive minutes. He just been unlucky and he definitely not a assistant. He a nba coach better then most and crafted a offensive system run through Noah and still won a decent amount of games. He has multiple 60+ win and a ECF. He a great coach and overacheve on occasion.

[ralph_i_el]

Thibs will wear our top players out in meaningless January games like they're mid June NBA Final bouts. Guy can't see the forrest through the trees to save his life. Doesn't know how to ramp it up gradually. It's a marathon not a sprint, yadda yadda and all those other cliches.

In essence, he's a defensive guru, an assistant that's it. He knows how to get after it, but isn't head coach material of a championship caliber team. He doesn't know when to pull back, or how to pace his team.

They look so deep this year that he won't have to worry about managing minutes. How can he run pau into the ground when he has to get Taj 30mpg, and has mcbucketts and mirotic on the bench? Is captain kirk still a bull btw? He's the backup pg I want on my squad in the playoffs