Does The Guy Exist?

By: Sam Ada

In Print - January 2007 | View Print Version (PDF)The answer to the question, “How good are the Bulls right now?” draws a plethora of responses, ranging from, “Not as good as we thought they would be” to “They are still developing a promising young core” to “They look like they could come out of the East, but can’t beat a single team in the West.”

What is clear is the following: Skileyball is still in full effect after four years, and the results — during the year that this team is supposed to make The Leap — remain murky.

Skiles, along with GM John Paxson, deserves credit for transforming the Bulls’ franchise from post-Chernobyl remnants to respectable, by relying on three important concepts: defense, toughness of character, and the no-star system.

The latter of Skiles’ sacred tenets may ultimately be the team’s undoing, as the Bulls have had serious fluctuations when it comes to scoring, even as they sit a fair 13th in the NBA at 97.8 PPG. Still, who is the reliable go-to-guy on which they can depend?

Although the players certainly acknowledge their lack of a true number one scoring option, they do not consider this dearth a shortcoming. Luol Deng quickly shoots down the notion that, as the highest scorer out of the starting five, he is the first-option on offense.

“We’ve got so many guys who can score…that we can just go out and play. We look for the mismatch, see who has it going.”

Deng’s assessment gets at the root of what is precisely the Bulls’ problem. Skiles’ starless system and his penchant for distributing players’ minutes in an egalitarian fashion, constrains the ability of those “so many guys who can score” to cut loose and take over on the offensive end. Notes rookie Viktor Khryapa, “There’s no Kobe [Bryant] scoring 30, 40, 60, but every game [guys score] 15, 20. Kirk, Noch, Luol…”

The age-old question then arises as to which structure is more prosperous, the scoring meritocracy or the dictatorship.

Case studies of Kobe Bryant and Tracy McGrady (who recently put a severe hurting on the Bulls) demonstrate that the dictatorship prevails and the NBA is still a league of stars. Name NBA Champs without a star, and you’re Veteran P.J. Brown knows this. He’s played on teams with a clear alpha-scorer.

“If you can have [a go-to guy], you always want a guy who can get you a basket when it’s crunchtime…it’s always advantageous to have a person like that, but we don’t really have nobody on that level. Not yet, anyway.”

TO LAND A STAR, OR INCUBATE ONE

Although there may not be an actual Kobe Bryant or T-Mac currently on the market, general manager John Paxson and Skiles are faced with the dilemma of whether to continue stacking chips slowly, or to go all in.

More reasonably, yet seemingly of little interest to Skiles or Paxson, is whether to find that central figure on the current roster.

Even Larry Brown’s 2003-2004 Skiles-esque five-as-one Detroit Pistons manufactured Chauncey Billups into a marquee name in order to become World Champions. To offer at this point, the three prime candidates for the Bulls’ version of “The Guy,” are: Luol Deng, Ben Gordon, and Ben Wallace-the team’s best player, the team’s most prolific scorer, and an aging vet with serious back problems.

Wallace makes the list because he was acquired specifically for the purpose of adopting this pseudo-starring role, one which he has been not only unable to fulfill but also reluctant to accept. Wallace has stood in the limelight in the past, as a perennial all-star, a defensive player of the year award-winner, and as the soul of that 2004 Pistons Championship team.

These are all titles that no other Bulls player can claim. He has also transcended the status of mere persona, to become a league-wide presence, the reverse negative of the NBA’s picture perfect star: all ugly deflections, box-outs, strips, and swats that win games.

Furthermore, Paxson promised a little something extra in the beginning of the year. Responding to current Pistons’ coach Flip Saunders’ remarks that playing Wallace during last playoffs’ Pistons-Heat series was like playing “four-on-five” on the offensive end, Paxson noted, ” I have a funny feeling that’s gonna motivate Ben Wallace,” adding, “Ben takes offense to that.”

Take offense he may, but generate offense he will not. In the meantime, Wallace would be better served by finding a voice, and using it for what he was brought to Chicago to do: lead.

DENG OR GORDON AS THE GUY?

With Wallace’s skill set on the decline, and his game never suited for scoring in the first place, Gordon and Deng are more likely candidates for The Guy status. Deng, the Bulls’ best all-around player by far, has proven this year that he is more than a cog; he can be the engine that makes the whole thing go. Averaging only 13.8 field goal attempts a game (less than Milwaukee’s Mo Williams and New Orleans’ David West, to name a few) it is clear that Deng still defers quite often to his teammates.

Gordon, on the other hand, has been placed in the basketball-
equivalent role of the designated hitter, asked to shoot at will and to score by any means. Two caveats to Gordon’s role are that he plays most of his minutes with the second unit and he only gets the green-light in the fourth quarter, two features that other teams have begun to zero in on in order to stifle Gordon’s one-man show at the end of games.

“At the end of the fourth quarter, we’re definitely going to give the ball to Ben [Gordon],” Deng notes.

Khryapa adds, “Everybody knows it.”

But in this sense, as one of the best pure scorers in the league, it is as though Gordon has been reduced to a novelty act. Deng, meanwhile, waits unknowingly at the edge of greatness. It has been 10 years since a face of the Bulls has truly existed, and unless a single player emerges as that face, the team will remain “Skiles and the guys” instead of a team that is led by a guy; and perhaps that would be The Guy, the one who will carry them not just to the playoffs, but beyond.

Sam Ada is a freelance writer based in Chicago, where he's finishing his PhD at U of Chicago. He's a founding contributor to the frequently delicious Free Darko. Reach him at freedarko@gmail.com.

Share This Article

No Comments

No comments yet.

Comment On This Article