Vinnie D To Run Gooden-Heavy Offense; Beards Across The Country Tremble

The Bulls lost a heartbreaker last night to the T-Wolves (just kidding it was a preseason game and I was the only one in America who cared about it). More importantly though, we saw some interesting developments. There were two things of note that bothered me.

First, and most upsetting, is the backcourt situation. Derrick Rose did not start and VDN went with a backcourt of Hinrich and Hughes to lead off the game. As previously discussed in my Bulls Season Preview, Larry Hughes needs to get as few minutes as possible. True to my prediction, he shot a miserable 3 for 10 (though he was somewhat effective in the first quarter, it didn't last long). Hughes got 31 minutes to Rose's 26. Yikes. Mike McGraw, a (sometimes) talented and thoughtful sportswriter had this to say about the switch:

In some ways, a starting backcourt of Kirk Hinrich and Larry Hughes makes sense. Derrick Rose is struggling a bit to catch up on defense and with a brutal early schedule on tap, why not shield the No. 1 draft pick from some of the November pitfalls?

Please tell me that's not the mentality. We aren't exactly playing for a championship and even if we were, a raw Rose gives us a better chance than fucking Larry Hughes. VDN tries to calm me down a bit:

"We're going to tinker with lineups a bit. We're trying to get healthy and find ways to get guys in shape. Don't read too much into that."
I hope he's not full of shit.

The second thing that bothered me, though it didn't end up hurting us last night, was Drew Gooden thinking the offense had to go through him. He was quoted after the game as saying:

"As long as you work hard," Gooden said with a mischievous smile, "you can take pretty much any shot you want."

Returning from missing one game with a sore back, Gooden tested this theory with 13 shots and a game-high 20 points Tuesday night in the Bulls' 96-86 loss to the Timberwolves at the United Center.

Now when he hits 9-13, that's fine, and I don't think Gooden is a terrible player, but I hope he doesn't take this to be a free ticket to shoot all the time. We have some more talented offense tools (Deng, Gordon, Rose), and the last thing we want is Gooden thinking he can do whatever he wants. Either way it appears he's going to shoot a lot, so lets just hope for more baby hooks and strong layups than his usual brand of fadeaway jumper.

No matter how you look at this 0-3 start to the preseason, it appears the Bulls are having some growing pains, not to mention Ben Gordon missing practices and games and being behind on learning VDN's system. Hopefully things start to come together and people begin to get comfortable in their roles. Quotes like I'm "tinkering" with lineups are not conducive to getting comfortable. Come on VDN, make it work.