Bulls Standing Pat As Eastern Conference Arms Race Continues

There's still plenty of time before the NBA season officially gets underway, but the offseason has had its share of big news, particularly in the Eastern Conference. Lots of teams have made moves to improve their chances of contending, and others are rumored to make big moves soon. The big three of Cleveland, Boston, and Orlando have all made big changes to their already stellar rosters, and they all appear to be deeper, more talented teams as a result. Detroit has snatched up Ben Gordon and Charlie Villanueva, and have recently come to terms with Chris Wilcox to come in and add some much-needed depth at power forward. Atlanta has brought in Jamal Crawford to put points on the board in a sixth man role, and Miami are rumored to be in the running for Lamar Odom and Carlos Boozer. Washington brought in Randy Foye and Mike Miller for peanuts, and, if the team stays healthy, they have the talent to get a respectable playoff seeding. Toronto has added Hedo Turkoglu and Jarrett Jack, and the trio of Chris Bosh, Jose Calderon, and Turkoglu could be extremely potent. We might be a ways from the start of the regular season right now, but there's been plenty of noise in the East this summer. For the Chicago Bulls, however, the summer has been remarkably quiet. While their rivals have made big changes and improved significantly (on paper, at least), the Bulls have contented themselves with making moves for role players and signing draft picks James Johnson and Taj Gibson. The teams has certainly not improved on paper, as the Bulls lost their leading scorer to division rivals and replaced him with Jannero Pargo, who can be effective for 12-18 minutes a game, but is definitely not starting material. The Bulls re-signed Lindsey Hunter, who isn't likely to do much other than serve as a mentor for Derrick Rose (which is important, but not the best way to use cap space). Johnson and Gibson might be able to contribute something, but neither is expected to play a big role for the Bulls this year. There is still plenty of time to make moves, and the Bulls have been involved in some rumors involving bigger names. As things stand now, however, the Bulls have avoided the arms race of the East and focused on small changes that seem to be based on financial needs rather than basketball needs. The roster doesn't look bad right now, but there are definitely some questions that come to mind after even the quickest of glances. To begin with, why are we stockpiling young, unproven power forwards? Tyrus Thomas seems to be improving gradually, Joakim Noah is establishing himself as a very solid option at center and power forward, and James Johnson can be valuable because he can also play the 3, but why on Earth did they proceed to draft Taj Gibson? Scouting reports say he can block shots and has decent defensive tools (sounds a lot like Tyrus and Noah to me). However, he seems pretty limited offensively, and, at 24, he doesn't figure to improve very much. In fact, unless Tyrus makes huge improvements over last season, we really didn't even solve our power forward situation at all. But that's not the biggest concern with drafting Gibson. The real concern is why didn't we draft a shooting guard, which we need much more than yet another power forward? Without Gordon, we now have Derrick Rose playing along with John Salmons at shooting guard, even though he's probably more of a small forward. Kirk Hinrich is backing both of them up, but he isn't quite a point guard and he isn't quite a shooting guard. None of this matters too much though, until we look past these three, who will likely do a pretty solid job this year. Should one of them get hurt, we have Pargo, Hunter, and most likely Anthony Roberson in line to fill that void. To me, that is an incredibly weak supporting cast, and, with Kirk's aggressive D and Rose's physical brad of offense, injuries are pretty likely. Like I said, the Bulls have plenty of time to tweak the roster, and they don't necessarily have to make moves during the offseason. They can wait until closer to the trading deadline to see how the current crop fares, but, with the other teams in the East getting deeper and adding more talent to their benches, the Bulls appear set to face much stiffer competition for a playoff spot this season.