A Tribute to Keith Bogans

Keith, I don’t think that you’ll be getting many of these, so you might want to save this one…maybe even buy a frame or something.

You came to the Bulls this past summer, signing for about $400,000 over the league minimum and about 1/3 of the amount that your fellow new Bulls’ shooting guards, Kyle Korver and Ronnie Brewer, were getting.  Although new Bulls Head Coach Tom Thibodeau was a fan dating back to your brief time together in Houston, most observers figured that you’d be nothing more than veteran depth on a young team that while improved, wasn’t expected to make any kind of loud noise on the 2010-11 NBA scene.

Of course, you worked hard to prepare yourself for the coming season, same as always, and play whatever role coach Thibs wanted you to play.  Since you’d been around the NBA block a time or two, you knew about Chicago and its fans.  Great sports town, love their teams and have a particular fondness for “blue collar” type players who may not be the most talented, but give it their all when they’re out there…definitely your kind of fans.

The Trouble “Starts”

Late September comes around and you find that Brewer is still suffering from the hamstring injury he suffered last season.  As a result, Thibs puts you in the starting preseason lineup and you’re absolutely shooting lights out…over 50% for field goals and a kinda crazy 50% on 3-pointers.  Your preseason true shooting percentage, one of those new high-tech scoring efficiency stats, is an absolutely ridiculous 70%, by far the best on the team…hell, it was probably some kind of world record.  Yeah, you didn’t score a lot, but Thibs didn’t really want you to.  Besides, how many points are you gonna to score when you only take 3 or 4 shots a game?

All in all, things had started off very, very nicely.

The regular season begins and Brewer’s still not ready so Thibs keeps you in the starting lineup.  Your team, who most experts pick as the 4^th or 5^th best in the Eastern Conference, faces a positively brutal early schedule…damn near all playoff teams and most of ‘em on the road.  Big-money free agent forward Carlos Boozer busted his hand and will miss the first month…great.  In early December, the Bulls are barely above .500 and it appears that you wasted all of your shooting mojo on the preseason.  You’re shooting an anemic 37% from the field, and as the starting squad’s designated spot-up 3-point specialist, you’re converting a pathetic 26% from the arc.

Brewer’s back and he’s playing more minutes than you, but he’s taken exactly one three-point shot for the season and apparently this isn’t what Thibodeau wants from his starting shooting guard.  Korver’s shooting well, but it seems that the only thing that makes Thibs sicker to his stomach than watching Kyle Korver try to defend opposing guards is watching a tired Kyle Korver try to defend guards…so he limits Korver’s minutes and keeps trotting you out there with the starting unit.  The natives are getting restless and looking for someone to blame.  For an increasing number of Bulls’ fans, you’re that someone.  Your poor shooting and low scoring numbers are clearly among the reasons they’ve pinned a “Kick Me” sign on your backside, but the fact that you’re a starter seems to be what the fans and media just can’t get over.

And yeah, I was one of ‘em.

You deserved a lot of the criticism.  I mean, you truly were playing poorly on offense.  Still, we were kind of silly to put so much emphasis on the fact that you got to have your name and college announced at the beginning of games.  The truth was that you were a sub who just so happened to play his minutes at the beginning of each half.

Everything Changes…Well, Not Everything

It was December 4th, you were coming off a loss to the Celtics the previous night and hosted the Houston Rockets.  The Bulls blew a lead, but came back to win in overtime.  You had an OK game, scoring 6 points on only 3 shots in your typical 16 minutes.  It wasn’t pretty, but having lost 5 of your last 8 and 3 of your last 4, it was just good to get the W.  Even being the blame-magnet you had become, no one could fault you for failing to see that your team was about to go on one of the most improbable runs in the history of Chicago sports.

The Rockets win was the start of a 7-game winning streak that the team built into a 14-2 stretch.  Early in the new year, we looked up to find that the Bulls had pretty much locked up the NBA’s Central Division.  The team was back where we thought they should be.  Fans were more or less content and the media was writing nice things, particularly about Thibodeau and the team’s freshly-minted superstar Derrick Rose.

Maybe it was because all the newfound Bulls’ love was being directed elsewhere, but you got none of it.  Instead, this was when the hypothetical “How good would the Bulls be if they only had a real starting shooting guard instead of Bogans?” gained what would become an enduring popularity.  Nobody seemed to notice that you had re-discovered your shooting touch during the team’s year-end turnaround…probably because you were still only scoring 4-6 points a night.

Losses at New Jersey and Philly calmed folks down a bit, but then the team got crazy.  We all know the rest of the story.  Beginning with that early-December OT victory over Houston, the team went an incredible 53-12 to finish with 62 wins, best in the league.  In the process, the Bulls were THE story of the 2010-11 NBA season, Rose became a lock for the MVP award, Thibs started clearing a place on the mantle for his Coach of the Year trophy and even long-time whipping boy Luol Deng was being mentioned for postseason defensive honors.

Alas, while it’s a great time to be a Bull, if you’re into acclaim from your fandom, it’s still not that great to be Keith Bogans.

Sorry Man, You Did OK

Last summer, the announcement of your signing pretty much elicited a group yawn.  Those who had heard of you knew you were a classic NBA journeyman…a defensive specialist who seldom made mistakes, could hit your share of open 3s and was a positive veteran presence in the locker room.  You’ve been pretty much as advertised and the fans might have embraced you if not for Thibodeau sticking in the starting lineup.  In any case, once you became the starter you stayed there, starting all 82 regular season games.

Like the Bulls, your season can be divided into two parts…the 17 games before that Houston overtime win and the 65 games after it.  In those last 65 games, you quietly were a positive force on defense and even put up some pretty nice offensive numbers.  You didn’t score much (4.4 points per game), but you had a very good reason…you didn’t shoot much (3.6 shots per game).  Keeping in mind that you only averaged 17 minutes per game over those last 65, it seems fair to point out that you actually averaged a more respectable 9.4 points per-36 minutes. 

Even including those awful first 17 games, while you didn’t score much, you were very efficient and pretty darn accurate.  Your 38.0% from the three-point line was 3^rd on the team behind only Korver and C.J. Watson and well above the league average of 35.8%.  Your effective field goal percentage of 55% was second only to center Omer Asik (and damn near all of his shots were dunks) and only Joakim Noah and Korver posted a better “true shooting percentage” than your 56%.

Oh yeah, your 1.0 turnovers per-36 minutes were the lowest on the team.

Regardless of what the fans and media say, given the nature of the Bulls roster, the team needed you to have a good season and you did.  Were you a critical reason for the Bulls’ surprising success?  No, but you did contribute both by what you did (defense and accurate shooting) and what you didn’t do (take stupid or forced shots, turn the ball over or miss games).

So I apologize for what I said about you early in the season…you’re a pro and you’ve given us the best you have.  And while just about everyone continues to look forward to the day that you’re no longer starting for the Bulls, here’s hoping that come June, you’ve got some new jewelry to wear.  No one can take that away from you.