The fact that the Bulls couldn’t seal the deal with a coach who wanted to coach here, when the players wanted to play for that coach, and when the fans wanted that coach after selling out that shitty arena for years with horrible, horrible teams… I’m just disgusted. This franchise is bush league. It is just a matter of time before the exodus begins. I can see Lu leaving, Ben leaving, trading Tyrus Thomas – Paxson can see the talent, he just can’t nurture it. He cares more about toughness and discipline than winning. And now it seems like they lowballed Avery Johnson as well. It is beyond ridiculous, players are just ripping the organization. Get ready for the next Bulls coach – Doug Collins.

I’m already over caring about next season

we can find comfort in the fact that there’s still Pete Myers and Ron Adams on the staff.
:-(

why would avery join the bulls if they wont pay him more then what he is making by taking time off. Unless he is desperate to get back to coaching he would lose tons of money. If the bulls arent willing to pay D’Antoni, they arent gonna pay Johnson? If they do, that would add injury to insult.

Personally, I thought D’Antoni would have been a nice addition to the team. He is well-respected by players and I think the listless losers on the current Bulls roster would have been energized with him at the helm. I didn’t buy the “no defense” talk because the Bulls have better natural defenders than the Suns. Moreover, Pax’s and Reinsdorf’s insistence that the Bulls retain their identity as a defensive-minded team is laughable. This team has no identity! At a minimum, his hiring would have brought some excitement to a team that is bordering on irrelevancy.

I did not go into this thinking “D’Antoni or bust,” so although I am disappointed that the Knicks got him, I am more disappointed with Paxson’s (and maybe Reinsdorf’s) general handling of the coaching search. These repeated statements about how this will be done on the Bulls’ schedule ignores the realities of how these deals are done. If someone is available, you make an offer or else that person gets hired elsewhere.

As I understand it, Pax’s approach was that he was going to interview everyone on his list and not make a decision until all interviews were held. Guess what? Carlisle and D’Antoni have been hired. Johnson is probably not going to coach for anyone next year. Mike Dunlap (who?!) has been hired by Arizona. Who is left? Tom Thibodeau? What if he doesn’t work out or stays with the Celtics? Mark Jackson (who has said he would only coach the Knicks)?

There is a lot of speculation that losing D’Antoni came down to money (which is reasonable given Reinsdorf’s involvement). Please remember that the Bulls raised ticket prices this season, making us the third most expensive ticket in the NBA. Is the team purposely trying to insult its fans at this point? Remember that we are paying for the privilege of a losing team, incompetent coaching and an overall boring product. Can someone remind me why I still care?

spoke to Reinsdorf?

Reports indicated that they were going to meet this weekend.

I wonder if Reinsdorf stated that the Bulls weren’t prepared to offer financial terms comparable to the Knicks?

And while this isn’t a disaster for the franchise and doesn’t presage doom, it certainly isn’t a positive development either. If people were reticent to get excited over D’Antoni, who was an established head coach with a gaudy winning percentage, then there definitely isn’t any reason to get excited over an obscure Boston assistant with no head coaching experience.

A more accurate description is It has become a a teenie weenie dinghy without any oars.

If Pete Myers is on the sidelines again next year along with Adams, I don’t care how many suits they have. They should be required to sit there without any pants on so the fans who were just pantsed could feel some empathy.

What do they do next after Thibodeau signs with the Suns? Maybe Red Kerr would like to try his hand again at the helm. After all, he did get an expansion team to the playoffs in his first year, and think of how Aaron Gray would prosper when 50% of the offense would be funnelled through him..

is Paxson interviewing any other candidates?

when he can make more money sitting on a beach in Cancun sipping pina coladas with his only headaches coming from too much sun and too much rum?

Now I for one was more interested in having Avery Johnson coach the Bulls than D’antoni, but it’s not like D’antoni would have been a bad option. But I am beyond infuriated with the Bulls for being cheapskates and not matching or exceeding what the Knicks spent for D’antoni. Hell, if you can throw 15 million at Ben Wallace then you can throw 6 or 7 mil at a coach. Who in the hell are we gonna end up with now? Who is Tom Thibedeau?? The only reason he’s hot now is becuase Boston won 66 games. When he was an assistant in Houston with his defensive scheme you didn’t hear his name bandied about as a being a potential head coach. We didn’t pull the trigger or the Gasol deal. We didn’t pull the trigger on several other deals. Now we didn’t pull the trigger on the D’antoni deal and Johnson has reportedly turned down what we offered him. What now? I’m beginning to despise Johnny Jumpshot. It’s killin’ me cause I’ve been a huge Paxson fan since he first came to the Bulls as a player. But I’m gettin’ sick of his shenanigans!!! And why does he insist on keeping Adams and Myers on the staff of whoever the next coach is???

I don’t know where this leads us, but unfortunately I think it means the team drafts Kevin Love, which is only bad in my book. Thibodeau being a Van Gundy disciple does not excite me. Avery is not a new philosophy. Mark Jackson, I guess, would be our best remaning hope?

I usually jump the gun to criticize Pax and Reinsdorf so I will restrain from doing so this time and see what the end up doing. I just hope they are intent on giving the fans competitive entertainment worth the prices they charge us. D’Antoni would have done that and would have raised the trade values of our guys.

Says D’Antoni is going from a Country Club to Riker’s Island. That the New York media will eat him alive. I gotta say I have no idea What D’Anotini is going to do in new york. Curry and Randloph are write offs. Marbury, Nate Robinson? Ha. Jamal Crawford is going to end up putting 30 FG attempts a game. The few hustle guys they have cant contribute offensively. At least he gets reunited with Q. Maybe the Bulls didnt offer enough money but I will not be surprised if D’Antoni resigns in a year. Ha.

Talk about making a coach really want to jump at an offer with an incentive like this. Couldn’t they have at least kicked it up from $4,25 million to $5? The answer of course is NO WAY, not when they think they can low ball Thibodeau at $2. Since Pax is so hung up on defense, maybe he can use his business savvy to get the corpse back by offering him another 5 years at only $10 million per annum as long as they throw in Tyrus Thomas to sweeten the deal for the Cavs.

I may have to change my sign-in from Tyrusmancrush to Paxsonisanidiot after Ford’s cogent commentary summed up everything that is wrong with this Mickey Mouse, chickenshit organization.

They spend so much time trying to be in the catbird seat, they wind up with nothing but bird droppings once again. The Knicks showed him some love while the Bulls showed him there are more horses asses than there are horses.

Read it and weep.
http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/columns/story?columnist=ford_chad&page=DAntoni-Knicks-080510

Tyger1147, if you really could actually talk out of your ass, you would probably be hired by Reinsdork in a millisecond as the Bulls PR representative because you would be speaking their language.

This is the most profitable team in the NBA, so money shouldn’t have even been an issue. I don’t want to hear the spin that “Paxson wasn’t sold on D’Antoni” – if he wasn’t, then why did they even pursue him? They didn’t get him for one reason and one reason only – money. I’ve spent more than enough of my money on this franchise, so I’ll let some other sucker take my place.

If enough fed up fans follow suit, maybe they will finally get the message that we’ve had enough and aren’t going to take it anymore.

is paxson demon possessed or something?

now when the knicks suck we can say we jammed them again by driving up the price on D’Antoni.

LeBron’s game would be a perfect fit in D’Antoni’s offense. Plus they have all the Olympic time spent together, which I’ll assume has been positive. If Walsh can clear out the crap on the team in the next 2 years and start assembling LeBron’s supporting cast, I think the red carpet will be rolling out for LBJ in 10/11 and he’ll be walking down it. This is a scary thought for the Bulls.

It’s not that D’Antoni was definitely the best option; it’s possible Thibodeau or Mark Jackson could end up being really good. It’s that signing D’Antoni to a big contract would’ve signalled that we’re going for a championship.

If we bring in a Thibodeau, that signals that we’re a few years away. That we can still afford to play sub-par, because we don’t have a superstar and we’re still a young team. If we make the playoffs next year as a #6 seed under Thibodeau, that’s a success. And that really disappoints me.

Pax did some good things with the Bulls. He made some smart, conservative picks early on (Hinrich, Gordon, Deng), and took some chances with more athletic players later (Tyrus, Thabo). He even made the ballsy move of signing Ben Wallace, which I liked because at least Paxson went for it.

After Wallace though, I don’t know. The Hinrich signing, the Nocioni signing, the falling-through of Garnett, Pau, and Kobe, the fudged offers to Deng and Gordon, the hiring of Boylan, and the refusal to make Boylan play Tyrus… all together, it was too many bad mistakes.

Now, this team has no direction. We have no top-75 players, we have no cap space, we have no extra draft picks, and we have no coach. The same team that had all the necessary assets to trade for a Kevin Garnett now has no assets and no playoff berth, and it’s all on Pax.

I thought all I had to do is to click on reply under the post I am addressing and it will magically appear under it. What am I missing? because that is what I’m doing.

Have you forgotten he was the one who signed Adrian Griffen, Cedric Simmons and Victor Khryapa? Talk about value. The combined salaries of all that talent would barely be enough to pay for one year’s salary ($5.2 million) of D’Antoni.

I dream of point guards someday coming to the Bulls, so this must have been a Freudian slip. It was a long article with lots of Knicks stuff and I only wanted to highlight the portions that pertained to the Bulls. But it has become obvious, it there is a finger of blame to be pointed, it should be pointed directly at the chairman.

I had been under impression that they got outbid by the Knicks, but apparently they never even bothered to make an offer. So they’re not cheap – they’re incompetent instead. I mean, if you want to hire a head coach, I’m pretty sure you have to actually offer him the job and a contract. Poor D’Antoni probably didn’t even think the Bulls wanted to hire him, since they had met with him for a week without making a job offer.

And the people faulting D’Antoni for not waiting for a Bulls offer are just wrong. What would have happened if he didn’t accept the Knicks offer, the Bulls continued to dither around, and the Knicks decided to hire Mark Jackson in the meantime? D’Antoni would have had to hope the Bulls would offer him a good contract (and he would have had no negotiating leverage), or go back to the Suns and wait to get bought out/fired in the summer. Most coaches are going to take the first acceptable offer they get, for fear of being left without a job. If the Bulls can’t figure that out, they’re going to lose out on several more coaches before this is over.

he met with both paxson and jerry and neither one of them even mentioned an offer? that really doesnt make sense if reports about Jerry coming away from the friday meeting impressed. seems like he would have made an offer then, its not as if he needs anybody else’s approval. it is unlikely that he went into the friday meeting without a contract in mind. The business about not getting a chance to make an offer makes the Bulls look incompetent. Honestly I dont really blame D’Antoni when u look at the respective rosters. Bulls are the bottom of the barrel once again and they aren’t going to be able to attract big name talent here (coaching or otherwise) until they start spending money. unfortunately Jerry seems content to make big profits and pocket them instead of reinvesting in our beloved bulls

They will interview recently dismissed Dallas coach Avery Johnson after moving away from Johnson this week to focus on D’Antoni.

They will continue to consider former Minnesota coach Dwane Casey, who has already interviewed once with the Bulls and is bound for Dallas as an assistant to Rick Carlisle if he can’t get the Bulls’ job.

And they will request permission to speak with Boston Celtics assistant coach Tom Thibodeau, architect of the defense that’s giving LeBron James so much trouble in the playoffs.

The Bulls will almost certainly hire one of those three - odds favor the less experienced (but less expensive) Thibodeau - and then start working on boosting the morale of players like Luol Deng, Ben Gordon and Joakim Noah, who were hoping so much to play for D’Antoni.