or just the first choice this week? And the early reports were that D’Antoni was the more excited one for the potential get together whereas at the end of the week now it’s Paxson who was the one itching to get the deal done? I agree that the whole thing was handled in a sloppy fashion, kind of like dragging your heels to ask the homely girl next door to the prom because you have no shot with anybody else and then finding out she’s already going with some dork from the cross country team. There’s just no win in a situation like that. I don’t feel like losing out on D’Antoni was a loss, but not getting the deal done still hurts.

pax is gonna blow up real soon and make a horrible decision, thus leading to his ultimate [as part of the bulls organization] death. party at my house? be there or be a fan of pax.

Avery’s failures as a head coach are well-known over the past 2 seasons+1 Finals, and the fact that he might cause Kirk to spontaneously combust with angst. I guess the best thing for this team is for it to find its defensive identity again after a pretty lackluster effort this season on that end. My concern about Avery is that his offense in Dallas was mostly a glorified isolation system, which is fine when you have a guy like Dirk. The Mavs were a pretty weak passing team, whereas the Bulls were at their best the past few years when their drive and kick offense seemed to always find the right cutter or open man.

Thibodeau has an excellent reputation for being a defensive mastermind, and has had success with every team he’s been on with making them defensive stoppers. But, there is no way you can hire him as a head coach without having some kind of offensive specialist there to help him out.

he had lots of talent on the Suns and couldn’t get the job done. Personally I never was fond of Dantoni with his constant crying to the refs and his emotional outbursts. If it’s true that he was one of the biggest pushers for the Shaq trade well then thats even more reason to let the dude go to the Knicks. Clearly his value was cash and not Defense. Thats why he beefed with Kerr and the same problems would haunt the Bulls if he was the coach.

So maybe it’s a blessing. Paxson’s main goal should be getting a respectable coach and fix he roster and then worry about a big named coach. After all players win titles right? Just ask Jerry Krause.

However it’s become clear that Paxson is a lame duck GM.

Honestly it’s time to admit he failed with Tyson Chandler.
He miss judged Ben Wallace’s decline in Detroit.
He failed to land KG, Gasol or Kobe.
He failed to sign BG and Deng.
He couldn’t right the ship with high expectations.
He hired a bum assistant coach.
Now he’s missed on his top coaching prospect.

Paxson has failed and I can’t see him pulling through this unless the Bulls get lucky in the lottery. The odds are Paxson’s time is over as Bulls GM. Sadly. He doesn’t gamble and it may have cost him big time.

The Bulls almost certainly will 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.

up coaching this team himself.

McGraw says so

Jackson remains a long shot. The Bulls see the long-time point guard as an intriguing candidate, but are concerned that he has never coached before. Jackson has so far refused the Bulls’ suggestion that he start as an assistant.

If they did, I don’t really have a problem with it…however, it’s just more of the same thing all over again. You know the guy had no coaching experience even before meeting with him. Why pose and posture and even peform due dilligence? Jackson wants a head coaching gig…I’m sure he was insulted to interview for the head job only to be told to go get some experience being an assistant. This franchise cracks me up the way they treat people.

now that D’Antoni is head coach of the Knicks perhaps he and the Walsh braintrust get together to talk trade with the Bulls to acquire those Bulls players D’Antoni likes so much.

this take to be kind of interesting. also to see the negative comments from the readers.

maybe we didn’t lose out. guess we’ll see. what’s really key is what happens next.

Time to rebalance the portfolio.

Out of the blue, Bill Gates calls a couple of big portfolio managers with an exclusive offer of Microsoft shares at a 10% discount to the market. Donnie Walsh says, "Holy shit! How much can I buy?" Paxdorf says, "Well let me commission a feasibility study, I don’t know how well Microsoft is going to fit in my portfolio."

After turning it over in his mind a few days, Paxdorf decides that a 10% discount sounds acceptable and calls Gates back, "Well, the price seems OK, but I’d like to also have a seat on the board."

To which Gates responds, "Sorry, fresh out of shares. Walsh bought it all."

A person with knowledge of the situation said Bulls players were filling team executive John Paxson’s inbox with text messages, begging him to bring D’Antoni to Chicago.

http://www.newsday.com/sports/basketball/knicks/ny-spknix125683405may12,0,7152760.story

yeah I know, I know, more speculation but the thought of Noce texting Paxson brings a smile to my face for some reason…nice…

i think Pax just isn’t fit for this job. i don’t think players, for the most part, are good GMs. GMs need to be shrewd negotiators, which obviously Pax showed in this process he is not. they gotta think quick, talk quick, and move quick, too. look all across sports, all the good GMs are NOT former players. GMs need to evaluate talent as well, but that is what you have scouts for. i have no problem with former players evaluating talent, but your GM is your point man in negotiations. i don’t think Pax is cut out for that role.

RC Buford in San Antonio, bryan colangelo in toronto (he’s assembled some talent), donie walsh is a proven GM, donnie nelson in Dallas (and even though the Kidd trade didn’t work out like they wanted, he still went and got the deal done even after it was stopped twice, which is more than Pax did in pursuing KG, Pau, or Kobe.) Pax keeps waffling and just doesn’t take the risk and move quickly. almost like he’s always second-guessing himself, like he’s afraid to fail. if you don’t risk failure, you’ll never succeed.

i will admit, though, that compared to the other major sports, basketball does have more successful former-player GMs. but that’s the nature of the game as well. you don’t have to hit on as many players like you do in football and baseball. one or to good players in basketball makes you a contender.

the roster still needs work done, though we might’ve been able to stand pat with these guys a bit more with d’antoni. but now i feel a lack in confidence with Pax. i don’t know of any big names to be had in free agency or the trade mill, but if there is one we don’t know about, is Pax gonna be able to go and get that player??

another low lottery pick. Great!! exactly what this team needs. in this draft, if it isn’t one of the top two picks, its not gonna matter.

speaking of drafts, and this is going back a long time, but i always wanted the bulls to draft Odom over Brand. though, if they would’ve kept Brand, that wouldn’t have seemed so bad. i just bring it up from watching yesterday’s Lakers-Jazz game. Odom put on a show, his whole game. that guy could’ve done wonders for the bulls.
and also from that game… if the lakers had won, how would jazz fans be feeling? “first, MJ takes us out with the flu, now Kobe gets hot with a bad back.”

or almost wasn’t bad at all, that Pax missed out.

What made me sick was how he whined about it afterward, and the version of events that he told to the press.

It’s at times like these that someone from inside the organization should stop Pax in his tracks and ask what the f* he thinks he’s doing.

If he was a cold-blooded killer, or even slightly aware of his situation, I’d think he’d put D’Antoni and D’Antoni’s agent on his s* list and bide his time, then tell the press calmly and coolly that D’Antoni’s not that good, and we were in absolute control of our side of the negotiations. End of story.

But this way, he gets to look like a spurned loser, a crybaby and the face of a joke of an indecisive organization whom people routinely feel right to walk all over.

Good going, Pax…! :)

This may be a stretch but in today’s Arizona Republic Steve Kerr outlines the type of coach he wants.

“I don’t want to do a 180 and all of a sudden try to turn us into something we’re not,” Kerr said. “I still want us to maintain our identity as an uptempo team. I’d like to expand that and be more balanced and add some defensive emphasis, but not at the expense of who we are.

“I want someone who’s good with the media and communicates well with players and fans. Someone with a strong presence.”

In the same article it is noted that

He is not naming names, so identifying assistants on his list is pure conjecture. The assistants generating the most buzz are Boston’s Tom Thibodeau and Detroit’s Michael Curry, but both are defensive-minded coaches, and Kerr is not looking for a drastic change in the Suns’ style.

The coaches he may be interested in are:

There are three former Suns players who are assistants on Western Conference playoff teams – the Lakers’ Kurt Rambis, Utah’s Tyrone Corbin and New Orleans’ Kenny Gattison.

Former Suns players and coaches Paul Silas, Paul Westphal, Vinny Del Negro, Eddie Johnson and Lionel Hollins also have surfaced in speculation.

I am not convinced D’Antoni would have succeeded with the Bulls. Steve Kerr is not stupid. Something was very wrong in Phoenix to cause Kerr to lose D’Antoni. It is well documented on this site the concern a number of NY sportswriters have with D’Antoni as coach. D’Antoni would have been great summer excitement for all of us BlogaBullers. I just don’t know if he could have delivered in November.

Well not really, but his actions say otherwise:

As of today, however, Johnson’s representatives had yet to reschedule an interview with Bulls general manager John Paxson, who postponed their original meeting last week.

http://www.suntimes.com/sports/basketball/bulls/945228,bull051208.article

I’ll probably get blasted again for jumping to conclusions but what else is new. The writing is on the wall. You can pretty much count Avery out.

Is Thibadeau even still a good option? Do they really want someone whose team only plays D at home?

The Tribune quotes Reinsdorf saying money wasn’t an issue and D”Antoni lied to him. He claims that D’Antoni told him he did not want to go to the Knicks.

The “misled” accusation stems from their 2-hour-15-minute meeting Friday at D’Antoni’s Phoenix-area home that is mere yards from Reinsdorf’s, a meeting Reinsdorf said he left at 4:45 p.m. local time.

“The second subject, I said if we need to get something done this weekend we shouldn’t even bother talking because it will take longer than that,” Reinsdorf said. “He said nothing had to be done over the weekend.

“I also said if this proceeds to where we want to make an offer, we don’t deal with coach’s agents. He said that’s not a problem and that money wasn’t the most important thing anyway. He said he wanted a job where he was going to be happiest. He said he didn’t want to coach the Knicks.”

The counter D’Antoni continues as Peter Vescey claims there is something that has changed in D’Antoni.

Two months later, D’Antoni became completely unraveled by the Suns’ failure to beat the Spurs. He’d been sarcastic toward opposing coaches for some time and had been condescending to anybody within the organization who disagreed with his philosophy.

But in the San Antonio series, he advised fickle fans who were on the ledge to jump. And he got testy with those in the media who questioned his refusal to order fouling at the end of regulation and OT in Game 1.

However, the biggest shock was his aversion to make offseason defensive and practice adjustments strongly required by owner Robert Sarver and team president Steve Kerr.

and there is more

Like his most recent predecessors, Knicks president Donnie Walsh opted for the name general with a chest full of ribbons. I say an original voice with an unusual message was needed. Walsh says the ex-Suns’ supreme commander gives the Knicks a better chance to win over the next two seasons with basically the same unmovable misfits who were victorious 23, 33 and 23 times under “resumes” Larry Brown and Isiah Thomas.

That was a deciding factor in hiring D’Antoni instead of Jackson, Walsh told me, stating it was a painstaking, mentally exhaustive, down-to-the-wire judgment.

I say Walsh dropped the ball. Either he took his eyes off it or his mind wandered. Upon his arrival he told us his short-term goal: Field a team that played hard and smart, and get progressively better (owning their first-round pick, for a change, surely can’t hurt) until salary-cap constrictions allow the Knicks to recruit a superstar or two.

D’Antoni may have been a terrific fit for the Bulls. Certainly better than the Knicks. I believe he could have added excitment to the offense. There is something about his demeanor over the last few months that concerns me. Wojnarowski also perceives this character flaw.

Everyone is ripping the Chicago Bulls for failing to go harder at D’Antoni, but as one GM who considers Chicago GM John Paxson and Kerr friends said, "To me, Pax is even an even more hardcore defensive guy. He loved the way (Scott) Skiles did it." Paxson insists the Bulls wanted to make an offer on Saturday, but D’Antoni never gave him the chance. If Paxson ends up with Celtics assistant coach Tom Thibodeau, he’ll never regret it.

As for Donnie Walsh, he’s thrown himself into the line of fire. Most of D’Antoni’s peers watched an easy-going, self-deprecating man grow too full of himself, too sensitive to criticism. Perhaps this was a response to his belief that Suns management was undermining him, and maybe that goes away with a GM who hired him, who’s invested in his success.

Lately, the more his system would get questioned, the more irritated D’Antoni showed himself. It spoke to a sensitivity, an insecurity, that could get him torn apart in New York. He’s never been to the NBA Finals, but he always left you thinking that his system was beyond reproach. Popovich has four titles and acts less sure he has it figured out.