I responded to “all we gotta do is just wait!!!” As in, just waiting is enough to turn this team around. Just waiting could turn this team into a 5-seed, which doesn’t interest me.

Unfortunately drafting Tyrus over Lamarcus Aldridge…..even if in 2-3 years from today Tyrus reaches that potential and is better than LMA, LMA is clearly a player we could have used to pair alongside the fading Ben Wallace last year.

Not knowing enough about Noah’s character and choosing him over the offensive ticket we needed in the ever improving and younger Spencer Hawes….. I do think Noah is better than he’s shown, but him not being a “character guy” like Pax claimed the team had is ridiculous.

Overpaying for Luol Deng was tough to stomach. We had a reasonable replacement locked in on the books in Nocioni (not as good, but not as far off as folks wanted). We had the better Gordon coming up at the same time….that was tough to stomach.

Over valuing his scouts on Thabo Sefalosha and letting JR Smith go for nothing. Smith’s a headcase, sure, but is he that much more a headcase than Noah? No….and a Smith-Gordon lightening rod tandem would be scary for a full 48 minutes…..hopefully with them playing very few minutes together, though Smith could perhaps give a spell to Deng. Worse still is letting him go for nothing.

Ben Wallace of course, enough said. Had we just kept CHandler though and not done the Wallace deal, we’d be pretty decent….not a contender perhaps but well on the way….

But the absolute worst thing is he allowed Skiles to seemingly pick and choose the players early on (pre Tyrus I guess) and so we were stuck with a bunch of hard working, decent players in lew of the stars we needed. Then Skiles (who had a penchant for buring out his teams) burned out our team and we mismatched talents all over the place.

Paxson might be able to rectify this year and a half of Bulls fan misery with the necessary right trade this offseason (I say go for AK47, Marion, Millsap and include anyone but Rose to try to get it done)….I would imagine BG would love to play on a contender and forfeit his bird rights to do so because he’s already looking at a better than $60M contract next year, and a Williams-Gordon-Korver-Okur-Millsap and of course 1 of Boozer and AK47 would be awesome when healthy.

Bulls could use either AK47 or Boozer….and frankly while Boozer’s the better offensive player, Kirilenko, the post defender we need, and the guy who can guard the best opponent player, might be more the glue guy we lack.

Bulls retain Hinrich and play a
Rose-Hinrich-Deng-AK47-Noah team for now…..with Tyrus on the bench. We likely lose Gooden in this deal but get a few solid players from the Jazz or picks, and still retain Hughes for the likely trade bait next year. I wouldn’t care if we parted ways with Noah either…

Boozer might work too, but I think the Bulls have to be the aggressor more so in that deal, and I think with Kirilenko, perhaps the Jazz give up a bit more on paper.