Gar Forman: still full of it

As I've said many times this offseason, the first official one of the Gar Forman GM era: until proved otherwise, I can't trust what he says.

And that doesn't mean he needs to tell the truth, or that it effects his job performance. Though it's not a good sign when your crowning achievement in the front office was taking over the Luol Deng negotiations, I'm willing to give him a shot.

(Actually, we don't know how much he can really do, with the assumption that Paxson still wants to build a team yet just didn't like the messiness of the media or agents, and then the Chairman selectively meddling without seemingly any pattern.)

But no matter the reasons for doing so, Forman was clearly lying when he said at the outset of this offseason that re-signing Gordon was the top priority. And last week ChicagoNow found this juicy quote from Foreman regarding the Bulls aborted pursuit of Carlos Boozer:

Forman added that while he had trade talks with every team in the league, he was inclined to bring back the same team that gave Boston everything it could handle in losing a seven-game first-round playoff series.

"We like the team that we have," Forman said, "and really this summer we had a lot of opportunities to change our roster if we wanted to and we wanted to let this roster continue to grow together."

As Doug Thonus points out in the ChicagoNow post: um, no, it's not the same team if your leading scorer is let go.

And even if that's just an inference on the reporter's part, and Gar means that this roster (minus Gordon) is the one to build around, the opportunities to change the roster weren't passed up because of some love of that roster, but because that roster was up against the tax this season and they want cap room in the offseason.

(also, wag of the finger for romanticizing the Celtics series. In terms of adversity it was Garnett's doctor that gave the Celtics all they could handle)

The quotes from Rose are interesting too, though ultimately innocuous. He sees Boozer as a frontcourt talent the Bulls don't have, and it's something he would like as a PG. And while it doesn't mean he'll be thinking twice when his extension comes up, or that the Bulls had to absolutely rush and get him superior talent to run with, or that Boozer is even the right target...it's just a reminder that it's not about going into the luxury tax for Ben Gordon, or for getting the 14th roster spot on a minimum deal. It's just a means of doing what it takes to get Rose a contending team.

They chose not to go into the tax to do it, so they're trying a different way. The beauty of this way is that even if it fails, at least it wasn't expensive. But it'd nonetheless still be a failure, and these extension talks always seem to come faster than you'd think.