We have a rumored addition to the Bulls front office, indicating these will not be significant changes at all

The ongoing disaster of the Chicago Bulls, which looked to have hit a new low during their hosted All-Star weekend, has at least led to indications that they will do something.

But all that’s been reported so far has looked insufficient to the point of mockery-worthy. Just a reshuffling of chairs, where everyone keeps their job (outside of poor dutiful Jim Boylen) and if anything the principals at the head of this debacle only further escape accountability than answer to it.

That continued today, as KC Johnson of Reindscorp subsidiary NBC Sports Chicago reiterated earlier reports that changes will include no walks of shame through Madison Street (let alone firings) and that John Paxson will have a major say in the new hire and basketball direction.

That’s trash! But for another post. The nugget today is that there’s an actual name bubbling up: Indiana Pacers GM Chad Buchanan.

And while a team source insisted the process is in the early stages, multiple league sources indicated one name is gaining momentum---Pacers general manager Chad Buchanan.

The Pacers hired Buchanan, 46, when they promoted Kevin Pritchard to president of basketball operations in 2017. Buchanan arrived from Charlotte, where he spent three seasons with Michael Jordan’s Hornets as assistant general manager under Rich Cho. Previously, he spent 10 seasons with the Trail Blazers, where he also worked closely with Pritchard.

In Portland, Buchanan worked primarily as a director of college scouting. However, he served as interim general manager for the 2011-12 season after the Trail Blazers fired Cho, who had replaced Pritchard.

These look like pretty good NBA bonafides. To the point where it’s unclear why he’d take a lateral position with Chicago.

But I will look deeper into Buchanan’s history, where it gets downright disturbing.

::shudder:: Iowa...

As we know, the Bulls front office has expanded a bit in the past few years but still is insanely infested with goddamned Tim Floyd acolytes from goddamned 1998, with Gar Forman being head of the snake.

Now this department includes Jay Hillock, who was hired in 2004. I had thought he was hired as a crony back then by Gar, but cannot find any connection prior. This line of inquiry had a lot more heft if Hillock was a decided Forman acolyte...but at best he just worked for him for the past 15 years.

Anyway, Hillock is old as hell and coached at Gonzaga in the early 1980s. His lead assistant was a coach named Bruce Wilson. That coach Wilson was a native Iowan, went on to Simpson College in Des Moines (he later, interestingly, was with the Bulls-affiliated GLeague Iowa Energy), where he coached and then hired as an assistant one....Chad Buchanan, a local Des Moniesian.

So there you have it. What is ‘it’? Not much of course. But this does speak to the idea that the Bulls are historically bad at hiring people (maybe because they have such little practice!) and I certainly won’t be giving the new guy any benefit of the doubt. That John Paxson, Doug Collins, Gar Forman, Jay Hillock, and the Dorf Dynasty have any say in the matter only adds to the doubt.