Why should Bulls fans change? AKME's the ones that suck

It's not fans' fault they can't feel good after a good win

If following a normal team and competent front office, Tuesday night’s victory over the visiting, west-leading, Minnesota Timberwolves would be cause for unambiguous joy. Sure, part of the drama was self-inflicted by another gigantic early deficit, and they needed a few lucky breaks (and whistles) to pull it out. But the TWolves have the number one defense in the league and the Bulls couldn’t hit anything from three in the first half. Coby White shook off that poor first half to lead the comeback, and you had another clutch performance on offense by DeMar DeRozan and defense by Alex Caruso. Andre Drummond added flair with his twin-towers duo with Nikola Vucevic to outplay the Towns-Gobert frontcourt on the other end.

All good stuff (even, gotta say it, Vuc…nah screw Vuc).

But with that being the last game heading into the trade deadline, all praise was paired with concern. I could see nearly every fan reaction on here and elsewhere lament that while the victory and individual performances were cool, it’s a net negative if it means the front office will take it as reason to not make changes. And while I can’t know this for sure, I’d imagine every fan in attendance among what looked like a boisterous crowd (even through the interminable fouls and foul reviews) was later in the parking lot having conflicting thoughts about the long term direction of the franchise.

The worst part is this is a totally earned and valid concern. The Bulls front office, through their inaction and explanation, have completely lost the trust of the fanbase.

And I don’t think it can be overstated how messed up that dynamic is, where the team can’t even root for objectively good things. Even seen (don’t want to validate with links, it’s out there) fans chastised for attending and cheering! All because it may feed into their incompetence. Ponder how low of an opinion you have to have of a front office to think that fan reaction to regular season games would incorrectly influence them. But that’s what they’ve shown us, a group too dumb to have proper perspective, self-assessment, and ambition.

And yes they all should be fired already for it getting to this point. I recognize ownership is also bad and looms over everything and would hire uninspiring replacements, but I’m convinced that replacement-level executives can work under these ownership parameters and avoid this kind of disaster.

Of course, they aren’t getting fired today, and that gives them a chance (unearned, but still) to win back some trust by doing what they’ve failed to for years: making moves and articulating a more ambitious plan. This should be the minimum expectation, and we can’t wait for the media to make them react, as their shamelessness has beaten it out of the beat to expect anything.

I do not happen to think that means it’s “blow it up” or nothing. A rebuild can be a cop-out for incompetence, just saves ownership more money, and they’d probably be terrible at getting out of it back to relevance again. If AKME’s true philosophy is to maintain a competitive floor and provide a good incubator for young talent, and extending DeRozan is the best way to do that, I can understand.

But that should just be the start of something, not the stated goal. Recognize that, and say that to us. Make moves that set you up for the next moves, each one moving in a positive direction instead of doing nothing and going nowhere.

And start immediately. You can get real assets for Caruso, and middling ones for Drummond. You may even be able to get out from the Vuc contract. Try and balance the roster a bit by acquiring real forwards. The LaVine surgery does delay getting him out of town, but that doesn’t preclude other moves.

Again, this is not to say that things aren’t too bad right now. All things considered this is totally FUBAR. We should be getting a new (likely also bad) front office to be skeptical of.

But we’re stuck with these current bozos, because we’re stuck as Bulls fans. We want to have enough trust to cheer for good things without feeling bad about it. A very low bar! Yet one the AKME era hasn’t cleared yet, and judging by past performance they won’t on Thursday either.