Let's zoom out: The Bulls went all in, and traded four first round picks, at least three of which are likely to be top-12 picks, for the 10th best team in a 15 team conference and a gentleman's sweep against the Bucks. It is honestly hard to hamstring a franchise's future any worse than that.
I'm preaching to the choir here but every write-up of this Bulls season that doesn't include this basic context is misleading its readers. [To be clear: I'm referring to *other* write-ups elsewhere, not this one.]
AK and Tim Connelly should give 10% of their salaries to Nikola Jokic for the rest of their careers. They picked him and then went on to be terrible with other teams. I wonder if they're actually sleeper agents still on the Denver payroll to destroy other teams from the inside by giving away all of their draft picks.
My two favorite points AK made (skipping the big, super dumb stuff):
1. I didn't find another PG because I thought Lonzo was coming back.
First of all, we know this is bullshit. If Lonzo wasn't like 80% of the way back to healthy by the time the series with Milwaukee ended last year, AK needed a backup plan. Hoping your PG comes back is terrible leadership. If there's the slightest concern he may not be back, you put a contingency in place.
2. Our 3-point shooting was bad this year.
Oh really? I'm pretty sure I remember you saying a couple months ago that the 3-point shooting was actually quite good and that they just needed to take more threes. So which is it? Are they actually good or no?
The stuff about Lonzo was the weirdest. Both the BS about how they thought he'd be playing this year, and the continued expectation that he's got a future, even literally nobody in the NBA has ever come back from the kind of surgery he's having.
Right!? At this point, you move forward expecting he's never going to play again. If he happens to come back, that's just a bonus, but you don't move forward expecting that to happen.
Why explain yourself when you can just commiserate with Chicago Bulls fans and their wondering about Lonzo, where he is, what he is doing, who he is with, what he is thinking about, is he thinking of us and whether or not he will some day return to us?
I don't think it's weird at all. Remember my directive: what's the money impetus?
In this case, if they apply to get Lonzo's money taken off the books, they'll be expected to respend that money, something they don't want to do. By "hoping" (i.e. pretending) he's going to come back, they can avoid applying for his Disabled player exception or whatever it is.
Remember, insurance only covers part of the contract even if the whole contract comes off the salary cap books. Reinsdorf ain't spending double-money.
Thats true, but the amount theyd be double spending is pretty small. Like $4m per year times two years. Basically what they wasted on Drummond and Tristan Thompson.
Incidentally the new CBA actually makes goig into the luxury tax quite a bit less punitive. Itll be interesting to see if that has any effect on the Bulls.
Yeah. There's not a lot to say. I'm probably more against rebuilding than most, because I think it's under appreciated that you don't actually need to tear it all down most of the time, and often counterproductive.
That being said, the problem isn't so much the strategy as the fact that I have no faith in the Bulls to execute any strategy well.
yes I am also against rebuilding, because the front office has only shown they'd be bad at that too. And botching a rebuild versus botching a 46-win team produces much worse basketball
Agree the Chicago Bulls should not do tear-down rebuilds. And if you look at say the Kings, it's possible to right the ship in even a single off-season. But....you have to get a difference-maker coach, make a few bold moves and assemble a team of pieces that fit together well. You put the right GM and coach against THIS exact roster and it's not impossible to build an interesting team. Running this back again is not it.
I think the biggest indictment against AKME is they picked up a scrap-heap point guard and it somewhat turned the season around. What if they actually worked to build a functioning roster?
Another not-flattering comparison. The Knicks. Good story on the Ringer today about the Knicks secret sauce: assembling interesting young players around a flawed but impactful big two in Brunson and Randall. Another way to look at AKME's team-building failure.
I don't know who could possibly thrive under Jerry Reinsdorf, but I can say with some certainty that AK might be the worst type of GM to have under Jerry. I say this because:
-He is a truly horrible communicator. We know that Jerry's leadership creates some major limitations, which in turn means that sometimes you need to sell the public on something tough to sell. AK is wholly incapable of doing this.
-He has no idea how to adapt. He came in with a very specific vision for how to team build, and it didn't work. He has done virtually nothing to amend this first attempt. Pat Bev, Andre Drummond, and Dragic aren't reasonable pivots. Jerry appears to limit his GMs in the types of moves they can enact, but there is no way he is this limited.
-He is awful at asset management. Whether you agree with the Lavine contract or not, there are enough other examples of how AK has spent money wildly on non-superstars, and how he has traded draft assets for non-superstars. Jerry doesn't like to roll out a bad team, for attendance reasons, and so you better be good at using your assets.
-He is a poor drafter. I mean Pat, Ayo, and Dalen are not an inspiring bunch. Don't make me yearn for the McDermott, Valentine, Portis days.
Jerry Reinsdorf puts his GMs in a pressure cooker, ties their hands behind their backs, and asks for a proper bolognese to sell to his fanbase. AK appears to be so incapable of adapting to this environment, it's downright depressing. I didn't think it was possible for our franchise to be in a more unenviable position than 4 years ago, but here we are. No assets. No young pieces. Nothing more than "maybe Zach and Pat will become Kobe and Kawhi next year?"
What makes this especially frustrating is that there appears to be 8-10 teams that could conceivably win the title this year. There is so much parity in the league right now, and we are definitively out of the conversation. Concurrently, the best draft prospect since LeBron James is entering the league next year, and we have virtually zero shot of winning his rights.
The Reinsdorfs were Succession before Succession. It's a pity David, Susan and Jonathan weren't as interested in the family business as Michael - it would be great theater.
At a certain point this just becomes an insult to the intelligence of your fans.
Really? You’re just going to bring back the exact same roster for a third year in a row and we’re supposed to think things can change?
It all comes back to ownership. If the owner doesn’t care about going deep in the playoffs, why should anybody else in the front office?
Imagine if the CEO of a company made it clear that they didn’t care about becoming a leader in their industry. Just making enough money to stay rich and avoiding negative headlines was all they really cared about. You think their executives would make decisions that result in great products? Of course not.
And that’s what we have here. A CEO who doesn’t care about his company and executives who are just here to carry out his goal of making him wealthier and avoiding bad publicity.
Honestly that's where I am. I know he's gonna bullshit, that's what these pressers are anyway. The words don't really matter but it's annoying to have my intelligence insulted.
Chicago is a big enough market that it doesn't matter if you insult half your fan-base's intelligence, there's still a million people to buy tickets after them. Plus the Bulls being a world-wide Jordan brand, it almost plays business wise as an even bigger market than just Chicago alone. I'm basically convinced at this point it works against us being a large market, it'd be better if we were smaller because then we'd have to actually be good to attract fans like Milwaukee, OKC, Miami, etc
: Karnisovas didn’t admit any mistakes, instead said he learned to be more patient. I think patience has long past reached any logical limit. :
Yeah THATS the ticket! Be more patient! With a team that 2 of its 3 highest paid players are past their prime, AND defensive liabilities. Severely lacks quality 3 point shooters. Has no rim protection. Minimal cap space. And no draft capital.
I think a lot of what AK says and does makes complete sense, if you allow yourself to go to a level of cynicism that most people prefer not to. AK gets paid by Jerry, not us. He not only doesn't care much about "true Bulls fans", his demeanor in press conferences suggests he actively loathes talking to us.
His quotes, "14-9 record after the break” and how “proud” he was overall that his group became a “tough out” down the stretch, is brilliant salesmanship of an inferior product. All of this comes from Jerry's internal business culture; the fish rots from the head down. Jerry literally told one of his White Sox executives and Jack McDowell "Finish in second place every single year because your fans will say 'Wow, we got a shot. We're in it!' But there's always the carrot left." He doesn't allow spending real money unless the team hits a lucky streak like the 2005 White Sox or the D-Rose Bulls, which are anomalies that any team will statistically get every blue moon but no more often. He coaches guys like Pax, AK, and his baseball executives in this manner, treating all of us fans/ consumers like suckers. Thus the executives merely have to behave in a manner of self-preservation and they're safe... I would go so far as to guess that Jerry tells his exec's to "not be a hero" or "tallest poppy gets whacked" or some other chicken shit attitude when they talk about ways to be more competitive. In this light, AK actually is fairly intelligent, because he knows how to stick around for a while in a city with such a large population that will support any team regardless of whether they're good or not. Chicago being a big market is a detriment to Bulls fans, not a positive. What we probably need is a 2nd team, which is as likely to happen as Jerry selling to someone who gives a shit.
That's why I put no stock in the "we'll pay the luxury tax for a contender line." That's one of the carrots they dangle. These guys were maybe 1.5 pieces away coming off the ECF and they spent $5M on Rip Hamilton and called it a day.
Didn't Rip Hamilton and Thibs absolutely hate each other too, from the beginning? Too funny, what a terrible signing. I think it was Jason Goff who said the first week Rip was here, Thibs told him to run sprints or something and Rip was like "Bro I'm Rip Hamilton", and it was basically a dead in the water signing from there.
I don't understand how anyone can watch this team and think it is on the right track, that you can basically bring the same squad back and generate a markedly different result. My mind is severely boggled.
What if the the result isn't supposed to be different. This current team has big names and is good enough to flirt with the playoffs. That brings in enough money to keep Jerry happy.
the headline is Sports Blog HOF-worthy! And, there was a question about what players should work on in the off-season, and when PWill's name came up, AK said "he's our best 3pt shooter"?! I mean, I like Pat, but no mention about him possibly strengthening up further, and working on his rebounding?
Sports psychologist would be good... I recall hearing about The Masters winner Jon Rahm, that guy had an anger management problem so he hired a former bomb disposal expert to teach him to handle his emotions in the clutch. I dunno, seems like if I was a million dollar athlete I'd want peak mental performance
Apr 17, 2023·edited Apr 17, 2023Liked by your friendly BullsBlogger
I can't even get mad. He's just trying to sell the mediocrity mindset that JR loves.
I just am irritated bc he does such a shit job of selling BS and is super duper condescending and smug whilst doing so. The definition of insanity- doing the same thing again and again and expecting different results.
It's obvious AKME are in over their head, they tried a plan. It failed miserably and they don't have the wherewithal or capital to right the ship. Now we're just in the re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic era. I wonder how long ol JR and lil Mikey boy will let them do it. I guess as long as they stay around .500 and can sneak into the playoffs every now n again, it's all gravy
I liked your post, but I want it to be known this is an angry like. I don't want to believe that AKME are ill-equipped to complete the job, but their inactivity over the past 12 months tells a different story.
Apr 17, 2023·edited Apr 17, 2023Liked by your friendly BullsBlogger
Excellent write-up YFBB. What a sad state of affairs: the bulls aren't good enough or bad enough to improve the roster, either short or long-term. There's an irony out there somewhere, that cheap, inactive & ineffective management can't afford to bring back all these mediocre pieces together next year, even if they wanted to
I just want the Bulls to go out and get a genuinely good PG. This team would be fun with a good PG. This team *was* fun with a good PG. It's not going to be good without a lot of work, but just a single good (not even great) PG would take this team from painful and bad to fun and ok.
Trad Zach. Trade DDR. Trade Vuc. I don't care. Everyone who remains will be more fun to watch and the product on the court will be better.
The failure to extend Coby White affordably should also probably go down as one of the more subtle failures of AK this season, to go along with other subtle failures like not extending Vuc if you wanted to keep him, and not getting an injured player waiver for Lonzo to at least try to sign a 1 year contract with a decent vet. Sure, maybe he tried with Coby and Coby didn't want it, I haven't heard that to be the case, but with Coby as an RFA I could see a team offering him a pretty big, starter level deal forcing us to match that. His skill set is pretty valuable in the modern NBA and almost any team would want him, Bulls should have realized earlier than any other team that he was developing well and worked an extension then
This is an excellent point. AKME and Billy's biggest flaw is simply accurate player evaluation. They don't seem to recognize (or admit to themselves) what they have. Again and again, from Lauri, to Wendell, to point-Coby, to starter-PW, to DDR+Zach redundancy, to Vuc-holes-and-cost, to injured-Lonzo, etc. etc.
They seem to manage by wishful thinking and post-failure gas-lighting.
100% agree but I don't know if I can blame Billy for that. I'm sure he would have been fine with something more than the personnel stasis the team has had since summer 2021, or drafting a player capable of playing in nba games with the 1st round pick. I don't think Billy is still evaluating these guys, it's AK who lacks the capacity to assess what a player can become if he were playing in a well run organization.
It really looks like Jokic randomly turning into an MVP made some guys' careers and now they're getting exposed as know nothings. The Bulls organization is a very safe space for incompetent middle managers who won the job lottery.
Great point on the Jokic effect, although man is that Nuggets squad stacked. Jamal Murray is like their 4th best guy? ... For Billy, I look at him the same way I look at AK to an extent: Self-preservation strategy. The quickest way for an NBA coach to get fired is if his "stars" turn on him. He has a tenuous relationship with Zach, highlighted by the Orlando benching, and I'd assume he knows that in crunch time, he must feed the iso-stars even if Coby or Vuc might be better options. Billy can only have so much control of an NBA locker room, at the end of the day they players generally do what they want and it's only their social culture among players that keeps them in check. And Coby isn't high enough on the NBA social hierarchy to command the rock down the stretch. This is why "stars" like Zach must go through years of politicking to convince people they are Olympians, they are Clutch, they are worthy of ref calls, they are All-Stars, etc, because perception is reality in a league where only like 5 or 6 guys are true Alpha's
Is this the least we've ever learned about a Bulls season from one season to the next? Almost all the story lines are the exact same as last season, just slightly more depressing. The post season result pretty similar, just slightly more depressing. Lonzo injury status same but slightly more depressing. Zach as a true superstar narrative same but slightly more depressing. At least with a "rebuilding" team (have grown to hate that catch all term used as a straw man to celebrate NBA Hell) you have the hope of player development even if your management is putrid. But this team is remarkably similar to the end of last season, to the point every time I listen to Cash Considerations I find their Stacy King intro to be ironically off-putting
Maybe but it's very uncannily like the Rose injury years. The only things you had to look forward to were budget cuts and Thibs squeezing every single win out of an undermanned roster as GarPax continued blowing open holes in it.
Right now it's like having deja vu of another time you've had deja vu. We've seen this all before.
True and I was thinking the same thing, feels a little like the Rose injury years. But that team was likeable, with Noah and Thibs (especially since Thibs was "our guy" on the inside against the evil front office), Jimmy, Nate Robinson-experience.... I struggle to like many players on our current squad except Caruso and maybe Coby and Javonte occasionally. Most of them I'm just apathetic towards
That is another bothersome thing from the fan side of things. To me. Is this team isnt even fun to watch. Besides the occasional incredible athleticism Zach shows. Or when Coby gets on fire from downtown.
And then that we all know this roster isnt going ANYWHERE. Even the casual fans have figured that out.
Let's zoom out: The Bulls went all in, and traded four first round picks, at least three of which are likely to be top-12 picks, for the 10th best team in a 15 team conference and a gentleman's sweep against the Bucks. It is honestly hard to hamstring a franchise's future any worse than that.
I'm preaching to the choir here but every write-up of this Bulls season that doesn't include this basic context is misleading its readers. [To be clear: I'm referring to *other* write-ups elsewhere, not this one.]
I’d also add that the Vuc trade didn’t even improve the team at the time. They missed out on the playin tournament that year too!
And it took wendell a whole year to provide production about equal to that as vooch (though vooch has been healthier?)
Health is big, though.
AK and Tim Connelly should give 10% of their salaries to Nikola Jokic for the rest of their careers. They picked him and then went on to be terrible with other teams. I wonder if they're actually sleeper agents still on the Denver payroll to destroy other teams from the inside by giving away all of their draft picks.
Maybe lucking into MVPs shouldn’t be considered a skill.
AK and Pax are more similar than I realized
My two favorite points AK made (skipping the big, super dumb stuff):
1. I didn't find another PG because I thought Lonzo was coming back.
First of all, we know this is bullshit. If Lonzo wasn't like 80% of the way back to healthy by the time the series with Milwaukee ended last year, AK needed a backup plan. Hoping your PG comes back is terrible leadership. If there's the slightest concern he may not be back, you put a contingency in place.
2. Our 3-point shooting was bad this year.
Oh really? I'm pretty sure I remember you saying a couple months ago that the 3-point shooting was actually quite good and that they just needed to take more threes. So which is it? Are they actually good or no?
The stuff about Lonzo was the weirdest. Both the BS about how they thought he'd be playing this year, and the continued expectation that he's got a future, even literally nobody in the NBA has ever come back from the kind of surgery he's having.
Right!? At this point, you move forward expecting he's never going to play again. If he happens to come back, that's just a bonus, but you don't move forward expecting that to happen.
Why explain yourself when you can just commiserate with Chicago Bulls fans and their wondering about Lonzo, where he is, what he is doing, who he is with, what he is thinking about, is he thinking of us and whether or not he will some day return to us?
I don't think it's weird at all. Remember my directive: what's the money impetus?
In this case, if they apply to get Lonzo's money taken off the books, they'll be expected to respend that money, something they don't want to do. By "hoping" (i.e. pretending) he's going to come back, they can avoid applying for his Disabled player exception or whatever it is.
Remember, insurance only covers part of the contract even if the whole contract comes off the salary cap books. Reinsdorf ain't spending double-money.
Thats true, but the amount theyd be double spending is pretty small. Like $4m per year times two years. Basically what they wasted on Drummond and Tristan Thompson.
Incidentally the new CBA actually makes goig into the luxury tax quite a bit less punitive. Itll be interesting to see if that has any effect on the Bulls.
Yeah. There's not a lot to say. I'm probably more against rebuilding than most, because I think it's under appreciated that you don't actually need to tear it all down most of the time, and often counterproductive.
That being said, the problem isn't so much the strategy as the fact that I have no faith in the Bulls to execute any strategy well.
yes I am also against rebuilding, because the front office has only shown they'd be bad at that too. And botching a rebuild versus botching a 46-win team produces much worse basketball
Agree the Chicago Bulls should not do tear-down rebuilds. And if you look at say the Kings, it's possible to right the ship in even a single off-season. But....you have to get a difference-maker coach, make a few bold moves and assemble a team of pieces that fit together well. You put the right GM and coach against THIS exact roster and it's not impossible to build an interesting team. Running this back again is not it.
I think the biggest indictment against AKME is they picked up a scrap-heap point guard and it somewhat turned the season around. What if they actually worked to build a functioning roster?
to the point of the Kings, they made that trade for Kevin Huerter and only sent out expiring salary and a lotto-protected first rounder
Another not-flattering comparison. The Knicks. Good story on the Ringer today about the Knicks secret sauce: assembling interesting young players around a flawed but impactful big two in Brunson and Randall. Another way to look at AKME's team-building failure.
https://www.theringer.com/nba/2023/4/18/23687415/new-york-knicks-youth-movement-immanuel-quickley-quentin-grimes-2023-nba-playoffs
Plus they have Thibs who knows X and Os and gets the most out of his players.
Sure but Billy Donovan can more professionally deliver medical updates so the VP doesn't have to
It should be damming to this franchise that we're saying the Kings are a better run organization...
I don't know who could possibly thrive under Jerry Reinsdorf, but I can say with some certainty that AK might be the worst type of GM to have under Jerry. I say this because:
-He is a truly horrible communicator. We know that Jerry's leadership creates some major limitations, which in turn means that sometimes you need to sell the public on something tough to sell. AK is wholly incapable of doing this.
-He has no idea how to adapt. He came in with a very specific vision for how to team build, and it didn't work. He has done virtually nothing to amend this first attempt. Pat Bev, Andre Drummond, and Dragic aren't reasonable pivots. Jerry appears to limit his GMs in the types of moves they can enact, but there is no way he is this limited.
-He is awful at asset management. Whether you agree with the Lavine contract or not, there are enough other examples of how AK has spent money wildly on non-superstars, and how he has traded draft assets for non-superstars. Jerry doesn't like to roll out a bad team, for attendance reasons, and so you better be good at using your assets.
-He is a poor drafter. I mean Pat, Ayo, and Dalen are not an inspiring bunch. Don't make me yearn for the McDermott, Valentine, Portis days.
Jerry Reinsdorf puts his GMs in a pressure cooker, ties their hands behind their backs, and asks for a proper bolognese to sell to his fanbase. AK appears to be so incapable of adapting to this environment, it's downright depressing. I didn't think it was possible for our franchise to be in a more unenviable position than 4 years ago, but here we are. No assets. No young pieces. Nothing more than "maybe Zach and Pat will become Kobe and Kawhi next year?"
What makes this especially frustrating is that there appears to be 8-10 teams that could conceivably win the title this year. There is so much parity in the league right now, and we are definitively out of the conversation. Concurrently, the best draft prospect since LeBron James is entering the league next year, and we have virtually zero shot of winning his rights.
Screw AK. Screw Jerry. I miss enjoying the Bulls.
The irony is that the Bulls could use McDermott now.
The Reinsdorfs were Succession before Succession. It's a pity David, Susan and Jonathan weren't as interested in the family business as Michael - it would be great theater.
At a certain point this just becomes an insult to the intelligence of your fans.
Really? You’re just going to bring back the exact same roster for a third year in a row and we’re supposed to think things can change?
It all comes back to ownership. If the owner doesn’t care about going deep in the playoffs, why should anybody else in the front office?
Imagine if the CEO of a company made it clear that they didn’t care about becoming a leader in their industry. Just making enough money to stay rich and avoiding negative headlines was all they really cared about. You think their executives would make decisions that result in great products? Of course not.
And that’s what we have here. A CEO who doesn’t care about his company and executives who are just here to carry out his goal of making him wealthier and avoiding bad publicity.
You NAILED so much. With just your first sentence statement.
Honestly that's where I am. I know he's gonna bullshit, that's what these pressers are anyway. The words don't really matter but it's annoying to have my intelligence insulted.
Chicago is a big enough market that it doesn't matter if you insult half your fan-base's intelligence, there's still a million people to buy tickets after them. Plus the Bulls being a world-wide Jordan brand, it almost plays business wise as an even bigger market than just Chicago alone. I'm basically convinced at this point it works against us being a large market, it'd be better if we were smaller because then we'd have to actually be good to attract fans like Milwaukee, OKC, Miami, etc
YFBB I'm happy you wrote this. So I dont have to actually watch this goofs press conference.
: Karnisovas didn’t admit any mistakes, instead said he learned to be more patient. I think patience has long past reached any logical limit. :
Yeah THATS the ticket! Be more patient! With a team that 2 of its 3 highest paid players are past their prime, AND defensive liabilities. Severely lacks quality 3 point shooters. Has no rim protection. Minimal cap space. And no draft capital.
...
Fans should be patient until the 2026-27 season when only Zach will be on the roster and the team will have all of its picks.
I think a lot of what AK says and does makes complete sense, if you allow yourself to go to a level of cynicism that most people prefer not to. AK gets paid by Jerry, not us. He not only doesn't care much about "true Bulls fans", his demeanor in press conferences suggests he actively loathes talking to us.
His quotes, "14-9 record after the break” and how “proud” he was overall that his group became a “tough out” down the stretch, is brilliant salesmanship of an inferior product. All of this comes from Jerry's internal business culture; the fish rots from the head down. Jerry literally told one of his White Sox executives and Jack McDowell "Finish in second place every single year because your fans will say 'Wow, we got a shot. We're in it!' But there's always the carrot left." He doesn't allow spending real money unless the team hits a lucky streak like the 2005 White Sox or the D-Rose Bulls, which are anomalies that any team will statistically get every blue moon but no more often. He coaches guys like Pax, AK, and his baseball executives in this manner, treating all of us fans/ consumers like suckers. Thus the executives merely have to behave in a manner of self-preservation and they're safe... I would go so far as to guess that Jerry tells his exec's to "not be a hero" or "tallest poppy gets whacked" or some other chicken shit attitude when they talk about ways to be more competitive. In this light, AK actually is fairly intelligent, because he knows how to stick around for a while in a city with such a large population that will support any team regardless of whether they're good or not. Chicago being a big market is a detriment to Bulls fans, not a positive. What we probably need is a 2nd team, which is as likely to happen as Jerry selling to someone who gives a shit.
That's why I put no stock in the "we'll pay the luxury tax for a contender line." That's one of the carrots they dangle. These guys were maybe 1.5 pieces away coming off the ECF and they spent $5M on Rip Hamilton and called it a day.
Didn't Rip Hamilton and Thibs absolutely hate each other too, from the beginning? Too funny, what a terrible signing. I think it was Jason Goff who said the first week Rip was here, Thibs told him to run sprints or something and Rip was like "Bro I'm Rip Hamilton", and it was basically a dead in the water signing from there.
Truth.
I don't understand how anyone can watch this team and think it is on the right track, that you can basically bring the same squad back and generate a markedly different result. My mind is severely boggled.
What if the the result isn't supposed to be different. This current team has big names and is good enough to flirt with the playoffs. That brings in enough money to keep Jerry happy.
DONT LET IT BE THIS WAY KIRK! :(
Not much to add, except...
the headline is Sports Blog HOF-worthy! And, there was a question about what players should work on in the off-season, and when PWill's name came up, AK said "he's our best 3pt shooter"?! I mean, I like Pat, but no mention about him possibly strengthening up further, and working on his rebounding?
Slow ass release too
Though mitigated somewhat by his length. It shouldn't be high on his off-season work priorities.
Sports psychologist would be good... I recall hearing about The Masters winner Jon Rahm, that guy had an anger management problem so he hired a former bomb disposal expert to teach him to handle his emotions in the clutch. I dunno, seems like if I was a million dollar athlete I'd want peak mental performance
Sure, I agree that his mental game is lacking, and should be addressed.
You mean should. Correct?
I can't even get mad. He's just trying to sell the mediocrity mindset that JR loves.
I just am irritated bc he does such a shit job of selling BS and is super duper condescending and smug whilst doing so. The definition of insanity- doing the same thing again and again and expecting different results.
It's obvious AKME are in over their head, they tried a plan. It failed miserably and they don't have the wherewithal or capital to right the ship. Now we're just in the re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic era. I wonder how long ol JR and lil Mikey boy will let them do it. I guess as long as they stay around .500 and can sneak into the playoffs every now n again, it's all gravy
Saddening as it is. I think you're probably SPOT ON.
I liked your post, but I want it to be known this is an angry like. I don't want to believe that AKME are ill-equipped to complete the job, but their inactivity over the past 12 months tells a different story.
'
Excellent write-up YFBB. What a sad state of affairs: the bulls aren't good enough or bad enough to improve the roster, either short or long-term. There's an irony out there somewhere, that cheap, inactive & ineffective management can't afford to bring back all these mediocre pieces together next year, even if they wanted to
I just want the Bulls to go out and get a genuinely good PG. This team would be fun with a good PG. This team *was* fun with a good PG. It's not going to be good without a lot of work, but just a single good (not even great) PG would take this team from painful and bad to fun and ok.
Trad Zach. Trade DDR. Trade Vuc. I don't care. Everyone who remains will be more fun to watch and the product on the court will be better.
The failure to extend Coby White affordably should also probably go down as one of the more subtle failures of AK this season, to go along with other subtle failures like not extending Vuc if you wanted to keep him, and not getting an injured player waiver for Lonzo to at least try to sign a 1 year contract with a decent vet. Sure, maybe he tried with Coby and Coby didn't want it, I haven't heard that to be the case, but with Coby as an RFA I could see a team offering him a pretty big, starter level deal forcing us to match that. His skill set is pretty valuable in the modern NBA and almost any team would want him, Bulls should have realized earlier than any other team that he was developing well and worked an extension then
This is an excellent point. AKME and Billy's biggest flaw is simply accurate player evaluation. They don't seem to recognize (or admit to themselves) what they have. Again and again, from Lauri, to Wendell, to point-Coby, to starter-PW, to DDR+Zach redundancy, to Vuc-holes-and-cost, to injured-Lonzo, etc. etc.
They seem to manage by wishful thinking and post-failure gas-lighting.
100% agree but I don't know if I can blame Billy for that. I'm sure he would have been fine with something more than the personnel stasis the team has had since summer 2021, or drafting a player capable of playing in nba games with the 1st round pick. I don't think Billy is still evaluating these guys, it's AK who lacks the capacity to assess what a player can become if he were playing in a well run organization.
It really looks like Jokic randomly turning into an MVP made some guys' careers and now they're getting exposed as know nothings. The Bulls organization is a very safe space for incompetent middle managers who won the job lottery.
Great point on the Jokic effect, although man is that Nuggets squad stacked. Jamal Murray is like their 4th best guy? ... For Billy, I look at him the same way I look at AK to an extent: Self-preservation strategy. The quickest way for an NBA coach to get fired is if his "stars" turn on him. He has a tenuous relationship with Zach, highlighted by the Orlando benching, and I'd assume he knows that in crunch time, he must feed the iso-stars even if Coby or Vuc might be better options. Billy can only have so much control of an NBA locker room, at the end of the day they players generally do what they want and it's only their social culture among players that keeps them in check. And Coby isn't high enough on the NBA social hierarchy to command the rock down the stretch. This is why "stars" like Zach must go through years of politicking to convince people they are Olympians, they are Clutch, they are worthy of ref calls, they are All-Stars, etc, because perception is reality in a league where only like 5 or 6 guys are true Alpha's
Is this the least we've ever learned about a Bulls season from one season to the next? Almost all the story lines are the exact same as last season, just slightly more depressing. The post season result pretty similar, just slightly more depressing. Lonzo injury status same but slightly more depressing. Zach as a true superstar narrative same but slightly more depressing. At least with a "rebuilding" team (have grown to hate that catch all term used as a straw man to celebrate NBA Hell) you have the hope of player development even if your management is putrid. But this team is remarkably similar to the end of last season, to the point every time I listen to Cash Considerations I find their Stacy King intro to be ironically off-putting
Maybe but it's very uncannily like the Rose injury years. The only things you had to look forward to were budget cuts and Thibs squeezing every single win out of an undermanned roster as GarPax continued blowing open holes in it.
Right now it's like having deja vu of another time you've had deja vu. We've seen this all before.
True and I was thinking the same thing, feels a little like the Rose injury years. But that team was likeable, with Noah and Thibs (especially since Thibs was "our guy" on the inside against the evil front office), Jimmy, Nate Robinson-experience.... I struggle to like many players on our current squad except Caruso and maybe Coby and Javonte occasionally. Most of them I'm just apathetic towards
That is another bothersome thing from the fan side of things. To me. Is this team isnt even fun to watch. Besides the occasional incredible athleticism Zach shows. Or when Coby gets on fire from downtown.
And then that we all know this roster isnt going ANYWHERE. Even the casual fans have figured that out.
Its absolutely demoralizing to a fan base.