Arturas Karnisovas: pathetically ignorant, or pathological liar?

could be a bit of both! and altogether comes from a complete lack of respect for his audience

I can’t get over how bad Arturas Karnisovas was in his self-assessment of another do-nothing trade deadline.

After a couple days, I am sticking with my decision of not wanting to even give his main talking points the credit necessary of being refuted. His use of the word “competitive” was total gobbledygook and cannot be reasoned with, especially worse in that it was used last season.

Another year and the same old cliches, I regret to inform Bulls fans that Arturas Karnisovas has reached the Boylen-point.

It only took this long because, unlike a head coach, AK can hide for 4 months at a time*. Both he and Boylen’s biggest problem is that their fundamental understanding of the league is flawed. But Boylen was also a volume-shooter, nearly every other day he’d say something contradictory, strange, or outright nonsensical to where there was anticipation to hear what’s next just to be first to mock it.

*(I’d say his deputy Marc Eversley should step up on occasion and speak, but he’s probably thinking as long as he keeps his head down he can get another NBA job after this regime inevitably - like 9 more years? - implodes)

Karnisovas is a similarly terrible spokesman but knows that much about himself. The main point, where he continuously showed a severe misunderstanding of what “competitive” means, was another in a long line of fireable offenses.

But that whole bit, already routinely mocked by the fanbase, may actually overshadow some of the lesser but still quite troubling things he said.

I think Karnisovas is kind of a bozo, who has bad ideas and can’t even communicate those ideas effectively. But you could be less charitable and assign some sinister intent to these. It could be, at the very least, massaging the truth in a slimy and ineffective attempt to hype his own job performance:

The Literal Standings

When it was pointed out to AK that his feelings about the team didn’t matter as much as actual facts of their win-loss record, he responded:

“The standings are that everybody is bunched up; you are three games away from sixth place”

At the time the Bulls were actually 4.5 games behind the 6th place Pacers.

At the team website, this quote was explained away as a mere gaffe (“…said perhaps anticipating Memphis too quickly”) and not even correct in how far off AK was.

years GarPax missed the playoffs

When trying to justify his bizarre mindset of “competitive”, AK said:

I think when we came here, the Bulls missed the playoffs five years in a row.

It was actually only three seasons in a row where the Bulls missed the playoffs.

In the AK era, they made it once and missed it twice. Given the likely scenario they miss it this year, that will mean the same number of missed playoffs that he is desperately and recklessly trying to avoid.

Even more bizarre was KC Johnson at the team media partner misquoting this:

1. he just edited it like it was a grammatical paraphrasing, not a material difference

2. he didn’t even get it right, saying “(four) years” and not the correct three.

The looming Luxury Tax crunch

I thought overall the assembled media had an impossible job in trying to reason with a rambling loon, but it was indicative of the sad current landscape that Joe Cowley prefaced his question about the cap with something to the effect of “now I’m no math wizard…”

It was a topic worth bringing up, there was opportunity in this trade deadline to make some cap-conscious moves with an expected raise for Patrick Williams and likely one for DeMar DeRozan.

But even with that soft touch prefacing the question, AK totally bungled the response:

“Those conversations are at the end of the season. Right now our focus is about how we can finish the season. The cap, we call it gymnastics, we can talk about it after the season”

oh…kay…

Like all these rhetorical questions it’s probably a bit of both, but: either AK truly is negligent and not considering the multi-year financial crunch he’s put his roster under, or he is just hoping not to draw attention to it.

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This isn’t the complete list of little lies AK told on Thursday. There were other blatant contradictions and omissions:

• The team’s playing better, yet the injuries hurt them and they are a better team with Zach LaVine.

• No mention of the failure to change style of play, a big talking point in training camp but ignored in favor of mentioning they are achieving another goal of ‘cohesion’. That snugly fits in AK’s entire M.O., as it’s a goal you can’t measure.

• The “emergence” of Julian Phillips in Dalen Terry, who are only playing because there were so many injuries. And that Patrick Williams “was on a tear” in a month where he averaged 14 points a game.

• Kept describing the time around the trade deadline as a “buyer’s market” as every team was looking to get better, when that is actually a “seller’s market” where he would’ve gotten more if deciding to sell.

I wanted this mentioned so it wasn’t overshadowed in AK’s big lie of “competitive”. That one is so galling it seriously makes the act of following these games completely pointless (by AK’s metric, they’re 2-0!).

These other smaller lies, missteps, or spin would be disqualifying for any other NBA lead decision-maker, and here it is just another for the pile.