Also pretty funny that an injury to a minimum salary guy on a 1 year deal is so apocalyptic. If he never plays another minute they've gotten more out of Craig than they paid for.
The team has been skating by for as long as I can remember trying to cut corners and acting as if being paper thin is a cruel twist of fate. Joakim Noah isn't playing on stumps instead of feet if you didn't let Omer Asik walk for nothing. We're not watching Dunleavy getting switched onto Lebron in the playoffs if he's just a bench scorer (as he had been for Milwaukee) rather than becoming the 34 year old starting SF for a playoff team.
Was listening to Dunc'd on today on the league's worst contracts and they gave a shout out to Blog a Bull.
Also,
Zach Lavine was #2 (2nd worst contract in the league).
Vuc was #5 (impressively bad GMing since he was the only guy on a freshly signed contract). Described as actually harmful to winning on both sides of the ball.
Lonzo Ball wasn't on the list but I'm sure the Bulls will be happy that he was "in the conversation".
lol at Vuc - I’m still mad at those that said, “Vuc contract is bad, but if they want to win, he’s their best choice.” Nope, NOPE, NOPE!!! Dude has always been a negative asset on defense, but he was trending downward on offense, being merely “equal” value on offense. Now that his shot has cratered this year, woof. and sure, it could come back up, but that’s already one of the three years “lost” and the contract only gets higher.
Vuc sucks. That they brought him back, bidding against themselves, is just the epitome of the ineptness of this franchise. But it was a tall Eastern European so maybe AK had a soft spot?
There only seems to be two rational explanations for why they do things like this: they're dumb, or they're lazy (of course they can be both). But we said the same thing about GarPax in their last rebuild. It seemed that if they had a multiple of solutions in front of them, they began to invariably take the option that required the least amount of work. How is it possible that the new team is acting exactly like the old one, and why?
I'm reading a book right now about the financialization era of news media admidst its managed decline and I think for the first time I'm starting to understand how an organization can be institutionally dumb and lazy, regardless of what personnel you hire:
1. The owner's #1 priority is to secure their operating profit and frankly there's really no second or third priorities.
2. The manager they appoint wants to exceed that goal to stay in the job and, hopefully, move up to a better one.
3. "Re-investment" of profit is basically a drunken Christmas present. Don't get your hopes up, it's not going to happen.
4. The quality of the product that you are ostensibly in charge of making really doesn't matter. Whether you want to make it "good" or "bad" actually comes down to a personal whim. Within the financial restraint ownership imposes, you can try to win Pulitzers... but that's really hard. Fundamentally it's a losing wager to try to sustain a great product while all the profit is being drained off, and kind of existentially pointless. It's both easier and in the short-term more profitable to print "What Day Is Daylight Savings Time?" stories instead of "We Caught The Mayor With a Bag of Cash In His Desk." It's certainly risk averse.
Which is to say that Karnisovas and Eversly could spend all weekend in the office scouting G-League players or flying to Greece to check out some 6'9" 14 year old in a tiny gym... but if they don't want to, that's okay too. In fact, finding out about that young Greek phenom probably requires more resources up front than you can expect to make back by tracking down successful players at a modest price. So unless every swing is a home run, just leave the bat on your shoulder, you won't be punished for it and it's the most profitable play.
And despite adding Arturas Karnisovas and Marc Eversley, the org didn't really change much. Maybe the outright awfulness of the late Garpax era is over and there are fewer locker room snitches and coach-choking, but they've come into the Bulls org and been swallowed by the beast. Who's still the Senior Advisor, Basketball Operations? Who's still the Director of Pro Personnel?
This isn't to say that AKME have gazed into the abyss of institutionalized mediocrity for too long and it's imprinted on their souls; after their Big Rebuild™️ they've meekly played out the thread for as long as they can and that's probably always who they were. But the Bulls org has also enabled it.
Have any of us ever seen a leaked Bulls strategic plan?
I stupidly challenged a guy on Youtube who was talking about how great Vooch is. My general point was that Vooch is a statistically mediocre center and his contract and age only make him worse.
I used Isaiah Hartenstein as a counterexample for a couple of reasons. First, he's statistically better than Vooch. Second, he's a guy the Bulls could have targeted last summer instead of re-signing Vooch. And third, he's supposedly a backup-level center that has been starting a lot this year with Mitchell Robinson constantly being injured.
With all that in mind, he has been a better center this season than Vooch has while making less than $8 million. The guy I was arguing with was having none of it and just kept pointing to Vooch's better basic stats (PPG, RPG, APG), so I eventually just stopped responding to him. My point wasn't to say Hartenstein is some super underrated center that everyone is sleeping on. It was to say that a backup center that has been shoved into a starting role has been better than our "star" center who is old and on a bloated contract.
Vooch is such an enigma because he's not necessarily bad (or at least hadn't been until this year). It's just that basically everything is working against him. He's old on a team of mostly young guys (at least the ones that will be around for a while). He's old and unathletic in a league that has very much moved in the direction of mobile big men where defense and rim protection are by far the most important aspects of a center's job - the two things Vooch is very bad at. He's on a team that needs paint protection more than it needs a big man with good court vision.
Offense is supposed to be the thing Vooch is good at. The problem is that's not what most teams need from centers anymore, and his offense isn't actually that good. It could be argued that it was never that great because it wasn't efficient, but that's beside the point. His offense right now in this season has been terrible. You can't be bad on offense and defense and expect to be paid $20 million a year. Well, I guess you can when the man writing the checks doesn't actually care about winning.
Logan Roynsdorf got all his Gregs in line. I expect we're going to hear non-stop Org talking points for the next six months until the stadium deal is dead.
so that's the first AK-loss of the post-deadline season, right?
they were "competitive"...for 2.5 quarters. I suppose he would still try to count that as a positive.
but otherwise: large margin of loss, especially from three. Home crowd chanting for opposing team (per Julia Poe). Onurlap Bitim played minutes. Luke Kornet dabbed on them...
I was at the game unfortunately. Free tickets and went with a Celtics fan who I couldn't disappoint by not going.
Bulls "fans" seemed way more interested in Benny than the basketball being played. Lots of green in the stands. Justifiably, given that the Celtics play modern NBA basketball at a high level while the Bulls play a shitty version of offensive basketball that stopped working at least 10 years ago. If you aren't there to see Benny and the halftime act and the t-shirt cannon I don't know what you think you're paying for.
This is just a terrific team. In some ways they remind me of those late 80s/early 90s Blazer teams with their extremely high level of play, depth, versatility, and seldom having the best player on the floor in the playoffs.
going with tried and true precedent when it comes to predicting free agents for the Bulls
agent Mark Bartelstein: Joe Harris
to a lesser extent there's their fruitful(?) relationship with Klutch. Juan Toscano-Anderson is in the GLeague and a free agent. Maybe do them a solid for some return favor when it comes to getting Lonzo off the cap
this has zero impact on this season. Bitim won't play (they could've been playing him all season on the two-way)
this is just thinking ahead, but in a cheapass Bulls way: Bitim likely is signed through next season making less than the veteran's minimum, which is gold when it comes to staying under the tax. (could also just have not picked up Dalen Terry's option, but whatever)
>"Even if Bitim doesn't play, his imminent signing to a multiyear deal adds a value contract for the offseason that can be included potentially for salary matching in trades. The multiyear deal is expected to feature either non-guarantees or guarantee dates well into next season."
You waited all year and you thought something was coming, didntcha? You thought, they can't possibly run it back, they can't possibly wait it out, they can't possibly be in the same position as last year and do absolutely nothing. Didntcha?
Well YOU GOT IT, BUDDY! Bet you never thought you'd think about Archidifuckinachio again, did you? And here you are, weeks after the deadline, the Bulls now 5 (I mean 3, I mean 7) games out of the 6th slot and this is the news: Ryan Fucking Archidiacano! Not just another small guard, but another small guard you've already seen before! And you're just laughing and laughing and laughing because you never saw it coming. Zach Lowe? FUCK YOU! Just try to satirize this. GUESS WHAT YOU CAN'T! You never dreamed your team would just become a meme, a five second blip of a sensible chuckle on Ekswitter. But here you are! Ryan Fucking Archidiacano! After an ENTIRE YEAR, they blow an open roster spot by giving a full contract to a guy that's played 6 minutes through 56 games and brought in Ryan Fucking Archidiacano out of the cold and into the warm embrace of the Windy City Bulls.
the Arcidiacono return likely used as cover to then release (to media via protected account) news that Patrick Williams is indeed having foot surgery and is out for the season
I don't know what's more Bulls-y about this:
1) releasing it Friday afternoon
2) slow-playing the diagnosis weeks ago
3) having Billy Donovan give the ham-handed updates in the time since
4) the official PR release has 5 members of the comms staff on the masthead
Xavier Tillman would probably play 35 mpg for Chicago, would be their best shot blocker and overall best actual PF since, idk, Thad?
You can do interesting things with 2nd round picks when you actually have some.
Great review. You echo my feelings exactly. All this crap while Reinsdork is trying
to get the city to pony up a billion for a new stadium and forget about the old one.
I wish owners were only allowed one free stadium in their lifetime
Also pretty funny that an injury to a minimum salary guy on a 1 year deal is so apocalyptic. If he never plays another minute they've gotten more out of Craig than they paid for.
The team has been skating by for as long as I can remember trying to cut corners and acting as if being paper thin is a cruel twist of fate. Joakim Noah isn't playing on stumps instead of feet if you didn't let Omer Asik walk for nothing. We're not watching Dunleavy getting switched onto Lebron in the playoffs if he's just a bench scorer (as he had been for Milwaukee) rather than becoming the 34 year old starting SF for a playoff team.
::sigh::
Was listening to Dunc'd on today on the league's worst contracts and they gave a shout out to Blog a Bull.
Also,
Zach Lavine was #2 (2nd worst contract in the league).
Vuc was #5 (impressively bad GMing since he was the only guy on a freshly signed contract). Described as actually harmful to winning on both sides of the ball.
Lonzo Ball wasn't on the list but I'm sure the Bulls will be happy that he was "in the conversation".
lol at Vuc - I’m still mad at those that said, “Vuc contract is bad, but if they want to win, he’s their best choice.” Nope, NOPE, NOPE!!! Dude has always been a negative asset on defense, but he was trending downward on offense, being merely “equal” value on offense. Now that his shot has cratered this year, woof. and sure, it could come back up, but that’s already one of the three years “lost” and the contract only gets higher.
Vuc sucks. That they brought him back, bidding against themselves, is just the epitome of the ineptness of this franchise. But it was a tall Eastern European so maybe AK had a soft spot?
There only seems to be two rational explanations for why they do things like this: they're dumb, or they're lazy (of course they can be both). But we said the same thing about GarPax in their last rebuild. It seemed that if they had a multiple of solutions in front of them, they began to invariably take the option that required the least amount of work. How is it possible that the new team is acting exactly like the old one, and why?
I'm reading a book right now about the financialization era of news media admidst its managed decline and I think for the first time I'm starting to understand how an organization can be institutionally dumb and lazy, regardless of what personnel you hire:
1. The owner's #1 priority is to secure their operating profit and frankly there's really no second or third priorities.
2. The manager they appoint wants to exceed that goal to stay in the job and, hopefully, move up to a better one.
3. "Re-investment" of profit is basically a drunken Christmas present. Don't get your hopes up, it's not going to happen.
4. The quality of the product that you are ostensibly in charge of making really doesn't matter. Whether you want to make it "good" or "bad" actually comes down to a personal whim. Within the financial restraint ownership imposes, you can try to win Pulitzers... but that's really hard. Fundamentally it's a losing wager to try to sustain a great product while all the profit is being drained off, and kind of existentially pointless. It's both easier and in the short-term more profitable to print "What Day Is Daylight Savings Time?" stories instead of "We Caught The Mayor With a Bag of Cash In His Desk." It's certainly risk averse.
Which is to say that Karnisovas and Eversly could spend all weekend in the office scouting G-League players or flying to Greece to check out some 6'9" 14 year old in a tiny gym... but if they don't want to, that's okay too. In fact, finding out about that young Greek phenom probably requires more resources up front than you can expect to make back by tracking down successful players at a modest price. So unless every swing is a home run, just leave the bat on your shoulder, you won't be punished for it and it's the most profitable play.
And despite adding Arturas Karnisovas and Marc Eversley, the org didn't really change much. Maybe the outright awfulness of the late Garpax era is over and there are fewer locker room snitches and coach-choking, but they've come into the Bulls org and been swallowed by the beast. Who's still the Senior Advisor, Basketball Operations? Who's still the Director of Pro Personnel?
This isn't to say that AKME have gazed into the abyss of institutionalized mediocrity for too long and it's imprinted on their souls; after their Big Rebuild™️ they've meekly played out the thread for as long as they can and that's probably always who they were. But the Bulls org has also enabled it.
Have any of us ever seen a leaked Bulls strategic plan?
Yeah, to me the first red flags for AKME was that they took this job in the first place.
22 and 14 against the Celtics, our constant!
(19 shots, which is actually efficient for him. But team was -18 in his 34 minutes womp womp)
I stupidly challenged a guy on Youtube who was talking about how great Vooch is. My general point was that Vooch is a statistically mediocre center and his contract and age only make him worse.
I used Isaiah Hartenstein as a counterexample for a couple of reasons. First, he's statistically better than Vooch. Second, he's a guy the Bulls could have targeted last summer instead of re-signing Vooch. And third, he's supposedly a backup-level center that has been starting a lot this year with Mitchell Robinson constantly being injured.
With all that in mind, he has been a better center this season than Vooch has while making less than $8 million. The guy I was arguing with was having none of it and just kept pointing to Vooch's better basic stats (PPG, RPG, APG), so I eventually just stopped responding to him. My point wasn't to say Hartenstein is some super underrated center that everyone is sleeping on. It was to say that a backup center that has been shoved into a starting role has been better than our "star" center who is old and on a bloated contract.
Vooch is such an enigma because he's not necessarily bad (or at least hadn't been until this year). It's just that basically everything is working against him. He's old on a team of mostly young guys (at least the ones that will be around for a while). He's old and unathletic in a league that has very much moved in the direction of mobile big men where defense and rim protection are by far the most important aspects of a center's job - the two things Vooch is very bad at. He's on a team that needs paint protection more than it needs a big man with good court vision.
Offense is supposed to be the thing Vooch is good at. The problem is that's not what most teams need from centers anymore, and his offense isn't actually that good. It could be argued that it was never that great because it wasn't efficient, but that's beside the point. His offense right now in this season has been terrible. You can't be bad on offense and defense and expect to be paid $20 million a year. Well, I guess you can when the man writing the checks doesn't actually care about winning.
The broadcast is really working that "top 10 record since 5-14" angle.
Logan Roynsdorf got all his Gregs in line. I expect we're going to hear non-stop Org talking points for the next six months until the stadium deal is dead.
so that's the first AK-loss of the post-deadline season, right?
they were "competitive"...for 2.5 quarters. I suppose he would still try to count that as a positive.
but otherwise: large margin of loss, especially from three. Home crowd chanting for opposing team (per Julia Poe). Onurlap Bitim played minutes. Luke Kornet dabbed on them...
I was at the game unfortunately. Free tickets and went with a Celtics fan who I couldn't disappoint by not going.
Bulls "fans" seemed way more interested in Benny than the basketball being played. Lots of green in the stands. Justifiably, given that the Celtics play modern NBA basketball at a high level while the Bulls play a shitty version of offensive basketball that stopped working at least 10 years ago. If you aren't there to see Benny and the halftime act and the t-shirt cannon I don't know what you think you're paying for.
OKC waiving Poku. Hmm...
https://x.com/ShamsCharania/status/1761045227266019746?s=20
To be clear this would of course be a disaster. But it could possibly be interesting!
I'm flying Air-Poku, book your flight now.
Someone check on MikeDC if he's alright :-)
This is just a terrific team. In some ways they remind me of those late 80s/early 90s Blazer teams with their extremely high level of play, depth, versatility, and seldom having the best player on the floor in the playoffs.
I remember there were national stories about how those guys wanted to murder each other.
https://vault.si.com/vault/1989/01/16/is-anybody-happy-here-the-uninspired-trail-blazers-and-their-coach-mike-schuler-left-are-giving-each-other-headaches-with-all-their-bickering-and-petty-demands
I love all reminders of one of the eternal truths of sports: it's a bunch of obsessive compulsives with 5% body fat being ultra catty with each other.
going with tried and true precedent when it comes to predicting free agents for the Bulls
agent Mark Bartelstein: Joe Harris
to a lesser extent there's their fruitful(?) relationship with Klutch. Juan Toscano-Anderson is in the GLeague and a free agent. Maybe do them a solid for some return favor when it comes to getting Lonzo off the cap
LOL, well roster's full, so nevermind:
>"@ShamsCharania - The Chicago Bulls are converting two-way F/G Onuralp Bitim to a standard multiyear NBA deal"
this has zero impact on this season. Bitim won't play (they could've been playing him all season on the two-way)
this is just thinking ahead, but in a cheapass Bulls way: Bitim likely is signed through next season making less than the veteran's minimum, which is gold when it comes to staying under the tax. (could also just have not picked up Dalen Terry's option, but whatever)
how many times is KC going to fall for this man:
>"Even if Bitim doesn't play, his imminent signing to a multiyear deal adds a value contract for the offseason that can be included potentially for salary matching in trades. The multiyear deal is expected to feature either non-guarantees or guarantee dates well into next season."
what a schlub
I look forward to Onuralp registering his first NBA boxscore statistic after more than half of a year on a 2 way contract.
let's see if it can come before his 25th birthday next week
Look, if he were a doctor or a PhD candidate in Sanskrit, he'd still be in school right now.
This is some extreme version of "He's basically still a rookie"
why... NVM. Your next post answers the why.
UGH
BULLS PRESS CONFERENCE AT 3PM
ARTURAS WILL STRIDE TO THE MICROPHONE AND CONFIDENTLY SMILE.
"Ladies and gentlemen," he'll announce.
"WE GOT HIM."
https://twitter.com/MikeAScotto/status/1761107978747367759
You waited all year and you thought something was coming, didntcha? You thought, they can't possibly run it back, they can't possibly wait it out, they can't possibly be in the same position as last year and do absolutely nothing. Didntcha?
Well YOU GOT IT, BUDDY! Bet you never thought you'd think about Archidifuckinachio again, did you? And here you are, weeks after the deadline, the Bulls now 5 (I mean 3, I mean 7) games out of the 6th slot and this is the news: Ryan Fucking Archidiacano! Not just another small guard, but another small guard you've already seen before! And you're just laughing and laughing and laughing because you never saw it coming. Zach Lowe? FUCK YOU! Just try to satirize this. GUESS WHAT YOU CAN'T! You never dreamed your team would just become a meme, a five second blip of a sensible chuckle on Ekswitter. But here you are! Ryan Fucking Archidiacano! After an ENTIRE YEAR, they blow an open roster spot by giving a full contract to a guy that's played 6 minutes through 56 games and brought in Ryan Fucking Archidiacano out of the cold and into the warm embrace of the Windy City Bulls.
RYAN
FUCKING
ARCHIDIACANO
the Arcidiacono return likely used as cover to then release (to media via protected account) news that Patrick Williams is indeed having foot surgery and is out for the season
I don't know what's more Bulls-y about this:
1) releasing it Friday afternoon
2) slow-playing the diagnosis weeks ago
3) having Billy Donovan give the ham-handed updates in the time since
4) the official PR release has 5 members of the comms staff on the masthead
This is certainly the Bullsiest day in recent memory.
My god, they're awful.
I was going to say the same thing hahaha
February 23 should be Blogabull Day after this. Much more polite than calling it what it really is!
5) having to make a contract decision on an injured player
Holy fuck
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/24622-bone-marrow-edema
Read through this. It's a career-threatening situation. And some of the underlying causes are downright scary.
But Pat's is just ACUTE bone marrow edema! Basically no worse than a minor sprain!!