Bulls 'direction' not determined by trades, but by Billy Donovan
will Donovan be interested in the team 'building', or being 'competitive'?
The Bulls are back on Thursday, as it doesn’t appear the NBA is moving quickly enough on their regular season problem to sim the rest of the season for a third of the teams, including the one solely occupying the Chicago market.
Games still have to be played, unfortunately. In the wake of the trade deadline, the Bulls got pummeled with their hodgepodge of 6’2” acquisitions. This lead to the stories from those covering the team about how the team is finally rebuilding, and even possibly tanking. Even if too little and too late, it was a declaration of a direction.
I’m here to remind everyone that you do not, under any circumstances, have to give Arturas Karnisovas credit.
Seeing this only has me feel I didn’t give enough shit to Arturas Karnisovas for his latest press conference. That was because it was repetitive of the same crap we’ve been hearing for years. How is it that they were interpreted as a change? It was a very changed roster, but I received little to sense it was a change in philosophy:
There’s a core (it always changes, this time it’s Giddey and Matas and a few role players plus the totally unproven Noa Essengue)
Want to acquire young players with experience
It’s of highest importance to have structure, thus why it actually wasn’t a mistake to keep Coby White and Ayo Dosunmu last year.
Head coach Billy Donovan is in charge of player development, and who he plays in the regular season is part of that process.
One of AK’s consistent axioms that he is correct on is that the trade deadline can disrupt the team. In the wake of trading Zach LaVine for three rotation players the year prior, the team got absolutely waxed in back-to-back contests against the Pistons before heading into the All-Star break.
Then we saw what happened after the break: an above-.500 stretch to end the season culminating in a 15-5 finish, that AK clearly bought into as a sign his team was progressing even though he says now that he knew they’d be mediocre…but also didn’t want to be mediocre…yet didn’t make moves before the season…
…it’s tough to discern the biggest item of bullshit that AK says in the giant pile of it. But I’ll try, and think the biggest turd is that their rebuild-don’t-call-it-that “stage” is “not skipping steps”.
Their player acquisition and roster construction philosophy is exactly what skipping steps is! The steps they are skipping include losing to improve your own pick quality, trading guys earlier, and pursuing more long-term (and riskier) assets like future firsts versus ‘youth with experience’ that need new contracts soon.
This past trade deadline they didn’t even fully commit to that!
I don’t think they actually wanted Anfernee Simons and Collin Sexton but they were the contracts that were required. And they aren’t “good at their jobs” so didn’t flip them before deadline hour
The best confluence of youth/experience resides within Rob Dillingham, who just turned 21 and is in his only second season
Jaden Ivey is 2 years younger than Coby/Ayo, which isn’t nothing, but there is no commitment: they only gave up Kevin Huerter to acquire him, and his free agent market is likely so light plus Qualifying Offer (and cap hold) is so high that they may waive their matching rights and/or sign him quickly to a low figure (but still risky given his injuries) new contract.
On the fringes, they acquired 22 year old Leonard Miller but sent out the same-aged Julian Phillips. Dalen Terry1 (23) was traded for a veteran, and Ousmane Dieng (22) was re-routed immediately - and had two productive games for the Bucks already - for another veteran.
Simply needing bodies, they signed Mac McClung, a 27-year-old guard, to a 2-way contract. The bodies are back, and he’s still around for some reason.
The Bulls - and this is Donovan and his bosses - have a philosophy of player development where they emphasize structure over opportunity. So while it’s true that the Bulls did get younger at the deadline, they didn’t fully embrace it to use these final 27 (oh god, so many) games as a laboratory environment. Plus if the result is losing some games along the way, that’s not the worst thing2.
If they were embracing a rebuild and not skipping steps, they wouldn’t state concerns about cohesion, or find it necessary to get veteran frontcourt players when they could have kept Dieng and/or sign younger players off the street3 to play with Lachlan Olbrich (22).
And if this was a rebuild, AK wouldn’t abdicate the playing time decisions to his head coach, a nominal subordinate. In the Bulls’ case, Billy Donovan has outsized influence, receiving only agreement and praise from AK and ownership. Part of it is a relative insecurity - well earned! - to their own acumen, but it’s important to remember also that AK doesn’t have a different philosophy than Billy, even though they should have different perspectives given their jobs. They all want to win, and as soon as possible.
Thus why we get these differing quotes regarding Dillingham. He did receive significant minutes since his arrival and has said how he appreciates the opportunity versus the contending Timberwolves, playing with freedom and not worrying too much about mistakes.
But then Donovan said not so fast(via):
The games heading into the break can be junked. What is far more significant is how Donovan4 will figure his playing rotation with ‘his guys’ Josh Giddey, Tre Jones, and Jalen Smith all returning to action.
Will Dillingham and Ivey even play? Miller hasn’t. The veteran bigs in Guerschon Yabusele and Nick Richards have. While there is more disruption than last year, remember how quickly Jones, Huerter, and Zach Collins made their way into Billy’s heart. I still maintain that Buzelis only played so much after the break last year because of injury. It is very possible that Simons and Sexton continue to receive minutes because Billy likes veterans and wants to do right by them (both heading into contract years) and in turn those veterans will play hard for him and maybe even win some games.
That’d be different than a rebuild, and far different from a tank. But it’d be the same old Bulls.
it went unasked of AK how he should be trusted with these new ‘young players with experience’ when they’ve busted out with Terry, Phillips, and Pat Williams…plus no significant fringe or two-way roster success story
though the tank race is all but decided and they can’t get much lower at this point ‘against’ so many other experienced tankers
can get them on cheap team options for the following season too
who has been out for some of this week due to the death of his father, and won’t coach Thursday
Season ticket holder here: long time listener, first time poster. Last night's game was horrible to watch. Just bad basketball all around and what the hell am I supposed to be rooting for anyway? Dillingham did not belong on the court last night--unplayable. I haven't seen a guard look that lost on the court for the Bulls since a young man named Cam Payne ran Point in one of the previous versions of the stupid days. The new front court guys are a bit below replacement level and will be forgotten memories like Joffery Lauvergne in a couple of months. It's a joke whether we frame it as tanking or not. It is providing no value in any way for the present or the future.
The "continuity" scam sold by AK over the past couple years did have some aesthetic benefits: a bunch of mostly likable, try-hard players who were more often fun to watch than not--they had a sense of where the other guys would be and they all bought in to a system that did work a decent amount of the time. And we did win some games. And that was OK ,I guess, if you look at games in isolation. But at the end of the day, sports fandom is not about winning games in isolation despite what this franchise tries to gaslight us to believe. The topped out the ability of those try-hard players to win games by whatever junky/lucky/aberrational way that it happened and that was enough for ownership to continue to bless it. But it was a complete unsustainable bandaid and any educated fan knew it as it was happening. We have no young success stories. Where is even one game's worth of Daniss Jenkins, someone who can thrive in the Bulls' system without a pedigree just based on good training and a good eye for scouting? We have none of that and haven't the whole time AK has been there (OK, Ayo, but that's a horrible overall track record, no other team has this bad of a development record).
We now have a complete blank slate of a future that will be filled in by the same idiots that caused this emptiness to occur by failing to plan for the inevitable for three+ years. The franchise touts "flexibility" as if we're clearing the decks for a 2010-like "decision" of a star to maybe, just maybe, want to play for us. I think AK can speak that kind of language to the ownership constituency because the ownership still maintains a mindset of team-building that hasn't existed in over 10 years.
I think most of us are thankfully done projecting the idea that AK has a "plan" that he's been executing since we got rid of DeRozan. It's been a cautious tear down while protecting the floor for no other reason than thinking "our" fans value the aesthetic value of some of those wins over planning for the future. I am negative on this new scavenger-like philosophy of "reclaiming" busted lottery picks. If we had any kind of a track record of developing depressed talent, I'd feel better. We haven't developed front court contributors since we drafted Joakim Noah in 2007 and Taj Gibson in 2009. We have no front court players now and none in the pipeline.
So AK has punted the confrontation of reality another 5 months, when he will look like he's reading a hostage statement in his bi-annual gaslighting exercise to the masses, which is the only time the organization is required to pretend to articulate some kind of vision. We won't be able to do a rebuild because we can't identify nor develop talent in a way that is better than the way other teams do it.
Will pray that one day, the organization hires a basketball mind talent that understands the way modern teams develop and cultivate talent, and then get the hell out of the way to allow that to happen.
Until then, [talking to ownership now], please stop insulting our intelligence. Please clear the lowest bar: being able to honestly articulate that serious roster building and development mistakes have been and are currently being made. Honestly articulating some kind of a plan that reflects the reality of our situation and what it will take to build a sustainable winning culture. "Our fans" have seen enough of the BS--time to get living or time to get busy dying.
Zach Collins out for the year, no reason not to waive him and sign a youngish non-guard