I can't believe it happened again
please fire this dunce!
I know we like to kid around and assume the worst when it comes to Arturas Karnisovas, but I am legitimately shocked that another trade deadline and post-mortem went THIS poorly for him.
It’s another transaction period gone by where there was not a single Bulls move, not even a minor one.
And then the press conference was even worse. Again, this should be expected by now, but it’s one thing to meme and another to actually say the same things AGAIN.
You can watch it now if you’re a real masochist.
These used to be fun to mock, but overall that performance today was not amusing to me, I felt insulted.
A nearly complete carbon copy of last deadline, though adding a few more recent nonsense that he’s repeated the other handful of times he’s deigned to address the fanbase since then.
I’d call it gaslighting, except that implies clever intent. This guy is simply a doofus, and worse is a jerk for operating under the assumption we’re the ones that are all stupid.
I could go into a detailed fisking of his quotes, but it truly is the same shit about how the team is good enough, going for 8th place in the worse conference is a worthwhile ambition, and change is bad. It’s all coming from some alternate reality where the Chicago Bulls are not part of a league of 29 other teams going for a championship, or even the 6 playoff seeds ahead of them in the East standings. It’s their ‘league’ of the Heat, Magic, Hawks, and Nets (he said they were closer to the Pacers than they actually are, a simple but telling gaffe), all a ‘bunch’ that didn’t get better at the deadline either. And existing in an alternate timeline where the past calendar year didn’t happen.
I don’t even find it fun to poke at the virtually-assembled media this time. The old saying applies here: “never argue with fools. They will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.” This team has successfully worn down interest to where there isn’t much hope from those that cover the team anymore, but some there today did indeed try to get AK to clarify some sense into what he was saying.
But he instead just confirmed every concern troll we had over his delusion and incompetence. I wrote earlier this week how messed up it was for us to be worried that improbable wins and competitive losses would teach AK the wrong lessons and perpetuate this terrible work he’s done running this team.
But it turned out to be totally valid! He keeps doing nothing and talking this same dumb way about it! The team is actually really good, they’re competitive (he literally said ‘gritty’ at one point), so competitive, let’s remember how competitive…
Competitive how? Well, the playoffs, or at least the play-in that gets you to he playoffs, or even if not winning the play-in there are stretches of the season that looked really good and showed progress. Vuc is a double-double machine.
I no longer am rooting for the team to lose to try and get AK to see the light. He’s has proven to be a dangerous combination of stupid and shameless, there is no bottom from which he can’t seek out the smallest evidence of good play and try and sell it as reason to have him stay the course. There is no chance of defeating him with logic by adding actual context and analysis to his team’s performance. He said 14-9 again! How can you reason with that?
No, I’m now rooting for this team to lose so Arturas Karnisovas feels personal anguish and suffers professional responsibility.
Any lamentation that it’s actually ownership that’s the real problem and we are forever stuck with uninspiring executives only deflects from how completely terrible this particular uninspiring executive is.
Please fire this tool, today’s trade deadline was another unearned chance that he totally squandered, only confirming he should’ve been fired a long time ago.
Just gonna repost:
There's so many reasonable criticisms to be made, I'm just going to document one that's less obvious but probably more egregious than most.
Let's talk about what it means to mismanage and waste assets.
The Bulls traded Gafford in February 2021. Three years later, in February 2024, the Wizards traded him for a 1st round pick. They also traded Luke Kornet to the Celtics. 3 years later, he's still not great, but he's a role player who plays on the best team in the league.
In exchange for giving up these two guys who still have significant value three years later, what do the Bulls have to show for it?
They got Daniel Theis, who played a total of 23 games for the Bulls. In the three seasons since, he's played 93 games (an average of 31 per season).
They got Troy Brown Jr, who played is a league minimum wing who just got traded to his 3rd team in two years.
They got Javonte Green, who's out of the league.
The initial construction of the deal was just between the Wiz and Bulls, and in that construction, the Bulls would have kept Kornet and also received Mo Wagner instead of Theis. Wagner is, like Kornet, not great, but a young role player getting steady minutes on a team that's much better than the Bulls while Daniel Theis is long gone with nothing to show for him ever being here.
This is what terrible GMing looks like.
The two funniest parts of his press conference:
1) When he brought up Pat’s stretch of averaging 14 ppg in December and said he “went on a tear”. That’s the threshold for impressing AK! Nikola Mirotic numbers!
2) The fact that he made it clear that the President of a nearly $5 billion dollar franchise doesn’t understand basic economics. He kept referring to it as a buyer’s market, but then said there weren’t any moves for them to make. Um, hey buddy, if you like your team and want to improve it, it would need to be a seller’s market in order to prevent you from making moves.