Why can’t you believe? This is what they have been doing for years and will continue as long any Reinsdork is alive. They hire asslickers and flakcatchers like Krause and AK and they do their job
AK is living in an alternate universe where all signs of failure are seen as signs of success. We need to remove all possible excuses from this guy, so the Bulls need to be healthy and miss the playoffs. Any injuries will be used to explain away why we didn't make the NBA Finals as planned. We also need huge blowout losses to take away the "we're competitive" stuff.
All of this also confirms to me that the Bulls really think Lonzo is coming back next year. AK had one idea for the team which included Lonzo and he is not giving up on it so long as he is under contract.
Of course what Giannis meant was that if you give your all (as he does) but despite that you fall short, it’s not your fault and you’re not a loser. It doesn’t mean that you get a gold medal just for showing up.
“make the nba finals as planned” -- has he ever even been this explicit with a goal? over the last three years all i can remember him saying is that they want to be competitive and ~try~ to make the playoffs
I agree with everything you say other than that we shouldn’t blame ownership. You say that AK is “a jerk for operating under the assumption we’re the ones that are all stupid” - except that he doesn’t need to care what you and I think as long as the Reinsdorfs are on board. The buck after all stops there (or maybe 50 cents given how cheap they are).
The amount of trivial lies he told was as alarming as his scripted Iraqi Information Minister responses.
Not only was he confused about his team's position in the standings (4.5 games behind Indiana, not 3), he also threw shade on his predecessor by claiming they hadn't made the playoffs in 5 years. (21:15 in the video.) It was 3 years. The 4th was under Billy Donovan and in Arturas' first year when he ran it back and then made his disastrous deadline deals. And Fred won 1 more playoff game than Billy has.
Funny all of errors are easily documented but make him sound better if you believe him. I didn't think an NBA executive would hold a press conference and lie about his team's record, both this year and in the past. But here we are, this is the new standard.
Can you imagine if Gar or Pax stood up there and lied about his team's record and about their predecessor to make themselves look better?
as pointed out in the chat, he also incorrectly called it a 'buyer's market' when every team is looking to improve
I think you're right that we'd all be taking GarPax more to task for outright lies, but they were scummy and stubborn but not outright dumb. I don't think AK is purposefully misinforming I think he literally doesn't know they're 4.5 games out
in KC's column he doesn't correct the '5 years without playoffs' but inserts his own edit:
"I think when we came here, the Bulls missed the playoffs (four) years in a row."
which isn't even correct! as you pointed out it was 3 years. After they miss the playoffs this year the AK era will have also missed the playoffs for 3 years (out of 4)
Little did we know the Bulls W/L record from like 5 years ago was arcane and esoteric knowledge, known only to basement dwellers and other wizards.
KC has a documented history of covering up for the malfeasance (and actual violence) of the people he's covering, but his willingness to throw himself in front of bullets on their behalf is both impressive and pathetic.
Feb 9·edited Feb 9Liked by your friendly BullsBlogger
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.
The crux of the issue is Chicago is the largest market that has only one team. Therefore, seats get filled no matter how bad the product. Reinsdorf won’t do a damn thing until he feels it in his wallet.
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.
I just wrote about this on discord, huge move for Dallas, with now two young players making almost nothing able to swat everything in sight into the first row and having the creativity of Doncic and Kyrie to get them easy buckets all game long.
Remember we had Gafford, we could have taken Lively if we hadn't traded away our pick, and one of those glorious wins in Chicago's "competitive" 14-9 stretch was a deliberate tank job by Dallas to keep the pick they used to take him.
I think Artuas is doing the right thing since he still is working on undoing the bad hand left by misfit John Paxson the previous owner who mortgaged all our draft picks and left Artuas with no draft picks when he took over this team.
His only mistake was putting all his faith and big money contract into Zach Lavine who in my opinion Bulls should have let him walk away via free agency and now the best thing Bulls should consider is just wait what kind of team they can put together once Lonzo Ball and Lavine comes back or trade him over the summer for some draft picks cus right now in my own eyes Lavine has been nothing but a cancer on this team and if Artuas doesn't not find any takers for him this summer then at that point fans should crucify Artuas for failing to get nothing for Lavine.
He out 4 months so he should be healthy when he comes back before the NBA Draft to grab more future draft picks for him.
Paxson was the GM though and he was the one that traded Jimmy Butler away for Zach Lavine and brought this cancer to the Bulls and what upset me the most was last season when Bulls had no draft picks going into the draft because the NBA took away the only draft pick we had for Bulls tampering to early to draft Lonzo Ball
I blame Paxson for leaving a huge mess for AK to fix and so far he is failing to do that right now but still has time to fix the mess that Paxson left and longface Gar Forman who they fired cus he was was worse than Paxson. Only other ex Bull that failed worse than Paxson as a GM or owner was the goat himself Michael Jordan
In your first post you claim Arturas is "doing the right thing" because he's cleaning up from Paxson who traded away all of our draft picks, which is completely untrue.
Every single contract on this roster was signed by Arturas Karnisovas.
These are all the future draft picks Bulls have and it's so pathetic that Bulls don't have any future multiple draft picks.
Some of these draft picks were orchestrated by Paxson since he was GM for much longer time than AK who really just has 2-3 years since taking over the Bulls
2024: First round pick
2025: First round pick, owed to the Spurs top 10 protected
2026: First round pick, owed to the Spurs top 8 protected if 2025 fails to convey
2027: First round pick, owed to the Spurs top 8 protected if 2025 and 2026 fail to convey
No, the fact that you say these were orchestrated by Paxson and that AK has been on the job for “2-3 years” indicating you have no idea what you’re talking about.
also mentioned on there was the clippers trading their #1 to get rid of baron davis and even though i hate kyrie that trade was worse.
really the problem is the future of the trade which included the ridiculous extension the bulls gave vuc. if they had been willing to cut their losses it would have been a different story.
I'm not disagreeing with you (really!), but from what I recall and have seen since is that the Clippers included that to dump salary. They were able to build around Blake Griffin with Deandre Jordan, Chris Paul, and then sign JJ Redick. Chris Paul is one of the few PGs (that was available) that I would say was definitively better than Kyrie Irving over that span. So at least they were able to execute their plan and have relative success with it. In a vacuum, the Clippers trade was worse. But in context and hindsight, it worked out pretty well.
The Bulls have nothing to show for their trade. They tried to get better and really did not at all.
I mean yes, though Davis was actually waived by Cle via the amnesty clause the same day as the Paul trade, so they could have still gotten the money off the books. Also of course they completely lucked out by the Lakers trade getting vetoed - things could have been way different.
Regardless though, I feel like it's not just about what the Bulls actually did but what they could have done, and maybe it's why I don't grade the trade itself as harshly. This isn't like Garpax hardcapping themselves with that stupid Hinrich trade which prevented them from further moves. AKME actually made some good signings after the Vuc trade, and the team at least looked competent and enjoyable to watch. Lonzo's injury wasn't caused by the trade, etc etc. I actually believe there could exist a universe in which Vuc is still on this team and it's ok, but it's not this one. Sometimes doing stupid shit like trading away excessive picks (though would definitely say the Vuc trade should have been only 1 pick), hardcapping yourself, or.... tampering lol prevent your ability to make future moves, but the Vuc trade in and of itself didn't really do that too much. That doesn't mean we shouldn't be mad about them refusing to trade him or the contract extension. Those things were not a foregone conclusion just because the bulls made the trade. But trading an unprotected number one is some dumb shit lol.
Just wait until the off season when AK hypnotizes Jerry into finally paying the tax just so he can sign/extend everyone and run back this exact squad for 2 more years. Wheeeee!
Feb 9·edited Feb 9Liked by your friendly BullsBlogger
Conspiracy Theory: Like MikeDC, I sort of think that Donovan is probably the sharpest guy in here. Maybe everyone sending Qs to him to handle is not a coincidence. Perhaps Karnisovas has already agreed to step out before the draft, which is why he seemed not just delusional but totally disconnected from even the W/L standings. After the season, Donovan will take over á la Brad Stevens and hire his own coach (or promote Chris Fleming who seems to have stuck around forever waiting for his close-up.) This would also explain the "secret" extension Billy signed.
This actually is the only thing I can think of for why this guy was allowed to go out there for 22 minutes of performance art.
2024 draft night, AK enters their war room and notices Donovan and Marc Eversley standing there in chainmail. Donovan approaches AK: "The Reinsdorfs send their regards" *stab*
As AK falls, consciousness fading, he whispers one final word: "Nikola"
Every time I see AK talk, it's evident that sending the questions to Billy is the right way to go. Sending the questions to Bennie would probably get more sensible results than sending them to AK.
When he was first hired, there was a lot made of him having worked for Nike. But now I'm wondering if maybe he just worked for Foot Locker (like in the stock room).
Eversley thinks AK is a good President of Basketball Operations. But then again his only other measuring stick is Bryan Colangelo (also know as 'high collar') who purposefully tried to alienate his best player (Joel Embiid) in the media.
Here here and there there!
People still fill the seats.
Why can’t you believe? This is what they have been doing for years and will continue as long any Reinsdork is alive. They hire asslickers and flakcatchers like Krause and AK and they do their job
AK is living in an alternate universe where all signs of failure are seen as signs of success. We need to remove all possible excuses from this guy, so the Bulls need to be healthy and miss the playoffs. Any injuries will be used to explain away why we didn't make the NBA Finals as planned. We also need huge blowout losses to take away the "we're competitive" stuff.
All of this also confirms to me that the Bulls really think Lonzo is coming back next year. AK had one idea for the team which included Lonzo and he is not giving up on it so long as he is under contract.
Giannis: "There's no such thing as failure in sports."
AK: "Aiite bet."
Of course what Giannis meant was that if you give your all (as he does) but despite that you fall short, it’s not your fault and you’re not a loser. It doesn’t mean that you get a gold medal just for showing up.
“make the nba finals as planned” -- has he ever even been this explicit with a goal? over the last three years all i can remember him saying is that they want to be competitive and ~try~ to make the playoffs
LOL no. That should be the goal of every NBA GM but today clarified AK's horizons are set much lower.
I agree with everything you say other than that we shouldn’t blame ownership. You say that AK is “a jerk for operating under the assumption we’re the ones that are all stupid” - except that he doesn’t need to care what you and I think as long as the Reinsdorfs are on board. The buck after all stops there (or maybe 50 cents given how cheap they are).
Thad Young is being waved. Think AK wants to really run it back?
At least he's a gd power forward, something this team seems allergic to actually signing.
Nah, too tall.
Not tall enough, no twin tower effect.
The amount of trivial lies he told was as alarming as his scripted Iraqi Information Minister responses.
Not only was he confused about his team's position in the standings (4.5 games behind Indiana, not 3), he also threw shade on his predecessor by claiming they hadn't made the playoffs in 5 years. (21:15 in the video.) It was 3 years. The 4th was under Billy Donovan and in Arturas' first year when he ran it back and then made his disastrous deadline deals. And Fred won 1 more playoff game than Billy has.
Funny all of errors are easily documented but make him sound better if you believe him. I didn't think an NBA executive would hold a press conference and lie about his team's record, both this year and in the past. But here we are, this is the new standard.
Can you imagine if Gar or Pax stood up there and lied about his team's record and about their predecessor to make themselves look better?
as pointed out in the chat, he also incorrectly called it a 'buyer's market' when every team is looking to improve
I think you're right that we'd all be taking GarPax more to task for outright lies, but they were scummy and stubborn but not outright dumb. I don't think AK is purposefully misinforming I think he literally doesn't know they're 4.5 games out
holy shit this is wild,
in KC's column he doesn't correct the '5 years without playoffs' but inserts his own edit:
"I think when we came here, the Bulls missed the playoffs (four) years in a row."
which isn't even correct! as you pointed out it was 3 years. After they miss the playoffs this year the AK era will have also missed the playoffs for 3 years (out of 4)
Little did we know the Bulls W/L record from like 5 years ago was arcane and esoteric knowledge, known only to basement dwellers and other wizards.
KC has a documented history of covering up for the malfeasance (and actual violence) of the people he's covering, but his willingness to throw himself in front of bullets on their behalf is both impressive and pathetic.
I miss GarPax
That’s like saying that when you have the flu you miss COVID.
I wanna fight you, but it’s too sad that that could actually be true.
It’s sad that as we were joking a week ago I said “we like our team Ak “. And that’s what he said today.
Well YFB you were right about AK. Years ago in fact. Crow sucks for dinner
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.
The crux of the issue is Chicago is the largest market that has only one team. Therefore, seats get filled no matter how bad the product. Reinsdorf won’t do a damn thing until he feels it in his wallet.
The problem with that theory is he owns the White Sox and the presence of the Cubs does nothing to make him want to spend on them either.
Touché. Well at least we don’t have to concern ourselves with hope any longer.
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.
I just wrote about this on discord, huge move for Dallas, with now two young players making almost nothing able to swat everything in sight into the first row and having the creativity of Doncic and Kyrie to get them easy buckets all game long.
Remember we had Gafford, we could have taken Lively if we hadn't traded away our pick, and one of those glorious wins in Chicago's "competitive" 14-9 stretch was a deliberate tank job by Dallas to keep the pick they used to take him.
I guess one of the things I am thankful for is that, considering how terrible AK’s moves have been, I suppose it’s good he’s not trading.
Gafford
Kornet
The pick that turned into Wagner
The pick that could have been Lively or Cam Whitmore, among others
2nd round pick for tampering with Ball
2nd round pick in 2022 for DeRozan and
Probably BOTH picks in 2025 for DeRozan
Wendell Carter, Jr.
Lauri Markkanen
The latter two of which ALL beat writers just handwave away their success with “they just needed a change of scenery.”
Maybe we should be lucky they don’t do anything so they can keep wasting assets.
And the Wiz just got a first for Gafford!
Is this because it is a salary dump or are we really this cursed?
We're cursed with a terrible GM.
I think Artuas is doing the right thing since he still is working on undoing the bad hand left by misfit John Paxson the previous owner who mortgaged all our draft picks and left Artuas with no draft picks when he took over this team.
His only mistake was putting all his faith and big money contract into Zach Lavine who in my opinion Bulls should have let him walk away via free agency and now the best thing Bulls should consider is just wait what kind of team they can put together once Lonzo Ball and Lavine comes back or trade him over the summer for some draft picks cus right now in my own eyes Lavine has been nothing but a cancer on this team and if Artuas doesn't not find any takers for him this summer then at that point fans should crucify Artuas for failing to get nothing for Lavine.
He out 4 months so he should be healthy when he comes back before the NBA Draft to grab more future draft picks for him.
Is this parody? Arturas had all of his draft picks when he took over the team. Arturas traded them all.
(And, uh, Paxson was not the "previous owner.")
Paxson was the GM though and he was the one that traded Jimmy Butler away for Zach Lavine and brought this cancer to the Bulls and what upset me the most was last season when Bulls had no draft picks going into the draft because the NBA took away the only draft pick we had for Bulls tampering to early to draft Lonzo Ball
I blame Paxson for leaving a huge mess for AK to fix and so far he is failing to do that right now but still has time to fix the mess that Paxson left and longface Gar Forman who they fired cus he was was worse than Paxson. Only other ex Bull that failed worse than Paxson as a GM or owner was the goat himself Michael Jordan
In your first post you claim Arturas is "doing the right thing" because he's cleaning up from Paxson who traded away all of our draft picks, which is completely untrue.
Every single contract on this roster was signed by Arturas Karnisovas.
These are all the future draft picks Bulls have and it's so pathetic that Bulls don't have any future multiple draft picks.
Some of these draft picks were orchestrated by Paxson since he was GM for much longer time than AK who really just has 2-3 years since taking over the Bulls
2024: First round pick
2025: First round pick, owed to the Spurs top 10 protected
2026: First round pick, owed to the Spurs top 8 protected if 2025 fails to convey
2027: First round pick, owed to the Spurs top 8 protected if 2025 and 2026 fail to convey
2028: First round pick
You’re an idiot. How do you get facts so wrong? Just kidding. I ain’t mad. I know this is an AI bot from Russia. lol
AI from Russia lol!
Here's my proof below
Chicago Bulls - Future Draft Picks | Fanspo
https://fanspo.com/nba/teams/Bulls/5/draft-picks
No, the fact that you say these were orchestrated by Paxson and that AK has been on the job for “2-3 years” indicating you have no idea what you’re talking about.
You’re an idiot or about. Your choice.
> Some of these draft picks were orchestrated by Paxson
Every single one of those picks (which is actually only 1 pick) were traded by Karnisovas. Paxson traded 0 of those.
Dude what are you even saying
What I'm saying is be patient till next season before crucifing AK
Are you a time traveler from 2023?
Robert Garvel is the opposite of a concern troll... a patience troll?
Neither Paxson nor AK have ever been the GM of the Bulls...
https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/lo2z5o/wtf_in_european_languages_languageseu/
I found AK’s burner account!
My dad's nickname for the team, "the losing losers from loserville" has rarely felt as fitting as today.
The Athletic Bounce newsletter named the Bulls trading for Vuc the worst deadline day deal OF ALL TIME
yeahhhh i don't buy it.
also mentioned on there was the clippers trading their #1 to get rid of baron davis and even though i hate kyrie that trade was worse.
really the problem is the future of the trade which included the ridiculous extension the bulls gave vuc. if they had been willing to cut their losses it would have been a different story.
I'm not disagreeing with you (really!), but from what I recall and have seen since is that the Clippers included that to dump salary. They were able to build around Blake Griffin with Deandre Jordan, Chris Paul, and then sign JJ Redick. Chris Paul is one of the few PGs (that was available) that I would say was definitively better than Kyrie Irving over that span. So at least they were able to execute their plan and have relative success with it. In a vacuum, the Clippers trade was worse. But in context and hindsight, it worked out pretty well.
The Bulls have nothing to show for their trade. They tried to get better and really did not at all.
I mean yes, though Davis was actually waived by Cle via the amnesty clause the same day as the Paul trade, so they could have still gotten the money off the books. Also of course they completely lucked out by the Lakers trade getting vetoed - things could have been way different.
Regardless though, I feel like it's not just about what the Bulls actually did but what they could have done, and maybe it's why I don't grade the trade itself as harshly. This isn't like Garpax hardcapping themselves with that stupid Hinrich trade which prevented them from further moves. AKME actually made some good signings after the Vuc trade, and the team at least looked competent and enjoyable to watch. Lonzo's injury wasn't caused by the trade, etc etc. I actually believe there could exist a universe in which Vuc is still on this team and it's ok, but it's not this one. Sometimes doing stupid shit like trading away excessive picks (though would definitely say the Vuc trade should have been only 1 pick), hardcapping yourself, or.... tampering lol prevent your ability to make future moves, but the Vuc trade in and of itself didn't really do that too much. That doesn't mean we shouldn't be mad about them refusing to trade him or the contract extension. Those things were not a foregone conclusion just because the bulls made the trade. But trading an unprotected number one is some dumb shit lol.
But at least they re-signed him!
When you have a #DoubleDoubleMachine like Vooch you gotta do whatever it takes to keep him.
Let me go wipe this completely unrelated vomit from my desk.
Just wait until the off season when AK hypnotizes Jerry into finally paying the tax just so he can sign/extend everyone and run back this exact squad for 2 more years. Wheeeee!
Conspiracy Theory: Like MikeDC, I sort of think that Donovan is probably the sharpest guy in here. Maybe everyone sending Qs to him to handle is not a coincidence. Perhaps Karnisovas has already agreed to step out before the draft, which is why he seemed not just delusional but totally disconnected from even the W/L standings. After the season, Donovan will take over á la Brad Stevens and hire his own coach (or promote Chris Fleming who seems to have stuck around forever waiting for his close-up.) This would also explain the "secret" extension Billy signed.
This actually is the only thing I can think of for why this guy was allowed to go out there for 22 minutes of performance art.
2024 draft night, AK enters their war room and notices Donovan and Marc Eversley standing there in chainmail. Donovan approaches AK: "The Reinsdorfs send their regards" *stab*
As AK falls, consciousness fading, he whispers one final word: "Nikola"
Promote Billy's son, I'm sure on the bench completely by merit
Every time I see AK talk, it's evident that sending the questions to Billy is the right way to go. Sending the questions to Bennie would probably get more sensible results than sending them to AK.
I'd say Marc Eversley should step up, but he's probably thinking he has a chance to work in the NBA again if he keeps his head down
When he was first hired, there was a lot made of him having worked for Nike. But now I'm wondering if maybe he just worked for Foot Locker (like in the stock room).
When HR doesn’t bother to check your resume
Eversley thinks AK is a good President of Basketball Operations. But then again his only other measuring stick is Bryan Colangelo (also know as 'high collar') who purposefully tried to alienate his best player (Joel Embiid) in the media.