Sometimes I think that these are just fake platitudes he throws to the media, but then after several years of this inaction you can't but believe that he buys into what he's spewing.
I watched the press conference. It was indeed the same crap.
When he went through his list of largely fake and unimpressive accomplishments, the first thing he noted was the successful change in play style and shot profile.
Um, Arturas. My friend. I’m not sure if you’re aware of this, but after all of that transformation, you finished with the same record and lost to the same team in the same non-playoff tournament. Maybe that should tell you something?
I’ll help you figure it out…PLAY STYLE AND SHOT PROFILES ARE NOT THE TOP FOCUS, YOU ABSOLUTE DORK. And no, it’s not about young players with experience either. Your $90 million young player with experience had 0 points and 0 assists in 15 minutes. It’s a superstar driven league, plain and simple, and you don’t have one right now!
So go off, you genius. Go give Josh Giddey a massive contract. Go sign a couple more vets who will get buried on the bench. Go fail to trade Vuc again. Go ask Rich Paul how many more years you need to keep Lonzo to ensure the Klutch offices don’t delete your phone number. We’ll see you same time next year when you find a new way to explain how your fourth consecutive play-in defeat is an actual success.
Sam Smith - who had a great and prescient question about 'fools gold' at the deadline - had another great question about this touted playing style and how that is a potential problem on defense
AK was just durr "...well we have to make improvements"
I was just about to write a comment about Sam Smith's question. He gave AK a total softball about the Bulls' bad defense. All AK had to do was say "We need to try and add some defense-first players this summer and work on our communication and rotations" and instead he started off by saying they need to turn the ball over less.
To me, that was probably the most revealing part of the whole session. It shows AK genuinely has no idea what he's doing or how the game of basketball works.
agreed, also he's spinning the easy sell with offense. is it that big of an achievement for Billy to get players to "buy in" when you don't have to play defense?
"I actually had some shreds of belief that the Bulls could continue their post-AllStarGame bullshit"
Rookie mistake yfbb, you know better.
That presser....might as well have taken the one from 2021. It's crazy that there was this brief moment I thought Akme were different. I still stand by the fact that the vuc trade and the DeRozan trade, while resulting in failure were good moves. Akme gambled and lost...but he gambled...he had some idea of what kind of roster could win and who know where a healthy Lonzo would put this team...sure...much of even that is fools gold, but the idea was right.
They put that roster together quickly but took their time to tear it up, and maybe the most annoying thing was people clamoring that the bulls team was different than years before. We didn't have lavine last year ..Coby's production wasn't a surprise...yes giddey finally playing well was a positive, but more so cuz he sucked all season long. There was some hint of potential in This team, but Zach could have have been moved to the kings last off-season (these rumors already existed).
The teams performance isn't what has surprised me, but bulls general fan base (outside of this blog) and media...they ate it up. Having people tell me "it's different"
But no...it's the exact same. It's been 5 years of the same. It's 15 years of refusing to rebuild. 15 years. A decade and a half. I have kids now.....my kids saw me watching the bulls game, see the score...then ask me why I even watch....like....I got nothing.
It's not the front office that needs to change....it's us fans....the see red crowd needs to come to truth.
“The teams performance isn't what has surprised me, but bulls general fan base (outside of this blog) and media...they ate it up. Having people tell me ‘it's different’”
Some people in this fan base are just desperate for something to be excited about. They’re the citizens in Fury Road holding up the buckets and waiting for Immortan Arturas to dump a morsel of hope.
“Do not become addicted to wins! They’re very hard to achieve in this league!”
The Bulls were probably a 32-34 win team masquerading as a 39-win team thanks to a mountain of Mickey Mouse bullshit, even if I can appreciate some of the individual stuff we saw and thought they could Mickey Mouse their way through this Mickey Mouse play-in. Would AK have still spun his BS if the Bulls just got worked as a 33-49 10-seed? Probably, but it would make it a lot harder for fans to buy it. Though them getting embarrassed like they did last night made it harder anyway.
And without Vuc and LaVine starts (and clutch luck and Lonzo playing) early...likely closer to that 28 wins that they were so happy to overachieve past
Assuming no major rotation changes this is a 28 win expectation next year too. maybe more teams tanking in the second half, but I expect 7th or higher in lottery which isn't top 4 but OK enough to me. Maybe even gets AK fired.
think I've said this before but I'd probably peg it a bit higher almost solely because of their gimmicky play style and desire to win at all costs in the regular season. then if Matas actually makes a leap think that probably also erases some of the expected regression...though honestly they were pretty fortunate injury wise this season outside of Lonzo (and they still got more from him than expected), so it could go badly that way. If they just run it back I think that 32ish number sounds right to me just based on their philosophy and having enough decent guys to get regular-season wins
The NBA, where trying adds 6 wins to your win total. The NBA, where filling out roster spots 10 - 15 with NBA players adds an additional 4 wins to your win total, but you sacrificed 20 wins to be able to do that.
Weirdly enough Gottlieb's post on this was not offense taken, but that...AK was more right on the team than he was, and it 'makes sense' for them to ask for patience 🙃
I think he is going to try and swing a big trade to try and save face. I think Trae and Ja could both be available this summer....i wouldn't be surprised if he went for one of them
So Patrick Williams, the #2 lick they lucked into and… something else for Ja Morant? They could run out a lineup of Morant, Dosunmo, White, Ball, and Giddey.
AK could use Giddey sign and trade for those two...or at least find out that other teams don't want Giddey and, gasp, that informs leverage in RFA talks
Without Matas Buezlis, noted doer of neat shit on the basketball court, this team would effectively be the Book of Lamentations. A sloggy, shitty read and one marked by years of famine as judgement for and consequence for years of desolation beneath our Babylonian overlords.
Imagine this team with Tidjane Salaun or Cody Williams or, rather, more Dalen Terry or Jullian Phillips or Pat Williams--which is to say draft picks the organization had and didn't get right.
Vucivec went on a proper rehabilitation this year, but seeing as he turned out to perform up to (some would say exceeding) his contract, he's probably one asset AK isn't going to let go of without demanding the moon, or some other planetary resource that would not befit an aging, cement-footed center who himself said that quiet part out loud today: that progress is a really shitty substitute for actually winning.
Coby and Giddey, the prism for with AK sees boundless, unlimited potential are bench players masquerading as pivotal pieces to a serious roster. And Pat Williams is so bad at basketball at this point the only things our FO can positively cling to re: his status is his perilously current clean bill of health.
In all of AK's posturing about priorities, winning basketball games at scale was/is conspicuously absent. Because, as most of us here have long thought, winning basketball games at scale with this group, when other groups are actually trying to win them too, is an impossibility of near biblical proportion.
So, to me, it makes sense, damned from the start as we are, that the front office is asking for more patience, as they wander further and deeper into the desert waiting for some immaterial reality to save them from themselves.
I wonder how much money the Reinsdorfs and Wirtzes have lost on CHSN. The channel was launched at the absolute worst time just when RSN’s were collapsing and all three teams are dog shit. I haven’t heard anything in months about them getting the channel on Xfinity. Now that the hockey and basketball seasons are over, there is even less demand with the woeful White Sox as the main focus of the channel. Since it’s available over the air, there is less demand for it to be on Xfinity.
Vuc is a problem. PW is an issue. (Billy too but that's another issue). The best path forward is lottery luck + trading Vuc+PW salary and ALLl the draft picks and swaps (or at least a good portion of them) for a star. Durant, Zion and Giannis are not perfect but fit the big scoring role and are probably available. Better but tougher would be to look for a younger project able star. Better yet still Anthony Edwards decides he needs a bigger market and eventually a statue. Well- and luckily-executed those kinds of moves would probably work. Short of that it's the belated fall all the way to the bottom....and another decade of pain.
I think the problem with trading for a star is that the Bulls currently have so few good players that they'd probably have to include all of them just to execute the trade. So now you have a star and a bunch of vet minimum guys around him. That's not a path to success either.
Phoenix is one of the few teams in the league with a front office that's as bad or worse than the Bulls. On the other hand AK wouldn't know how to take advantage of them, and they're hamstrung by the apron so my dream deal (Vuc and a sign-and-trade Giddey plus a few firsts for Durant) couldn't happen even if they wanted to do it.
There are only a handful of franchises that have really bad front offices, I just don't see the Bulls improving themselves via trade, even if they had assets worth dealing.
everywhere i turn in this world there are men given unreasonable power and immunity from any scrutiny, despite proving themselves to be dire, gormless morons. it feels deeply dire that i must tell myself “arturas is a feckless idiot, but at least he’s not…evil?”
all i have left is that some act of god forces this front office out of complacency, be it a ping pong ball or josh giddey finding christ, retiring, and moving to a monastery.
LOL. Every born rich person I've ever met has some bullshit origin story about how hard they worked to get there. Unfortunately the country is full of marks dumb enough to buy it.
I'm sure Michael Reinsdorf tells his imaginary friends about how hard he had to grind to get where he is, how much work he put in, etc. etc. Rent seekers extracting profits, that's all the Bulls ownership is and all they're ever going to care about.
This officially concludes the first season of my fandom that I did not watch a single Bulls game. In a world where NBA champion coaches and GMs get fired 2 years after the fact Karnisovas and Donovan have found more job security than anyone.
Now AK asks for more time which would be hilarious if it wasn’t keeping fans hostage. Reinsdorf may have made a deal with Satan for Michael Jordan, I don’t know what Bulls fans have done to deserve this. Sports are supposed to be entertainment and I think the Bulls have been entertaining once in a decade, that brief period of relevance in 2020. It’s been 10 years since that D-Rose shot and it’s been downhill ever since. This team brings nothing but misery for the people who support it.
This team is so bumbling and dumb it’s mind boggling. This was such a predictable ending, even a skeleton of a playoff team could dominate the Bulls. AK may not have long though, I imagine the attendance numbers are going to start going down, especially if he intends on trotting out Josh Giddey as the star 🤮 I will never watch that creep in a Bulls uniform. I just pray whoever comes along is smart enough to move on from his albatross contract ASAP. It’s going to be another year of no Bulls for me and there is very little reason to doubt that they’ll make me regret it.
Guy who fired the Bulls after tiring of their “permanent purgatory” status checking-in
First I must commend yfbb for continuing to cover this abysmal abomination of a franchise. I’m very happy with the choice I made to let the Bulls wallow in whatever they wanna call it. Watching the Thunder, Clippers, Warriors, and Nuggets in the Western Conference has been very entertaining basketball.
The Chicago Bulls don’t deserve anybody who posted here as a fan. That was the conclusion I came to when I fired them. Stop giving them your time or money, unless it pays more than what you’re spending 😂. They don’t want to win. They don’t want to compete. They just want to exist and build half ass trash ass rosters and keep trash ass front office personnel employed no matter how STUPID they look in comparison to every other FO in the league. Even Nico Harrison did something. He’s like the fuckin Brick Tamland of the NBA right now, but he made a move. Arturas Karnisovas, Marc Eversley, and Billy Donovan SHOULD BE FIRED and the Reinsdorf’s should SELL THE BULLS!
Take your fandom, your pride, and your money to an organization that actually cares about the one thing that ACTUALLY matters in this hell hole of a league: WINNING A GOT DAMN CHAMPIONSHIP!!!
He talks so slowly and with so little enthusiasm that I didn't realize I had the YT video on 1.5x playback until someone else spoke. Seems like he's surviving these press conferences by way of killing everyone else's will to be there.
AK is complimented by North Korean-style commentator Will Perdue on the chuggo podcast, who on Monday glacially enumerated the reasons the Heat were better yet concluded "The. . . Bulls. . . will. . . find. . . a. . . way. . . to. . . win." Then Wednesday night, after the loss he posited "We. . . all. . . knew. . . this. . . would. . . happen."
Yeah, thanks for making me look like an idiot, Buddy... 😂
Sometimes I think that these are just fake platitudes he throws to the media, but then after several years of this inaction you can't but believe that he buys into what he's spewing.
I watched the press conference. It was indeed the same crap.
When he went through his list of largely fake and unimpressive accomplishments, the first thing he noted was the successful change in play style and shot profile.
Um, Arturas. My friend. I’m not sure if you’re aware of this, but after all of that transformation, you finished with the same record and lost to the same team in the same non-playoff tournament. Maybe that should tell you something?
I’ll help you figure it out…PLAY STYLE AND SHOT PROFILES ARE NOT THE TOP FOCUS, YOU ABSOLUTE DORK. And no, it’s not about young players with experience either. Your $90 million young player with experience had 0 points and 0 assists in 15 minutes. It’s a superstar driven league, plain and simple, and you don’t have one right now!
So go off, you genius. Go give Josh Giddey a massive contract. Go sign a couple more vets who will get buried on the bench. Go fail to trade Vuc again. Go ask Rich Paul how many more years you need to keep Lonzo to ensure the Klutch offices don’t delete your phone number. We’ll see you same time next year when you find a new way to explain how your fourth consecutive play-in defeat is an actual success.
Sam Smith - who had a great and prescient question about 'fools gold' at the deadline - had another great question about this touted playing style and how that is a potential problem on defense
AK was just durr "...well we have to make improvements"
I was just about to write a comment about Sam Smith's question. He gave AK a total softball about the Bulls' bad defense. All AK had to do was say "We need to try and add some defense-first players this summer and work on our communication and rotations" and instead he started off by saying they need to turn the ball over less.
To me, that was probably the most revealing part of the whole session. It shows AK genuinely has no idea what he's doing or how the game of basketball works.
agreed, also he's spinning the easy sell with offense. is it that big of an achievement for Billy to get players to "buy in" when you don't have to play defense?
"I actually had some shreds of belief that the Bulls could continue their post-AllStarGame bullshit"
Rookie mistake yfbb, you know better.
That presser....might as well have taken the one from 2021. It's crazy that there was this brief moment I thought Akme were different. I still stand by the fact that the vuc trade and the DeRozan trade, while resulting in failure were good moves. Akme gambled and lost...but he gambled...he had some idea of what kind of roster could win and who know where a healthy Lonzo would put this team...sure...much of even that is fools gold, but the idea was right.
They put that roster together quickly but took their time to tear it up, and maybe the most annoying thing was people clamoring that the bulls team was different than years before. We didn't have lavine last year ..Coby's production wasn't a surprise...yes giddey finally playing well was a positive, but more so cuz he sucked all season long. There was some hint of potential in This team, but Zach could have have been moved to the kings last off-season (these rumors already existed).
The teams performance isn't what has surprised me, but bulls general fan base (outside of this blog) and media...they ate it up. Having people tell me "it's different"
But no...it's the exact same. It's been 5 years of the same. It's 15 years of refusing to rebuild. 15 years. A decade and a half. I have kids now.....my kids saw me watching the bulls game, see the score...then ask me why I even watch....like....I got nothing.
It's not the front office that needs to change....it's us fans....the see red crowd needs to come to truth.
I don't know if this is an original poem or something repurposed...but I love this lol
“The teams performance isn't what has surprised me, but bulls general fan base (outside of this blog) and media...they ate it up. Having people tell me ‘it's different’”
Some people in this fan base are just desperate for something to be excited about. They’re the citizens in Fury Road holding up the buckets and waiting for Immortan Arturas to dump a morsel of hope.
“Do not become addicted to wins! They’re very hard to achieve in this league!”
Vucevic
Insures
Championship
Talk
Over
Remaining
Years.
Lonzo
Assures
Playoffs.
haha well played
The Bulls were probably a 32-34 win team masquerading as a 39-win team thanks to a mountain of Mickey Mouse bullshit, even if I can appreciate some of the individual stuff we saw and thought they could Mickey Mouse their way through this Mickey Mouse play-in. Would AK have still spun his BS if the Bulls just got worked as a 33-49 10-seed? Probably, but it would make it a lot harder for fans to buy it. Though them getting embarrassed like they did last night made it harder anyway.
Mickey mouse catching strays...no bulls fault
And without Vuc and LaVine starts (and clutch luck and Lonzo playing) early...likely closer to that 28 wins that they were so happy to overachieve past
Assuming no major rotation changes this is a 28 win expectation next year too. maybe more teams tanking in the second half, but I expect 7th or higher in lottery which isn't top 4 but OK enough to me. Maybe even gets AK fired.
think I've said this before but I'd probably peg it a bit higher almost solely because of their gimmicky play style and desire to win at all costs in the regular season. then if Matas actually makes a leap think that probably also erases some of the expected regression...though honestly they were pretty fortunate injury wise this season outside of Lonzo (and they still got more from him than expected), so it could go badly that way. If they just run it back I think that 32ish number sounds right to me just based on their philosophy and having enough decent guys to get regular-season wins
The NBA, where trying adds 6 wins to your win total. The NBA, where filling out roster spots 10 - 15 with NBA players adds an additional 4 wins to your win total, but you sacrificed 20 wins to be able to do that.
“likely closer to that 28 wins that they were so happy to overachieve past”
lol I’m glad someone else caught that petty shot AK took at Gottlieb.
Wow, someone thought you’d be really bad and you were only kind of really bad. Way to stick it to the doubters, AK!
Weirdly enough Gottlieb's post on this was not offense taken, but that...AK was more right on the team than he was, and it 'makes sense' for them to ask for patience 🙃
I think he is going to try and swing a big trade to try and save face. I think Trae and Ja could both be available this summer....i wouldn't be surprised if he went for one of them
From a strictly basketball point of view, I sure hope it's Ja if it comes down to those two...
So Patrick Williams, the #2 lick they lucked into and… something else for Ja Morant? They could run out a lineup of Morant, Dosunmo, White, Ball, and Giddey.
AK could use Giddey sign and trade for those two...or at least find out that other teams don't want Giddey and, gasp, that informs leverage in RFA talks
Also should inform Bulls that Giddey doesn't fit next to Ja or Trae, which harms Giddey's value
Without Matas Buezlis, noted doer of neat shit on the basketball court, this team would effectively be the Book of Lamentations. A sloggy, shitty read and one marked by years of famine as judgement for and consequence for years of desolation beneath our Babylonian overlords.
Imagine this team with Tidjane Salaun or Cody Williams or, rather, more Dalen Terry or Jullian Phillips or Pat Williams--which is to say draft picks the organization had and didn't get right.
Vucivec went on a proper rehabilitation this year, but seeing as he turned out to perform up to (some would say exceeding) his contract, he's probably one asset AK isn't going to let go of without demanding the moon, or some other planetary resource that would not befit an aging, cement-footed center who himself said that quiet part out loud today: that progress is a really shitty substitute for actually winning.
Coby and Giddey, the prism for with AK sees boundless, unlimited potential are bench players masquerading as pivotal pieces to a serious roster. And Pat Williams is so bad at basketball at this point the only things our FO can positively cling to re: his status is his perilously current clean bill of health.
In all of AK's posturing about priorities, winning basketball games at scale was/is conspicuously absent. Because, as most of us here have long thought, winning basketball games at scale with this group, when other groups are actually trying to win them too, is an impossibility of near biblical proportion.
So, to me, it makes sense, damned from the start as we are, that the front office is asking for more patience, as they wander further and deeper into the desert waiting for some immaterial reality to save them from themselves.
I wonder how much money the Reinsdorfs and Wirtzes have lost on CHSN. The channel was launched at the absolute worst time just when RSN’s were collapsing and all three teams are dog shit. I haven’t heard anything in months about them getting the channel on Xfinity. Now that the hockey and basketball seasons are over, there is even less demand with the woeful White Sox as the main focus of the channel. Since it’s available over the air, there is less demand for it to be on Xfinity.
Yes, what an absolute mess. They have lost a whole generation of casual fans that haven't tuned in at all his year.
And it's still going nowhere. Latest is they admit defeat and work with WGN
https://archive.ph/c47Qh
Quote in there from Mikey Reinsdorf saying this is all very unfair
Vuc is a problem. PW is an issue. (Billy too but that's another issue). The best path forward is lottery luck + trading Vuc+PW salary and ALLl the draft picks and swaps (or at least a good portion of them) for a star. Durant, Zion and Giannis are not perfect but fit the big scoring role and are probably available. Better but tougher would be to look for a younger project able star. Better yet still Anthony Edwards decides he needs a bigger market and eventually a statue. Well- and luckily-executed those kinds of moves would probably work. Short of that it's the belated fall all the way to the bottom....and another decade of pain.
I think the problem with trading for a star is that the Bulls currently have so few good players that they'd probably have to include all of them just to execute the trade. So now you have a star and a bunch of vet minimum guys around him. That's not a path to success either.
Phoenix is one of the few teams in the league with a front office that's as bad or worse than the Bulls. On the other hand AK wouldn't know how to take advantage of them, and they're hamstrung by the apron so my dream deal (Vuc and a sign-and-trade Giddey plus a few firsts for Durant) couldn't happen even if they wanted to do it.
There are only a handful of franchises that have really bad front offices, I just don't see the Bulls improving themselves via trade, even if they had assets worth dealing.
everywhere i turn in this world there are men given unreasonable power and immunity from any scrutiny, despite proving themselves to be dire, gormless morons. it feels deeply dire that i must tell myself “arturas is a feckless idiot, but at least he’s not…evil?”
all i have left is that some act of god forces this front office out of complacency, be it a ping pong ball or josh giddey finding christ, retiring, and moving to a monastery.
LOL. Every born rich person I've ever met has some bullshit origin story about how hard they worked to get there. Unfortunately the country is full of marks dumb enough to buy it.
I'm sure Michael Reinsdorf tells his imaginary friends about how hard he had to grind to get where he is, how much work he put in, etc. etc. Rent seekers extracting profits, that's all the Bulls ownership is and all they're ever going to care about.
"Succession" but with Ishbia and Dan Gilbert fueding over the love of despot Tom Izzo
This officially concludes the first season of my fandom that I did not watch a single Bulls game. In a world where NBA champion coaches and GMs get fired 2 years after the fact Karnisovas and Donovan have found more job security than anyone.
Now AK asks for more time which would be hilarious if it wasn’t keeping fans hostage. Reinsdorf may have made a deal with Satan for Michael Jordan, I don’t know what Bulls fans have done to deserve this. Sports are supposed to be entertainment and I think the Bulls have been entertaining once in a decade, that brief period of relevance in 2020. It’s been 10 years since that D-Rose shot and it’s been downhill ever since. This team brings nothing but misery for the people who support it.
This team is so bumbling and dumb it’s mind boggling. This was such a predictable ending, even a skeleton of a playoff team could dominate the Bulls. AK may not have long though, I imagine the attendance numbers are going to start going down, especially if he intends on trotting out Josh Giddey as the star 🤮 I will never watch that creep in a Bulls uniform. I just pray whoever comes along is smart enough to move on from his albatross contract ASAP. It’s going to be another year of no Bulls for me and there is very little reason to doubt that they’ll make me regret it.
Guy who fired the Bulls after tiring of their “permanent purgatory” status checking-in
First I must commend yfbb for continuing to cover this abysmal abomination of a franchise. I’m very happy with the choice I made to let the Bulls wallow in whatever they wanna call it. Watching the Thunder, Clippers, Warriors, and Nuggets in the Western Conference has been very entertaining basketball.
The Chicago Bulls don’t deserve anybody who posted here as a fan. That was the conclusion I came to when I fired them. Stop giving them your time or money, unless it pays more than what you’re spending 😂. They don’t want to win. They don’t want to compete. They just want to exist and build half ass trash ass rosters and keep trash ass front office personnel employed no matter how STUPID they look in comparison to every other FO in the league. Even Nico Harrison did something. He’s like the fuckin Brick Tamland of the NBA right now, but he made a move. Arturas Karnisovas, Marc Eversley, and Billy Donovan SHOULD BE FIRED and the Reinsdorf’s should SELL THE BULLS!
Take your fandom, your pride, and your money to an organization that actually cares about the one thing that ACTUALLY matters in this hell hole of a league: WINNING A GOT DAMN CHAMPIONSHIP!!!
He talks so slowly and with so little enthusiasm that I didn't realize I had the YT video on 1.5x playback until someone else spoke. Seems like he's surviving these press conferences by way of killing everyone else's will to be there.
AK is complimented by North Korean-style commentator Will Perdue on the chuggo podcast, who on Monday glacially enumerated the reasons the Heat were better yet concluded "The. . . Bulls. . . will. . . find. . . a. . . way. . . to. . . win." Then Wednesday night, after the loss he posited "We. . . all. . . knew. . . this. . . would. . . happen."
worstpersonyouknowmakesgreatpoint.png
https://chicago.suntimes.com/bulls/2025/04/17/bulls-vp-arturas-karnisovas-speaks-confusion-ensue
Heard Cody Westerlund on The Score and he had a great expression that I will be sure to steal:
AK talked about the young players 'learning a lesson' from that Heat loss. What about the front office learning a lesson?
Did the young players learn a lesson from the previous two losses to the Heat in the play in?