The Bulls should be desperate and reckless, not patient

the case for skipping steps

The NBA playoffs, and specifically the success of the Indiana Pacers, has emphasized and de-emphasized the point of this earlier post:

The Bulls are so far from their pathetic goal of being early-round playoff fodder

• While some of these playoff games are a bit flukey, the Pacers look better than I assessed

• That means the Bulls are even farther away than they thought are trying to spin

Unfortunately for Bulls fans, PR arm KC Johnson has co-opted my (?) “Chicago wants to be Indiana” meme and is either trying to legitimize it or more likely misunderstands it (via):

One thing I have heard consistently about the Bulls is that they are very focused on stylistically how whoever the pick in the first round will fit with their new philosophy. They’re obviously trying to emulate the Indiana Pacers: Get deep, play fast, have two-way players, depth at the wings, depth at the front court

::rubs temples::

When I mentioned this parallel, as a joke, it was before the Pacers went this deep and dominant in the playoffs (the East playoffs, but still). So KC is attempting to retroactively assign some prescience to AK in his dumbass-and-cynical team-building philosophy, to the point of saying it’s “obvious”. When, in the real world, they have failed to do much of what the Pacers have done. I suppose KC calling it ‘new’ is a way to hand-wave years of inactivity and failure.

ESPN’s Bobby Marks did a clickbaity ‘what every team could offer for Giannis’ column earlier in the month, and put the Bulls in a category of ‘too risky’.

Risking what, exactly?

I keep trying to hammer this next point home: while I don’t expect KC to buy in, I was hoping at least more impartial national observers, and certainly the fan-centric outlets¹, would remember:

It’s not that an NBA team can’t build this way, it’s that Arturas Karnisovas and the AKME regime can’t build a team this way.

Why would anyone discuss this ‘plan’ in a normal context, let alone with speculation that it’s going to work? You do not, under any circumstances, have to hand it to them: AKME having the job in perpetuity because of absentee ownership is not reason to give in to their calls for patience.

No, I am calling for them to be realistic about their own limitations:

1. They did not receive the Hail Mary of the #1 overall pick

2. They are currently a boring and irrelevant franchise, and any business success comes from inherent advantages and is leaving a ton of money on the table that even the ‘dorfs probably notice

3. They have demonstrated an inability to make targeted acquisitions, and a complete ineptitude at assessing player value

4. While owning your own first-round picks is a solid start of an asset base, they have one of the worst young cores in the league among fellow non-competitive teams

Knowing this, there is only one real choice: be impatient to the point of reckless, and trade for a star.

AKME took this tact in their first couple years, but while that failed it wasn’t due to the idea but the execution. Nikola Vucevic was never a player worth multiple first round picks, and though AK never admits mistakes he came close when referencing ‘avoiding skipping steps’ in his new, desperately-cling-to-job, plan.

They are not going to be able to get a star that doesn’t possess some risk factors². The consensus available at the moment indeed have a lot of risks: Zion Williamson, Ja Morant, Trae Young, LaMelo Ball

But as I mentioned with the Giannis³ speculation, there really isn’t much risk when it comes to the future of the Bulls. Their future is doomed, because AKME is running the team. Not the #12 pick this year, nor Matas Buzelis, nor a future first rounder or three, is more valuable to the future of the Bulls than firing and replacing the front office.

That’s why, even if this doesn’t work (likely due to injury⁴), there will be some success in that it will get AKME fired. And having some picks gone due to a shortsighted move will hurt, but a new front office means more.

This is actually the low-risk way to build the team this summer. It is much riskier to be patient, and allow AKME to dither and screw up for a few more years.

1. most prominent being CHGO, which is doing a *daily* podcast on the Chicago Bulls in the offseason as some kind of torture experiment I think

2. that’s also true of “young players with experience”, a pretty critical flaw in the AK plan

3. sure, try and trade for Giannis as well, but he and Kevin Durant to a higher degree are too old to be that enthusiastic about

4. ANOTHER problem with the AKME model, where even a ‘very good’ player like Lonzo Ball being hurt totally torpedoed the whole operation