Tonight is my playoffs. We can lose to Philly and Brooklyn should beat the Wiz. We can move to within a half game of 6th. The odds of jumping into the top 4 from there are markedly improved.
Plus, I maintain a dream that losing something like 25 of their last 30 games might force Jerry to consider whether AK knows what he is doing (he does not) and fire him or at least start thinking about it. Let's get that snowball rolling!
Regarding Donovan, does anybody actually know what happened between him and the Thunder?
The story for years was he left as a result of a mutual agreement. But the further we’re removed from that, the less sense that makes.
So Donovan left OKC, a team with a good and highly regarded front office, but chose to coach for a team with an unknown front office and a poorly regarded owner? He also just said this season that he has no problem with rebuilding, which was supposedly why he agreed to leave OKC. So why would he agree to leave OKC if he didn’t have a problem with the direction they were taking?
My theory is that he didn’t actually mutually agree to leave the Thunder. I think he was fired, but OKC liked him, so they said that it was a “mutual agreement” to help him out.
this was Presti's statement at the time lol so who the hell knows: "It became apparent that we couldn’t provide him the information on the future direction of the team over the next several seasons to give him the level of clarity that he understandably desires at this stage of his career," Presti said in the statement.
So he left the Thunder because they couldn’t provide him with clarity, but he’s been choosing to stay with expert communicator AK?
That would be like an actor leaving a Spielberg movie because they didn’t like his vision and then instead signing up for, and staying on, a Tommy Wiseau movie.
I don't know, I actually believe they agreed to part ways. Despite Billy saying a few weeks ago that he's fine with rebuilding, I think he was just saying that because he basically has to. He's currently coaching a (somewhat) rebuilding team. He can't just say he hates rebuilding.
The way he's coaching this team points to him either having zero idea how to coach a rebuilding team or having zero interest in coaching a rebuilding team in a conducive manner. As Matt said, he clearly doesn't care about helping the young guys develop. He's coaching how he wants to - either because it'll help him get his next job somewhere else or because he plans to retire soon and doesn't give a shit about how he sets the team up beyond his tenure.
It's possible OKC would have fired him if he wouldn't agree to mutually part ways, but I definitely don't think it came to that. I think OKC was going in a direction Billy clearly didn't want to go, so they agreed it was best for them to split.
And yes, the Bulls are probably the worst run team in the league, but how much does Billy care about that? He's been around long enough that simply being able to live in Chicago instead of Oklahoma City was probably quite desirable. Plus, I'm fairly certain AK told him he'd have a ton of freedom to do what he wanted, which was probably also very appealing.
“And yes, the Bulls are probably the worst run team in the league, but how much does Billy care about that?”
If he’s truly anti-losing and concerned with his overall record, you’d think he’d care about front office incompetence at least a bit.
The whole dynamic between AK and Donovan is just off. AK loves to draft prospects who need to be developed and keeps assigning them to his head coach who doesn’t like to develop prospects. Donovan likes to win immediately, but keeps sticking around a team that can’t improve from the 10th seed.
There’s also the interesting subplots that Billy seems to do some of AK’s job from a PR perspective and Billy’s son is the coach of the G League team. It’s as if these two are doing favors for each other and don’t realize it’s completely pointless because they’re an incredibly poor fit for each other.
It's not that far off. AK has already stated his belief that player development happens individually in the offseason moreso than regular season minutes. He's lamented not being able to give Billy (who is, at all times, "doing great") more to work with
Also consider the salary. Just guessing but I think Donovan is in the top ten highest paid coaches. A (legit) small market team wanting to rebuild doesn't need that. The Bulls are also (less legit) small market, but somewhat compensate by having an affordable and small front office
I think this is the less nefarious reason why OKC and BD parted ways. They didn't need to keep paying Billy as they tore down the team. For some reason, the Bulls seem OK with paying Billy whatever no matter what the product on the floor looks like.
I've also been pondering Thunder Revisionism with Billy Donovan. He was highly praised for his last season there, as all coaches are by people who predicted the team was going to be worse and now have to explain why they were wrong. Must be the coach! He even finished in 3rd for COTY.
Compare the trajectories of Chris Paul, Billy Donovan, Monty Williams and the Chicago, Phoenix and Detroit franchises. I would guess most people agree that Chris Paul, even after age 34, can lift the floor on a team as probably the best player/coach (and as he learned to pace himself, still sometimes the best player on the floor for certain possessions). The common thread of those teams has been mostly the presence or absence of Chris Paul.
In the almost four seasons that AKME has run the Bulls, the Bulls are in a worse position than when they started. They have no players that are close to all star level, not a lot of future draft capital, one playoff appearance and one playoff win and seemingly no plan to get better. Their best move was to sign Alex Caruso, but that really didn’t accomplish anything in the long run.
He also made a huge trade at the deadline his first season as team president and then spent the next couple of years lecturing the media on the idea of midseason trades being a bad idea.
Like, dude, the main reason the Bulls needed to make midseason trades in ‘22 and ‘23 was because you accelerated their timeline and put the team in win-now mode with your midseason trade in ‘21! Instead, you stopped trying and acted like everyone who wanted you to finish the job was crazy!
This is why it’s important to not just paint AK as incompetent. Yes, he’s incompetent, but he’s also a gaslighter and a BS artist.
To be fair, if I had fucked up my first ever mid-season trade as badly as AK did, I'd probably try to convince myself and the media that mid-season trades are bad...
1. The lack of plan also falls on ownership. No matter what they publicly say, the Reinsdorfs aren't OK with tanking. And don't point me to any of that "sources say Reinsdorf says AKME can tank if they want to". There are several obvious reasons to take these kinds of statements as equivocations or outright lies.
2. Research points to the marginal irrelevance of playing time on the "development" of young players. Beyond a moderate amount, which Matas is on track to get, there's no developmental upside he's missing out on. It's questionable if there's even *ANY* developmental upside. There's simply nothing to gain in telling Donovan who to play.
3. I don't think there's any mystery with Donovan. He didn't want to tank so he left the Thunder. Here, he also clearly doesn't want to tank, but the roster is so bad from mismanagement that they're de facto tanking. He publicly said a few weeks ago that he didn't know what the plan was. But, maybe he'll change his mind since nepotism is rampant with the Bulls?
4. My guess is the whole state of affairs is due to AKME spinning BS to Reinsdorf. Because 1) AKME are terrible at everything, 2) Reinsdorf keeps telling them conflicting goals, and so, instead of just saying the truth, which is that they've made so many bad moves they're trapped, AKME tells Reinsdorf that he's simultaneously rebuilding on the fly and tanking and also insuring that they keep their pick, while simultaneously being optimistic that they can make the playoffs. A good owner would see right through this nonsense, but we don't have one.
I’ve theorized before that every Reinsdorf employee seems to be solely focused on convincing the Reinsdorfs that they’re doing a good job. Everything they say to the media is essentially just the message in the moment that they’re trying to sell to Jerry (and Michael).
When AK says things like “Midseason trades don’t help a team” and “developing happens in the offseason” I think he’s just a desperate and overwhelmed employee who’s trying to convince his boss that his failures are actually not failures at all.
1. You know when your boss says something but STRONGLY implies they want the opposite of what they just said? That's exactly what's happened when Jerry (or most likely Michael) has told AKME they can tank or go into the luxury tax if they want to. Just because they technically can doesn't mean they won't lose their jobs if they do.
2. Do you have links to this research? You've brought it up a few times now and I've meant to ask in the past but have forgotten.
And if playing time isn't actually as beneficial as is generally believed, is the expectation that these young players are doing a lot of their growing in practice and/or with 1-on-1 coaching? Because if so, I don't have great confidence that the Bulls are investing that much in their young players in practice or via 1-on-1 coaching. Which if that's true would mean that playing time is actually important for young Bulls, even if it's not as important for other teams that actually invest in their players.
I'll try to look it up when I have time. Outside of pretty limited cases, I don't think, though, that game time is any kind of substitute for actual skill development.
Even for a team that "underinvests" in practice and player development, the amount of time doing that and the amount of time players work individually just absolutely dwarfs playing time.
Like, think about it this way. A player might spend 6-8 hours a day working on his game in various ways. A fanatical player might spend a lot more than that. So most off days, and most of the off-season, let's call that 8 hours a day.
What's the difference between going from 1200 minutes to 1800 minutes? Well... 10 hours. All of that extra playing time only amounts to about 1 day of off-season or off-day work.
Where I think teams make a real difference is in how they guide and direct physical development. Sometimes I assume it's just the player, but that's what I learned from the Lauri experience. The Bulls vision for him was to bulk him up and have him be a center. So most of us looked at him through that perspective and thought, "whelp, he's not that good". Basically, they totally pushed him in the wrong direction.
A narrative from a coach. I just note that he doesn’t seem to care much about game time
maximizing-time-for-skill-development
Likewise this: Which argues that minutes matter, but in a very different way. For most players, getting out there is a super high pressure situation that makes or breaks you because young players have limited minutes. You aren’t really out there developing skills, you’re doing a job.
Nah, I'm sure there's definitely research out there on the topic. Developing young players certainly isn't as black and white as just playing them a ton and them magically becoming amazing.
Ultimately, I think the problems with regard to the Bulls and their issues developing young players goes much deeper than just Billy not playing Matas enough minutes.
There's a lot of good stuff in these articles though, so thanks for sharing!
No problem... I'm sure I'll stumble on it and then forget about it again at some point in the future.
One problem is just that, statistically, it's very hard to separate and derive causation from minutes and skill. If the player looks better, he plays more. Like, Matas is going to play more than Terry did in Terry's rookie year. How much of Matas' year 2 improvement will we attribute to him playing more compared to Terry?
How much of Terry being pretty bad do we attribute to him not playing more in his first couple seasons?
If playing more helps, why didn't the G-League help guys develop?
I dunno these are just non-statistical things, but I don't think I can ever think of a situation where a guy's playing time over his first year or two really had much discernible impact.
Guys that were good were always gonna be good (Jermaine O'Neal and Jamal Crawford? Maybe Anfernee Simons) even when they didn't play as rookies.
Nor can I think of guys who I think were "saved" by playing through a lot of terribleness. Pat? James Wiseman? Maybe there were guys that went from awful to "ok" but I can't really think of them.
Houston is trying to make Jalen Green that person. He's in his 4th year, just turned 23, still not "good," but he's getting better. They've had the position, give him minutes, give him shots, and he'll get better. He has? But would he have always? Who knows?
Thank you for these. This is just fascinating and showing how much this is probably impossible to say.
For example:
Player A starts out playing 5 mpg in the rookie season, but that increases to 20 mpg in the second half. They get lots of minutes - let's say between 1000-1200. They a) naturally improve as the season goes on (through all sorts of means - playing time, practice time, general acclimation to "the life", etc), b) their minutes are weighted more heavily in their "improved player era" (as the kids say) (it'd be 4:1) c) they have a very good 1st team all rookie season. His second season, he plays about 25 mpg, and it IS an improvement on that 1st season, but it's not a HUGE improvement. He's still one of the 5-best 2nd year players.
Player B barely plays all year, getting about 5 minutes per game. They get 400-500 for the season. They improve throughout the season very similarly, but the 1:1 first half to second half PT ratio doesn't make the whole season look as promising. His first season is very much a borderline bust. His second season, he plays just as well as the Player A. His improvement looks huge and it suggests that playing more actually hurt Player A's development. But we know that's not true. His whole season 1 improvement to whole season 2 is massive, especially compared to Player A, though we could say Season 1 Game 82 to Season 2 Game 1 is the same for both.
Anyway, that's just one example. I think it's more safe to say that we have flipping clue on a large-scale statistical analysis. It's so incredibly individualized. As a high school teacher and coach, this makes sense. What works for one player won't work for another. What one teacher can get from one student, he or she can't get from another.
The one other analogy I'd make to teaching is that a) in practice, there are clear ways to cultivate improvement: set challenging but manageable goals. Make them something that success can be achieved to keep up motivation, but keep sufficiently difficult that there is real achievement in getting those goals. b) in performance, or tests, there's such a different atmosphere around testing, that the only way to practice that is to practice tests (or games). You get better at test-taking (performing under pressure) by taking tests. Of course, if all you do is take tests, there's no real ability to work on smaller, necessary changes that need repeated practice.
I'd definitely like to see that, too. Intuitively, I think there's truth to what you're saying, but I'd like to see the numbers to prove it.
Pros (intuitively): One does simply have to practice to hone skills. You can't change your shooting technique without shooting it 1000 times a day and getting consistent feedback and correction (other skills, too, of course). You can't get that in a game. Similarly, strength, plyometrics, and proprioception are all best done in a controlled, repeated environment.
Cons: You need to develop two things that can really only be developed in games: confidence and making the right decisions in real-time. "Confidence" is way too subjective and individual for me to think that it's anything other than "yeah, it's just individual - that could be more game time, a better coach, a sports psychologist, or just a really encouraging Mom (or Dad), or whatever". But the other part, in-game decisions, I tend to think it's so varied and different, that the more you're exposed to it, the better. Now, is there some diminishing marginal utility? Maybe? If one wants to be the best, is every bit of improvement needed? I think so. If not diminishing marginal utility, does it just flat-line, like you suggest? Don't know. I'd love to see the data.
I think this is right, and due to bad ownership will continue for another year
perhaps ownership does say AK they need a star attraction for 'their fans', either from a top-3 pick, or do a three firsts for a veteran trade that will surely backfire but (again) buy AK more time
I get this feeling that we're going to see Zion Williamson in a Bulls uniform in 26-27. He's a perfect target. Big name that'll attract a lot of casual fans, decent contract for a "star", a lot of past highlights to reference whenever the FO gets asked about why they'd pursue such a bad player, etc.
lol I just wrote above that Zion was a candidate but I don't think the Pelicans will part with him yet, and then deleted it because it was rambling. Maybe at the deadline.
Haha he makes perfect sense to me. I think he's mentioned previously that he'd be interested in playing for the Bulls. He strikes me as the kind of guy that isn't that serious about winning, but still enjoys playing the game to an extent and enjoys the spotlight.
What better place to do that than in the third biggest market (the largest with only one team) with one of the most storied franchises of all time that just so happens to not care about winning at all?
And Zion makes perfect sense for this FO/ownership too, as I mentioned above. They want someone they can point to and say "Look, we're serious about winning. We just signed "insert big name here". Zion is super marketable, which they'd absolutely love. Plus, since he doesn't seem to care about winning all that much, they won't have to worry about him getting disgruntled and forcing his way out.
It just seems like a win-win for both sides. And a lose-lose for us fans!
As depressing as the last 3 years have been, the 2023 and 2024 teams at least had some good players that seemed like also good people. The team was mediocre but Alex Caruso and DeMar were pretty cool to watch. That is totally lacking now. So yeah, they need something more.
NBA economics being what they are, I expect the team to chase an old or disgruntled player who shoots a lot but doesn't seem to move the needle for his team using their newly liberated draft picks and endless expiring contracts. There's always one of those.
I haven't looked very carefully. If you take the logos off the uniforms, the player that actually fits the best by that criteria is... DeMar DeRozan? I don't think anyone can convince themselves to actually do that (maybe at the trade deadline though). But then again Sacramento saw the Bulls for the last two years and said "Maybe?" And the team just gave a backup point guard a contract extension based on vibes. It's hard to put yourself in that cheeseball mindset of the Chicago Bulls front office.
This is a really grim list you guys have going there.
LaMelo makes sense since AKME appear to be Klutch handmaidens. Maybe they orchestrate a S&T of Giddey for Melo? Giddey at a reasonable price + pick(s?) would seem like the sort of thing the Hornets might use to gracefully shed Melo.
Yeah, LaMelo would be my guess with all the talk over the years of LaMelo and Lonzo playing on the same team.
Could also see Coby and/or Pat (the Carolina boys!) heading to Charlotte. Maybe it's AKME's master plan to corner the NBA market on oversized "funky" PGs with Lamelo, Lonzo, AND Giddey.
that could make sense from Charlotte's perspective too. They are probably reticent to trade LaMelo - even with new management in town that seems smart and not tied to old ideas there - because he's very popular.
I suppose it depends on how they finish in the lottery. If they get a top-3 (that's the tier of 'superstar', right?) pick, then they have box office cover to trade LaMelo
What about KD? I don't have any sense how many teams will be lining up to take him on for the last year of his contract. But I'd guess Chicago wouldn't be his preferred destination.
I think Jerry just cares about profit and (more so) minimization of loss. The White Sox are a trash heap, have no real tv deal now and are going to possibly be more of a ghost town at the stadium than last year. I think he really needs the Bulls to just make money. That means cutting cost where needed to guarantee profit.
This is where I possibly see changes to the management coming. I'm hearing about family four packs for $30 where opening season tickets were in the 70s. With the bulls having no streaming deal, no star power and no plan, I wouldn't be surprised to revenue tank next year (even if attendance stays high due to lower prices).
Tldr Jerry doesn't mind a crappy team, he minds crappy revenue for his White Sox supporting cash cow.
First part is right, I think — Reinsdorf just wants the steady gains from the Bulls.
But he runs the team this way because he wants to, not because he needs to. He's doing fine — he's got real estate projects everywhere, from apartment complexes in the suburbs to commercial properties downtown and in Arizona. It was just announced today in Crains that Reinsdorf and Wirtz just bought another $11 million parking lot to add to the UC project that the city council approved last week.
The White Sox could suck for a hundred years and he would run the Bulls this way. Or, maybe more revealing, he could find a giant mountain made of solid gold tomorrow and in the center there could be a fountain whose healing waters grant him the gift of eternal life and he'd still run the Bulls this way. He's just a miserly slob.
Please don't take this as a defense of Reinsdorf but he has a LOT of folks to answer to when it comes to the Bulls and White Sox. His co-investors put him in charge of making as much money for them as he can. The reason he owns both teams is because they were considered a good investment at the time, and have (for the most part) continued to gain value over the years. They aren't in his blood, or passion/vanity projects.
Casually Googled figures say that he owns about 19% of the White Sox and 40% of the Bulls. He's the "controlling partner" in both franchises, but not a majority shareholder. There are multiple ways a team can be owned, and none of these directly relate to how "active" the owner is in team operations. The Ricketts own 95% of the Cubs, McCaskeys around 80% of the Bears, Wirtz Corp all of the Hawks (I think). For reference Jerry Jones owns 100% of the Cowboys (and also their GM).
There's no special "ownership" sauce when it comes down to spending and team success. For big spenders, the Dodgers and Warriors are big ownership groups with controlling partners/CEOs, while Steve Cohen owns 95% of the Mets.
What is true, though, is that the circumstances of the Bulls and White Sox (and Chicago fans) dictate that the best ROI comes with "moderate competitiveness". Jerry is a smart businessman trusted by other smart businesspeople to make them money, and he has figured it out. It's not like he doesn't know how much money you make or lose by being champions or bottom-dwellers because he's owned the team through multiple seasons of both. He knows that being just good enough to seem competitive is the Goldilocks "just right" formula for our market. What would force him to change? Or when he's gone, won't his ownership groups just put in someone with the same mentality?
Lots of minority partners in sports teams effectively have no say at all. Even if Reinsdorf only controls 40%, the difficulty of getting the other 60% to vote as a block to do anything is probably damn near impossible.
Oh for sure, 40% is a lot, relatively speaking, for a controlling partner. But I don't think very many of that other 60% have any reason to rock the boat. They've got everything they've wanted and more from riding the Jerry bus all this time. He's definitely "the man" but my point was more that while many pro sports owners aren't in it for the money, there's never been any illusion about gains and profits being the primary motivation of the Reinsdorf ownership group. And to his credit (I guess??) Jerry has always been pretty up front about that.
Now when JR passes there will be some serious tax implications that may mean breaking up his stake into smaller shares. We'll see what happens and whether anything changes (it sure did when Rocky Wirtz took over for Bill, but I don't think the Jerry/Michael dynamic is anything like the Wirtz fam).
> Please don't take this as a defense of Reinsdorf but he has a LOT of folks to answer to when it comes to the Bulls and White Sox. His co-investors put him in charge of making as much money for them as he can.
The limited partners have zero legal ability to defenestrate Reinsdorf if they don't like what he's doing. (That's a very hazy dream anyway, because he DOES have a voting majority between himself, Michael and the Reinsdorf family cronies who are his partners on various real estate ventures and have been for decades.)
Reinsdorf could actually tell them all he was going to work on a longer-term strategy — say a 10 year plan, which would increase the value of the franchise exponentially but at the cost of the yearly penny-pinching — and they are powerless to stop it.
Decision-making power for the franchise is solely invested in an entity called CBLS Corporation, of which Reinsdorf owns 100% of the shares. He is not answerable to these people as a normal CEO of a normal company would be.
But it's a moot question as these other partners aren't private equity monsters that demand their annual profit. Most of them are holding an asset that has appreciated at a staggering rate since 1985 and several of them have in fact cashed out (Bruce Rauner, when he was trying to be a more cuddly public billionaire, was one of the buyers).
tl;dr — Reinsdorf could do whatever he wanted and he would have to really smash the car into the wall about 500 times before his limited partners would have standing to challenge him. And then they'd lose the challenge. He could do what he wants. The way he runs the Bulls is A Choice.
I did a Reddit post about six months ago looking at the various Bulls minority owners. About half of the Jerry’s original partners have died and their shares are held in a trust. Trusts have even less say in the organization than the limited partners do. They just want their check every quarter.
The Huerter minutes defy logic* but other than that, I'm not upset at what Billy is doing. The "young guys" (only one matters) are getting adequate minutes. It seems to me that all of the handwringing over Matas's minutes are whether he should have maybe 4 more minutes a game. I think he should play a lot but I'm not going to get too worked up over that. In terms of the rest of the guys, does it really matter? Does anyone need to see more Dalen? And as it pertains to Matas, don't we want him playing with better players? You don't really improve by playing with bad players.
*If Huerter can somehow catch fire to end the season and rehab his trade value, playing him could be worth it. A huge "if" for sure, but this is the only way my brain can reconcile his playing time.
I hope I didn't convey the impression that I think any of this particularly matters. I agree that 5-10 more minutes doesn't make much of a difference for Matas, just like any minutes doesn't make a difference for Dalen Terry
just that it shows a lack of leadership, and I'm preemptively mad at the cover AK is trying for when he'll say for the 4th year in a row "we don't know what we have"
Stacey has brought up the potential of drafting Cooper Flagg multiple times over the past couple weeks during games and has talked about how awesome it would be to have him and Buzelis together. Adam finally called him out a little last night and basically just said he'd love that, but the odds are not in the Bulls' favor.
I wish he would have pushed back harder on Stacey though. Like if you're so into the Bulls getting Flagg this year and having the possibility of getting a top three pick next year (which he also mentioned last night), why are you imploring the Bulls to win every game? Being the 10 seed in the East almost guarantees that you won't get a top three pick. If top three picks are so important, this team needs to be intentionally bad.
I know it's not Stacey's job to play armchair GM, but it's annoying hearing him basically parroting AK's logic on live broadcasts. Being a play-in team every year and hoping your 3% chance of getting the #1 pick lands is not a viable path to success.
another prediction of AK not just being bad at his job but not a smart person:
he will say, without any investigation as to the logic, that the Hawks were 10th in lottery odds last year and won, so "you never know, maybe better to be 10th than 6th"
As far as I know, there are four post-game shows on YouTube
I don't know how these numbers are in relation to the general ecosystem or when incorporating other platforms (it's probably bad, this team is boring), but striking that the official show does so close to the independent ones
Probably worth clarifying that the Chicago Bulls Central guy is not the same as the Bulls Central guy. Bulls Central is decent. Chicago Bulls Central is not.
Giddey or his agent putting pressure on AK to give him his 30M/year contract:
Josh Giddey knows he’s pumped up his value with his strong play this season. The Bulls guard will enter restricted free agency this summer and admitted to the Chicago Sun Times’ Joe Cowley that he’s wondering how it will play out.
‘‘I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t thinking about it,’’ Giddey said. ‘‘Every player in the league thinks about it, but I don’t let it impact what I do on the floor. I don’t come out here with any preconceived ideas of how I want to play or the numbers I want to put up to earn X amount of dollars or whatever it may be.’’
"Josh Giddey knows he’s pumped up his value with his strong play this season."
What strong play are we talking about here? Sure, his last three games have been pretty good, but his stats over the course of the season are barely better than they were last year, and that's with him averaging more minutes and having the ball in his hands a lot more.
Per 36 minutes: his points are down, turnovers are up, assists are slightly up, and rebounds are identical. His overall field goal percentage is down, although his three point percentage is up to 37%. His net rating is the lowest it's been since he was a rookie, his turnover ratio is the highest it's been since he was a rookie and his PIE is the lowest it's been since his rookie year.
He has made marginal improvements in some areas, but overall this has not been a breakout season for Giddey. I don't know why journalists can't do the most basic research instead of just immediately saying he's played well enough this year to make a strong case for getting a huge pay raise.
Heard Julia Powe on a podcast say her personal opinion on a Giddey contract would be 2yr/$10m per
That is in line with my thinking, i doubt AK feels that way and maybe some shared delusion in the media simply assuming Bulls will overpay (not unreasonable) not giving their personal opinion
I'm not sure I'm that pessimistic, especially with how much guys have been getting on their rookie extensions lately. I don't think his market will be super huge this summer, but I have a feeling someone will be willing to offer him more than that.
My guess is he'll get offers in the $15 million a year range for three or maybe four years with a team option on the final year unless he keeps up his current play. If he can somehow sustain this for the remainder of the season, I could see someone offering him something closer to $20-25 million per year at which point I'd just let him walk.
Josh Giddey is so frustrating to me. As someone who grew up idolizing pass-first point guards, I genuinely do enjoy watching Giddey at times. And I'm not even totally against extending him.
I just struggle to enjoy watching him, especially these last few games where he's been on fire, because I know AK's a moron and will think Giddey beating up on other teams that aren't even trying means he should give Giddey a huge extension.
Giddey is the type of guy that you need to build around to get the best out of him. Just like Zach and DeMar before him. Those guys need to be the centerpiece of a team if you want them at their best. Unfortunately they aren't good enough to warrant building a team around unless you're okay with being a mediocre team for the foreseeable future.
The same is true for Giddey, except he's not even as good as those other two. Zach's gone, Vooch has missed a couple games, Ayo and Lonzo have been in and out of the rotation lately. Giddey's basically gotten to take full control of the team and he's shined while doing so.
But this has also shown exactly why you can't build around him. He'll put up really nice numbers when he's surrounded by a bunch of bench players, but you can't expect to find success like that. Then once you surround him with better players, he goes back to being fairly ineffective because he's just not a useful player when the ball isn't in his hands.
To me, I think Giddey will find the most success as a team's backup point guard. Put him in a situation where he can come in and command the bench unit and I think he'll be highly effective. But he's never going to accept that role. At least not this early in his career. He's good enough that some team will be willing to make him the starter for the next several years, and unfortunately that team is most likely the Bulls. Buckle up, Bulls fans. It's going to (continue to) be a bumpy ride.
friends don't let friend write about the Bulls every day. They don't deserve it, and you get stuff like this every year. Last year I was yelled at (very mean!) when ribbing Chuggo for their Bitim hype
> To be sure, the Bulls were rather thin in the frontcourt, so the mere idea of rostering a third big man wasn’t crazy. But who they added matters. For a multitude of reasons, Collins belongs on the floor. He appeared in 60+ games over the previous two seasons and averaged roughly 22.0 minutes per contest.
He is 6'11" tall which is 211 cm. His weight of 250 pounds converts to 113kg. His favorite dog is the border collie. His favorite ice cream is sherbet. He enjoys long walks along the beach, romantic dinners at home and nights on the town. Zach Collins is looking for something more serious in his life and any prospective team should be too. Let's make 2025 our year, a year for you and me and Zach Collins.
Is Zach Collins part of our young core? He just turned 27 in November, which means he was 25 (at the beginning of) last season. That's our arbitrary young core cutoff and he barely missed it! I think he's basically a building block. We're now sprinting towards 9-10 very good players!
I think there's a huge issue of people (looking at you, AK) not understanding what replacement level play looks like. There are just so many players that can you 14 and 8 in 30 minutes. So many guys that can give you an inefficient 20pt/game with 25%+ USG. Guys stepping into start for Vooch and giving you Vooch numbers (and perhaps better impact because they're not awful on D) isn't a surprising revelation speaking to a logjam. It's what replacement looks like with minutes and touches at the position. This is why nobody wants Vooch, dummy!
Tonight is my playoffs. We can lose to Philly and Brooklyn should beat the Wiz. We can move to within a half game of 6th. The odds of jumping into the top 4 from there are markedly improved.
Plus, I maintain a dream that losing something like 25 of their last 30 games might force Jerry to consider whether AK knows what he is doing (he does not) and fire him or at least start thinking about it. Let's get that snowball rolling!
Bulls have lost 6 in a row, Sixers have lost 7. The age old battle of Resistible Force vs. Unmoored Object.
Oof, thoughts and prayers
Regarding Donovan, does anybody actually know what happened between him and the Thunder?
The story for years was he left as a result of a mutual agreement. But the further we’re removed from that, the less sense that makes.
So Donovan left OKC, a team with a good and highly regarded front office, but chose to coach for a team with an unknown front office and a poorly regarded owner? He also just said this season that he has no problem with rebuilding, which was supposedly why he agreed to leave OKC. So why would he agree to leave OKC if he didn’t have a problem with the direction they were taking?
My theory is that he didn’t actually mutually agree to leave the Thunder. I think he was fired, but OKC liked him, so they said that it was a “mutual agreement” to help him out.
this was Presti's statement at the time lol so who the hell knows: "It became apparent that we couldn’t provide him the information on the future direction of the team over the next several seasons to give him the level of clarity that he understandably desires at this stage of his career," Presti said in the statement.
So he left the Thunder because they couldn’t provide him with clarity, but he’s been choosing to stay with expert communicator AK?
That would be like an actor leaving a Spielberg movie because they didn’t like his vision and then instead signing up for, and staying on, a Tommy Wiseau movie.
That's why I think it's coming to a head this offseason. 'desiring clarity' is just another way to say 'pay me'
Presti also said Josh Giddey is a possible future all star after the Caruso trade, so maybe he's just a nice guy.
I don't know, I actually believe they agreed to part ways. Despite Billy saying a few weeks ago that he's fine with rebuilding, I think he was just saying that because he basically has to. He's currently coaching a (somewhat) rebuilding team. He can't just say he hates rebuilding.
The way he's coaching this team points to him either having zero idea how to coach a rebuilding team or having zero interest in coaching a rebuilding team in a conducive manner. As Matt said, he clearly doesn't care about helping the young guys develop. He's coaching how he wants to - either because it'll help him get his next job somewhere else or because he plans to retire soon and doesn't give a shit about how he sets the team up beyond his tenure.
It's possible OKC would have fired him if he wouldn't agree to mutually part ways, but I definitely don't think it came to that. I think OKC was going in a direction Billy clearly didn't want to go, so they agreed it was best for them to split.
And yes, the Bulls are probably the worst run team in the league, but how much does Billy care about that? He's been around long enough that simply being able to live in Chicago instead of Oklahoma City was probably quite desirable. Plus, I'm fairly certain AK told him he'd have a ton of freedom to do what he wanted, which was probably also very appealing.
“And yes, the Bulls are probably the worst run team in the league, but how much does Billy care about that?”
If he’s truly anti-losing and concerned with his overall record, you’d think he’d care about front office incompetence at least a bit.
The whole dynamic between AK and Donovan is just off. AK loves to draft prospects who need to be developed and keeps assigning them to his head coach who doesn’t like to develop prospects. Donovan likes to win immediately, but keeps sticking around a team that can’t improve from the 10th seed.
There’s also the interesting subplots that Billy seems to do some of AK’s job from a PR perspective and Billy’s son is the coach of the G League team. It’s as if these two are doing favors for each other and don’t realize it’s completely pointless because they’re an incredibly poor fit for each other.
It's not that far off. AK has already stated his belief that player development happens individually in the offseason moreso than regular season minutes. He's lamented not being able to give Billy (who is, at all times, "doing great") more to work with
That is to say I don't think AK has a drafting strategy, he's just bad at drafting (like he's bad at pretty much everything)
Also consider the salary. Just guessing but I think Donovan is in the top ten highest paid coaches. A (legit) small market team wanting to rebuild doesn't need that. The Bulls are also (less legit) small market, but somewhat compensate by having an affordable and small front office
I think this is the less nefarious reason why OKC and BD parted ways. They didn't need to keep paying Billy as they tore down the team. For some reason, the Bulls seem OK with paying Billy whatever no matter what the product on the floor looks like.
The Bulls needed a respectable name after employing Bozo the CEO for the previous couple years.
I've also been pondering Thunder Revisionism with Billy Donovan. He was highly praised for his last season there, as all coaches are by people who predicted the team was going to be worse and now have to explain why they were wrong. Must be the coach! He even finished in 3rd for COTY.
Compare the trajectories of Chris Paul, Billy Donovan, Monty Williams and the Chicago, Phoenix and Detroit franchises. I would guess most people agree that Chris Paul, even after age 34, can lift the floor on a team as probably the best player/coach (and as he learned to pace himself, still sometimes the best player on the floor for certain possessions). The common thread of those teams has been mostly the presence or absence of Chris Paul.
In the almost four seasons that AKME has run the Bulls, the Bulls are in a worse position than when they started. They have no players that are close to all star level, not a lot of future draft capital, one playoff appearance and one playoff win and seemingly no plan to get better. Their best move was to sign Alex Caruso, but that really didn’t accomplish anything in the long run.
He traded the best player he inherited for his team's own draft pick. Sometimes I think about this.
He also made a huge trade at the deadline his first season as team president and then spent the next couple of years lecturing the media on the idea of midseason trades being a bad idea.
Like, dude, the main reason the Bulls needed to make midseason trades in ‘22 and ‘23 was because you accelerated their timeline and put the team in win-now mode with your midseason trade in ‘21! Instead, you stopped trying and acted like everyone who wanted you to finish the job was crazy!
This is why it’s important to not just paint AK as incompetent. Yes, he’s incompetent, but he’s also a gaslighter and a BS artist.
To be fair, if I had fucked up my first ever mid-season trade as badly as AK did, I'd probably try to convince myself and the media that mid-season trades are bad...
Somehow his best quote was that first year when he described other GMs around the league as "delusional" and then did the Vuc trade.
1. The lack of plan also falls on ownership. No matter what they publicly say, the Reinsdorfs aren't OK with tanking. And don't point me to any of that "sources say Reinsdorf says AKME can tank if they want to". There are several obvious reasons to take these kinds of statements as equivocations or outright lies.
2. Research points to the marginal irrelevance of playing time on the "development" of young players. Beyond a moderate amount, which Matas is on track to get, there's no developmental upside he's missing out on. It's questionable if there's even *ANY* developmental upside. There's simply nothing to gain in telling Donovan who to play.
3. I don't think there's any mystery with Donovan. He didn't want to tank so he left the Thunder. Here, he also clearly doesn't want to tank, but the roster is so bad from mismanagement that they're de facto tanking. He publicly said a few weeks ago that he didn't know what the plan was. But, maybe he'll change his mind since nepotism is rampant with the Bulls?
4. My guess is the whole state of affairs is due to AKME spinning BS to Reinsdorf. Because 1) AKME are terrible at everything, 2) Reinsdorf keeps telling them conflicting goals, and so, instead of just saying the truth, which is that they've made so many bad moves they're trapped, AKME tells Reinsdorf that he's simultaneously rebuilding on the fly and tanking and also insuring that they keep their pick, while simultaneously being optimistic that they can make the playoffs. A good owner would see right through this nonsense, but we don't have one.
I’ve theorized before that every Reinsdorf employee seems to be solely focused on convincing the Reinsdorfs that they’re doing a good job. Everything they say to the media is essentially just the message in the moment that they’re trying to sell to Jerry (and Michael).
When AK says things like “Midseason trades don’t help a team” and “developing happens in the offseason” I think he’s just a desperate and overwhelmed employee who’s trying to convince his boss that his failures are actually not failures at all.
1. You know when your boss says something but STRONGLY implies they want the opposite of what they just said? That's exactly what's happened when Jerry (or most likely Michael) has told AKME they can tank or go into the luxury tax if they want to. Just because they technically can doesn't mean they won't lose their jobs if they do.
2. Do you have links to this research? You've brought it up a few times now and I've meant to ask in the past but have forgotten.
And if playing time isn't actually as beneficial as is generally believed, is the expectation that these young players are doing a lot of their growing in practice and/or with 1-on-1 coaching? Because if so, I don't have great confidence that the Bulls are investing that much in their young players in practice or via 1-on-1 coaching. Which if that's true would mean that playing time is actually important for young Bulls, even if it's not as important for other teams that actually invest in their players.
I'll try to look it up when I have time. Outside of pretty limited cases, I don't think, though, that game time is any kind of substitute for actual skill development.
Even for a team that "underinvests" in practice and player development, the amount of time doing that and the amount of time players work individually just absolutely dwarfs playing time.
Like, think about it this way. A player might spend 6-8 hours a day working on his game in various ways. A fanatical player might spend a lot more than that. So most off days, and most of the off-season, let's call that 8 hours a day.
What's the difference between going from 1200 minutes to 1800 minutes? Well... 10 hours. All of that extra playing time only amounts to about 1 day of off-season or off-day work.
Where I think teams make a real difference is in how they guide and direct physical development. Sometimes I assume it's just the player, but that's what I learned from the Lauri experience. The Bulls vision for him was to bulk him up and have him be a center. So most of us looked at him through that perspective and thought, "whelp, he's not that good". Basically, they totally pushed him in the wrong direction.
Man, I wasted a lot of time looking and couldn't find shit. :|
NBA Player Development
Interesting Articles that weren’t the one I was thinking.
Says more minutes help, but more garbage minutes might not.
https://harvardsportsanalysis.org/2015/05/player-progression-in-the-nba/
General description on how progression is mostly based on age
https://apbr.org/metrics/viewtopic.php?t=8308&sid=dc497fe6cadeaa98364b15d43c18a1aa&start=15
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/0rp6h9sq7fbipjr748eii/xRAPM-Aging-Project-Summary-Paper.pdf?rlkey=varccujyu7lq3qxq76039jrr0&e=1
https://godismyjudgeok.com/DStats/APBRmetrics_Old/viewtopic.php@t=2598.html
This one is a clear no
https://sites.dartmouth.edu/sportsanalytics/2022/04/07/do-higher-minutes-played-and-higher-usage-percentage-in-a-players-rookie-year-result-in-improved-efficiency-in-their-second-and-third-years/?utm_source=chatgpt.com
Ambiguous
https://digitalcommons.bryant.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1223&context=eeb
This one is a clear no
https://x.com/nicidob/status/1152411949059256320
https://page.byu.edu/docs/files/Publications/JQASSelfArchive.pdf
A narrative from a coach. I just note that he doesn’t seem to care much about game time
maximizing-time-for-skill-development
Likewise this: Which argues that minutes matter, but in a very different way. For most players, getting out there is a super high pressure situation that makes or breaks you because young players have limited minutes. You aren’t really out there developing skills, you’re doing a job.
https://hoopconsultants.com/the-process-of-developing-an-nba-rookie/
I couldn’t find it on
https://www.nbastuffer.com
But it’s a great site
I looked through several years of Sloan conference papers and nothing. Maybe I dreamed this but I don't think so.
Nah, I'm sure there's definitely research out there on the topic. Developing young players certainly isn't as black and white as just playing them a ton and them magically becoming amazing.
Ultimately, I think the problems with regard to the Bulls and their issues developing young players goes much deeper than just Billy not playing Matas enough minutes.
There's a lot of good stuff in these articles though, so thanks for sharing!
No problem... I'm sure I'll stumble on it and then forget about it again at some point in the future.
One problem is just that, statistically, it's very hard to separate and derive causation from minutes and skill. If the player looks better, he plays more. Like, Matas is going to play more than Terry did in Terry's rookie year. How much of Matas' year 2 improvement will we attribute to him playing more compared to Terry?
How much of Terry being pretty bad do we attribute to him not playing more in his first couple seasons?
If playing more helps, why didn't the G-League help guys develop?
I dunno these are just non-statistical things, but I don't think I can ever think of a situation where a guy's playing time over his first year or two really had much discernible impact.
Guys that were good were always gonna be good (Jermaine O'Neal and Jamal Crawford? Maybe Anfernee Simons) even when they didn't play as rookies.
Nor can I think of guys who I think were "saved" by playing through a lot of terribleness. Pat? James Wiseman? Maybe there were guys that went from awful to "ok" but I can't really think of them.
Houston is trying to make Jalen Green that person. He's in his 4th year, just turned 23, still not "good," but he's getting better. They've had the position, give him minutes, give him shots, and he'll get better. He has? But would he have always? Who knows?
Thank you for these. This is just fascinating and showing how much this is probably impossible to say.
For example:
Player A starts out playing 5 mpg in the rookie season, but that increases to 20 mpg in the second half. They get lots of minutes - let's say between 1000-1200. They a) naturally improve as the season goes on (through all sorts of means - playing time, practice time, general acclimation to "the life", etc), b) their minutes are weighted more heavily in their "improved player era" (as the kids say) (it'd be 4:1) c) they have a very good 1st team all rookie season. His second season, he plays about 25 mpg, and it IS an improvement on that 1st season, but it's not a HUGE improvement. He's still one of the 5-best 2nd year players.
Player B barely plays all year, getting about 5 minutes per game. They get 400-500 for the season. They improve throughout the season very similarly, but the 1:1 first half to second half PT ratio doesn't make the whole season look as promising. His first season is very much a borderline bust. His second season, he plays just as well as the Player A. His improvement looks huge and it suggests that playing more actually hurt Player A's development. But we know that's not true. His whole season 1 improvement to whole season 2 is massive, especially compared to Player A, though we could say Season 1 Game 82 to Season 2 Game 1 is the same for both.
Anyway, that's just one example. I think it's more safe to say that we have flipping clue on a large-scale statistical analysis. It's so incredibly individualized. As a high school teacher and coach, this makes sense. What works for one player won't work for another. What one teacher can get from one student, he or she can't get from another.
The one other analogy I'd make to teaching is that a) in practice, there are clear ways to cultivate improvement: set challenging but manageable goals. Make them something that success can be achieved to keep up motivation, but keep sufficiently difficult that there is real achievement in getting those goals. b) in performance, or tests, there's such a different atmosphere around testing, that the only way to practice that is to practice tests (or games). You get better at test-taking (performing under pressure) by taking tests. Of course, if all you do is take tests, there's no real ability to work on smaller, necessary changes that need repeated practice.
I'd definitely like to see that, too. Intuitively, I think there's truth to what you're saying, but I'd like to see the numbers to prove it.
Pros (intuitively): One does simply have to practice to hone skills. You can't change your shooting technique without shooting it 1000 times a day and getting consistent feedback and correction (other skills, too, of course). You can't get that in a game. Similarly, strength, plyometrics, and proprioception are all best done in a controlled, repeated environment.
Cons: You need to develop two things that can really only be developed in games: confidence and making the right decisions in real-time. "Confidence" is way too subjective and individual for me to think that it's anything other than "yeah, it's just individual - that could be more game time, a better coach, a sports psychologist, or just a really encouraging Mom (or Dad), or whatever". But the other part, in-game decisions, I tend to think it's so varied and different, that the more you're exposed to it, the better. Now, is there some diminishing marginal utility? Maybe? If one wants to be the best, is every bit of improvement needed? I think so. If not diminishing marginal utility, does it just flat-line, like you suggest? Don't know. I'd love to see the data.
I think this is right, and due to bad ownership will continue for another year
perhaps ownership does say AK they need a star attraction for 'their fans', either from a top-3 pick, or do a three firsts for a veteran trade that will surely backfire but (again) buy AK more time
I get this feeling that we're going to see Zion Williamson in a Bulls uniform in 26-27. He's a perfect target. Big name that'll attract a lot of casual fans, decent contract for a "star", a lot of past highlights to reference whenever the FO gets asked about why they'd pursue such a bad player, etc.
lol I just wrote above that Zion was a candidate but I don't think the Pelicans will part with him yet, and then deleted it because it was rambling. Maybe at the deadline.
Haha he makes perfect sense to me. I think he's mentioned previously that he'd be interested in playing for the Bulls. He strikes me as the kind of guy that isn't that serious about winning, but still enjoys playing the game to an extent and enjoys the spotlight.
What better place to do that than in the third biggest market (the largest with only one team) with one of the most storied franchises of all time that just so happens to not care about winning at all?
And Zion makes perfect sense for this FO/ownership too, as I mentioned above. They want someone they can point to and say "Look, we're serious about winning. We just signed "insert big name here". Zion is super marketable, which they'd absolutely love. Plus, since he doesn't seem to care about winning all that much, they won't have to worry about him getting disgruntled and forcing his way out.
It just seems like a win-win for both sides. And a lose-lose for us fans!
As depressing as the last 3 years have been, the 2023 and 2024 teams at least had some good players that seemed like also good people. The team was mediocre but Alex Caruso and DeMar were pretty cool to watch. That is totally lacking now. So yeah, they need something more.
NBA economics being what they are, I expect the team to chase an old or disgruntled player who shoots a lot but doesn't seem to move the needle for his team using their newly liberated draft picks and endless expiring contracts. There's always one of those.
I haven't looked very carefully. If you take the logos off the uniforms, the player that actually fits the best by that criteria is... DeMar DeRozan? I don't think anyone can convince themselves to actually do that (maybe at the trade deadline though). But then again Sacramento saw the Bulls for the last two years and said "Maybe?" And the team just gave a backup point guard a contract extension based on vibes. It's hard to put yourself in that cheeseball mindset of the Chicago Bulls front office.
Who else is a candidate?
Trae Young seems like a solid bet
longer shot maybe Zion or Ja Morant (don't forget to add 'never healthy' to 'old' and 'disgruntled' reason a player is available)
even longer shot...LaMelo Ball?
Thought about that but they've got Giddey. Maybe if Billy takes over he can finally try his 5 PG lineup?
Julius Randle feels like a Bull already.
Giddey works alongside a point guard because he's tall and not a very good point guard. It's called versatility.
I'm trying to conceive of players enticing patronage...Randle has even less star appeal than LaVine (maybe even less than Vuc)
Arturas's reductive reasoning ("we need size and defense") and affinity for Euros suggests Rudy Gobert
This is a really grim list you guys have going there.
LaMelo makes sense since AKME appear to be Klutch handmaidens. Maybe they orchestrate a S&T of Giddey for Melo? Giddey at a reasonable price + pick(s?) would seem like the sort of thing the Hornets might use to gracefully shed Melo.
I could absolutely see this happening.
Yeah, LaMelo would be my guess with all the talk over the years of LaMelo and Lonzo playing on the same team.
Could also see Coby and/or Pat (the Carolina boys!) heading to Charlotte. Maybe it's AKME's master plan to corner the NBA market on oversized "funky" PGs with Lamelo, Lonzo, AND Giddey.
that could make sense from Charlotte's perspective too. They are probably reticent to trade LaMelo - even with new management in town that seems smart and not tied to old ideas there - because he's very popular.
I suppose it depends on how they finish in the lottery. If they get a top-3 (that's the tier of 'superstar', right?) pick, then they have box office cover to trade LaMelo
oddly enough, LaMelo is not with Klutch like his brother, instead with (among the very few) Roc Nation
What about KD? I don't have any sense how many teams will be lining up to take him on for the last year of his contract. But I'd guess Chicago wouldn't be his preferred destination.
DurantInBullsKukocJersey.png
It has been foretold.
I think Jerry just cares about profit and (more so) minimization of loss. The White Sox are a trash heap, have no real tv deal now and are going to possibly be more of a ghost town at the stadium than last year. I think he really needs the Bulls to just make money. That means cutting cost where needed to guarantee profit.
This is where I possibly see changes to the management coming. I'm hearing about family four packs for $30 where opening season tickets were in the 70s. With the bulls having no streaming deal, no star power and no plan, I wouldn't be surprised to revenue tank next year (even if attendance stays high due to lower prices).
Tldr Jerry doesn't mind a crappy team, he minds crappy revenue for his White Sox supporting cash cow.
First part is right, I think — Reinsdorf just wants the steady gains from the Bulls.
But he runs the team this way because he wants to, not because he needs to. He's doing fine — he's got real estate projects everywhere, from apartment complexes in the suburbs to commercial properties downtown and in Arizona. It was just announced today in Crains that Reinsdorf and Wirtz just bought another $11 million parking lot to add to the UC project that the city council approved last week.
The White Sox could suck for a hundred years and he would run the Bulls this way. Or, maybe more revealing, he could find a giant mountain made of solid gold tomorrow and in the center there could be a fountain whose healing waters grant him the gift of eternal life and he'd still run the Bulls this way. He's just a miserly slob.
Please don't take this as a defense of Reinsdorf but he has a LOT of folks to answer to when it comes to the Bulls and White Sox. His co-investors put him in charge of making as much money for them as he can. The reason he owns both teams is because they were considered a good investment at the time, and have (for the most part) continued to gain value over the years. They aren't in his blood, or passion/vanity projects.
Casually Googled figures say that he owns about 19% of the White Sox and 40% of the Bulls. He's the "controlling partner" in both franchises, but not a majority shareholder. There are multiple ways a team can be owned, and none of these directly relate to how "active" the owner is in team operations. The Ricketts own 95% of the Cubs, McCaskeys around 80% of the Bears, Wirtz Corp all of the Hawks (I think). For reference Jerry Jones owns 100% of the Cowboys (and also their GM).
There's no special "ownership" sauce when it comes down to spending and team success. For big spenders, the Dodgers and Warriors are big ownership groups with controlling partners/CEOs, while Steve Cohen owns 95% of the Mets.
What is true, though, is that the circumstances of the Bulls and White Sox (and Chicago fans) dictate that the best ROI comes with "moderate competitiveness". Jerry is a smart businessman trusted by other smart businesspeople to make them money, and he has figured it out. It's not like he doesn't know how much money you make or lose by being champions or bottom-dwellers because he's owned the team through multiple seasons of both. He knows that being just good enough to seem competitive is the Goldilocks "just right" formula for our market. What would force him to change? Or when he's gone, won't his ownership groups just put in someone with the same mentality?
Shoot, I'm getting depressed....
That's good context and a well reasoned argument. I think the way you put this is more accurate than what I said above.
Lots of minority partners in sports teams effectively have no say at all. Even if Reinsdorf only controls 40%, the difficulty of getting the other 60% to vote as a block to do anything is probably damn near impossible.
Oh for sure, 40% is a lot, relatively speaking, for a controlling partner. But I don't think very many of that other 60% have any reason to rock the boat. They've got everything they've wanted and more from riding the Jerry bus all this time. He's definitely "the man" but my point was more that while many pro sports owners aren't in it for the money, there's never been any illusion about gains and profits being the primary motivation of the Reinsdorf ownership group. And to his credit (I guess??) Jerry has always been pretty up front about that.
Now when JR passes there will be some serious tax implications that may mean breaking up his stake into smaller shares. We'll see what happens and whether anything changes (it sure did when Rocky Wirtz took over for Bill, but I don't think the Jerry/Michael dynamic is anything like the Wirtz fam).
> Please don't take this as a defense of Reinsdorf but he has a LOT of folks to answer to when it comes to the Bulls and White Sox. His co-investors put him in charge of making as much money for them as he can.
The limited partners have zero legal ability to defenestrate Reinsdorf if they don't like what he's doing. (That's a very hazy dream anyway, because he DOES have a voting majority between himself, Michael and the Reinsdorf family cronies who are his partners on various real estate ventures and have been for decades.)
Reinsdorf could actually tell them all he was going to work on a longer-term strategy — say a 10 year plan, which would increase the value of the franchise exponentially but at the cost of the yearly penny-pinching — and they are powerless to stop it.
Decision-making power for the franchise is solely invested in an entity called CBLS Corporation, of which Reinsdorf owns 100% of the shares. He is not answerable to these people as a normal CEO of a normal company would be.
But it's a moot question as these other partners aren't private equity monsters that demand their annual profit. Most of them are holding an asset that has appreciated at a staggering rate since 1985 and several of them have in fact cashed out (Bruce Rauner, when he was trying to be a more cuddly public billionaire, was one of the buyers).
tl;dr — Reinsdorf could do whatever he wanted and he would have to really smash the car into the wall about 500 times before his limited partners would have standing to challenge him. And then they'd lose the challenge. He could do what he wants. The way he runs the Bulls is A Choice.
I did a Reddit post about six months ago looking at the various Bulls minority owners. About half of the Jerry’s original partners have died and their shares are held in a trust. Trusts have even less say in the organization than the limited partners do. They just want their check every quarter.
Sixers game thread is UP -> https://open.substack.com/chat/posts/931e00d6-ed0f-43e9-a826-0f789098b098
The Huerter minutes defy logic* but other than that, I'm not upset at what Billy is doing. The "young guys" (only one matters) are getting adequate minutes. It seems to me that all of the handwringing over Matas's minutes are whether he should have maybe 4 more minutes a game. I think he should play a lot but I'm not going to get too worked up over that. In terms of the rest of the guys, does it really matter? Does anyone need to see more Dalen? And as it pertains to Matas, don't we want him playing with better players? You don't really improve by playing with bad players.
*If Huerter can somehow catch fire to end the season and rehab his trade value, playing him could be worth it. A huge "if" for sure, but this is the only way my brain can reconcile his playing time.
I hope I didn't convey the impression that I think any of this particularly matters. I agree that 5-10 more minutes doesn't make much of a difference for Matas, just like any minutes doesn't make a difference for Dalen Terry
just that it shows a lack of leadership, and I'm preemptively mad at the cover AK is trying for when he'll say for the 4th year in a row "we don't know what we have"
https://www.cbssports.com/nba/news/nba-front-office-rankings-celtics-okc-at-the-top-mavericks-sink-after-luka-trade-but-theyre-not-no-30/
Stacey has brought up the potential of drafting Cooper Flagg multiple times over the past couple weeks during games and has talked about how awesome it would be to have him and Buzelis together. Adam finally called him out a little last night and basically just said he'd love that, but the odds are not in the Bulls' favor.
I wish he would have pushed back harder on Stacey though. Like if you're so into the Bulls getting Flagg this year and having the possibility of getting a top three pick next year (which he also mentioned last night), why are you imploring the Bulls to win every game? Being the 10 seed in the East almost guarantees that you won't get a top three pick. If top three picks are so important, this team needs to be intentionally bad.
I know it's not Stacey's job to play armchair GM, but it's annoying hearing him basically parroting AK's logic on live broadcasts. Being a play-in team every year and hoping your 3% chance of getting the #1 pick lands is not a viable path to success.
Stacey looks around and sees a path to becoming head coach. He's already in the building! (and actually was a successful minor league coach)
another prediction of AK not just being bad at his job but not a smart person:
he will say, without any investigation as to the logic, that the Hawks were 10th in lottery odds last year and won, so "you never know, maybe better to be 10th than 6th"
As far as I know, there are four post-game shows on YouTube
I don't know how these numbers are in relation to the general ecosystem or when incorporating other platforms (it's probably bad, this team is boring), but striking that the official show does so close to the independent ones
CHSN 4.5k views
Chicago Bulls Central 3.5k
CHGO 3.1k
Locked On Bulls 2.1k
I should mention my review: the Bulls Central guy, who is also on Locked On, is quite bad. poor opinions and with an almost offensive delivery of them
Probably worth clarifying that the Chicago Bulls Central guy is not the same as the Bulls Central guy. Bulls Central is decent. Chicago Bulls Central is not.
Which is the jagoff that kept trying to sell me NFTs
Starting lineup last night was Collins, Buzelis, Ball, Huerter, and Giddey.
That’s a starting lineup consisting of players who played a combined zero minutes for the Bulls last season. When’s the last time that’s happened?
Giddey or his agent putting pressure on AK to give him his 30M/year contract:
Josh Giddey knows he’s pumped up his value with his strong play this season. The Bulls guard will enter restricted free agency this summer and admitted to the Chicago Sun Times’ Joe Cowley that he’s wondering how it will play out.
‘‘I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t thinking about it,’’ Giddey said. ‘‘Every player in the league thinks about it, but I don’t let it impact what I do on the floor. I don’t come out here with any preconceived ideas of how I want to play or the numbers I want to put up to earn X amount of dollars or whatever it may be.’’
https://www.hoopsrumors.com/2025/02/bulls-notes-giddey-vucevic-dosunmu-ball.html
"Josh Giddey knows he’s pumped up his value with his strong play this season."
What strong play are we talking about here? Sure, his last three games have been pretty good, but his stats over the course of the season are barely better than they were last year, and that's with him averaging more minutes and having the ball in his hands a lot more.
Per 36 minutes: his points are down, turnovers are up, assists are slightly up, and rebounds are identical. His overall field goal percentage is down, although his three point percentage is up to 37%. His net rating is the lowest it's been since he was a rookie, his turnover ratio is the highest it's been since he was a rookie and his PIE is the lowest it's been since his rookie year.
He has made marginal improvements in some areas, but overall this has not been a breakout season for Giddey. I don't know why journalists can't do the most basic research instead of just immediately saying he's played well enough this year to make a strong case for getting a huge pay raise.
I was also taken aback by that line, seemed off editorializing by the aggregator
Heard Julia Powe on a podcast say her personal opinion on a Giddey contract would be 2yr/$10m per
That is in line with my thinking, i doubt AK feels that way and maybe some shared delusion in the media simply assuming Bulls will overpay (not unreasonable) not giving their personal opinion
I'm not sure I'm that pessimistic, especially with how much guys have been getting on their rookie extensions lately. I don't think his market will be super huge this summer, but I have a feeling someone will be willing to offer him more than that.
My guess is he'll get offers in the $15 million a year range for three or maybe four years with a team option on the final year unless he keeps up his current play. If he can somehow sustain this for the remainder of the season, I could see someone offering him something closer to $20-25 million per year at which point I'd just let him walk.
> Heard Julia Powe on a podcast say her personal opinion on a Giddey contract would be 2yr/$10m per
Season this with a player option.
Josh Giddey is so frustrating to me. As someone who grew up idolizing pass-first point guards, I genuinely do enjoy watching Giddey at times. And I'm not even totally against extending him.
I just struggle to enjoy watching him, especially these last few games where he's been on fire, because I know AK's a moron and will think Giddey beating up on other teams that aren't even trying means he should give Giddey a huge extension.
Giddey is the type of guy that you need to build around to get the best out of him. Just like Zach and DeMar before him. Those guys need to be the centerpiece of a team if you want them at their best. Unfortunately they aren't good enough to warrant building a team around unless you're okay with being a mediocre team for the foreseeable future.
The same is true for Giddey, except he's not even as good as those other two. Zach's gone, Vooch has missed a couple games, Ayo and Lonzo have been in and out of the rotation lately. Giddey's basically gotten to take full control of the team and he's shined while doing so.
But this has also shown exactly why you can't build around him. He'll put up really nice numbers when he's surrounded by a bunch of bench players, but you can't expect to find success like that. Then once you surround him with better players, he goes back to being fairly ineffective because he's just not a useful player when the ball isn't in his hands.
To me, I think Giddey will find the most success as a team's backup point guard. Put him in a situation where he can come in and command the bench unit and I think he'll be highly effective. But he's never going to accept that role. At least not this early in his career. He's good enough that some team will be willing to make him the starter for the next several years, and unfortunately that team is most likely the Bulls. Buckle up, Bulls fans. It's going to (continue to) be a bumpy ride.
I have a feeling AK is taking from these past 4 games that Giddey is good, instead of taking from them that Vuc sucks
no....oh no... https://www.bleachernation.com/bulls/2025/02/27/bulls-big-prob-literally/
friends don't let friend write about the Bulls every day. They don't deserve it, and you get stuff like this every year. Last year I was yelled at (very mean!) when ribbing Chuggo for their Bitim hype
Poor Elias, man. I'm fairly certain he's required to write like at least three articles a day on the Bulls. I couldn't imagine having to do that.
> To be sure, the Bulls were rather thin in the frontcourt, so the mere idea of rostering a third big man wasn’t crazy. But who they added matters. For a multitude of reasons, Collins belongs on the floor. He appeared in 60+ games over the previous two seasons and averaged roughly 22.0 minutes per contest.
He is 6'11" tall which is 211 cm. His weight of 250 pounds converts to 113kg. His favorite dog is the border collie. His favorite ice cream is sherbet. He enjoys long walks along the beach, romantic dinners at home and nights on the town. Zach Collins is looking for something more serious in his life and any prospective team should be too. Let's make 2025 our year, a year for you and me and Zach Collins.
Did that writer actually mean the Bulls have the problem of too many Centers that deserve minutes?
Oh yes, that's the problem
Oh boy
"Collins has played well enough since the deal that Donovan indicated he might use some double-big lineups when Vucevic and Smith are healthy"
Such relief for Billy, whatever means necessary to limit Buzelis playing time
Is Zach Collins part of our young core? He just turned 27 in November, which means he was 25 (at the beginning of) last season. That's our arbitrary young core cutoff and he barely missed it! I think he's basically a building block. We're now sprinting towards 9-10 very good players!
I think there's a huge issue of people (looking at you, AK) not understanding what replacement level play looks like. There are just so many players that can you 14 and 8 in 30 minutes. So many guys that can give you an inefficient 20pt/game with 25%+ USG. Guys stepping into start for Vooch and giving you Vooch numbers (and perhaps better impact because they're not awful on D) isn't a surprising revelation speaking to a logjam. It's what replacement looks like with minutes and touches at the position. This is why nobody wants Vooch, dummy!