<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Denny Crane @ Feb 15 2008, 12:56 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}></div><div class='quotemain'>What is the cure for the Bulls, aside from Reinsdorf selling the team?</div> The honeymoon's over already? Well, I don't have any ground-breaking ideas, either short- or long-term. But here's what I'd like to see happen. 1. Take charge of the Ben Wallace problem imo, Wallace doesn't deserve anything more than spot /mop-up minutes. Demote him (although I acknowledge it would be difficult/crass to use his absence from the lineup to go to a funeral as a springboard for this). Explain to him and his representation that this is not a permanent move -- if he regains the intensity and effort and output that made him so successful in Detroit, his minutes will rise accordingly. If he balks or causes (more) locker-room strife, you Tim Thomas him. I don't worry about damaging his trade value, because we're not going to pull the wool over anyone's eyes. I don't want the Bulls to continue to give him, and to a lesser extent Smith/Nocioni, entitlement minutes. But I also want them to remain disciplined and not make a Knicks-like trade that brings in a worse or equally bad contract. 2. Get the organization on the same page. The Bulls are in a weird place right now -- it's not often you see a team go from a sexy preseason Finals pick to on the verge of a complete overhaul in a span of a couple of lousy months. I think the Finals are an unrealistic goal for this current bunch, if only because it would require literally nothing of any consequence to not break the Bulls' way. But I wouldn't advocate a total rebuild, either. There are some extremely nice pieces here. But to me it feels like the organization doesn't know which way to go. I'd like them to pick a direction and stick with it, and if that involves Paxson handing Boylan an Excel spreadsheet to govern playing-time distribution, so be it. 3. Paxson/Reinsdorf I think that Paxson has definitely chafed under Reinsdorf's thumb this year. He's voiced some extreme frustration over presumably not being able to make Kobe and Gasol deals, even momentarily slipping "off message" and mentioning the no-luxury-tax restriction to the press. Pax is (gulp) kind of our biggest hope here -- barring a mass exodus of fans, I think he's the only person who can sell the notion of crossing the tax threshold for a team that has not yet won a championship. Those are my basic thoughts. I would have liked to see what this team could have done with a Gasol or Kobe plus a lot of the current nucleus, but it seems to me that we could be on the verge of Rebuild X.0.
I wasn't asked, so I'm not going to answer I seem to remember hearing an interview with Pax where he said something to the effect of "I put together a trade and ownership didn't approve". I remember being pretty shocked he said that, but for whatever reason I didn't post about it at the time and now I've lost the source. But back to the general question, if Pax knew the deal (and I find it impossible to believe he didn't) then he really screwed himself by signing up Wallace last year and then especially re-upping Noc and signing Smith this year. They new full well that the Deng and Gordon were going to command salary, so spending $13M on a couple of backups was just stupid. The problem now is the problem they've always had. Instead of keeping their players and riding out their mistakes, they'll sell their good players at a discount and hold on to the albatrosses. The solution, since they aren't willing to pay to ride out their mistakes, is to learn from this in the future. Next time, don't get grandiose notions of old guys putting you over the top. Get a core of guys who can play together, sign them, and keep the rest flexible. Ideally, I don't think they absolutely need to do anything. Even if they're paying Deng, Gordon, and Hinrich big money you still have plenty of room, when Wallace comes off the books, to either sign Thabo, Thomas and Noah down the road and/or possibly get a major FA to boot. But you don't have that kind of ability with Noc around. And you aren't going to get to that point in a couple years, probably, because Noc and Smith will cost the Bulls so much next year that they're in danger of paying the tax to sign Gordon and Deng. The smart move was to, when teams were sniffing around Noc this summer, try to get a pick or some sort of useful guy on an expiring deal for him. Getting back a Memphis pick or Kyle Lowry or Hakim Warrick would have been moderately useful on the court and ensured we had plenty of room to do what we wanted. If we'd done that, hell, even signing Smith wouldn't have hurt us. So it's really pretty simple. If your owner won't let you over the tax threshold, you have to be realistic about your backups and dare I say it a little pro-active. Much better to move a guy a year early than a year late.
I remember the excuse for the Chandler salary dump was to make LT cap space to sign Nocioni. Whether Noc is a starter, or 6th/7th man, he's still one of our 4 best players. His salary isn't out of line with that.
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Denny Crane @ Feb 15 2008, 05:48 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}></div><div class='quotemain'>I remember the excuse for the Chandler salary dump was to make LT cap space to sign Nocioni. Whether Noc is a starter, or 6th/7th man, he's still one of our 4 best players. His salary isn't out of line with that.</div> By what measure is he one of our four best players? I can't think of any sort of yardstick where he comes up on the top four of our guys except salary. Deng, Gordon Hinrich? Definitely not. Wallace, Smith? If I had to win a single game, and could actually count on Wallace to be into it, I'd probably take Wallace. I dunno about Smith. Noah? I suppose if position didn't matter and I had to win a game right now I'd take Noc. But I'd get rid of Noc every day of the week and twice on Sundays before getting rid of Noah. Same goes for Tyrus.
