<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'>As Aaron Gray walked to the bench after Drew Gooden replaced him following a brief second-quarter stint on Tuesday, the rookie center, according to several witnesses, snapped at interim coach Jim Boylan. "That's what I get for working hard?" Gray said. A shocked Boylan snapped back and Gray, a second-round pick, played only the final 1:21 of a blowout victory over Memphis the rest of the night.</div> http://chicagosports.chicagotribune.com/sp...1,4985512.story I think it might be best for Paxson to pull the plug on the Boylan experiment by the end of the year. I think where Boylan messed up the most was with Gordon. Gordon seemed to be the one guy who had Boylan's back, and then wafter the trade, Boylan messed with Gordon's role. I think it is quite clear that the players don't care what happens to Boylan. What I would do this offseason (besides trading Hughes), is bring in an entirely new coaching staff. We have Noah lashing out at Ron Adams, we have Thomas skipping practice because of Boylan messing with his minutes (Skiles at least demanded enough respect from Tyrus for that not to happen), and now Gray, a second round draft pick who is unproven, and knows and realizes he is unproven, is lashing out. This coaching staff is a joke. I think we need at least three more coaches in. Get rid of Boylan and Adams first off. Myers can stay because of his ties to the organization from the 90's, but just use him as an extra body in practice for grunt work. Three guys you need to bring in. First, the head coach. My recommendation would be Larry Brown. Don't make this contract for more than three years. Second, the lead assistant. Scottie Pippen is the guy here. Start grooming Pippen to be the head coach after Brown (ala Avery Johnson). Third, bring in a guy for Gordon. Randy Livingston is the obvious choice. I would like Big Bill back as well. He did a good job with Tyson imo. If Paxson has enough sway, get him back on our bench. One thing should be clear though, Boylan's time here is limited.
Wow. What a mess this team is. No respect for the coach. No leadership from the players. Ick. Here's what I wrote about Skiles when he was fired: <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'>I said it earlier today before the news hit and I'll stick by it. This team wasn't brought down by Skiles and getting rid of him isn't going to provide any sort of meaningful lift. Despite the fact that I'm pretty sure he was a jackass to more than a few players, I can't even say with much certainty that I think he really deserved to be canned. It'll be interesting to see how much the players walk all over the next coach. My guess is quite a bit, and not a whole lot will get improved in terms of winning, although some guys' numbers will improve. From what I can tell, there's a pretty fair amount of dissension on this team between the old high paid guy and everyone else, and the guy who didn't get paid and everyone else. I have know idea how bringing a new coach in to keep the lid on that kettle helps. Nor do I have any idea who that coach will be except that if we get Pete Myers for the rest of the season it will surely result in a regular batch of empty seats in the UC by the end of the year.</div> A few months later and I think I was pretty much on the money about this. Hell, Skiles reportedly saw it coming way back in the off-season when he was concerned about how Deng and Gordon would handle their contract issues. I doubt he was much in favor of the Wallace headband exception. With all of this stuff flying around, it's maybe hard to pin down exactly what the underlying problem is. Guys throwing up their hands and saying "lack of focus" etc isn't quite it. I think it boils down to this. To motivate guys well, you have to have some kind of vision of progress that everyone can 1) buy into and believe (players can look and see that if we play this way, we've got succcess ahead of us) and 2) see themselves in (players move up and have individual success within the overall scheme). Probably a 3) is guys who can put players in line if they step out without coming off as ridiculous or hypocritical in doing so (e.g. Hinrich or Deng could have potentially done this. Wallace and Adrian Griffin could not). If you don't offer a compelling vision of that, as a leader, people start looking out for themselves. Looking at this season, it was clear coming in that the "compelling vision" required Tyrus Thomas, Deng, Gordon, Hinrich and almost everyone else to step up and play really well almost immediately. When it was obvious this wasn't happening (and I'm sure it was obvious to everyone important fairly quickly), that was a killer. It killed the believability of the Bulls getting somewhere. Success was no longer a self-fulfilling prophecy. Without that first part (real success), and with contracts at issue for Deng and Gordon, you have lots of room for people to start looking out for themselves. The house of cards collapses. Those who already have money- Wallace, Hinrich, Noc, don't look as motivated. They see their success as established, it's "the team" that's screwed up. Those who are on the verge of having it- Deng and Gordon- not only don't see their success in the team's success, they start to view their own and the team's separately. This is probably especially true for Gordon, who the GM is now on record as saying can't have a starting role here. In other words, his boss has publicly pegged his ultimate role in the company, and it's one Gordon probably right to not like. A guy like Gordon, just like everyone else really, wants to not have a glass ceiling. If he performs, he wants more. Finally, the younger guys who are a few years away get frustrated (Noah and Thomas obviously) because it's hard for them to see themselves not getting any burn when the team is stinking it up. So they pitch the sort of fits you see them pitching. Finally, I don't see anyone to do the third thing. Some of this could have been avoided or at least worked through by having the guys in leadership positions exercise.... well... leadership. Team captain shouldn't be a purely ceremonial position. It's part of the job to have guys that keep their mates focused, positive, and working towards success. By any measure I can see, this year's team captains have been miserable failures. So how could things have been fixed? A couple of possibilities, not mutually exclusive. 1. Getting a trade done earlier to change the mix of things might have helped. Gordon and Tyrus Thomas for Gasol, for example, seems pretty crazy in retrospect not to get done. But the Bulls were insistent on including big salary going out. 2. Breaking up Deng/Gordon and potentially Noah/Thomas sometime last summer. It's clear to see that the situation of having to pay two guys at the same time added stress and distraction. And having to bring along two young big guys at once) added stress and distraction. These were entirely foreseeable things. 3. Giving Skiles more power and a public vote of confidence. That's bound to be a controversial take, but I think it's clear at this point that things are no better without Skiles. While I don't approve of some of what he did, I think a big part of what the Bulls did was keyed on saying "it's my way or the highway". Some form of conflict along those lines happened every year. In the past, the Bulls always opted for the "highway". This year they blinked, and instead of being rewarded by renewed effort from the players, they were rewarded by guys playing like garbage. Perhaps things would have been different if the Bulls had sent Wallace packing for Larry Hughes and packaged up Gordon and Thomas for Gasol shortly after back in December/January. Of course one doesn't know for sure, but perhaps that gets sufficiently renews the other guys' attention.
