I am questioning my fan-dom

Yep. I question my fan-dom.

For the first time since I can remember, I don't find myself watching Chicago Bulls games. For the first time since I can remember, losses don't really hurt. For the first time since I can remember, I've stopped watching the NBA. For the first time since I can remember, I am not really all that excited about the NBA draft and probably won't watch it.

What. The. Hell.

Jib was supposed to be the answer. Hard work, hustle, determination.

And it hasn't worked.

We've really gone backwards.

The Pax Model was something I originally bought into. It was something I supported. It was something I believed in. Yet, years of heading down this particular path, we are no better than we started.

I think I finally am so frustrated with the lack of progress that I don't care anymore.

 

It's ok, you're not the only one. I'm fed up with the bullshit the Bulls have fed us this year. How can a team with such great expectations fail so miserably? I honestly began rooting against the Bulls here recently. As much as I'd love to see them in the playoffs, I don't want them to make it. There's no point. They'd get swept by Boston. So, why not say to hell with it, finish the tank job that was this season, and get a lotto pick?

 

A true fan wouldn't have this attitude

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (such sweet thunder @ Apr 7 2008, 06:34 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}></div><div class='quotemain'><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (playaofthegame @ Apr 7 2008, 01:09 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}></div><div class='quotemain'>A true fan wouldn't have this attitude</div>

Well, I guess I'm not a true fan then. I seriously can't remember the last time I was less interested in the Bulls. It has to be pre-championships, way before high school. I think it was 1987-88: that was the year before we got cable and the year after the Bulls left whatever station became Fox. . . I want to say. Twenty years ago. Yikes. I was nine.

This preseason, I would go out to the local sports bar just to see all forty-eight minutes of a meaningless game. I don't think I've watched a full game since all-star break. My how things have changed. And I am unrepentant.
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Wow really? If I was in Chicago in 87-88 I would love to watch all the Bulls Games just to see MJ's amazing season.

- Too bad you didn't seem to have the capability of watching those games.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (playaofthegame @ Apr 7 2008, 01:09 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}></div><div class='quotemain'>A true fan wouldn't have this attitude</div>


Who the **** are you?

kthxbye.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (such sweet thunder @ Apr 7 2008, 06:34 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}></div><div class='quotemain'><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (playaofthegame @ Apr 7 2008, 01:09 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}></div><div class='quotemain'>A true fan wouldn't have this attitude</div>

Well, I guess I'm not a true fan then. I seriously can't remember the last time I was less interested in the Bulls. It has to be pre-championships, way before high school. I think it was 1987-88: that was the year before we got cable and the year after the Bulls left whatever station became Fox. . . I want to say. Twenty years ago. Yikes. I was nine.

This preseason, I would go out to the local sports bar just to see all forty-eight minutes of a meaningless game. I don't think I've watched a full game since all-star break. My how things have changed. And I am unrepentant.
</div>


Last year, I couldn't get enough. If games weren't on TV, I went with some of my buddies to Buffalo Wild Wings to watch games. When the Bulls came into Milwaukee, a bunch of friends and I bought tickets to the game.

Now?

I haven't watched a game in God knows how long.

I truly believed in the direction Paxson sold us.

Now, he's got to blow it up. Restart. Again.

 

Agreed, I don't care about the rest of the year. I'm just checking Bulls box scores. I'll start watching basketball again once the playoffs start.

The final straw for me was the treating of Gordon. The guy is obviously the best player on the team, and now the idiot coach is playing him 20-25 MPG. Gordon is averaging 20.2 PPG on 60.5 TS% since clown took over. That is superstar level efficiency, with allstar level scoring average. Boylan just threw Gordon under the bus though once we got Hughes.

Hell, probably the last game most Bulls fans are proud of, Gordon had 37 points and 5 assists. It was the game before Hughes started playing for us. We had they guys we wanted to play, playing, and they played damn good, smoking the Nuggets asses.

Paxson should have fired Boylan after he mishandled the team after the Hughes team and everyone blew up. There just haven't been any more blowups at Boylan since the players simply don't care anymore, since they know they won't be in the playoffs. Paxson should have been sitting down on that bench for the rest of the year, the guy is a coward.

I am willing to give this team another chance. We'll have a new coach next year...a real coach. Hopefully Hughes will be gone, and Gordon still here.

However, if we dump Gordon, have Hughes playing big minutes, and continue to F! up...well I'll have plenty of things to do in college to keep me occupied other than following the Bulls.

 

As the Bulls are getting their a$$ handed to them by the <u>Wade</u> and <u>Marionless</u> Miami Heat; I continue to be a fan of this ball club.
Indiana opened up more opportunity for us today by beating the Hawks and we aren't taking advantage of it.

 

This is what we got for firing Skiles? a few good games and then now having been eliminated from playoff contention?

Post play next season.

Do something with either Deng or Gordon so that we have no excuses for playing terribly due to "Kobe" talk or talk of the like.

Work on shooting, and passing and get more big men that can shoot a in the post! It's not rocket science, it's common sense.

I'm sick of Pax, get rid of him. Still a fan, but pissed about this whole season and having to wait another 82 games for bad reasons and unexcused losses.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (huevonkiller @ Apr 7 2008, 06:37 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}></div><div class='quotemain'><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (such sweet thunder @ Apr 7 2008, 06:34 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}></div><div class='quotemain'><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (playaofthegame @ Apr 7 2008, 01:09 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}></div><div class='quotemain'>A true fan wouldn't have this attitude</div>

Well, I guess I'm not a true fan then. I seriously can't remember the last time I was less interested in the Bulls. It has to be pre-championships, way before high school. I think it was 1987-88: that was the year before we got cable and the year after the Bulls left whatever station became Fox. . . I want to say. Twenty years ago. Yikes. I was nine.

This preseason, I would go out to the local sports bar just to see all forty-eight minutes of a meaningless game. I don't think I've watched a full game since all-star break. My how things have changed. And I am unrepentant.
</div>

Wow really? If I was in Chicago in 87-88 I would love to watch all the Bulls Games just to see MJ's amazing season.

- Too bad you didn't seem to have the capability of watching those games.
</div>

Lol what the hell is this superfluous edit?

Of course I didn't, it was an entirely hypothetical post.

 

Hi everyone. I've been taking a brief hiatus while trying to finish out my dissertation proposal, but jeez.

Yeah, I'm feeling the same things. Last night, when I looked at the score and saw we lost to the D-League all-star Miami Heat team, I should have felt something, but mostly it was numb disbelief.

It's probably not a lot different than what the players feel at this point.

I look at this mess and think two things in general.
1. The whole bill of goods about getting guys that "play the right way" was always just a bunch of talk. Paxson probably knows this to some extent; guys don't have to be choirboys to play good hard basketball.

2. What Pax has been pretty clueless at is in motivating everyone to play good hard basketball over the long run. I think he looks at it as "if you get a bunch of hard working, self-starters, they'll play hard". Well, that might help, but it's obvious this bunch of hard working self starters has given up. The reason why they've given up is that Pax and the Bulls have completely failed to motivate and structure the team in a constructive fashion. In the literal sense of the word, it's a failure of management.

What does it mean to "manage" someone? Well, in the business world it means collecting your resources and directing them toward a goal. And unfortunately, not everyone is a hard-working self starter who requires little direction or supervision. And even the guys that are get spun off in unproductive directions all the time if they feel the overall situaton is a mess. Bad management makes everyone look worse than the are.

So I don't look at these guys and think everyone needs to be thrown under the bus. What I think is the Bulls were way too late (and still haven't) made the sort of changes to keep things pointed in the right direction and keep the players focused and motivated.

All of this is also explainable simply in terms of bad decisions on players. Our current players aren't morons. I think they saw the bad decisions of the past couple years themselves, saw the implications for themselves, and became distracted. At this point, you've got a situation that's feeing on itself. Everyone looks around and wonders if they're going to be here or even what their role is. That's understandable, but at the same time it has to be distracting, even for players that are pros who work hard.

In short they kept guys they when they should have let go or tried to move them for a future asset. And they made pretty crummy decisions with their 2006 picks. If they'd simply let Noc go to Memphis, or better yet, managed to get a future pick, they would have:

1. Made finances less of an issue when it comes to re-signing Ben and Lou, and thus, even if they hadn't signed extensions, there wouldn't be quite the same context there is now (arguing about a rapidly diminishing fund pool when Noc is sitting there with more than he deserves).

2. Moving him would have forced us to sink or swim with Thabo and Tyrus. The prevailing sentiment, I think, is that they would have gotten their feet under them quite a bit earlier, and we might have pulled out of our early season funk.

3. It would have left enough luxury tax maneuvering room to consider something like the Gasol trade. In short, more flexibility.

Likewise, if they'd looked around in the summer, they potentially could have found a taker for Wallace and actually got something useful (a pick, expiring contracts) in return. I spent most of the summer saying they should be looking. It was pretty clear that Wallace was aging a lot more quickly than the days past. If they'd managed something more than a desperate deadline deal, things could have been a lot different. And again, everyone would have had a better sense of what was going to happen going forward. I think the bottom line there is everyone simply misjudged. Nobody wanted to trade him when we could for fear of "taking a step back", but the reality was we took at least a big step back, and probably a bigger one by doing nothing.

And lets not even get into the 2006 draft. Excuse it however you want, but the bottom line is we'd be a lot better off if we'd have selected some of the (many) better players available when we picked.

 

I think it's all Nocioni's fault, by the way.