I didn't understand Doug's prior defense of management and almost signed up just to rebut him. You can't only look at the 5 biggest moves or the 5 biggest mistakes and evaluate mgmt that way. The good GMs create value. When is the last time Paxson created any value? The good GMs buy low and sell high. Look at Paxson's draft picks. When the hell have we every "sold high". Face it, we lucked into the number 1 draft choice and still are terrible.
We lucked into the #1 pick and lucked into a #2 and a #7 via the Curry trade, and we're still at where we're at. Its just bad management. Terrible coaching selection. Bad decisions on who to give big money to and who to jettison. A silly corporate culture for a NBA team. This season is turning into the nightmare scenario for this season. Gordon is gone. Salmons does not step up. Rose does not grow. TT does not grow. To top it off, Kirk has been crap / hurt and Miller has been pretty brutal as well, and he was a solid contributor for our team after that trade last year. Until management changes, its hard to see how they will start making better decisions or how this ship really turns around. This organization has taken over the persona of Paxson. Mediocre to bad. Hamstrung in its decision making, or more importantly, its lack of decision making. A devotion (which has decreased IMO) to a strange "culture" that really has been mediocre to losing basketball since MJ.
Maybe this is what wanting a divorce feels like. I love the team and the good times it's brought me over the years, but I know I neither like nor respect the people in charge and there's little prospect for that to change. Their values and interests aren't just different than mine, they're incompatible. I'm totally cool with a team not wanting to pay the luxury tax every year. I'm totally cool with a team that's in business to make money. I recently did a pretty detailed analysis of the Bulls in contrast with other NBA teams as investments. I was quite surprised that, although the Bulls are frequently knocked for their profit-first mentality, the Bulls didn't necessarily look like the most attractive investment out there. The Bulls are one of the most profitable investments in the league, but they're not far out of the range of other many other NBA teams- the Lakers, Pistons, Rockets, Suns, Spurs, etc. The Bulls represent one model of extremely risk averse profit-taking, but the lesson was it's also very profitable to field a good team. The kicker is those those teams have all been extremely profitable while winning. They're in business to make money too. To varying degrees, I accept that winning is secondary to making money. But in the question is how much. With most teams, I think ownership values winning as somewhat secondary to profit, but ownership strongly values both. With the Bulls, however, the impression I get is they value profit first, some sort of personal preferences second, and then winning is a pretty distant third. And that's not for me. Especially when the personal preferences include things like treating a player and team member who's brought me a lot of enjoyment over the years like garbage. And simultaneously rewarding and lavishing praise on a guy... to the extent of invoking a father-son relationship when talking about him... who's ultimately been a fairly ineffective employee. It's not even that I dislike loyalty and think it shouldn't play a role. But this team's sense of loyalty is warped as all get out. What I want is 1. A team that is out to profit... but understand that long-run profitability is tied to winning. You can live off past successes for a long time, but not forever. 2. A team that values loyalty... but recognizes that loyalty ought to be earned, not doled out on personal whims. 3. A team that values winning, and recognizes that evaluating talent and making sound decisions is paramount to long-run success and profitability. That starts at the top. If the team truly acted as an excellent business, selecting good management and rewarding success, it would be just as profitable but it would also win more. This team is content to coast on its past status and it's current home-grown cash cow. It's not that they want to lose, but they've been lousy at putting together a winner and worst of all don't feel much incentive to change. Sorry for the rant...
You guys are so wrapped up in this it kills me. BG was at least 20 games under .500 the last two years as "the man." BG basically had the same PER as Salmons, but wanted twice the money as a guy who had to be subbed at the most critical parts of games on defense. And as bad as Salmons has played this year, BG hasn't exactly helped Detroit win any games. Detroit's four game winning streak has completely coincided with a reduced role for BG or him being out. So they are a bad team without Rip and Prince, but they are a decent team without Rip, Prince and BG. BG is the third best SG on Detroit even. And the next time BG sniffs an all-star mention will be the first time bulls management even has to have a second thought about not resigning him. You guys are so short sighted and in such a big hurry for the bulls to be a nice 45-50 win team that it kind of sickens me. The one thing that Chicago doesn't have in common with the Lakers, Rockets, Suns, Spurs, is that they haven't had a franchise player to build around yet and won't until Rose develops. It took Jordan 7 years, Rose is only in his second year. It took 8 years to get him. It took the Celtics 21 years to get back to the championship. I really don't think you guys understand what it takes to get to a championship, especially with all this noise about BG, a guy who wouldn't even start on any of the current contenders.
This analysis is so far off I don't even know where to start. Comparing Gordon to Salmons Comparing Jordan to Rose
In reality, it has very little to do with Gordon in particular, and a lot more to do with Gordon as just another example of how bizarro this team is.
A theory of Jerry Reinsdorf: If you reward guys who don't deserve it, or don't believe they deserve it, they reward you with loyalty. If you pay a guy who believes he's worth every penny you're paying him, you won't be buying loyalty because you're making a fair trade.
lol...fwiw...At least as a player, John Paxson did have his own awful negotiation with Krause and Reinsdorf. Jordan had to intervene.
I recently browsed through and re-read what Smith said in the Jordan Rules about Paxson. It's pretty interesting. He concluded Paxson always sold him self short by looking at himself critically, and then being willing to accept being one of the league's lowest paid players because he saw his weaknesses much more clearly than he saw his strengths. In short, this is exactly the sort of guy Reinsdorf rewards. A guy who lacks confidence and will be truly pleased to get peanuts.
Well, I'm still not done with this team. The increase in on-court performance with short-termer Tyrus and Kirk coming back, and the increasingly clownishness of the front office has dovetailed nicely to boost interest.
