... do the Bulls fire him at the end of the year? If the Bulls are reasonably successful... say .500 or better and fire VDN after a trip to the playoffs, how exactly do they sell firing him? I mean, to really sell it as an improvement, they'd have to lock up a really top notch coach that the big FA's would be obviously happier with than VDN. I don't think that man even exists. I mean, I think there are a lot of coaches better than VDN, but there's no one that really separates himself from the pack as a clear cut upgrade. There's no one that players are going to go "Wow, I want to play for that guy!". So in the absence of that, what does firing VDN get them in terms of marketing. If they do the best job they possibly can (as opposed to the job they did two summers ago), they'll get a better coach, but the positive of having a better coach will be the balanced by the negative of having to overcome some perceptions of disarray in firing a guy they took a chance on and did "ok" against an organization that never really expected to or had his back.
Free agents and especially their agents generally aren't morons. If the next guy brought in is generally regarded by people in the know as an upgrade, that won't be a hard sell. And if the team does markedly better, it will be as much about overcoming Vinny as anything. It's a lot harder to blow a 10 point lead in the last two minutes with bad coaching decisions than it is to blow a 4 point lead.
