Wonderful. This is an abject failure on the part of all involved. I bet Gordon loses significant money, the Bulls lose him for nothing, and we get another season of stupid bullshit stories about how Gordon is faking it if he gets hurt, how Larry Hughes needs his minutes and so forth. Yuck.
Hey, but Larry Hughes is normal sized for a shooting guard, therefore he plays slightly better defense! Larry Hughes was statistically the worst offensive player in the NBA last year. Looking at his scoring efficiency is frightening. It's amazing that a player as bad as Larry Hughes on the offensive end can get so many minutes and so many shots. You would hope, Vinny as a rookie head coach won't want to rock the boat. But if they insist on screwing Gordon over (which I don't think will work, a good GM like Pat Riley won't be fooled by the Bulls benching a player), at least play Thabo in place of Gordon, and not Hughes. There is no reasonn that Hughes should be getting anything more than spot minutes. I think I would rather shift down Deng and Nocioni to shooting guard before giving Hughes any minutes. That was one of the things that Skiles had the wisdom of. Gordon didn't like being yanked around, but Skiles knew Gordon was selfless enough to go to the bench without complaining, and Gordond didn't complain because Skiles proved that Gordon would still get his minutes, and Skiles always brought Gordon back as a starter later on. Jim Boylan didn't get this. At the end of the season, with the playoffs still in reach, he just kept shaving off more and more minutes. Hopefully Vinny isn't like Boylan!
This is going to be a fun season. We are entering uncharted waters. This is the first time in NBA history that a player of Gordon's caliber took the qualifying offer. Also, first time the best player from the past few years for a team ended up on the qualifying offer. It'll be interesting to see how this unfolds. With a rookie head coach no less.
