Do they want to be undermined in the press, be told how to run the team, have their assistants fired, unable to have input in trades and draft picks, work for a highly profitable team that manages itself like the smallest market team?
What about him? He wanted the GM job before he was forced out for the previous incarnation of Hoiberg. Should have given him the chance way back then. Ideally, I'd love to see Thibodeau sign a $1/$1/$18M/$18M 4 year contract to go coach the Knicks.
My point is he stuck around in that environment, much worse under Krause, because it gave him a chance to win. As long as the Bulls have elite talent, they'll find coaches, good coaches, willing to sign up.
I don't think the Bulls have elite talent. They'd have won more than 50, and beaten Cleveland if they did. I think we lost and it was expected exactly because we overvalued and overestimated the talent we did have. The team was terribly constructed, lacking a starting SF and backups at the wings, and the 4 PF/C types did not play well together in any combination. What the Bulls do have is the best talent that staying under the luxury tax can buy. They're more likely to trade a key starter and rotation player like Luol Deng for cap space than to go out and get a Mozgov to fill a gaping hole in the lineup. The talent may look good on paper, but coaches realize there's more to a satisfying job than the players. Especially when you can see how awful our management is play out in the press.
We'll have to agree to disagree on that one. Rose, Nico and Butler are studs. The roster needs some work, true. But a reclamation project this ain't.
There isn't any room under the LT to fix the roster. Jimmy's MAX deal will take them right up to it or over, depending on if we keep our draft pick and that sort of thing. The Bulls simply lost games when Niko played a lot. I expect that will change, but it is what it is. For example, he won player of the month in march or whatever. The team was 5-7 in those games. Sub .500. We lost in the playoffs games he played big minutes, too. If anything, I expect the Bulls are going to shed salary, hence one of the key players. I don't think Noah can pass a physical so he probably won't be the salary dump. My bet is Taj. Book it
So predict their record next season. Same team, good, not great coach incoming. No massive changes in the East.
This is pretty much how I see things. I think this thread is being led astray by this emphasis on the so called freedom of national media to report the real story. The national story line seems to me to be all noise and very little signal. When the dust settles after all this embarassing stuff from the Bulls front office, the real story over the last few days was reported by Nick Friedel, who somehow managed to stumble upon his first decent story. Friedel reported that the Bulls front office thought Thibs' over playing of Noah down the stretch last year was responsible for his injury woes. If the front office believes that Thibs' rotations derailed Noah's career, and derailed Rose's career, and will derail Gasol's career then nothing else matters: Thibs has to go. The rest is just drama.
