Chicago Bulls: Why They Cannot, and Will Not, Succeed

The Chicago Bulls are currently sitting in the eighth and final playoff spot in the Eastern Conference, and pulled within one game of seventh place Detroit, after beating the Pistons 99-91 last night.

So, to the naked eye, things would seem to be looking up, right?

To quote my favorite hobbit, ESPN's Lee Corso, "not so fast my friend."

Everything about the current Bulls roster is wrong, upside-down, and backwards. In their current condition, they're winning despite themselves and doing their future a disservice by staying out of the 2009 Draft Lottery. But I won't simply stop at making a blanket vote of no confidence; let me break down for you what's wrong with the Chicago Bulls.

Their mindset sucks

Earlier this week, after beating a Washington Wizards team that had more starters in street clothes than available to play, Ben Gordon was quoted as saying the Bulls were more concerned about Milwaukee, who are chasing the Bulls in ninth place, than they were excited about the prospect of catching Detroit in seventh.

What?

If I have ever heard a player say, without literally saying the words, "We're trying not to lose rather than to win," Gordon did. Teams that have a champion's mindset are focused on what's above them, not behind.

A swim coach of mine once told me that, if you focus on the bottom of the pool, you'll sink. It was an obvious metaphor for toning a championship mental approach from someone who was around a pool, but it speaks volumes to the issue with the statements from Gordon.

If the Bulls are trying to not fall to ninth place in the conference, the best they'll ever do is eighth. If they're trying for fourth and fall short at sixth, isn't that a better scenario? But as long as players like Gordon are publicly displaying a mindset of "getting by is ok" rather than "I want more," the Bulls won't do any better than they are right now.

Their rotation sucks.

Reggie Miller, on last night's TNT broadcast, said at one point that he believed Tyrus Thomas should average a triple-double... because, in Miller's opinion, Thomas should be able to block 10 shots a night.

While averaging 10  blocks a night makes about as much sense as Charles Barkley's golf swing, Miller has a point: Thomas is being wasted and misused by Vinny Del Negro and the Bulls coaching staff.

Thomas is as physically gifted as any player not named Kobe, LeBron, or Wade. But when Del Negro runs out Thomas, who's a skinny 215 pounds at 6'9" tall, at the power forward position, he's taking a fast, athletic pogo stick of a potentially dominant small forward and wrecking his game.

I know the Bulls just (over) committed millions of dollars to Luol Deng, largely because GM John Paxson has a man-crush on him and still thinks his future is too bright for him to be part of a trade for a legit star like Pau Gasol or Bryant. But look at what Thomas could bring to the table versus what Deng already has (or hasn't) been able to do consistently.

Last night, against a good Detroit team, Thomas had 18 points, 12 rebounds and a handful of assists. Thomas has three double-doubles in his last four contests, and had seven over a 10-game stretch at the end of January into the beginning of February.

When was the last time Deng had a double-double? How about one since the beginning of February.

As long as the Bulls have a decent center on the roster in Brad Miller, there's no reason Thomas should ever play the four. There is also no reason to believe Thomas shouldn't be able to put up better numbers than Deng's career averages of 15.4 points and just over six rebounds per game.

Furthermore, when was the last time a guard, who was under 6'2", led a team in scoring on a championship team? Isaiah Thomas maybe? Allen Iverson couldn't do it. And Ben Gordon isn't Iverson on AI's worst day.

Yeah, Gordon might bring a little bit of vintage Vinny "The Microwave" Johnson to the table, but for all the 40-point nights he gives the Bulls, when was the last time he guarded a two effectively? Or handled the ball well enough to be considered a point guard?

I know the Bulls are looking for guys who can get their shot no matter what on this roster, but Gordon gives away as much as he provides; his net effect on the game is almost break even.

I wasn't a big fan of Paxson's move at the deadline for Miller and John Salmons, but I am going to admit I was wrong. [For those of you that regularly read my writing, this is an enormous moment in the history of sports journalism.]

Salmons is a stud. I liked him when he was a tall, skinny point guard coming out of the University of Miami, but he got lost in a few cities on the bench and didn't see much of the light of day until the last couple seasons in Sacramento where, because of injuries, Mike Bibby being traded and the Kings having one of the worst depth charts in the NBA, he finally got some playing time.

Why is Gordon taking minutes away from Salmons is beyond me. Well, that's not what baffles me. How Paxson could build a roster like the Bulls have now and claim that it's intention is to win now is mind-blowing?

When everyone's healthy, Del Negro has to choose from Deng, Thomas, Salmons, Derrick Rose, Kirk Hinrich and Gordon to play the two guard positions and, if you include Tim Thomas, the small forward. How many good teams in the NBA have a rotation of nine players of which seven are either a guard or a small forward?

The roster Paxson has put together is handcuffing an already clueless coach. The roster that should be on the floor, and the rotation that is actually playing, are so completely different it's almost painful to watch at times.

In fact, some observers might have picked up on the friction between the GM and coach over the past couple months about Del Negro's playing time selections regarding Rose.

There is no way that Thomas should be playing the four (unless the other team goes small), Gordon should still be taking big minutes away from Salmons at the two, and Hinrich should still be on the roster.

The coaching choice and style sucks

Finally, I am going to remain steadfast in my objection to Del Negro being the head coach of the Bulls, both now and in 2009-10. Let's look at what this roster should look like next year:

Starting Five:

Guards: Derrick Rose, John Salmons

Forwards: Tyrus Thomas, Joakim Noah

Center: Someone currently not on the roster.

Order coming off the bench:

Deng, Miller, Hinrich

Look at the four starters I have listed. You have one of the elite speed-points in the game in Rose, a tall, athletic two and three, and a tall, relatively athletic (when he's in shape) four.

RUN, RUN, and then RUN SOME MORE.

Enter Avery Johnson.

He had a system in Dallas that allowed for open court running and flow around the perimeter. Please don't take anything that I say below as a knock on the other players, especially in the case of some of the Mavericks' star players, but:

Dirk Nowitski couldn't handle Thomas' jock when it comes to athletic ability.

Jerry Stackhouse might have been able to play with Deng—10 years ago.

Erick Dampier does as many stupid things on the court as Noah does walking down the street in Jacksonville, but Noah's energy (again, when he's in shape) and on-court IQ are way higher.

So why not bring in a guy who took a team that had pieces that would, at least to the naked eye, be harder to implement the system that got Dallas to the Finals than the Bulls' potential roster for next season?

Implementing a run-and-gun offense (not quite as far as Don Nelson's "just let them shoot; they might miss and then we can go score again" defense of course) with this roster would make Thomas a star and maybe fulfill the promise that led Paxson to trade LaMarcus Aldridge for him on draft night.

It would also more closely resemble the offense that Rose ran at Memphis... all the way to the National Championship Game. Rose has shown an ability to break the best ankles in the NBA in the open floor, but hasn't been as good in the half-court sets. The logical response is to let him run; it's what rabbits do, and he's as good a rabbit as there is in the league.

It would also, in the context of the rotation I propose earlier, see the ball moving more to a better mix of cutters. I wouldn't be shocked if, in a higher-tempo offense, you saw Salmons, Thomas and Rose all averaging better than 17 points a game, with Thomas (at the three) and Noah (at the four) collecting around 11-12 rebounds a night. Rose could, in a running offense, probably see his assists go to nine or 10 a game as well.

This Bulls team is younger and more athletic than the Phoenix teams that were so good over the last decade. I am not, however, going to start wishing for Mike D'Antoni. I think his success was as much a function of the floor leadership and chemistry of his roster as it was his coaching; his track record away from Steve Nash would lend support to that argument.

I will say, however, that a team that plays defense, as Johnson's Dallas teams did, but that runs the offense up and down more aggressively, would see both the statistics of the Bulls players and the knee-grabbing and begging for a time out from opponents skyrocket.

If the Bulls, with the youthful talent they have, ran an offense the way Phoenix did/does, there aren't many teams (if any) in the East that could defend it.

Conclusion

As long as the players and coaches on this roster have a closed mindset, the levels they achieve together will be limited to their imaginations. The current Bulls will continue to fight to, as Gordon so eloquently said, stay out of ninth rather than reaching for fourth or, at some point, first.

Here are a few action steps to fix the situation in 2009-10:

Let Vinny go this summer. Bring in Avery Johnson.

Let Ben Gordon go this summer; replace him in the starting lineup with Salmons at the two.

Let Deng replace Gordon as the sixth man; move Thomas to the starting small forward position.

Get a somewhat-athletic big to run next to Noah and Thomas. How many Shaq-like centers are there in the East? Being able to run like Dwight Howard is more important than being big enough to keep Zydrunas Ilgauskas from throwing his baby hook in a few times.

If Paxon's out there and he reads this and follows these steps, the Bulls could contend for not only the middle of the Eastern Conference playoff list, but they could lay a foundation to make someone like (dare I say it) Chris Bosh or Dwayne Wade want to play in Chicago in 2010.