Chicago Bulls: How Do I Loathe Thee? Let Me Count the Ways

The Bulls certainly had an eventful offseason this year.

They hired Vinny del Negro to be their head coach, they somehow by an act of God got the number-one pick in the draft and took Derrick Rose, and they re-signed Luol Deng and Ben Gordon.

The hope was that all of these moves would help the team regain at least some of the excellence that they had achieved during their 2006-07 season, when they made the playoffs and beat the Heat to advance past the first round for the first time since the Jordan years.

This hasn’t happened, however.

Last night’s game was a perfect example. As one of my fellow writers on Bleacher Report called him, “Derrelicious Rose” was a meager one-for-eight, and looked more like a deer in the headlights than a Rookie of the Year candidate.

Overall, the team didn’t fare much better, losing by 42 points and looking like a collection of castoffs from the Washington Generals and my local Nazarene Church’s B-league team.

Granted, I’m not an all-weather supporter of the Bulls.  I like the team when I like the effort of the team on the court. In the couple of years before their recent string of playoff appearances, I thought that the effort was better than the outcomes on the court reflected. But starting last year, I really thought that the team started to come apart at the seams, losing steam and not performing up to their capabilities.

I don’t think this should disqualify me for commenting, but I felt it was necessary in the interest of journalistic integrity to let you know that I’m not a ardent fan gone sour, but more of a fan when I feel the effort and tenacity is there to earn it.

There are four individuals who I have a beef with in the Bulls organization. These people are not solely players, but also include a guy in the front office and the man who is running the show on the sidelines. We’ll start today’s rant with him.

I have one question for John Paxson (and I’ll get to insulting him later): Why Vinny? You took the reins from a ruthless guy who the players lost respect for (Scott Skiles), put in a quiet guy that they once again didn’t respect (Jim Boylan), took him out, and then replaced him with a virtual carbon copy.

The equation that I apply to this situation is this: Zero experience plus zero fire equals bad news for the club.

On top of being a Xerox copy of Boylan, you’ve got Del Negro saying stuff about how this team has to play like “a family,” and he shows little or no passion on the sidelines. Sometimes, a lack of fire can just be attributed to a coach being cool and collected, but in Vinny’s case, I think sometimes he just appears to be bored and uninterested.

This “family” crap is high-school stuff, not NBA material. If you want rainbows and kittens, Vinny, you need to go back to coaching grade-school hoops, or attend next week’s Boy Scout Jamboree.

Besides a coach with no spark, we have a couple of players who also need to seriously re-evaluate themselves before they take the court again. 

Larry Hughes, aka “The Body Suit,” is definitely in this category. We are paying this clown $12.8 million to do what, exactly? To look like Under Armour spokesman LaVarr Arrington? To take horrendous shots that make a drunken frat boy slinging back tequila look good? To look more erratic in the paint than a piece by Pollack?

I know, I know. He’s a better option than Bumblin’ Ben Wallace, but isn’t that like trading a “douche for a turd sandwich,” to quote South Park? Personally, I would have taken Ben’s ‘fro and attitude problems over the more-expensive and ineffective Hughes. I am certainly not an expert as to how a guy like Hughes is supposed to operate, but I know what I’m seeing when I see bad basketball.

This trade was probably one of the worst that the Bulls have pulled off.  It didn’t relieve their salary cap woes, and it also stuck them with a player that really isn’t helping their already-fragile playoff hopes. I would rather have Kwame Brown’s contract at this point than Hughes’.

Speaking of bad trades, the trade that I personally think is the worst is when Bulls traded Elton Brand to the Clippers for _____________. I deliberately left that space blank because it doesn’t matter. They traded a guy with a high ceiling for absolutely nothing in return—the absolute pinnacle of organizational ineptitude in a half-decade of bone-headed decisions.

Another trade that absolutely made me question my faith in the Bulls was the trade that brought Tyrus Thomas to Chicago. Can any of you tell me who they traded to get the services of Thomas? If you answered LaMarcus Aldridge, give yourself two Jimmy Points (they can be redeemed at the prize counter on your way out).

They traded a player who was an absolute beast at a highly-competitive school (Aldridge) for a guy who probably wasn’t even the best player on his team at LSU. One word describes this trade: DUMB!

I didn’t like that trade then, and I certainly don’t like it now. For every game he has that can be considered a good one (opening night this year), he comes back with an absolute dud the next (the Boston game). He simply does not bring a consistent tempo or flow to the court, and he’s a defensive liability on some nights he plays. That kind of inadequacy is not something that a team already short on big men needs.

I’d much rather get Horace Grant out of moth balls than to have this buffoon playing power forward for this team. He drags his teammates down, and his occasional good games are not enough to mask that as far as I’m concerned.

Finally, a quick note on what I think about John Paxson: your only qualifications for this gig as GM are that you made a big three-pointer against the Suns in the 1993 Finals, and you didn’t throw Jerry Krause under the bus when he blew up the Bulls after the 1998 season.

You have mortgaged this team’s future to re-sign guys like Luol Deng, Kirk Henrich, and Ben Gordon, and instead passed up the opportunity in two years to sign guys who are coming up to free agency, like LeBron James.

I think the Kobe Bryant non-trade is quite possibly the biggest black eye on the Paxson resume. Kobe played the Lakers like a fiddle, feigning that he wanted a trade in order to get the Lakers to commit to winning, and it got him Pau Gasol as a running mate. All it got the Bulls was an aggrandized view of how valuable Luol Deng really is, and it has cost them dearly, both in the wallet and in the standings.

Am I saying that the Bulls are beyond hope? Am I saying that I’m gonna pout and not watch the team until they improve their wicked ways?

No, but what I am saying is that for all the optimism that accompanied this team out of their summer workouts at the Berto Center, the cold, hard reality of it is that this team is the NBA equivalent of the Oakland Raiders—really solid a few years ago, and torpedoed by the perfect storm of front office ineptitude and wrong on-court attitude.

Hopefully, they can reverse course before it’s too late.