The Travails of Captain Kirk

By: Charlie Danoff

“We simply must accept the fact that Captain Kirk is no longer alive…”
- Spock

In the late 1960’s a young Canadian white man burst onto the scene, boldly captaining the Starship Enterprise, “where no man has gone before.” William Shatner was a smashing success as Captain Kirk, seizing the screen and the imagination of young people. Despite failing to really evolve as an actor going forward, Shatner’s role as Captain has allowed him to remain popular in the decades since. If this story seems a little too familiar to Bulls fans who have never even watched Star Trek, you should not be surprised. Like the fictional Captain Kirk, the Bulls’ Hinrich has failed to evolve; yet he remains popular because of his early success, and because he just happens to be white.

Kirk Hinrich’s rookie season for the Bulls in 2003-2004 was a revelation. For years, Bulls fans had been tortured by that most tantalizing and dangerous of words: potential. Whether it be Jamal Crawford’s 100-pound frame scoring 50 points one night and 5 for the next ten, or teen phenoms Eddy Curry and Tyson Chandler taking five years to become adequate NBA players, or Jay Williams’ tease of a rookie season and fateful motorcycle accident, or even Tim Floyd’s darling baby Marcus Fizer going from lottery pick to NBA D-League in the blink of an eye. Bulls fans saw more than their fair share of young players who were supposed to save the franchise, just not this year … or next year, or the year after that.

Current GM John Paxson witnessed the same phenomenon from the outside, and so when it finally came time for him to gamble on future deliverance, he did not hesitate to pick the scrappy coach’s son from Kansas with the 7th pick in the 2003 draft. He decided to pass on the tempting Mike Sweetney and Jarvis Hayes, even foregoing the Euro Jordan Mickael Pietrus.

And you know what? Even with the gift of hindsight, Hinrich was the best player available at that spot. Maybe Josh Howard at #29 turned out to be a better value, but he was simply not considered lottery material at that time. Hinrich’s rookie year certainly validated Paxson’s faith.

He only put up 12 points per game that year, but he also dished out nearly seven assists, and only turned the ball over 2.68 times a game. Shockingly, he even played defense - something not seen from a Bulls rookie since… Scottie Pippen? (OK, Artest played D as a rookie; but he was so crazy that the negatives outweighed the positives.) More than anything else, though, Hinrich hustled and played hard. He seemed like he actually cared about the game of basketball; like he put his heart into winning.

Playing with a bunch of guys who were either not ready or never would be ready to become real NBA players, Hinrich shined. He continued his solid play over the next few seasons, as Paxson complemented him with Ben Gordon and Luol Deng to return the Bulls to the postseason after six years in purgatory.

Yet as shining as Hinrich’s rookie season and young career were, like most Bulls, he has failed to really progress. He proved he belonged as a starter in the NBA, but he remains a shooting guard forced to play the point because of the team around him. He accepted the position willingly, but never seemed to understand what it meant to be an NBA point guard.

Don’t get me wrong, Hinrich remains one of the better on-the-ball defenders amongst NBA guards to this day. He still hustles and makes you believe in blue-collar, white American hard work - but that’s it.

Obviously the Bulls as a team have been a failure so far this year, and while veteran Ben Wallace has received the lion’s share of the blame, Kirk has mostly (though not completely) escaped criticism. It is an unfortunate fact that raises questions both about the media and the leadership of the Bulls franchise.

The days of a young Hinrich playing scrappy, and proving he can hang in the NBA with grit and determination, are long gone. What’s there now is a man making over $11 million dollars a year, faltering to earn his big paycheck and captain status. The stats begin to tell the story of Kirk’s demise.

This year he is shooting an embarrassing, abysmal 35% from the floor, and an even worse 21% from behind the arc. Both numbers are career lows by a sizable margin. To make it worse, he is also averaging only 5.4 assists per game (also a career low) and guiding the anemic Bulls offense right to the bottom of the league. As the icing on the cake, he is averaging career highs in one category: turnovers, the kryptonite to offensive success for any basketball team.

Over the course of his career, Hinrich has been - and remains - a scorer first, and a point guard second. Given his poor shooting, he is obviously not doing that very well right now (scoring a career-low 10.7 points per contest). Despite spending over four full seasons at the point for a successful NBA franchise, Kirk still cannot run a team.

I do not have official stats on this one, but I would be willing to bet my mother’s salary that Kirk dribbles the ball more than any other point guard in the league. Countless times he brings the ball up, then rather than running a play or passing to a teammate in a scoring position, Kirk will simply dribble. And dribble, and dribble, and dribble…

It is one thing to dribble around looking for an opportunity to score; it’s another to bounce the ball solely for the sake of bouncing. He gives away precious shot clock seconds as if he were Willy Wonka giving away chocolate bars, and fans wonder why the Bulls have the lowest team field goal percentage in the entire NBA.

I am not assuming any of the Bulls black players are racist, but I know that if I were in their position, I would wonder aloud about Kirk’s continual lack of censure. It is not hard to imagine that Hinrich earns his money, playing time and organizational value primarily by reminding coach Scott Skiles and GM John Paxson of themselves.

Both were short, white guards who got by in the NBA by their hard work and smarts, not because they could jump out of a gym. It does not seem a stretch to assume this sympathy seeped into their subconsciouses and allowed them to overlook Kirk’s many limitations.

Gordon, Deng and Thomas are all also lottery picks who are given much shorter ropes, despite their success. All of them have also struggled at times, but they have been rewarded with riding the pine as a result - not $11 million a year. Even Deng - who plays good defense and rarely makes glaring errors - did not become a full-time starter until his third year, and was offered a contract extension this summer that was widely considered to be significantly below his market value.

Hinrich’s whiteness playing into the inflated perception of his worth is not just the fault of the Bulls brass, though - the media is also to blame. The short 2-guard trying to make it in the NBA is not a recent phenomenon. The most famous example is obviously Allen Iverson, but Jason Terry and Chauncey Billups have also managed to overcome their height limitations.

Like those three, Hinrich is a born shooting guard trying to learn the point in the NBA. Unlike those three, Hinrich’s ability to run a team has never been brought up. He has never been called “just a scorer,” and faced criticism because of it; in part because he is white. Granted, that is just my opinion - I can’t prove it, but any NBA fan worth their salt has heard a thousand complaints about Iverson looking for his own stats at the expense of the team. Even Jay Marriotti has not said the same about Kirk.

Monday night’s loss to Dallas was an excellent example of this phenomenon. Benched by coach Skiles to start the second half, what does Kirk do when he finally gets back onto the floor and his team is down by double digits? Does he look for ways to set up all-world shooter Ben Gordon? Or to get the ball to his team’s best player, Deng? No. Kirk calls his own number time and again, scoring 14 of his 18 points in the fourth quarter. Along the way, the Bulls lost again; and Hinrich finished shooting a pristine 5-of-16 from the field.

At the end of the day, Kirk is who he is: a short two-guard who plays good defense and can make some jump shots. Despite the fact that Chauncey Billups eventually learned how to run a team all the way to the NBA Championship late in his career, I do not see the same outcome in Hinrich’s future. He is too overpaid, too satisfied with his own lack of progress, or maybe just too stupid to change. How can a team possibly have success starting Hinrich at the point when they are 6 points better per 100 possessions with him on the bench?

All of that said, just like the fictional Kirk, he will remain the captain despite his popularity being disproportionately correlated to his ability. While it is certainly going too far at this point to say the Bulls’ Captain Kirk is no longer alive, it is not a stretch to say that fans must accept that Hinrich has already led the team as far as he ever will. And it’s a far, far cry from “where no man has gone before.”

Quick Notes Relating to Last Week’s Column:

Those who read my column last week remember my scathing indictment of many decisions made by Bulls GM John Paxson. I had a debate with two close friends about the issue, and two things they brought to light, which I ignored, are important for properly evaluating Paxson’s tenure.

  • Imagine where the Bulls would be today if instead of taking Tyrus Thomas and Thabo Sefolosha in the 2006 draft, they took LeMarcus Aldridge and Ronnie Brewer. 18.6 PPG from Alrdridge’s smooth inside game would make things a lot easier on the diminutive backcourt. Brewer’s 2.37 steals/game would also make it easier, potentially allowing Gordon to come off the bench and Hinrich to no longer guard players three inches taller than him every time down the court.
  • One thing that has really killed the bulls over the years is just a lot of misfortune in the lottery. The second pick in the Yao Ming draft; the third and seventh pick in the Dwight Howard draft; the seventh pick in the LeBron, Carmelo, Wade, Bosh draft; the second pick in the Tyrus Thomas draft with no superstars, which would have had Durant and Oden in it if not for the rule change that year.

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    Charlie is an aspiring writer and a caddy at Skokie Country Club. Odds are you will hear a lot about him in the years to come, so if you want to be the first kid on the block familiar with his work, click here.

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