Chicago Sports Review

When was the last time you went on YouTube and watched some old Michael Jordan highlights? Can you remember the smile on your face when John Paxson’s three beat the Suns in the 1993 Finals? Do you still consider Phil Jackson a Bull, or has his time with the Lakers adjusted your thinking?

It has been ten years since the Bulls last brought a world championship back to the city of Chicago. Ten years since the last rally in Grant Park, ten years since the last banner in the United Center rafters, ten years since the last champagne bath and confetti shower. Those great teams, the six NBA titles, the 72 regular season wins in one year, the two best all-around players of the ’90s (as well as the best coach and best rebounder), are now all a distant memory. The Bulls now are a joke, the leagues biggest disappointment and once again looking for a coach to replace Jackson.

Since the last championship in June of 1998, the Bulls have made the post-season only three times, advancing past the first round only once. Not a single Bull has played in the All-Star game since Jordan in ‘98. And once again, the most exciting day of the off-season for Bulls fans is the NBA Draft lottery. Ten years since the last title. I guess the old saying is true: Time flies when your team really stinks.

So who is at fault for this decade of deprivation? There are the players, the coaches, management, even the ownership. Or how about all of the above. It really has been a group effort in turning the Bulls from the greatest basketball team the planet had ever scene to nothing more than an after-thought.

It started in ‘98, after the Bulls defeated the Utah Jazz in the Finals to win their sixth and final title. Scottie Pippen said he would return to the team only if Jordan came back. Jordan said he would only return if Jackson came back. And Jackson said he would return only if he got a huge raise. Owner Jerry Reinsdorf and general manager Jerry Krause didn’t like the sound of a raise, so they let Jackson go. That led to Pippen being traded to the Houston Rockets for a pile of scraps. (More accurately it was forward Roy Rogers, released before he ever played a game in a Bulls uniform, and a second round pick, which became center Jake Voskul. Yes, Jerry Krause is an idiot.) And Jordan made a big announcement, stating he was finally hanging up his Nike sneakers so he could spend time with his family and drive carpool. (Since then MJ has come back to basketball once, purchased parts of two NBA teams and most likely driven his kids to school zero times.)

So out went the most successful playoff coach in league history and two of the sports all-time greats and in came coach Tim Floyd, whose career highlights at the time included three consecutive trips to the NCAA Tournament’s second round at Iowa State. Other key players from the second three-peat also left, with forward Dennis Rodman going to the Lakers, center Luc Longley signing the Suns, and reserve guard Steve Kerr becoming a key contributor on two championship teams in San Antonio. The players who started the most games for the 1999 Bulls isn’t exactly a who’s who of NBA All-Stars: Toni Kukoc, Ron Harper, Dickey Simpkins, Brent Barry and Mark Bryant. A year after going 62-20 and winning title number six, the Bulls went 13-37 in the lockout shortened ‘99 season.

The shinning light at the end of that disastrous season was that the Bulls got the top pick in the ‘99 draft. Filled with one of the deepest pools of talent of any of the drafts in recent memory - nine future All-Stars were picked in the class of ‘99 - the Bulls actually had two of the top 16 selections thanks to a trade with Phoenix. And in maybe the biggest shock in team history, Krause actually picked two of those nine future All-Stars. With the first pick in the draft, the Bulls selected Duke power forward Elton Brand and with pick 16, they acquired St. John’s small forward Ron Artest.

Brand and Artest each had solid seasons in ‘99-2000, with Brand even taking home co-Rookie of the Year Award. But the team struggled again, finishing 17-65. That led to two more lottery picks, as Krause took Iowa State forward Marcus Fizer and Michigan shooter Jamal Crawford in the summer of 2000. Floyd now had a strong, young nucleus to work with, as well as some nice veteran players in Ron Mercer and Brad Miller. But the ‘00-01 season was even worse than the year before, as the team ended the season 15-67.

For most organizations, three consecutive seasons where the team won less than a quarter of the games they played would signify that some sort of a change needs to be made at the top. Either the person picking the players, the general manager, should leave or the person in charge of motivating and teaching the players, the head coach, should be on the first train out of town. Apparently that’s not how Reinsdorf and the Bulls do it. Both Krause and Floyd kept their jobs in the summer of 2001. But some changes were made. Two years into the re-building process, the duo felt that it wasn’t going the right direction, so they traded the teams’ best player, Brand, in exchange for straight out of high school big man Tyson Chandler. Teamed with fellow prep-to-pro center Eddy Curry, the team now had no go-to players and two long-term projects.

Finally, 25 games into the ‘01-02 season, Tim Floyd was fired. I’m not sure if it was his career 49-190 record (winning percentage: 21%) or the fact that the Bulls never escaped the basement of the Central Division in his nearly three full seasons on the bench, but whatever it was, it ended the worst stretch of professional basketball the city has ever seen. Assistant Bill Berry was the interim coach for two games (0-2) before Krause hired former Bulls center Bill Cartwright to take over full time. If anybody could teach the two baby big men toughness, it would be the guy who dominated Patrick Ewing in the playoffs back-to-back seasons during the first three-peat.

That ‘01-02 season was also noteworthy for the big deal that Krause pulled at the trade deadline. The team was struggling again, on its way to 21-61 record and the number two pick in the draft. Apparently the GM felt the only thing the team was missing was a giant contract to fill up the salary cap, making it impossible to sign an elite free agent. So he traded the teams best defender, Artest, best post player, Miller, as well as Mercer to the Indiana Pacers for swingman Jalen Rose (and his $12 million/year contract) and reserves Travis Best, Kevin Ollie and Norm Richardson. Along with Duke point guard Jay Williams, who the Bulls took in the ‘02 draft, rebuilding plan number two now seemed ready to contend for a playoff spot.

Yet for some strange reason, the nucleus of Rose, Crawford, Curry, Chandler, Williams and free agent Donyell Marshall didn’t produce many wins. Even with Cartwright’s guidance, the team still played no defense and refused to share the ball. Seven guys on the ‘02-03 team (those six plus Fizer) averaged over nine points a game, but not one player averaged more than five assists. The team finished 30-52 and on April 7, 2003, Krause stepped down as the Bulls GM, citing health reasons. The man who had won Executive of the Year twice and was the brains behind the six title trophy’s walked away with most fans remembering how he alienated Jackson, Jordan and Pippen in ‘98 and failed to turn the Bulls back into contenders.

The man assigned to replace Krause was none other than John Paxson, another key member of the Bulls’ first three-peat; the team now had the championship center as coach and the point guard as general manager. Paxson’s first move would be a memorable one. The team went into the ‘03 off-season thinking that all they needed was a glue guy, a player who could do the little things to get wins. Then, a week before the draft, the team and its point guard were struck a big blow. Jay Williams, who had played decent in his rookie season but had shown flashes of brilliance, crashed his motorcycle into a street post. The crash severed a nerve in Williams’ leg, fractured his pelvis and tore up his knee. A week later, the team drafted Kansas point guard Kirk Hinrich, pretty much giving up any hope that Williams would recover.

With a rookie point guard running the show again, the Bulls struggled in ‘03-04. Cartwright was fired 14 games in, and after two contests under longtime assistant Pete Myers, Paxson hired Scott Skiles to be head coach. The GM also traded Rose to Toronto in December, and once again, thanks to a trade with the Suns, had two of the top seven picks in the ‘04 draft. With those picks, the team selected UConn shooting guard Ben Gordon and Duke small forward Luol Deng. The Gordon selection paved the way for Crawford’s trade out of town, as he was dealt to the Knicks.

Finally, with rebuilding plan number three underway, the Bulls finally had a group worthy of the playoffs. The team started ‘04-05 1-10, but finished strong with a record of 47-35, making the post-season for the first time since the glory days. Gordon won the NBA Sixth Man Award and even though the team lost in round one to Washington, the future was looking good. And even after Curry was traded to the Knicks in the summer of 2005 because of his refusal to take a heart exam, the team looked like contenders for the Eastern Conference Title. Another slow start hurt their playoff seeding, pitting them in round one against the Miami Heat, the team that would eventually go on to win the NBA Title. The Bulls put up a good fight but once again couldn’t get into the second round.

2006-07 was to be the year. Really. Paxson traded Chandler, and in his place signed Ben Wallace, the four-time Defensive Player of the Year. Gordon and Deng looked ready to break out from good players to stars and glue guys Andres Noccioni and PJ Brown did all the intangibles needed to win basketball games. The Bulls went 55-27, swept the Heat in round one of the playoffs, but fell short in the Eastern semi-finals, losing to Detroit four games to two.

Then everything fell apart…again. Predicted by some to make the Finals, the Bulls struggled all season to get easy shots, play team defense and beat bad teams. Skiles was fired in December, replaced by assistant Jim Boylan. The team did no better under him, even after Wallace was dealt at the trade deadline. Young players Tyrus Thomas and Joakim Noah, both acquired in the Curry trade, flashed potential skills but never put it all together. And Hinrich, Deng, and Gordon all digressed back to average players. The day after the season ended, Boylan was given the pink slip.

That brings us to now. Ten years since the last title, the Bulls are looking for head coach number seven (Floyd, Berry, Cartwright, Myers, Skiles, Boylan and TBA). Rebuilding plan number three (Brand/Artest, Curry/Chandler/Williams, and Hinrich/Gordon/Deng) looks like another loser as fans wonder when the team will contend again. At least, when Bulls fans want to see good basketball, there’s still memories to rely on.

“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 7^th 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.