Chicago Sports Review

Merry halfway to Christmas, Chicago. Meet your present – Derrick Rose.

In all likelihood this is the best present anyone has ever received for Jesus’ half birthday. He’s going to be a star – you can book it now. I could go further into that, but someone already has, and he’s probably done more research than me, so let’s move on.

Which is what the Bulls can now do – there’s a coach in place (say what you will about his qualifications) and a new franchise cornerstone in Rose, so it’s time to build a team around him. Which begins, naturally, with taking stock. As far as I can tell, the current team breaks down like this…

PG – Rose, Kirk Hinrich

SG – Larry Hughes, Ben Gordon, Thabo Sefolosha

SF – Luol Deng, Andres Nocioni

PF – Drew Gooden, Tyrus Thomas

C – Joakim Noah, Aaron Gray

Guys who will be lucky to make the roster and likely won’t leave the bench if they do – JamesOn Curry, Cedric Simmons, Demetris Nichols.

There are a couple things that jump out at me here. First, the perceived and oft-discussed “glut of guards” doesn’t entirely exist, particularly if you consider that Thabo is long enough and a solid enough defender to log some minutes at small forward.

Yes, there are four returning guards on this team, plus Rose, but I think they all bring different things to the table. Specifically…

Ben Gordon is a volume scorer, who is capable of tearing any team apart when he gets hot, regardless of the defender. Assists from Rose can only help in that department.

Kirk Hinrich is in many ways an intriguing combo guard. While he’s often criticized for not fitting either guard position particularly well – a legitimate criticism, I think – he certainly is not as bad as he played last year and there’s a good argument to be made that his versatility between the two guard spots offers welcome flexibility for a coach.

Thabo Sefolosha is already a very, very good defender at the 2; he’s got crazy long arms and a willingness to break down and guard people. He still got beat occasionally last year, but never for lack of trying. He can be a lockdown defender in this league.

Larry Hughes is a bit of an enigma, and often takes frustratingly bad shots, yes. However, he also is the only returning player who is both capable of and willing to drive to the hole on a regular basis. He is also untradable right now with his ridiculously inflated contract, so Bulls fans might as well get used to having him around.

All in all, a team is not at a disadvantage for having depth at the guard positions. What puts the Bulls at a disadvantage is the general lack of experience – and, let’s be honest, ability – at the power forward and center positions.

I’m on record as being a Drew Gooden fan, and I stand by that – but the trio of Thomas, Noah and Gray is troublesome. Together they have a total of four years of NBA service, and each has marked weaknesses. There is potential there, but this is where the Bulls need help.

That said, John Paxson has maintained that the first order of business is to resign the Bulls’ own restricted free agents, Ben Gordon and Luol Deng. And business time begins today, July 1, with the opening of the NBA’s free agency period.

For the uninitiated, restricted free agents have the option to sign an offer sheet – essentially a long-term contract offer – with any team around the league. If they do, the team that owns their rights has the option to match that offer and keep the player; or they choose not to match, letting the player go. If the player chooses not to sign an offer sheet, they can return for a one-year “qualifying offer” and become an unrestricted free agent at the end of this coming season.

For Gordon, that last option is the most likely. In a down market, with very few teams having available salary cap space, Gordon is not likely to find an offer that he feels is appropriate. That’s judging from the audacity he showed in turning down the Bulls’ reported five year, $50 million offer last offseason.

Unfortunately for the Bulls, this means there is little they can do with Gordon. And perhaps even more unfortunately, Deng – who is far more versatile and two years younger than Gordon – is far more likely to sign an offer sheet and force the Bulls to overpay him.

Working in the team’s favor is the fact that almost nobody around the league has the kind of salary cap space that would be necessary for that sort of deal. Outside of the Memphis Grizzlies, the Philadelphia 76ers and the Los Angeles Clippers, there is essentially nobody who could afford the sort of contract Deng is believed to want; and both the Clippers and Sixers would likely have to let their own free agents (Elton Brand and Corey Maggette for the former; Andre Iguodala for the latter) walk out the door.

One would hope that Deng could be signed to a longer-term extension, but for now let’s assume he’s targeting unrestricted free agency in the Summer of ‘09. What, then, ought the Bulls do to shore up their frontcourt?

Solution 1: Elton Brand

Brand is undoubtedly the best player available on the open market, and his opt-out clause from the Clippers makes him an unrestricted free agent. In other words, if Brand can be convinced that Chicago would be a good place for him, there is nobody who can stop him from signing here.

And oooohhhh, would Chicago be a good place for him – much different than he remembers it, I’m sure. Instead of the likes of Corey Carr and Cory Benjamin, Brand would be teamed with a hot young point and a host of other talented youngsters.

The problem with this scenario is simple logistics. The Bulls have been unwilling to cross into the luxury tax threshold (i.e. exceed the salary cap), and they would likely have to do that in order to sign Brand.

Unless, somehow, they can get Ben Gordon out the door. Thanks to the NBA’s awesome rookie pay scale, Gordon (as the #3 pick in 2004) is set to earn basically $2 million more than Deng if they both sign their qualifying offers. If Gordon manages to score an offer sheet – from, say, Philly – and the Bulls let him go, that’s about $6.5 mil in extra cap space that they would have to work with, and might be enough to go after Brand. It would also clear up the logjam – perceived or actual – in the Bulls’ backcourt, and give Derrick Rose an established offensive and defensive force on the interior.

Solution 2: Nenad Krstic

Clearly a major dropoff from Solution 1, but such is life. Krstic, before knee injuries derailed his last two seasons, was considered a real up-and-comer at the center position, especially on the offensive end. With the almost entirely defensive contributions of Joakim Noah and (sometimes) Tyrus Thomas, the Bulls could use someone capable of scoring in the post with regularity, as Krstic appeared able to do before injuries struck.

As a restricted free agent, the current Net is not likely to be a signee for the Bulls, but is a potential sign-and-trade candidate. The Nets went big – really big, actually – in the first round of the NBA draft when they picked up Brook Lopez and Ryan Anderson, presumably to be their starting center and power forward of the future (though Anderson could end up projecting more as a 3). Either way, it seems to mark the end of them valuing Krstic particularly highly, and that could be where the Bulls come in.

After unloading Jason Kidd last year and Richard Jefferson on draft day, the Nets essentially have three guards in their rotation – Vince Carter, who many expect to be the next Net to be traded away; Devin Harris, their prized point guard acquired in the Kidd deal; and Marcus Williams, a second-year point out of Connecticut that is expected to develop into a pretty good player. Throw in second-round pick Chris Douglas-Roberts if you like, but it’s not likely he’ll have much of an impact this season.

On the other hand, the Nets’ frontcourt is almost comically overcrowded – besides Anderson and Lopez, they have youngsters Sean Williams, Yi Jianlian, Josh Boone and DeSagana Diop, plus less young-sters Stromile Swift and Bostjan Nachbar. You may call some of those guys small forwards, and that’s fine, but the bottom line is I just listed eight players who are listed at 6′9″ or taller. The Bulls have basically three – Noah, Gray and Gooden.

There haven’t been any reports to this effect, but it sure looks to me like the Nets might want an experienced combo guard like Kirk Hinrich in exchange for a center they apparently no longer value. So I think that’s a possibility, and while it might not be an exciting one it could be a very practical one, particularly if Gordon and Deng both stick around for one-year contracts.

Solution 3: Absolutely nothing

Sadly, as a veteran observer and fan who has followed the NBA closely for a decade and been so on top of Paxson’s career as a GM that I should be paid for it, this strikes me as by far the most likely scenario. It might seem weird for the word “solution” to be the associated label for a summer of inactivity, but to a certain extent I think this is a reasonable action.

It will certainly be intriguing to see how the addition of Rose affects the rest of the team, as he is the first true point guard I can remember the Bulls acquiring since… well, ever. After watching the Jay Williamses and Jamal Crawfords of the world traipse through the United Center for unsatisfying stays, a point who actually wants to pass the ball is a novelty that Chicago is not entirely familiar with.

But it would certainly help the Bulls front office considerably in their evaluation of guys like Gordon and Deng. So often in the last two years the Bulls seemed to be a talented bunch of players running around like a chicken with its head cut off – no on-court leadership; and if the behavior of Noah and Thomas is any indication, little off-court leadership.

A year with Rose at the helm of the ship would give Paxson the chance to see who fits with his young franchise cornerstone and who needs to go, and there’s nothing to suggest that resigning guys like Gordon and Deng will be especially harder next summer as opposed to this one.

Plus, let’s be honest – even the acquisition of Elton Brand wouldn’t make the Bulls a championship contender this year. Rose, great as I think he will be, is only 19 years old and will not likely walk in and dominate the league from Day One. What he should do from Day One is help weed out the undesirables.

So, for instance, if Ben Gordon can’t get on board the Rose train, then Paxson knows he won’t try to resign him next season. And if the Bulls stand pat this summer, their committed payroll just about cuts itself in half for next season, giving Pax all the flexibility he could ever want to bring in anyone who is available from a group that could include Rasheed Wallace and Carlos Boozer, not to mention the long-coveted free agent class of 2010 that includes most of the legendary 2003 NBA Draft.

In other words, the easiest, most likely and least pressurized course of action – the sort of route Paxson has shown himself to be partial to in the past – involves signing nobody this offseason. He will almost certainly try to work something long term out with Deng, and to a lesser extent with Gordon, but I would caution Bulls fans not to hold their breath for the big splash, as it’s quite possible that an unrestricted second-tier center like Primoz Brezec could be as wet as the Bulls get.

But don’t despair. Not only would that action set the Bulls up for a potential run at bigger talents in the future, it will allow them to use 2008-09 as a development season – which means more Derrick Rose for your viewing pleasure, and likely less time wasted trying to get something out of veterans that have disappointed us in the past. Not to mention that with Rose in the fold, the team will probably not underachieve to the embarrassing degree that they did last year.

And, perhaps best of all, it means that without having to worry about an ill-advised big-money deal potentially handcuffing your favorite basketball team for years to come, you have all summer long to bask in the glory of your best Halfway to Christmas gift ever.

Happy Holidays.

I’m in danger of being labeled a Chicago Bulls “yes-man.”

I was okay with the Doug Collins hire – though I famously warned all of you that deals are not done until they’re done, and I want credit for that, dammit – and now I’m okay with the Bulls (officially) hiring Vinny Del Negro instead. In fact, I’m better than okay.

I downright like this. I like it better than Doug Collins. I like it much better than the thought of Flip Saunders, or Dwayne Casey, or any other former Minnesota Timberwolves head coach. I like it more than I would have liked Kurt Rambis – although, in all honesty, if he regrew that mullet and put his sport goggles back on he would have gotten my vote.

Sadly, he didn’t. And Vinny Del Negro has a sort of mullet already, so that gives him a jump start on Rambis and all the other candidates that John Paxson may or may not have interviewed for his team’s head coaching position. But enough about mullets…

This is about coaching. Simply put, nobody knows if Vinny Del Negro will be a good coach. Not John Paxson, not me, and sure as hell not Jay Marriotti, who – predictably – used the Del Negro hire as an excuse to pan Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf as a cheapskate looking to make a pocketbook-friendly hire.

But let me ask you all this – isn’t it possible that John Paxson just told the truth from the beginning of this process? From day one of the coaching search, Pax told anyone who would listen the following things:

(1) We will take our time with this search. We will not let potential coaches or other teams affect the pace at which we conduct our search, and we intend to be deliberate about it.
(2) We’re not just looking at former NBA head coaches. We intend to interview any number of candidates from any number of basketball avenues, and prior coaching experience is only one of many criteria.
(3) We’re looking for somebody who really turns us on. Someone who comes into the interview process with fresh ideas and a good perspective; somebody with a plan to turn this team around that makes sense to us and that we think will work.
(4) I expect I’ll know my man after one or two meetings with him.

As I understand the process, Pax met with Del Negro at the Orlando Pre-Draft Camp a couple weeks ago and was surprised by how much he liked the coaching vision of a front office guy with no coaching experience. So he set up an interview.

Well, the impression I’ve gotten is that Del Negro knocked the interview out of the park. He showed up prepared, with information on the roster and ideas about how to coach it. He knew how he wanted to present himself as a coach, and whatever his presentation was, it seems to have worked on Pax and Reinsdorf.

So why can’t this work? Why does it have to be a budget hire, instead of a deliberate and well-thought-out hire of an inexperienced person?

There’s no doubt Del Negro knows the game – he may have spent the majority of his career as a jump-shooter off the bench for a handful of NBA teams, but he is known throughout the business for having a great basketball mind and for having been a sort of coach on the floor during his playing days.

He’s also praised by everyone he’s worked with for being a people person – something that, for all his good qualities and straight-shooting, Scott Skiles would never have been accused of being. Steve Kerr, his now-former boss in Phoenix, has nothing but praise for Del Negro, and has even intimated that he might have hired Vinny as the Suns coach if he didn’t think the team needed a coach with experience.

The Suns, though, have a championship window that is closing fast. Kerr’s big ticket deal for Shaq needs to pay off soon – like, this year – or he’s going to be out of a job and it won’t much matter who he hired as coach. So he felt he needed that experience.

The Bulls are in an almost diametrically opposed situation. They have the youngest team in the league, and will add a 19-year-old to their roster in less than a month. Trades will be made before the end of the offseason, sure; but no matter what happens, the Bulls are going to be a youthful team (hopefully led by an exciting young point guard) with a championship window that hasn’t even been cracked yet.

When better to hire a young, green coach? Let him grow with his players – with whom all signs suggest he’ll be able to relate. Sure, he’ll do some learning on the job, but that doesn’t mean he can’t also get the job done.

Sure, there are reasons to be suspicious – D’Antoni seemed like a good fit before jilting the Bulls for the Knicks, and obviously people thought the Doug Collins deal was in place; certainly Del Negro could be seen as a third choice.

Then again, everyone involved says that D’Antoni was never as interested in the Bulls as he was in the Knicks, and there was never any sort of deal in place with Collins. Isn’t it just as possible that Paxson soured on Collins after meeting with Del Negro? After all, Vinny is much younger than Doug and probably a lot more in touch with the current NBA.

I’m not even saying that Del Negro is going to be a good NBA coach, because there’s no way to know. As he mentioned over and over again throughout his introductory presser, he doesn’t own a crystal ball – and neither do I. But I’m not going to condemn him before he starts.

When a coaching position comes open in the NBA, the calls of “fresh face” being to ring out. Every columnist in the city with the opening wants something new – no more NBA retreads, no more Rick Carlisles and Flip Saunderses.

But then the new face is unfamiliar – shocking, right? – these tired old sportswriters can’t handle it. These hired hacks want to tell you that there’s no way such an inexperienced coach can possibly turn a roster full of young’ns into winners when he’s never been a winner himself as a head coach.

Sorry fellas, I’m calling BS on that. He might fall flat on his face; anyone might. But there’s no reason to believe there’s a better chance of failure than success. And outside of his much-ballyhooed lack of experience, Vinny Del Negro looks to me like exactly what the Bulls need.

He wants them to play hard defense. He wants them to play up-tempo offense. He’s been hailed by people all over basketball as the most well-prepared guy they know in the business – in fact, he talked about handing out booklets to players over the summer so they can begin to familiarize themselves with his ideas before training camp.

He’s young and energetic, especially compared to NBA head coaches. By all accounts, his interpersonal skills are fantastic and he’s very much in touch with the youth of the NBA. He’s the type of guy who will be hard on his players, but can also sit down for a beer with them, or throw his arm around them when they need support.

His skills in player development are already well-developed, and he’s said to be great and helping young talent mature – a skill that could be useful to the youngest roster in the league. His playing and management career has put him next to some of the great coaches of his lifetime – Jim Valvano at N.C. State and Greg Popovich in San Antonio, to name a couple.

Basically, Vinny Del Negro has a ton of positives working for him, and only one negative – a lack of experience.

Every coach has to start somewhere, though.

Here’s to beginner’s luck.

Let me begin with a caveat – Doug Collins is not (yet) the head coach of the Chicago Bulls.

Sure, I’m a realist. I know these stories saying that “the deal is in place” don’t come from nowhere; I’m prepared to accept that Bulls GM John Paxson and the excitable Mr. Collins have an agreement in principle, and that in all likelihood Collins is just a couple of phone conversations away from putting pen to paper on a new Bulls contract.

But it hasn’t happened yet. And I’ve seen enough – see “Bill Parcells agrees to deal with Atlanta” for a recent example – to know that nothing is a done deal until it’s… well, until the deal is DONE. Not proposed, not “in place,” done!

That said, get used to it Bulls fans, because this is likely what’s happening; and though there are certainly scenarios where it falls through, I promise it won’t be because you’re writing angry letters to the Berto Center. So instead, let’s see who’s coming to dinner – or, rather, who’s coming to be dined on by this team full of vulturous malcontents.

There are plenty of reasons to hate this hire. (1) Doug Collins has never won a Conference Finals, much less an NBA Finals. (2) Doug Collins is old – perhaps too old to relate to the youngest team in the NBA (which is about to get younger). (3) Doug Collins wore out his welcome with the 1988-89 Bulls in much the same badgersome fashion that Scott Skiles wore out his with the 2007-08 Bulls – yelling and screaming, demanding too much. (4) Doug Collins has never lasted more than three seasons as any team’s head coach. (5) Doug Collins has not coached a team to a winning record since the 1996-97 Detroit Pistons.

Those are five relatively significant concerns (and that’s just off the top of my head… clearly I haven’t put much thought into this article :). In short, it’s not hard to see why Paxson’s apparent decision to bring back a guy that coached him here 20 years ago is being lambasted in every corner of the world – from ESPN’s Gene Wojo-whatever-his-name-is to your buddy Jimbo down at [insert corner tavern here].

I’m well aware of – and, in some cases, nervous about – Collins’ shortcomings. But I’m not so sure this isn’t a sneaky-good hire by Paxson.

Let’s take our aforementioned criticisms one by one, for starters…

(1) If we start eliminating coaches who have never won Conference Finals, it’s gonna be a short list of potential candidates. Not everyone steps into a championship-ready situation in their first head coaching job and then gets to pick and choose the best jobs in the nation forevermore (Phil Jackson). Larry Brown – considered a giant of the coaching industry – was on his sixth NBA coaching job, in his 18^th season as an NBA coach, before he won a Conference Finals. And it took a seventh job before he won a Championship, in his 21^st season. Collins has only three jobs and seven-and-a-half years on of coaching on his resume, so let’s not close the door on his winning ability.

(2) Doug Collins isn’t as old as you think. Specifically, he’s 56. Current head coaches older than Collins include: Greg Popovich, Larry Brown, Mike D’Antoni, Phil Jackson, Rick Adelman, Don Nelson and George Karl. That’s a pretty distinguished list, and it doesn’t include a handful of guys that are only a year or three younger. 56 is pretty average for an NBA head coach – and if Don Nelson can relate to a team full of perceived thugs in Golden State, I’m confident Collins can make adjustments to the youth of America today. Which brings us to…

(3) Skiles was a young coach, and he couldn’t relate, so let’s toss out the idea that age has anything to do with relating. Yes, Doug Collins has been criticized for riding players too hard, for being too demanding – it’s possible this is why his stays in Chicago and Detroit didn’t last long or end particularly well. But he’s very different from Scott Skiles in that he’s a people person; a likeable guy. Skiles, for all that fans and media may have enjoyed his candor, was anything but – he was a poor communicator, and it that was his downfall, much more so than his lofty expectations and demanding demeanor. Collins will demand the players’ best, but he will also talk to players. Plus, Ben Wallace was the ringleader of the revolt against a demanding coach, and he’s long gone (thank God!)

(4) Let’s not make too much of the three-season thing. In Washington, Michael Jordan brought Collins in as his own sort of personal coach; so when Mike left, Collins was done there. Not because he did a bad job, but because he never would have been there in the first place if not for MJ. In Detroit, he led a decent team to a decent record and a disappointing playoff loss in his second year, then followed that up with a slow first half the following season. As so often happens in those situations, the guillotine fell on the head of the coach, despite a team that featured Grant Hill supported by… approximately nobody. And with the Bulls, he took over a 30-52 team – albeit with a maturing and improving Michael Jordan – and turned them into 50-win team in a couple of years. He also advanced further in the playoffs in each year of his tenure, before being canned in favor of the Zen Master after his team’s first Eastern Conference Finals loss. Who’s to say the Bulls wouldn’t have progressed further in 1989-90 if Collins had been kept around?

(5) Ok, this is true. But look who he’s been coaching since then… It starts with the 1997-98 Pistons, featuring Grant Hill – and I’ll give you five bucks if you can name their second leading scorer [tick, tock… tick, tock… tick, tock] Give up? Bison Dele (R.I.P.) Sure, they also had Jerry Stackhouse gunning 3-pointers at a 20% success rate and Joe Dumars limping up and down the floor to dish out a measly 3.5 assists per game, but can you really expect much better than a 21-24 first half when your front line is Dele and Jerome “Junkyard Dog” Williams? I think not. And in Washington, for two years, he coached a too-old Michael Jordan, a too-young Rip Hamilton and a bunch of damn losers to a 37-45 record; then an even more decrepit bunch with Stackhouse acquired for Hamilton. This time around, the big men included Kwame Brown, Christian Laettner and Jahidi White. All I’m saying is, teams full of losers usually end up with losing records, and Doug Collins has never been anybody’s GM.

But all this jibber-jabber may eschew the most interesting and potential-filled part of this surprising hire.

Doug Collins was the guy who took a skinny, athletic kid without a whole lot of game and turned him into a tough, bruising, beast of a power forward. He also took a skilled wing player without a true position and began to mold him into one of the 50 greatest players in NBA history. Those guys were Horace Grant and Scottie Pippen, respectively – but couldn’t he have a similar effect on guys like Tyrus Thomas and Luol Deng?

John Paxson was there, on the team, when Collins kicked Grant’s skinny ass into the weight room. He watched Collins work with those two talented youngsters, and he saw what they became when the Bulls were winning Championships just a few years later. If he thinks Doug Collins is the right man for the job, I have to believe it’s because of what he saw at that time.

Paxson knows how Skiles lost this team, and he knows how Collins lost his job 20 years ago. So he must know that Collins is better suited to handle this bunch – whether because his years spent in the broadcast booth have mellowed him out, or simply because he’s a better match for the personnel.

With the first pick in the draft, this Bulls group is a team that should be able to compete in the Eastern Conference in the upcoming season, and if a man who knows the team and their new coach as well as anyone sees a good fit, I can accept that he knows what he’s talking about.

Or I can at least reserve judgment until Collins coaches his first few games for this team, or presides over his first locker room revolt. That’s assuming, of course, that he does in fact get hired. Which, as we know, is not yet a certainty.

So I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

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.

Wow, that was painful.

The only solace Bulls fans can take from a miserable 2007-08 season is that it wasn’t just Chicago that was optimistic about the team coming into this season. After three straight playoff appearances and an 06-07 season that featured 49 wins and a first-round playoff sweep of the Miami Heat, even the World Wide Leader was buying what the Bulls were selling.

Now that the season is over and the Bulls record stands at 33-49, ninth worst record in the NBA, I think it’s safe to say ESPN was wrong. We were all wrong.

But it would also be wrong for me to review the Bulls season with the benefit of knowing how it turned out. Instead, let’s look back at what we at the Chicago Sports Review were saying about this Bulls’ season as it happened.

Nov. 12 - The Bulls (once again) started the season miserably at 1-5. An ugly 101-71 loss to the Toronto Raptors was enough for Charlie Danoff to call for a change in the starting lineup, making a plea for Skiles to get larger and more defensive with a starting lineup of Kirk Hinrich, Luol Deng, Tyrus Thomas, Joakim Noah and Aaron Gray. As for the poor start, we’re not worried:

Overall, it is not time to worry… yet. Skiles’ Bulls teams have started slow before and made the playoffs. In 2004-’05 they got off to a roaring 0-9, while last year they started 3-9. I know changing the starting lineup might just be putting a band-aid over a bullet hole for some teams, but I really think it could make a difference for the Bulls. They are just at too much of a disadvantage defensively with their current unit.

Finally, the biggest key for this year’s team is Luol Deng evolving into the superstar that so many people think he will become. He needs to stop being such a team-first guy and passing off shots to Duhon and Sefolosha. Deng should be demanding the ball and taking control. If he does, the Bulls could win the East. If he does not, it may be a struggle to make the playoffs.

Nov. 20 - A little more than a week later, the Bulls are no better. Their record now stands at 2-7 (and soon to be 2-8 after a loss in Denver tonight) and Luol Deng is struggling with an Achilles injury. A change has been made in the starting lineup, as Andres Nocioni has replace Tyrus Thomas at small forward. Optimism is still abundant here at CSR:

Given all this doom and gloom, is all hope lost for the Bulls? No, not quite yet. Even if I let my heart blind me to the real team when I thought they could win the East, they are not THIS bad.

The Bulls are still a playoff team. What they need to do is play the way they did in the first quarter against the Clippers. They got defensive stops, then beat the Clippers down the floor for fast breaks. Running and gunning is the only way this team will get easy baskets, and that is really important for a team that starts Ben Wallace at center.

Nov. 27 - The Bulls are now 2-10, and even a 90-78 victory against the Atlanta Hawks this night won’t do much for the mood of Bulls fans. In case you missed the big stories of the off-season, Kevin Garnett was traded to the Celtics and Kobe Bryant asked to be traded from the Lakers before changing his mind. In his column this week, Charlie Danoff questions how good a job John Paxson has really done in building this Bulls team:

So, after giving up on Curry and Chandler, and not exercising their opportunities with Garnett and Bryant, where does this leave the Bulls today?

Well, currently they sit at 2-10. For a Scott Skiles-coached team this is not a huge cause for alarm, as they always start slow. Don’t worry fans, coach Skiles will figure out this mess and have his Bulls team losing in the early rounds of the playoffs once again.

Dec. 5 - Ahhh, what’s better than December in Chicago? Well, just about anything, especially when the Bears are on the verge of being eliminated from the playoffs and the Bulls are just now realizing their season started. It’s not all bad, though, (*SPOILER ALERT*) as the team is about to have their most productive month - an 8-8 December. Despite the team showing promise, point guard Kirk Hinrich is having the worst year of his career, averaging 10.7 ppg, 5.4 apg and shooting 35% from the field. You know what, Captain Kirk will not only never be a star, he may not even be starter-material:

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?

Hinrich eventually found his shooting stroke and finished the year at 41% from the field, his career shooting percentage. Unfortunately the Bulls still owe him $36.5 through 2012, and Hinrich is coming off career lows in points per game (11.5) and assists per game (6.0).

That’s it for part one of the Bulls season in review, be sure to come back for our next installment. It’s about to get good (and by good, I mean really, really bad).

Thursday’s deadline three-way trade by John Paxson may well go down one day as the move that saved his legacy as GM of the Chicago Bulls.

Doing the impossible and trading what is easily one of the NBA’s worst current contracts allows Paxson to finally move on from the most egregious error of his tenure.

As many have said, losing Wallace is addition by subtraction, and so long as the Bulls didn’t get Vin Baker back in a trade for him they would instantly become a better team as soon as he left.

What they did actually yield in the deal that also saw Joe Smith and Adrian Griffin leave town was considerably better than Vin Baker: Shannon Brown, Cedric Simmons, Larry Hughes and Drew Gooden. Somehow, Paxson managed to find somebody stupid enough to give him more talented, younger and cheaper players in exchange for Wallace.

Thank god the Matt Millen of the NBA, Danny Ferry, does his trading based solely on the whims of LeBron James.

The move is a huge positive for Chicago and a astronomical negative for the Cavs. Some may say, especially after Sunday night where the Cavs were victorious, while the Bulls lost their debut with the new players that Cleveland “won” the deal.

I’ll say it now and remember you heard it here first: if the Cleveland faces the Bulls in the playoffs, the Bulls will win the series.

Now that that’s established, I’ll examine the skills of the new players the Bulls brought in and try to see how they’ll fit with the current roster. In his comments Friday, Paxson harped on how the biggest thing about the move was giving more time for the Bulls young big men. If you watched the past two games, you’ve noticed just how talented the pair of Tyrus Thomas and Joakim Noah are. They will only get better with more minutes as the Bulls make their playoff run this year and into the future.

More importantly, though, moving Wallace, Smith and Griff means all the Bulls veteran “leaders” are gone. The younger Bulls are more talented than this trio and any success this team has today or tomorrow depends solely on its youthful core. It is time for them to take responsibility for the team’s success into their own hands.

Shannon Brown

Contract:
20007/08 - $1,044,120

The Proviso East graduate returns to Chicagoland amid little fanfare. He was included in the deal only essentially to make the salaries equal out, and anything the Bulls get from him will be a bonus. Given the backlog at the guard position, and his expiring contract at the end of this year, doing anything in a Bulls uniform seems unlikely.

Just in case, though here’s what the excellent folks at DraftExpress.com were saying about Shannon before the Cavs picked him 25th overall in the 2006 draft,

Strengths:

“Brown is one of the most explosive athletes in this draft, possessing good length, huge hands and excellent strength to make an impact off an NBA bench. His first step is terrific, and he finishes with reckless abandon thanks to his impressive strength, body control, tenacity and outstanding vertical leap. He’s worked very hard on his shooting range to the point that he shot 39% from behind the arc as a junior. As a passer, Brown shows good awareness and is very much adept at finding the open man. He puts a lot of pride into his ability to get in right in his matchup’s grill and dictate where he wants to lead them. His intangibles are solid as he’s been praised for being highly coachable and an outstanding citizen both on and off the court.”

Weaknesses:

“At 6-3, Brown is certainly stuck between NBA positions. He has a shooting guard’s mentality, but has the size of many NBA point guards. His in-between game is underutilized, as he either explodes past his man on his way to the hoop or pulls up for a 3-pointer, but rarely utilizes the mid-range. He needs to work on creating space to operate offensively beyond just using his outstanding athleticism. Brown has been inconsistent throughout his college career, looking outstanding one night and then silent the next. He lacks the polish on both ends of the floor to truly utilize his excellent physical gifts on a nightly basis.”

In a year and a half with Cleveland, Brown’s only played 420 minutes in the NBA. So, needless to say he didn’t do much to impress coach Mike Brown during his time there.

Just about the last thing the Bulls need is another undersized shooting guard who can’t play the point. If there’s a rash of injuries he may see some time, but odds are against him doing anything meaningful in a Bulls uniform.

Welcome home buddy!

Cedric Simmons

Contract:
2007/08 - $1,629,120
2008/09 - $1,742,760
2009/10 - $2,671,651 (Team Option)
2010/11 - $3,734,968 (Qualifying Offer)

Like Brown, Simmons hasn’t seen too much burn in his first two seasons in the NBA. Big men do usually take longer to develop, however, and he came out as a sophomore after not really playing his freshman year. Given how little he’s played and his youth, there’s a solid chance he could really improve going forward.

Because I’ve somehow missed his career 604 minutes of action, I’ll turn again to DraftExpress.com to get the lowdown on Cedric. His profile was considerably longer than Brown’s so check out the link if you want more details, here I’ll quote briefly from his outlook,

“Simmons is in good shape for this draft, as his combination of strengths (height, length, frame, athleticism, tenacity, attitude, budding skills, upside) is extremely rare, while his weaknesses are, for the most part, highly improvable. … He projects as a power forward, but can certainly steal some minutes at center due to his length and athleticism in today’s small-ball infatuated NBA, particularly once he adds weight to his terrific frame.”

There is certainly room in the Bulls frontcourt for a cheap, defensive-oriented rebounding big man. If he works hard for the rest of this year and this off-season, there’s no reason he couldn’t become a regular off the bench for the Bulls going forward.

Of course, he could also not improve and disappear from the NBA quite quickly. Either way, it’s always nice when you can get someone like this with high potential and low risk as a throw-in in a trade.

Larry Hughes, aka “Smooth”

Contract:
2007/08 - $12,000,084
2008/09 - $12,827,676
2009/10 - $13,655,268

Since coming to the NBA in 1998 after starring at his hometown college of St. Louis University, where he averaged 20.9 PPG, 5.1 RPG and 2.1 SPG as a freshman, Hughes has had an up and down career.

He couldn’t find a way to mesh with then 76ers star Allen Iverson, and was traded halfway through his second year to the Golden State Warriors. In an interesting piece of career symmetry, that first trade of his career was also a three-team deal featuring the Chicago Bulls. GM at the time Jerry Krause refused to take Hughes back, preferring instead a 2000 first round pick from the Warriors that was used on Jamal Crawford.

In two and a half years with Golden State Hughes did nothing particularly noteworthy, though he played point guard relatively competently for a period. Being able to at least fill in at the point is a real nice aspect to have for a 6-5 scoring two guard. It speaks to Larry’s all-around game.

He signed with Washington in the 2002 off-season, and his third year there was the best of his career. His PER was 21.6, which is at an All-Star level. His jack-of-all-trades game was on full display, as he averaged 22 PPG, 4.7 APG, 6.3 RPG and lead the league with 2.9 SPG. He even made the NBA All-Defensive first team.

It was that performance which caused the idiot Danny Ferry to vastly overpay for him. He didn’t mesh with LeBron during his Cleveland tenure, and his numbers never equaled those he put up as a 26-year-old for the Wizards. Though, again starting as a point guard, he was good enough to support LeBron on their over-hyped run to the NBA Finals.

This year in particular was a rough one for Hughes, as many of his numbers are the lowest of his career. He’s never been noted as a particularly good shooter, but this year’s field goal percentage of .377 shows he’s been especially bad. He was injured early on, a chronic problem for him, and he’s only played a full 82 games once.

It should be noted, though, after finally returning to full strength he had been playing well his last ten games with the Cavs. His averages were 4.6 RPG, 2.5 APG, 1.1 SPG and 19.9 PPG. His field goal percentage also got more in line with the rest of the career and returned to a respectable .431.

How he fits in with the Bulls this season and going forward remains to be seen. While he will unquestionably be overpaid for his tenure, I think he will be a solid addition that will fit in well with what the Bulls want to accomplish.

In Sunday night’s ESPN telecast, sideline reporter Lisa Saunders revealed a surprisingly valuable insight (for a sideline reporter, who’re almost always useless) she gained in an interview with Smooth. He complained that he never fit in with the role Cleveland coach Mike Brown asked of him: to be a spot-up shooter. He said he’s more of a scorer who moves without the ball and within a flowing offensive system.

That’s exactly the kind of offense the Bulls try to run. His defensive skills will also be much appreciated, as the Bulls have been looking for a big defensive guard since they’ve returned to the playoffs. Of course, they found the answer to that problem in January with Thabo Sefolosha, but there’s still room for Hughes.

Many pundits have been commenting on how his arrival means the definite end of Ben Gordon’s tenure. Paxson shot down that idea Friday, and I don’t think he was lying. Given Larry’s defensive talent and ability to play point for stretches, he actually could play with Ben. Against the Rockets, Jim Boylan put the two on the floor together for stretches and they played well off each other.

Gordon is a better scorer than Larry, while Hughes does everything else better. Actually, if Larry’s arrival spells the end for any Bulls guard it’s more likely to be Thabo, whose game is similar to Hughes’, but not quite at his level - yet.

Player movement aside, the Bulls guard who will suffer most from the move will be Chris Duhon. He got a DNP-CD Sunday night and that figures to be the norm. If I had my druthers I’d start Du, as he remains the best pure point guard the Bulls have and the only guy who can really run an NBA offense. With him as the general, the Bulls always score better.

At the end of the day, given his contract Paxson would probably prefer to move Hughes this off-season if he could. For the rest of this campaign, I think Larry will fit in real well with the Bulls and be a big part of them returning to the postseason.

Drew Gooden, aka The Truth (*he claims this was his before Pierce), The Big Drizzle

Contract:
2007/08 - $6,400,000
2008/09 - $7,100,000

Gooden played his college ball at the University of Kansas with Kirk Hinrich. His third and final year with the Jayhawks he averaged a double-double, with 19.8 PPG and 11.4 RPG.

That was good enough to get him drafted by the best GM of all time, “The Logo,” Jerry West. For one reason or another Gooden failed to live up to West’s expectations, and he was traded from Memphis to Orlando midway through his rookie year.

So far in his career, that’s really been the truth about “The Truth,” - not living up to his potential. Whether it was in Memphis, Orlando, or eventually Cleveland, his career averages of 12.0 PPG and 7.9 RPG are not the kind of numbers expected from a #4 overall pick.

Aside from that, the player Drew Gooden is today, especially at his overly reasonable salary, is exactly what the Bulls have been looking for all season. He’s a proven scorer with his back to the basket, which nobody else on the roster is, save Aaron Gray. Unlike Gray, however, Gooden’s overall game is good enough to warrant extended minutes.

As he gets more comfortable with his teammates, the entire scope of the Bulls offense will change. The flashes of a dynamic inside-outside game we’ve seen with Gray will become the norm. No longer will the Bulls jump shooters have to work especially hard to get good looks.

If defenses play too hard on them, they can dish it inside for an easy score by the Big Drizzle. Once defenders start collapsing on Drew, he’s a good enough passer to hit Hinirch, Gordon or Deng for open jumpers. And, even if they were still all shooting as bad as they were at the beginning of the year (they aren’t, thank God) they would make more shots if they were open, as opposed to having a man in their face. For some reason, opposing defenses didn’t really feel it was necessary to guard Ben Wallace.

Also keep in mind, that even if Gooden never lives up to his draft number, another bust - a #1 overall bust, in fact - Joe Smith, was pretty solid for Chicago this year before he got traded.

I don’t know if Gooden will start or not. If he does, I hope it’s at the center position, as Tyrus deserves to start and is much better as a starter. Either way, Gooden is a gigantic upgrade over both Smith and Wallace and will help the Bulls on both ends of the floor.

I got the call late last night. As a sports radio junkie, I knew there were rumors the Heat were looking into trading Shaquille O’Neal and that the Suns were a possible suitor. I literally laughed off the report of a Shaq for Shawn Marion trade, though.

Then my friend called and said it was real. ESPN’s Ric Bucher was reporting the teams agreed to the trade and the only hold-up was Shaq passing a physical. I still didn’t believe it, but the television and Internet confirmed it: my team had just traded away the perfect player for their system for a washed up, fat center. Oliver Miller, anyone?

The story of my allegiance to the Phoenix Suns franchise is a bit boring, so I won’t go into too many details. But basically, I grew up in a professional sports desert (Austin, TX) and I was a huge Kevin Johnson and Tom Chambers fan. When Barkley came to Phoenix in ‘92 I was hooked for life.

Until my team, the most entertaining team in the NBA, traded away the ultimate Mike D’Antoni power forward for a guy who won’t be able to run with Steve Nash or Leandro Barbosa. It’s enough to make me want to renounce my fanhood.

Living in Chicago for the last two-plus years, I realize it could be worse. Yes, I think this is an awful trade. But I also understand what the Suns are doing. They know they couldn’t beat the Spurs with their run and gun style. They knew the Lakers passed them up when they got Pau Gasol without giving up any of their rotation players not named Kwame Brown.

So, it’s a desperate attempt by my team, but it is an attempt.

I imagine the feeling I had last night is pretty similar to the feeling Bulls fans had on July 31 of last year, when they found out that not only was Kevin Garnett not being traded to Chicago, but that he was going to another Eastern Conference team - the Boston Celtics.

Or earlier this month, when Bulls fans found out they weren’t getting Gasol, a player the Bulls were rumored to be interested in going back to last season.

Before I pile on John Paxson too much, he’s not without his strengths. Paxson had a plan to build around successful, college players and he stuck with it. The result? He turned the Bulls from a 23-win team in 2003-04 into a team that has made the playoffs three years in a row.

Paxson did that almost entirely through the draft. In ‘03 he got Kirk Hinrich. In ‘04 he brought in Ben Gordon, Luol Deng and Chris Duhon. In ‘06 they landed Tyrus Thomas and Thabo Sefolosha and in ‘07 they drafted Joakim Noah. All safe, quality players that any team in the league would be thrilled to have.

But there are no superstars there. No Kevin Garnett, no Kobe Bryant, not even a Pau Gasol.

And that appears to be the problem with Paxson and the current Bulls management. It is clear they need a star and/or a low post threat, yet they continue to do nothing.

As good as Paxson has been at drafting, he’s shown no ability to take the Bulls to the next level through free agency or trades. His biggest signings have been bringing Scottie Pippen back to town (which failed miserably) and over-paying Ben Wallace. In four-plus years he’s traded away Jamal Crawford, Tyson Chandler and Eddy Curry for players that are no longer with the team. His only positive trade was stealing Luol Deng on draft day from my Phoenix Suns because our owner didn’t want to pay the luxury tax.

Now the trade deadline is two weeks away and it appears the Bulls are going to stand pat once again, hoping that if they can turn things around next year with this group of safe, low-ceiling players, they can once again be a middle-of-the-pack Eastern Conference team.

So before I get too down on my team, I just have to look to the corner of Damen and Madison.

The Suns know they weren’t going to win a championship with the personnel they had, so they did something about it. Apparently, everyone except for Bulls management know they aren’t going anywhere this year and the team continues to do nothing. At least I’m not a Bulls fan.

Do you believe in destiny? If you don’t, Bulls second-year guard Thabo Sefolosha is living proof it exists. Thabo has a tattoo on his arm - The Game Chose Me. Despite not picking up a ball for that game until he was nine years old and living in a country that had never produced anything close to an NBA player, he is one of the brightest spots on a struggling NBA team’s roster. Later in that adolescence there are pictures of a young Sefolosha wearing a cap of what would be his first team, and a self-portrait he drew shows him wearing a Bulls uniform 13 years before he ever actually donned one.

Still not convinced? Thabo’s first pro team, Vevey, was also the first pro team of his current head coach, Jim Boylan.

Born along le Lac Leman, in French Switzerland on May 2 1984, Sefolosha is truly a world citizen. His parents, Patrick and Christine, met and fell in love in South Africa in the early ’80’s. The ignorant, legalized racial separation laws of Apartheid were still enforced then, so by law the mixed race couple - Christine is white, Patrick is black - were unable to wed in Patrick’s homeland.

Moving to Christine’s native land of Switzerland, the couple wed in 1982. His background is similar to that of fellow Bull Joakim Noah, as Thabo explains in lovably broken English on his website:

I’m having a lot of fun with Joachim Noah. We had different journeys but our families are similar, they are also metis-african-european and his 2 parents are also artists.

Christine (a painter) and Patrick (a writer and saxophonist in The Malpoets) divorced in 1993, but their lives dedicated to their passions inspired Thabo to chase his own.

At 16, when asked that silly question by his high school guidance counselor - what do you want to do with your life? - Thabo replied that he planned on becoming a professional basketball player, and one day playing in America for an NBA team.

As his mother Christine recalls, the guidance counselor’s immediate response was typical of his dream-crushing profession - “The guy laughed… He said, ‘I’m coming back to talk to you in three days, so think about what you seriously want to do.’” Thankfully for Switzerland, the Bulls and most importantly himself, Thabo quickly forgot about the silly counselor’s criticism and chased his dream.

Originally a futbol player, he started playing basketball at the age of nine along with his brother Kgomotso, following an invitation from a neighbor to play the game at a local club, Blonay. His addiction to the ball game played with your hands started soon afterwards, and he quickly worked his way up through the weak Swiss basketball ranks.

By 17, he was playing professional basketball in Switzerland’s top pro league for Vevey. Only a year later, Thabo left home and moved up to the more competitive French professional leagues. He started out riding the pine, but it was only a matter of time before his natural talent shone through and he was playing big minutes on his club’s top team.

In the middle of his third year there, he made the French All-Star game and was making a name for himself in Europe. He ended up being nominated for the best-named award in all of professional sports - Bossman of the Year (best European player who is not French).

Like any young star athlete worth his salt, he soon had a contract dispute with his team and ended up switching over to the Italian club Biella. He delicately explained the situation in an interview with HoopsHype.com:

Last summer, I had the chance to renegotiate my contract with the club. We were supposed to reach an agreement, but when my agent and the president started talking, they couldn’t agree on a contract.

Following a standout year in Italy, Thabo proved good enough to be noticed by NBA scouts, including Chicago’s chief European scout, Ivica Dukan, who recommended him to GM John Paxson. The rest is history - he was drafted 13^th overall in the 2006 draft by the 76ers and immediately traded to the Bulls.

Despite filling an immediate need for Chicago as a tall, defensive-minded guard to complement the diminutive Kirk Hinrich and Ben Gordon, Thabo saw little action in his rookie season. Playing in 71 games, he averaged 2.2 rebounds, 0.8 assists and 3.6 points. He did impress then-coach Scott Skiles enough to get important minutes in the playoffs, where he appeared in nine of the Bulls ten postseason matches.

Like many Bulls, though, Thabo failed to carry his success from last season into the current one. He struggled mightly over the first month of the season, making less than 29% of his shots. There were games where I wondered how he ever made the NBA, as he looked to be one of the worst shooters I had ever seen.

His minutes dwindled in December, only averaging 6.3 per game, and he was largely forgotten behind more prominent Bulls who were also playing far below their ability level. Thabo noted as much in his diary, writing that, “I’m not satisfied of my season beginning. I was expecting to play more and I wanted to have more impact in the team. Unfortunately, for different reasons, it didn’t happen.”

Clearly though, being the first Swiss ever to play in the NBA, Thabo is not one to give up. In the same entry he told his readers, “I’m still confident and I’m working hard everyday to reach my goals. That’s one of my resolution for 2008.”

Unlike me and most other people, Thabo managed to actually keep his resolution, and has been playing huge lately for the Bulls. Following Gordon’s return to the bench and Hinrich’s injury, Sefolosha made the most of the available minutes and worked his way into the starting lineup. He still has not been shooting particularly well - only 41% for January - but as he said about himself in the HoopsHype interview, Thabo is “an all-around player. I can rebound, run the court, play defense. I can score, too. I can say I do a little bit of everything.”

Indeed he has been doing a little bit of everything, especially filling up the box scores over the past five games, where he’s averaged: 2.2 assists, 2.2 steals, 6.2 rebounds, and a fine 11.6 points. The rebounding has been particularly impressive for a guard. Against Detroit last week, Thabo notched a double-double with 12 points and 13 rebounds.

And his talents extend beyond what statistics can capture, as he is one of the Bulls’ best defenders. At 6′7″, he is the only Bulls guard capable of matching up against the LeBron Jameses and Kobe Bryants of the league, an aspect the team has been sorely missing in the Paxson era.

What makes Thabo especially valuable is his ability to run the team on offense. While he’s clearly no Jason Kidd, he is more than capable of playing point guard at the NBA level. Considering that the same can probably not be said about Hinrich, and that Duhon simply is not an NBA starter, at this point Thabo is arguably the Bulls’ best option at the position.

In the five minutes after Kirk Hinrich took his first rest on Wednesday, Thabo played the one and orchestrated the Bulls offense. He managed to lead the Bulls to score on 6 of their 11 possessions. While that would be a hard rate to keep up over the course of a whole game (where teams typically have near 110 possessions) it would mean the Bulls were scoring 120 or so points per game. Not bad.

He also added a little offense of his own. Following a steal from Travis Diener, he ran the fast break and looked to pass to a streaking Tyrus Thomas, but instead kept the ball and dunked it home (still not as impressive as this play). He also did something that Hinrich - for some unknown reason -rarely does: attack the hoop. It’s a lot easier to score two feet from the basket than it is with a fadeaway 15-footer.

And it can’t be a coincidence that the first game Hinrich started in the backcourt with Thabo, Kirk had his best offensive output of the season.

While I may have gone a little too far in my effusive praise of Thabo, the facts remain that he is a 6′7″, defensive-oriented combo guard whose development is key to the Bulls present and future hopes. He seems to be becoming the player that GM John Paxson hoped he was getting in the 2006 draft, as he said shortly afterwards - “For a long time we had been looking for a bigger guard who could complement both Kirk Hinrich and Ben Gordon - someone who could defensively shut down guards with size when Kirk was on the floor, and someone who could also initiate offense when paired with Ben … Thabo [is] a really good fit.”

It is time for Sefolosha to replace Paxson’s favorite mistake, Kirk Hinrich, in the starting lineup. He turns the point guard position, which has been a matchup weakness for the Bulls, into a chance to use matchups in the team’s favor. If nothing else, perhaps moving Kirk to the bench can motivate him the same way it did Gordon.

Don’t be a fool and ignore destiny, John. There are powers at work here you couldn’t even begin to understand.

There are a million excuses for this year’s abysmal Bulls performance. Writers, including myself, have speculated ad nauseam about the preseason contract extensions never signed, the Kobe rumors, Scott Skiles “losing” the team, missed opportunities in the past lotteries, the small backcourt, the lack of inside scoring, and on and on.

While some of those may even be valid reasons for the team’s failure, it is time to move on. The explanation no longer matters. Until GM John Paxson makes personnel changes, the team needs to figure out how to make the best of their current situation. Enough of the BS - the Bulls are clearly not as good as critics thought heading into the season, but they are also not as bad as they have shown.

As a first step to getting more out of what they have, I suggest a switch in offensive systems. I would like to see what this group could do playing an up-tempo offense.

Currently, the Bulls play a half-court offensive game. Whether it’s Hinrich or Duhon bringing the ball up the floor, they do so slowly. By the time they finally get to the offensive half of the court, the opposing team is set in their defense. The Bulls then pass it around, look for a shot, and usually settle for a long jumper. Given the limitations of their current roster, this system has resulted in the worst field goal percentage in the league (42.43%).

It is time for the Bulls to start playing a “run and gun,” fastbreak-oriented offense. The team’s offensive weaknesses in the half-court are not going to change until the personnel does. Until that happens, the Bulls should adopt a system that maximizes their current potential, as opposed to one that exacerbates their weaknesses.

Playing a more up-tempo game would make everyone on the team better. Let’s begin with the worst offensive player in the league (league history?) - Ben Wallace.

Ben is a terrible free throw shooter, has no jump shot, and can’t make a post move to save his life. Usually when the Bulls play offense, opposing teams only have to guard the other four players on the court. Asking Ben to beat the opposing center one-on-one with his back to the basket is an exercise in stupidity.

But the Bulls are still gonna play the man.

Despite his advancing age and declining production, I think most fans would agree that Wallace remains one of the more athletic starting centers in the NBA. Athleticism is different from on-court basketball ability. Wallace is clearly lacking in the latter, but the drop-off has not been so huge in the former.

What I am trying to say is that if you lined up all the starting centers of the NBA for a 100-yard dash, I think Wallace would finish in the top ten. He would unquestionably leave Chris Kaman, Yao Ming, and Zydrunas Ilgauskas (all better offensive players) in the dust.

Logically, then, the best way to maximize Wallace’s ability is by getting him to run the floor. In a fast-break style offense, the Bulls could get 3-5 easy baskets a game for the big man, as he would often beat the opposing center down the floor for an easy dunk.

Will this make Wallace an All-Star, or even an average offensive big man?

No.

But that is not the point. There is no magic potion that will turn a player into something he has never been in the past - especially considering that he seems not to care about his deficiencies. If he did, he would spend every off-season working as hard as humanly possible to improve upon them. There is no way, over the course of 12 NBA off-seasons, that he could not at least develop one friggin’ post move.

But I digress. Running Wallace down the floor ahead of his center counterpart would turn a completely worthless offensive piece into a slightly less worthless offensive piece. Sad as that may be, it would make a big difference for this Bulls team.

Moving on from Big Ben, the rest of the roster would also benefit from such a switch. All of the Bulls’ top scorers - Gordon, Deng, Hinrich, Nocioni and even Joe Smith - are jump-shooters. There is nothing wrong with that, it’s just that shooting from 10 feet away from the basket and beyond, over an opposing defender, is the hardest way to score in basketball.

The way the Bulls have been doing things this season, almost every shot has been a difficult one. Having Hinrich methodically bring the ball up the floor and work it around, using screens or movement to get the best jump shot, has led the Bulls to their current sorry offensive state.

Like Wallace, though, one thing almost the entire roster can do, is run. There is no reason Deng or Nocioni can’t beat their men down the floor, especially if Nocioni is playing the 4. The same goes for Smith and the diminutive backcourt - if Gordon and Hinrich were not quicker than many NBA guards, they would never have made it to the league.

Get out and run, boys!

As soon as a Bulls defender gathers a defensive rebound, the other four players should already be near the half-court line. One or two passes later, the ball should be in the hands of a player crashing to the hoop. This should result in a layup or dunk.

Taking short shots like those would immediately improve the team’s field goal percentage. In addition, opposing defenses would be forced to foul running Bulls players more often, sending them to the line. Lack of free throws attempted is another huge weakness for this team offensively.

Picking up the pace would, theoretically, reduce the number of jump shots taken and replace them with lay-ups and free throws. Seems pretty easy, no?

I realize this is a relatively simplified way to look at what the Bulls’ offensive problems have been and how easily a new system could work. That said, it shouldn’t be impossible to implement. Plenty of teams in the NBA use a run-and-gun system for offensive success, and there is no reason - with their current personnel - that Chicago could not as well.

The weirdest part of all is that playing faster is something the Bulls have previously used for success. Maybe past teams did not play quite the breakneck fast-break style of offense I am recommending, but they did play faster than this year’s team.

The best way to measure the pace a team plays at is a convenient statistic appropriately called “pace factor.” Basketball-Reference.com defines it as follows:

“Pace factor is an estimate of the number of possessions per 48 minutes by a team.”

Simple enough? For teams with established offensive stars such as the Boston Celtics, San Antonio Spurs or Detroit Pistons, having a high pace factor is not necessary to score. All of those teams have more than enough offensive options to have success in traditional half-court sets.

For teams without established stars - like the Golden State Warriors, for instance - pace becomes more important. The Warriors are third overall in the NBA in pace at 96.9, while the Bulls are 13^th at 90.7. Accordingly, the Warriors score a lot more than the Bulls do - 109 points per game as opposed to the Bulls’ 95.1.

Friday night showed that Baron Davis is clearly a better offensive weapon than anyone on the Bulls. That said, as a top scoring trio, are Davis, Jackson and Ellis really that much better than Hinrich, Gordon and Deng?

And even if they are better, are they 14 points per game better? No. The difference is, the Warriors play at one of the highest paces in the NBA, and as a result get more chances for their best players to score. It follows that if the Bulls created more scoring opportunities, then the overall number of points scored by the team would also increase.

Each of the past few years, when the Bulls made the playoffs, they had a pace factor among the top ten in the league, and increasing each season - 95.1 in ‘04-05, 95.7 in ‘05-06 and 96 in ‘06-07. They also played better defense, but that is something that is more of a lack of effort than a system failure. For whatever reason, this year’s Bulls team does not have the defensive pride that past teams have had.

While a switch of philosophies would not necessarily improve their defense, it would vastly improve their poor offense. Even if this current group of players will never be the Phoenix Suns, they are definitely capable of better offensive output than they have shown so far this year.

At the end of the day, in spite of everything that has gone wrong this season, the team still has hope. Currently, the Bulls remain only a game-and-a-half out of playoff position. There really is no reason they can’t work their way into the top six in the East, maybe even up to number five. If the Bulls are going to make a playoff run, however, it has to start with some on-court running.

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NOTE: It’s good to see at least one person reads my irregular columns. Sam Smith wrote a piece about how the Bulls should trade Wallace to the Lakers, only ten days after I suggested the Bulls do the same thing. Don’t worry about crediting me, Sam - you can borrow ideas from my columns any time you choose.

I feel the craziness going on in the financial markets is an excellent metaphor for what is happening with the Bulls. This sub-prime mess was caused by lenders not accurately understanding the true value of the loans they were giving out. The lenders thought the thousands they loaned out today would be millions in a few years. Turned out those thousands they loaned yesterday are probably worth zero in a lot of cases today.

Similarly, heading into the year GM John Paxson thought he had a team that could contend for the Eastern crown. Turns out his team will probably miss the playoffs.

I got the inspiration for this column reading an article about one of the best GM’s in sports: Billy Beane of the Oakland Athletics. What separates Beane from the pack is his ability to get the most wins out of a limited payroll. Over most of this millennium he has competed with the Angels, Yankees and Red Sox of the world while spending millions less than them.

“I got off the plane from the winter meetings, I said to David, `Who are we kidding?’” Beane said. “We can’t let hope be our strategy here. That’s what we’re doing. … We can’t waste another year. If this needs to be done, it needs to be done …

“Our status quo as we stood going into the season was mediocrity at best. That’s my opinion. If anything we’re taking a step back with the idea we have a chance to build something very good for a long time… The cost of indecision for us probably would be a bigger mistake.”

The Bulls are in the same place as Beane’s A’s. They just do not have a roster capable of competing for a title in the current NBA. It is time to give up and rebuild. Trying to salvage a few years of making the playoffs would be a “bigger mistake.”

To understand why I think it is time for the Bulls to give up on the majority of their current roster and start over, I will take a completely subjective look at the assets of all the teams in the NBA relative to the Bulls. The time frame will be from today through the next two NBA seasons. That is to say, I will divide the NBA’s teams into three categories: better assets, same assets and worse assets. All of those categories will be relative to the Bulls. For example, the Boston Celtics are in the first category: better assets than the Bulls. That means, I think the Boston Celtics have better assets today and they will continue to have better assets until the 2010-11 season.

Any teams in the ‘better assets’ category have a superior chance of winning the NBA title than the Bulls for the defined time period. Teams with worse assets have less of chance for the title than Chicago.

OK, that probably made no sense, but here I go:

Better Assets than Chicago:

ATLANTIC
Boston - KG, Pierce, Allen and Rondo will be a top five point guard within two years.
Toronto - Bosh and Bargnani both better than any Bulls players.

CENTRAL
Detroit - Will probably win the East this year … something the Bulls were supposed to do.
Cleveland - LeBron James.

SOUTHEAST
Orlando - Dwight Howard.
Atlanta - Joe Johnson, Marvin Williams, Al Horford form a better nucleus and are already winning more.
Miami - Dwayne Wade.

NORTHWEST
Portland - They are already better than the Bulls WITHOUT the 2007 #1 overall pick.
Denver - Carmelo Anthony.
Utah - Nearly won the West last year.
Seattle - Kevan Durant.

PACIFIC
Phoenix - Could win it all this year.
LA Lakers - Kobe Bryant and Andrew Bynum = ironic Shaq and Kobe of years past.
Golden State - Playing better today and that’s without a mature Andris Biedrins or Brandin Wright.

SOUTHWEST
Dallas - 67 wins last year.
San Antonio - You know why.
New Orleans - Chris Paul.
Houston - Yao.
Memphis - There’s a reason the Bulls are rumored to be giving up a lot of their roster for Pau Gasol, and they also have Rudy Gay and Mike Conley.

Same Level of Assets:

ATLANTIC
Philadelphia

CENTRAL
Indiana
Milwaukee

SOUTHEAST
Washington
Charlotte

PACIFIC
Sacramento
LA Clippers

Worse Assets

ATLANTIC
New Jersey
New York

NORTHWEST
Minnesota

I acknowledge my prior categorization was highly subjective, extremely difficult to prove and very easy to argue with. Nevertheless, I feel the categories are fair overall and at the end of the day, most fans would have to agree the Bulls rank at BEST in the middle of the pack.

There are enough better teams in the East by any standard, and I would almost trade the Bulls roster for any Western team, save Minnesota. That may be going a little too far, but not far too far.

For a slightly less subjective way to compare what the Bulls have, I borrowed a financial statistic used to evaluate stocks: ROA. Return on Assets measures “how efficient management is at using its assets to generate earnings.” The math can is:

ROA = (Net Income) / (Total Assets)

This number essentially tells you what money a company generates from their company. For the purposes of the NBA, I have slightly altered the stat. The acronym will remain the same, but the math is slightly different:

ROA = (Wins) / (Payroll)

This number will tell fans how many wins a team gets for the money they invest in their players. While no one statistic is good enough to completely explain anything, I feel this number is a quick and dirty way to get a good idea of what NBA teams get for the money they pay. Below is a list of every team in the NBA’s ROA.

As a quick note, the NBA’s luxury tax this season is set at: 67.85 million.

Even if you do feel the Bulls have underachieved this season (which I do, certainly) this is still an extremely discouraging stat. Despite having a payroll only $4 million away from the luxury tax, the Bulls have the 23^rd-worst ROA.

For every million the Bulls spend on payroll, 22 NBA teams get more wins out of the same one million spent.

Given that they are not going to have much money to spend on free agents - especially if Paxson intends to keep the current core intact by resigning Gordon and Deng - bringing a top-level star in with a new contract simply will not happen. Furthermore, since the Bulls are just good enough to stay in the playoff hunt and maybe get the 6-8 seed or finish a few games out, they will not get a game-changing draft pick in the foreseeable future.

Basically, unless trades are made, the roster you see today is the roster you will see in the future.

While it pains me to say this … I’m sorry Mr. Reinsdorf, but that simply will not cut it.

Trades need to be made, and NOW. The longer the Bulls’ current parts stay together, the worse it will become. Jim Boylan is not the answer. A puppet coach controlled by GM John Paxson is not the answer. It is beyond the time where fans can acceptably sit back and wait for Hinrich and Wallace to “get better.”

So, what’s to do? Trade everyone, save: Luol Deng, Tyrus Thomas and Joakim Noah. Aaron Gray and Duhon can stay, because they barely make anything and are worth more than their salaries. Gordon could stay, though he is less of a priority than the first three.

Everyone else? Dump ‘em. Move them right now. Maybe a Ben Wallace trade to the LA Lakers for Kwame Brown’s expiring contract? How about Hinrich to the Heat for Jason Williams and Ricky Davis? Both of their deals come off the cap next year.

I realize moving players Paxson has put so much faith and effort into will be difficult. The hardest thing for anyone to do is admit they have made the wrong choices in the past, and realize it is time to cut their losses and move in a different direction.

The only thing harder is continuing down that wrong path.

The Bulls still have the quality to get a lot of high draft picks and talent back in trades. Combine that with the cap room they could acquire to use wisely on free agents, and within two or three years the Bulls could have a young championship contender in the works.

Ultimately, I think the best thing you can do when building a team is wait to start spending money until you have that one star: the Shaquille O’Neal, Michael Jordan, Tim Duncan-type player. Once you have that, building the rest of the team is not so hard.

Luol Deng is not and never will be that guy. He could one day become a Scottie Pippen or Dennis Rodman type - the second- or third-best player on a championship team. Becoming a Finals-winning MVP is just not in the cards for Luol.

Until you get a player like that, however, it’s important to stay flexible enough that acquiring that player is possible. That means having high draft picks and lots of cap room. The Bulls needed to be moving that direction yesterday.