Excuses, excuses: Dawdling Bulls fail Chicago
No-can-do Reinsdorf and dawdler Paxson can’t pull the trigger
Mike D'Antoni lives only a few cacti, a couple of rattlesnakes and an estimated 200 yards from Jerry Reinsdorf. But what is proximity when an owner is cheaper than dirt? Reinsdorf couldn't strike a deal with his Arizona neighbor Friday, which only exacerbates the misery of his struggling franchise and prompts thought that he get out of the business before he buries pro basketball in Chicago.
The man is hopelessly stuck in the last century, flushing away the momentum of the greatest resource in NBA history -- Michael Jeffrey Jordan -- because he's too cost-stubborn to play with the big boys. First, Reinsdorf hesitated trading for Pau Gasol, who subsequently has turned the Los Angeles Lakers into a leading title contender, because he didn't want to exceed the league's luxury tax. Now he loses D'Antoni, whose high-tempo style would have energized the Bulls and created a winter buzz currently seized by the Blackhawks, in part because he didn't want to engage in a bidding war with the New York Knicks.
(Tom Cruze/Sun-Times)
Since when did we become Sacramento? And why are the Bulls so sluggish and wishy-washy about every big decision that comes their way? Aren't we all tiring of Kevin Garnett going to Boston, Kobe Bryant staying in L.A., Gasol going to L.A., D'Antoni going to New York -- and Reinsdorf and general manager John Paxson just sittting there, making excuses, spinning bull to the gullible local media and letting life pass them by 10 years after a dynasty was prematurely dismantled?
``I thought I would be going to Chicago,'' Gasol said the other day.
A can-do owner would make magic happen. Reinsdorf is a can't-do owner who spends too much time with his beloved White Sox at U.S. Cellular Field -- where his maniacal manager is a national laughingstock -- and not nearly enough with the Bulls. If basketball is such an afterthought for him, why doesn't he sell the team to someone who would care more? Say, a group headed by Jordan? And don't tell me he feels burned because he actually coughed up a market-value contract in 2005 for Scott Skiles, who did solid work before crashing last season. What, Reinsdorf is going to stop trying and spending now?
Simply, he didn't feel like making D'Antoni the NBA's third-highest-paid head coach, even though Chicago is America's third-largest city. This is a major market, Jerry. You charge the league's fourth-highest average ticket price, Jerry. You and your partners have made filthy amounts of money off Jordan and related residual effects, Jerry. You couldn't reach down, excite your overly loyal fans and match the $24 million offered by the Knicks over four years? It's a corporate embarrassment when Reinsdorf can't lure D'Antoni, who by all accounts preferred to be here, and lets him drift away to the most unappealing job in sports. The Knicks are rotten. They don't have the personnel to play his up-tempo style. They'll have to suffer through two more seasons of rampant losing and salary-cap slashing before hoping LeBron James signs in 2010, which likely won't happen with buddy Jay-Z sure to woo James as the centerpiece of a relocated Brooklyn franchise. By next year, the New York media will be pounding the new savior with the same hammer they've pounded every Knicks boss.
But D'Antoni took on an impossible challenge anyway Saturday, deterred by an inability to find total common ground with Paxson in recent conversations. The in-house spin is that Paxson wanted a coach with a defensive pedigree. If so, why did he even interview D'Antoni and why did Reinsdorf meet with him in the desert? Truth is, D'Antoni is a strong-willed leader who wants to control his team's basketball philosophies, and he certainly would have clashed with Paxson, who remains enamored of defensive principles and a conservative approach. The same reason D'Antoni fled Phoenix, where GM Steve Kerr wanted a more defined defensive structure, is why an arrangement wouldn't have worked in Chicago. Aren't Paxson and Kerr friends? Aren't they the same person, actually, having both hit jumpers to win championships on Jordan teams? Didn't they talk about D'Antoni?
So the slip-slide continues for the Bulls, who haven't been whole since Paxson botched the No. 2 draft pick in 2006 and wound up with Ty Thomas instead of Brandon Roy or LaMarcus Aldridge. Whatever progress Paxson made in his first couple of seasons, when he quickly cleaned up Jerry Krause's mess and made the franchise respectable, is eroding fast. He desperately needed a coach who would maximize a semi-skilled roster lacking direction and purpose. D'Antoni wouldn't have won a championship here, but he would have returned the Bulls to the playoffs and created an atmosphere of fun. Know what he would have been?
A story. When was the last time the Chicago Bulls, formerly the biggest sports extravaganza of them all, were a story?
I'm not sure what Paxson is doing, but nearly a month has passed since Jim Boylan was relieved of interim coaching duties, an ouster everybody knew was coming for weeks. He lost another prime candidate in Rick Carlisle, who signed Saturday with the Dallas Mavericks. Carlisle has had major success in the league and seemed capable of improving Paxson's mish-mash talent. But while Paxson dawdled after interviewing Carlisle last month, Mark Cuban pounced. In another example of why you want him buying the Cubs, Cuban fired Avery Johnson on April 30 and needed only nine days to lock up a new coach. The price wasn't outlandish, $17.5 million over four years, but it surely was in Reinsdorf's mind.
``Incredibly excited that Rick has come on board," Cuban said on the team's Web site. ``His coaching record speaks for itself. He has a unique ability to coach multiple styles of play, which we think makes him a great fit for the Mavs."
The best two candidates, ones with proven postseason pedigrees, are gone. Johnson is on Paxson's list, but again, why would a man owed $12 million by the Mavericks take a lowball deal? Jeff Van Gundy, who made $5 million a year in Houston, isn't working for less in Chicago. Paxson seems to be waiting on Boston assistant coach Tom Thibodeau, a defensive specialist who enhanced his rep when the Celtics reduced James to an 8-of-42 shooting nightmare and 17 turnovers in the first two games of the Eastern Conference semifinals. But who knows if Thibodeau might want the Phoenix job?
That's the new hook, of course. Coaching the Bulls isn't an attractive endeavor anymore. What is the future of Luol Deng and Ben Gordon? Hasn't Kirk Hinrich been exposed? Where's the go-to guy, the low-post scorer, the point guard? What about the episodes when players defied the authority of Skiles and Boylan? Does anyone want to take over a team that admittedly quit on a coach?
Such is the state of the Bulls. Once the most famous sports team in the world, they have become irrelevant and dismal in hoops life. Think small, be small.
