You want to believe they were doing the right thing. You want to believe that hard work leads to success. You want to believe that rewarding the right attitude leads to winning. But this season, the Bulls are throwing a wrench into what every sane person believed was the only foolproof way of developing a successful organization from scratch. The Bulls had a plan, and it seemed to make sense.
1) Have patience, it's going to be awhile. You have to know going in that you aren't going to win a championship next year. When teams try to do the "one year turnaround" it almost never works, and usually ends up setting the team back even further. Look at the Orlando Magic in 2000 after making the giant free agent signings of T-Mac and Grant Hill. They rushed it, and it cost them so much money that they couldn't afford filling the rest of the 12 man roster with any semblance of talent. To this day they are still recovering. The Knicks (Jalen Rose, Eddy Curry, Zach Randolf...), the Sixers (C-Webb), and the Pacers (Dunleavy, Murphy) all have been victims of this thinking. (Side note: Notice how they are all in the East.) The '08 Celtics are expections to the rule and that's just because Kevin Garnett is involved.
2) Hire a GM that the owner will have no problems with going forward. The man must be smart, dedicated, have a plan, and have some experience with a winning franchise. John Paxson has served as an assistant coach under one of the smartest coaches ever, Phil Jackson. He was the key member of 3 championship teams: two as a starter and one as a go-to guy off the bench. He came in with a plan (to build through the draft and collect assets to eventually use toward requiring a franchise player) and started implementing that plan almost immediately.
3) Get rid of the filth. Pax started by getting rid of anything that reminded us of the Krause era. Goodbye, Eddie Robinson. Goodbye, Jamal Crawford. Goodbye, Eddy Curry. Goodbye, Bill Cartright.
4) Hire a head coach that shares the same basic principles as the GM. Pax hired Skiles, a former unathletic caucasion point guard, like Paxson, whose success as a player stemmed from his work ethic and no-nonsense attitude.
5) Draft players from successful universities/backgrounds. Pax needed to change the atmosphere as soon as possible. The work environment is often more important than the workers themselves. If you put a dumb kid in a classroom full of nerds, pretty soon that dumb kid ain't gonna be so dumb. You put an honor roll 10 year old little girl in a classroom full of drug addicted prostitutes and paper bag boys, pretty soon that honor roll 10 year old little girl will be pregnant. With that in mind, in comes Jason Williams from the '01 NCAA championship winning Duke. In comes, Kirk Hinrich from the '03 runner up, Kansas. In comes Ben Gordon, leading scorer for '04 champion, UConn. In comes Luol Deng from '04 Elite Eight member, Duke. In comes Andres Nocioni, veteran starter for Argentine Olympic Squad. In comes Tyrus Thomas, best player for '06 final four member, LSU. In comes Joachim Noah from back-to-back national champion Florida Gators.
The process was working. The team had improved. Not only could we FINALLY see the light at the end of the tunnel, but the light we saw was blinding. So what the hell happened? Why are they not kicking ass and taking names this year? Allow me to enlighten you, my fellow depressed Bulls fans.
For starters, Skiles sucked. Everyone thought this guy was such a terrific coach. "Finally, an old school coach that tells it like it is!" "It's about time we found a coach that doesn't mince words. He'll demand accountability. He'll demand that the players play the RIGHT way." Every columnist in the Chi was slurpin' this guy just because he brought a team full of lottery picks to 3rd place in a horrible Eastern Conference. Some idiots from the FLN were even mentioning his name as a Coach of the Year candidate. It was the biggest overreaction since the warden in Shawshank Redemption sentenced Tim Robbins to two months in the hole just for calling him "obtuse."
To us, Skiles seemed like the type of guy we'd want our son to play for, an old-school coach that cherishes fundamental principals. If our kid did something wrong, we could count on Coach Skiles to set them straight. Well, that probably works for high school kids. College kids, maybe. Professional athletes, puh-lease.
For some reason in Chicago, people get confused between "honesty/integrity/toughness" and "good coaching." Not that it's wrong, but it's slightly misguided. They usually coincide. But you have to be able to teach it. Skiles talked it, but he didn't teach it. One could argue this Bulls team is one of the least mentally tough teams in the league. The natural inclination of the average racist idiot is to say, "Coach Skiles told these guys time and time again. The players just didn't listen. They quit on him. They're lazy. They don't try hard. They're unmotivated." This is inaccurate. Players still played hard, or at least, as hard as could be expected. But when when you continue to lose and it becomes harder and harder to compete with better teams with more talent, one begins to lose motivation.
Yeah, I hear you all saying, "A professional athlete shouldn't require additional motivation. They're getting paid millions to play a game. What other motivation does one need?" True that, true that. But look at this way. A guy can offer me $1000 every time I run into a brick wall. And I'll do it. For the money, I'll do it. If he wants me to run hard, fine. $1000, sure, I'll run hard. But after a while, despite being motivated by the money, believe me, I'll begin to lose motivation.
That's what the losing is. It's running into that brick wall. It's taking the court every game knowing you're outmatched and you'll most likely lose no matter what level of effort you bring.
The players did begin to slack off. Yes, it's true. And every one of them will admit as much. But when Skiles was consistently outcoached and the team's game plan was constantly being squashed by average defensive teams, he was eventually going to get tuned out.
What professionals respect is winning. Period. And Skiles doesn't win. What he does is get young players to play better, particularly young guards. But big men under him have never flourished. Veterens can't stand him (J-Kidd, Jalen Rose, Antonio Davis, Scottie Pippen, Corey Blount, Ben Wallace...). In a sense, he has the ultimate "little man syndrome." He's taken stubborness to Tony Soprano-type levels. The job of a coach is to get the best out of what he's given and to win. Skiles simply didn't do that. He didn't adapt. He had a dominant low post player in Eddy Curry, who became a bust here. He had a dominant defensive shot blocker in Tyson Chandler, who became a bust here. He had a former defensive player of the year in Ben Wallace, who became a bust here. He had a freak of nature athlete in Tyrus Thomas, who is on his way to becoming a bust here.
The average fan sees these players underachieving and thinks it's all their fault; that they either suck or they don't play hard. Not the case, people. Skiles disregards the big man on offense and puts them in lose-lose situations on defense. He allows his guards to gamble on defense and expose the big men to penetration. (Ever wonder why Tyson was always in foul trouble? Ever wonder why Big Ben had no impact? Look at the lack of help from the guards, who consistently hung them out to dry.) Both guards, Kirk and Lil' Ben, are too small to be playing significant minutes. You can't start two undersized shooting guards in the backcourt and expect to be defensively efficient. Offensively, Skiles insisted on these ridiculous drive and kick scheme that allowed the guards to jack up a disgusting amount of jump shots from the perimeter. Decent defensive teams began to stick with their men instead of collapsing on the penetration. Pretty soon, last year's open 20 footers turned into contested 20 footers. It was Skiles fault. He didn't adapt. He didn't use the weapons at his disposal. He didn't get the best out of his players. He didn't coach and he didn't win.
He routinely gave Kirk Hinrich 35 minutes a game this year, even though Captain Kirk brought less and less to the table. If anything he took things from the table. He was a bus boy, really. His turnovers, poor shot selection, and inability to run the offense all contributed to maybe the biggest key to this team's lack of success: no floor leader. We don't have one player capable of yelling, "Lu, get your ass on the block. You're 6'9'' damnit. The guy whose guarding you is 6'5''. What the hell are you doing on the perimeter?!" Or, "Noc, if you jack up one more 3 with a man in your face when your 10 times quicker than the opposing team's four and can easily take him off the dribble, I'm going to fly to Buenos Aires and screw your wife." Gordon never speaks up. I'm not sure if Luol even knows how to talk, I've never heard him say a thing. Noc doesn't speak English. Tyrus and Joachim are too young, I guess. It's the defacto point guard's job to take charge. Kirk didn't do that.
The players didn't trust their on-floor leader. They definitely didn't trust their coach. And that brings up Pax. The players lost their trust in him as well. It began last year when Tyrus Thomas was fined $10,000 for his comments regarding the slam dunk contest. Most people remember it as the immature Thomas saying he'll go just to collect a check. Then Pax fined him. Truth is the NBA had been late in the process of selecting the slam dunk contestants, giving the finalists very little time to plan and work on the dunks they would use. The four finalists each receive a check from the NBA no matter the outcome of the contest. After the late selection, all Thomas said was, in a joking manner, "I guess I'll go there to collect the money." Then a huge deal was made out of it. Fans called him a spoiled athlete. And Paxson, fearing bad press, decided to fine his rookie $10,000. It was unfair and disloyal. That may have been the beginning to the downfall.
The following offseason's trade rumors and contract negotiations didn't help. Pax waited to the last minute to offer Lil' Ben and Luol Deng new contracts, and when he finally did, they were both in the, "Take it or leave it" category. This is simply not the way you deal with the two best players on your team. Then, to add insult to injury, he waited till several weeks into the season to squash any trade rumors involving any of the players.
Fans said the players should be professional and play through it. How would you like coming to work everyday for month after month, wondering if today is your last day? It wasn't very condusive to winning games and it certainly wasn't condusive to building trust between players and management.
You can even go so far back as Paxson's decision to trade Chandler. Tyson had been one of the hardest working players on the Bulls, the anti-Eddy Curry. He was a fan favorite as well as a locker room favorite. But because he didn't fit Skiles plans, he was traded for P.J. Brown and J.R. Smith. Smith was let go within days. The plan was to use Brown in a trade for a big name player, a trade Pax was too conservative to pull the trigger on. We look back now at how little Memphis asked for in return for Pau Gasol from the Lakers, and as LA just wrapped up home court advantage throughout the playoffs in the most competitive conference in NBA history, we realize Pax effed it up.
In the end, the blame lies mostly in the lap of management. The easy thing to do is blame the players; to accuse them of being lazy, unprofessional, and immature. Amazing! These are the same players from fantastic backgrounds who never once in their lives have had their character questioned. They were thrown into an unprofessional environment, and pretty soon they began to act unprofessional. That's the truth.
2) Hire a GM that the owner will have no problems with going forward. The man must be smart, dedicated, have a plan, and have some experience with a winning franchise. John Paxson has served as an assistant coach under one of the smartest coaches ever, Phil Jackson. He was the key member of 3 championship teams: two as a starter and one as a go-to guy off the bench. He came in with a plan (to build through the draft and collect assets to eventually use toward requiring a franchise player) and started implementing that plan almost immediately.
3) Get rid of the filth. Pax started by getting rid of anything that reminded us of the Krause era. Goodbye, Eddie Robinson. Goodbye, Jamal Crawford. Goodbye, Eddy Curry. Goodbye, Bill Cartright.
4) Hire a head coach that shares the same basic principles as the GM. Pax hired Skiles, a former unathletic caucasion point guard, like Paxson, whose success as a player stemmed from his work ethic and no-nonsense attitude.
5) Draft players from successful universities/backgrounds. Pax needed to change the atmosphere as soon as possible. The work environment is often more important than the workers themselves. If you put a dumb kid in a classroom full of nerds, pretty soon that dumb kid ain't gonna be so dumb. You put an honor roll 10 year old little girl in a classroom full of drug addicted prostitutes and paper bag boys, pretty soon that honor roll 10 year old little girl will be pregnant. With that in mind, in comes Jason Williams from the '01 NCAA championship winning Duke. In comes, Kirk Hinrich from the '03 runner up, Kansas. In comes Ben Gordon, leading scorer for '04 champion, UConn. In comes Luol Deng from '04 Elite Eight member, Duke. In comes Andres Nocioni, veteran starter for Argentine Olympic Squad. In comes Tyrus Thomas, best player for '06 final four member, LSU. In comes Joachim Noah from back-to-back national champion Florida Gators.
The process was working. The team had improved. Not only could we FINALLY see the light at the end of the tunnel, but the light we saw was blinding. So what the hell happened? Why are they not kicking ass and taking names this year? Allow me to enlighten you, my fellow depressed Bulls fans.
For starters, Skiles sucked. Everyone thought this guy was such a terrific coach. "Finally, an old school coach that tells it like it is!" "It's about time we found a coach that doesn't mince words. He'll demand accountability. He'll demand that the players play the RIGHT way." Every columnist in the Chi was slurpin' this guy just because he brought a team full of lottery picks to 3rd place in a horrible Eastern Conference. Some idiots from the FLN were even mentioning his name as a Coach of the Year candidate. It was the biggest overreaction since the warden in Shawshank Redemption sentenced Tim Robbins to two months in the hole just for calling him "obtuse."To us, Skiles seemed like the type of guy we'd want our son to play for, an old-school coach that cherishes fundamental principals. If our kid did something wrong, we could count on Coach Skiles to set them straight. Well, that probably works for high school kids. College kids, maybe. Professional athletes, puh-lease.
For some reason in Chicago, people get confused between "honesty/integrity/toughness" and "good coaching." Not that it's wrong, but it's slightly misguided. They usually coincide. But you have to be able to teach it. Skiles talked it, but he didn't teach it. One could argue this Bulls team is one of the least mentally tough teams in the league. The natural inclination of the average racist idiot is to say, "Coach Skiles told these guys time and time again. The players just didn't listen. They quit on him. They're lazy. They don't try hard. They're unmotivated." This is inaccurate. Players still played hard, or at least, as hard as could be expected. But when when you continue to lose and it becomes harder and harder to compete with better teams with more talent, one begins to lose motivation.
Yeah, I hear you all saying, "A professional athlete shouldn't require additional motivation. They're getting paid millions to play a game. What other motivation does one need?" True that, true that. But look at this way. A guy can offer me $1000 every time I run into a brick wall. And I'll do it. For the money, I'll do it. If he wants me to run hard, fine. $1000, sure, I'll run hard. But after a while, despite being motivated by the money, believe me, I'll begin to lose motivation.
That's what the losing is. It's running into that brick wall. It's taking the court every game knowing you're outmatched and you'll most likely lose no matter what level of effort you bring.
The players did begin to slack off. Yes, it's true. And every one of them will admit as much. But when Skiles was consistently outcoached and the team's game plan was constantly being squashed by average defensive teams, he was eventually going to get tuned out.
What professionals respect is winning. Period. And Skiles doesn't win. What he does is get young players to play better, particularly young guards. But big men under him have never flourished. Veterens can't stand him (J-Kidd, Jalen Rose, Antonio Davis, Scottie Pippen, Corey Blount, Ben Wallace...). In a sense, he has the ultimate "little man syndrome." He's taken stubborness to Tony Soprano-type levels. The job of a coach is to get the best out of what he's given and to win. Skiles simply didn't do that. He didn't adapt. He had a dominant low post player in Eddy Curry, who became a bust here. He had a dominant defensive shot blocker in Tyson Chandler, who became a bust here. He had a former defensive player of the year in Ben Wallace, who became a bust here. He had a freak of nature athlete in Tyrus Thomas, who is on his way to becoming a bust here.
The average fan sees these players underachieving and thinks it's all their fault; that they either suck or they don't play hard. Not the case, people. Skiles disregards the big man on offense and puts them in lose-lose situations on defense. He allows his guards to gamble on defense and expose the big men to penetration. (Ever wonder why Tyson was always in foul trouble? Ever wonder why Big Ben had no impact? Look at the lack of help from the guards, who consistently hung them out to dry.) Both guards, Kirk and Lil' Ben, are too small to be playing significant minutes. You can't start two undersized shooting guards in the backcourt and expect to be defensively efficient. Offensively, Skiles insisted on these ridiculous drive and kick scheme that allowed the guards to jack up a disgusting amount of jump shots from the perimeter. Decent defensive teams began to stick with their men instead of collapsing on the penetration. Pretty soon, last year's open 20 footers turned into contested 20 footers. It was Skiles fault. He didn't adapt. He didn't use the weapons at his disposal. He didn't get the best out of his players. He didn't coach and he didn't win.He routinely gave Kirk Hinrich 35 minutes a game this year, even though Captain Kirk brought less and less to the table. If anything he took things from the table. He was a bus boy, really. His turnovers, poor shot selection, and inability to run the offense all contributed to maybe the biggest key to this team's lack of success: no floor leader. We don't have one player capable of yelling, "Lu, get your ass on the block. You're 6'9'' damnit. The guy whose guarding you is 6'5''. What the hell are you doing on the perimeter?!" Or, "Noc, if you jack up one more 3 with a man in your face when your 10 times quicker than the opposing team's four and can easily take him off the dribble, I'm going to fly to Buenos Aires and screw your wife." Gordon never speaks up. I'm not sure if Luol even knows how to talk, I've never heard him say a thing. Noc doesn't speak English. Tyrus and Joachim are too young, I guess. It's the defacto point guard's job to take charge. Kirk didn't do that.
The players didn't trust their on-floor leader. They definitely didn't trust their coach. And that brings up Pax. The players lost their trust in him as well. It began last year when Tyrus Thomas was fined $10,000 for his comments regarding the slam dunk contest. Most people remember it as the immature Thomas saying he'll go just to collect a check. Then Pax fined him. Truth is the NBA had been late in the process of selecting the slam dunk contestants, giving the finalists very little time to plan and work on the dunks they would use. The four finalists each receive a check from the NBA no matter the outcome of the contest. After the late selection, all Thomas said was, in a joking manner, "I guess I'll go there to collect the money." Then a huge deal was made out of it. Fans called him a spoiled athlete. And Paxson, fearing bad press, decided to fine his rookie $10,000. It was unfair and disloyal. That may have been the beginning to the downfall.
The following offseason's trade rumors and contract negotiations didn't help. Pax waited to the last minute to offer Lil' Ben and Luol Deng new contracts, and when he finally did, they were both in the, "Take it or leave it" category. This is simply not the way you deal with the two best players on your team. Then, to add insult to injury, he waited till several weeks into the season to squash any trade rumors involving any of the players.
Fans said the players should be professional and play through it. How would you like coming to work everyday for month after month, wondering if today is your last day? It wasn't very condusive to winning games and it certainly wasn't condusive to building trust between players and management.
You can even go so far back as Paxson's decision to trade Chandler. Tyson had been one of the hardest working players on the Bulls, the anti-Eddy Curry. He was a fan favorite as well as a locker room favorite. But because he didn't fit Skiles plans, he was traded for P.J. Brown and J.R. Smith. Smith was let go within days. The plan was to use Brown in a trade for a big name player, a trade Pax was too conservative to pull the trigger on. We look back now at how little Memphis asked for in return for Pau Gasol from the Lakers, and as LA just wrapped up home court advantage throughout the playoffs in the most competitive conference in NBA history, we realize Pax effed it up.
In the end, the blame lies mostly in the lap of management. The easy thing to do is blame the players; to accuse them of being lazy, unprofessional, and immature. Amazing! These are the same players from fantastic backgrounds who never once in their lives have had their character questioned. They were thrown into an unprofessional environment, and pretty soon they began to act unprofessional. That's the truth.
The darkhorse is T-Mac. Allow me to go out on the limb here and say that if McGrady had never had these recurring back issues and ever had a chance to play with a great coach earlier in his career who demanded his accountability at the defensive end, we might be talking about him in the same light as we have the Kobe's, Duncans, and KG's over the last 7 or so years. A 6-8 terror who could score from anywhere, was practically unguardable, and could jump out of the gym. He still drops 22, 6 and 5 consistently, but you can literally see the strain in his eyes as he rises to the basket on a drive and can barely get a runner up and over a shot blocker, when 5 years ago he would have dunked with ease. He deserves an entire article here. But the bottom line is this: he's gotten a depleted Rockets team up to third place 3/4 of the way through the season in the most difficult conference any of us has ever seen. If he keeps it up through season's end, then his name does deserve to be mentioned in the original 5 that I pointed out earlier.
Applying this to today's race, it especially stands out as the major difference between Kobe and Lebron. Kobe makes his teammates better. Lebron does not. All of Kobe's teammates have improved since playing with him, from Farmar to Fisher to Luke Walton and particularly to Andrew Bynum. Bryant has demanded they get better. All of Lebron's teammates have not improved. In fact, if anything, they've gotten worse. Larry Hughes was a borderline all-star before coming to play with King James, where he was labeled a bust. Ilgauskas was a former all-star, and his numbers have gotten worse nearly every year since James came into the league.
