Has there been a better time to be a post-Jordan Bulls fan?
Discussing the Bulls' management upheaval, the upcoming docuseries "The Last Dance", and what it means to be a Gen Z Bulls fan. Plus, this week in consumption.
(content warning: the 2017-Present Chicago Bulls)
Hey everyone,
Hopefully you and your loved ones are staying safe, and discovering some creative ways to politely exit your Zoom happy hours.
I recently finished Tuesdays with Morrie, and wanted to share a quote from a rapidly-declining, bed-ridden Morrie towards the book’s end that struck me as poignant:
"In the beginning of life, when we are infants, we need others to survive, right? And at the end of life, when you get like me, you need others to survive, right?" His voice dropped to a whisper. "But here's the secret: in between, we need others as well."
True words, no doubt. Especially at 11:00 AM CST on Monday, when I received three texts, two Twitter DMs, and even a few Slack messages all re: the same tweet:
When this many people message me at once about the Chicago Bulls, it’s usually about their incompetence, like back in 2017, when Bobby Portis hospitalized his own teammate Nikola Mirotić by punching him in the face during a pre-season practice:
So to receive a barrage of messages about something positive involving the Bulls is both refreshing and unfamiliar. Plus, I fully missed this tweet when browsing Twitter amidst the sea of COVID-19 statistics on Monday morning, so thanks to those of you who went out of their way to ensure I got this fantastic news.
Let’s take a moment to recall why so many Bulls fans were frustrated with Forman in the first place, and properly bid adieu as we acknowledge this end of an error.
For those out of the loop (and/or the greater Chicagoland area), firing GM Gar Forman and VP of Basketball Operations John Paxson (aka, #FireGarPax) is something disgruntled Bulls fans have been passive-aggressively calling for since at least 2017:
And aggressive-aggressively calling for since this February:
This is mainly because - other than lucking into Derrick Rose at the 2008 Draft Lottery (during which they had a 1.7% chance of getting the top pick) and a few late-first round draft choices (Taj Gibson, Jimmy Butler) - they’ve generally stunk at running the team.
A brief and snarky recap of the last 12 seasons:
2008-2010: went 41-41 in each of Rose’s first 2 seasons before replacing completely-out-of-his-depth head coach Vinny Del Negro with the defense-oriented, chronically hoarse Tom “load mis-management” Thibodeau
2010-2012: earned two consecutive #1 seeds in a conference that featured LeBron James on the same team as Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh.
D-Rose won the 2011 MVP, famously tore his ACL in 2012, infamously tore his meniscus in 2013, broke his face in 2015, and was traded to the Knicks in 2016.
Gave Bulls fans the original Bench Mob, the Stacey King soundboard, plenty of Brian SCAL-A-BREE-NEE chants, and this iconic 12 Days of Christmas video:
Unfortunately, Keith Bogans’ enthusiasm level during his “11 dancers dancing” solo was a harbinger of what was to come for the next decade of Bulls fandom.
As Steph Noh’s recent Who Is Artūras Karnišovas? blog post succinctly puts it:
The only mid-season acquisitions that Paxson made to improve the team in recent history were deals for John Salmons and Brad Miller in 2009 and Otto Porter Jr. in 2019.
I had my data team crunch the numbers on “Total Playoff Wins” by the players we traded for in those two, “win-now” moves:
Four… and three of those were in the 2009 seven game series vs the KG-less Celtics.
(Brad Miller got the fourth W vs. Cleveland in Round 1 of the 2010 Playoffs)
A brief aside on something I found during some “Where Are They Now?” research:
Salmons is now a self-described “Pivotpreneur”, and owns a vaaaaaaguely entrepreneurial company called John Salmons Entreprises. I only mention this because his obviously-self-written bio has one of the best cherry-picked stats I’ve ever seen:
“Salmons ranks in the top 10% of all-time scorers in the history of the NBA/ABA”.
That’s amazing. Does that include guys on 10-Day contracts, and way back in the ‘50s when Ossie Schectman was tearing it up against the Syracuse Nationals? I technically led my eighth-grade team in free throw % (I went 3/3 after getting fouled on a three, and haven’t shot one since), so maybe I should start including that on my resumé, too.
2012-Present:
GarPax sifted through every undersized, scrappy backup point guard in the league in Rose’s absence (D.J. Augustin, C.J. Watson, John Lucas III, Aaron Brooks, and Nate Robinson, off the top of my head), paid Kanye West a Cristiano Felicio level of money for their pre-game, “Now when I walk in, everybody do the Power Clap” video, and experienced injury issues with every major minutes-getter on the team:
Rose, Luol Deng, Joakim Noah, Jimmy Butler, Pau Gasol, Mike Dunleavy Jr., Rip Hamilton (who you definitely forgot was a Bull), and more recently - Wendell Carter Jr., Denzel Valentine, and Otto “Win-Now” Porter Jr., to name a few…
Also, around the third or fourth time that Rose got injured, they fired Tom Thibodeau and replaced him with Iowa St. head coach and former-Bull Fred Hoiberg.
There was reason for optimism from Bulls fans about the hire - Jimmy Butler was rounding into form as a perennial All Star, and nobody had yet heard of Paul Zipser.
The Hoiberg era was supposed to be an upswing. Everyone knew Thibs’ hard-nosed style of coaching was falling on deaf and/or injury-prone ears, and “Hoi-ball” was sold to skeptical fans as a modernized, three-point-oriented offense.
However…
GarPax discontinued The Matadors, and overpaid Dwyane Wade and Rajon Rondo (neither of whom shoot threes particularly well) about six years too late, which led to a divided locker room, another 41-41 season w/ side of first-round exit, and this meme:
My personal favorite trade(s) during the GarPax era: flipping picks #16 and #19 (who would become Jusuf Nurkić and Gary Harris) in the 2014 NBA Draft to trade up to the #11 spot and take Doug McDermott, who played all of 321 minutes his rookie year, before flipping him and fan-favorite Taj Gibson for 2.5 seasons of Cameron Payne.
But hey, anytime you can package two dudes scoring 18 points a game for a guy who’s biggest contribution to an NBA team is that he’s sick at handshakes, you have to do it.
After the “Three Alphas” experiment fizzled out, GarPax gifted Cristiano Felicio $32 million, traded Jimmy Butler for Zach LaVine, Kris Dunn, and the #7 Pick in the 2017 Draft (which they used on Lauri Markkanen), and have been drafting 7th ever since.
…No, seriously. The Bulls have drafted #7 overall for three seasons straight (selecting Markkanen, Wendell Carter Jr., and Coby White in the 2017-2019 drafts respectively), and in the league’s current hiatus, sit at 22-43, which is good for 11th in the Eastern Conference, and - you guessed it - the 7th worst record overall.
Meanwhile, Hoiberg was fired during year 3 of his five-year deal (and is still being paid, might I add), and current head coach (for now) Jim Boylen marked GarPax’s fourth coaching hire in a row with no previous head coaching experience in the NBA.
The Bulls have been so bad in the Boylen Era, even their graphics team is tanking…
This is a photo c/o my buddy Jacob from a Bulls vs. San Antonio Spurs game this January. Take a minute to look at this and play a game of, “Spot the (In)Difference”:
Not only are “Fouls” listed twice on the box score, but it incorrectly claims the Bulls are playing the Toronto Raptors. Meanwhile - the roster for the “Raptors” is the 2018-2019 Golden State Warriors! Again, they are playing the San Antonio Spurs. In 2020.
…not to mention the Bulls roster is equally wonky. LaVine simultaneously has 00003 and 3 fouls, Cam Payne has 17 points (that just can’t have ever been true), and if they were really down by 10 in the 4th, then why isn’t Cameron “Now when I check in, everybody take a power nap” Bairstow in the game??
The Bulls have been borderline unwatchable the past three seasons, winning just 27, 22, and 22 games. You’d literally have a higher success rate betting on Dashing Donut to win every Dunkin Donuts Race since 2017 than you would on the Bulls winning.
But they haven’t been bad enough.
They didn’t receive an impact player from the Butler haul, and haven’t exactly nailed their lottery picks post-Thibs. For reference, here is a table of the estimated probability of making an All-Star team by draft pick, c/o Threes and Layups:
GarPax are so bad at running an organization that they can’t even be bad correctly.
I recently asked salary cap experts Nate Duncan and Danny Leroux of the Dunc’d On podcast if they thought there were over or under 1.5 All Stars on the Bulls’ current roster (because of course I’m the kind of guy who submits write-in questions during live streams of basketball podcasts)1, and they took the under!
So if you win a combined 71 games over three seasons, while subjecting loyal season ticket holders to not one, but two seasons of Justin Holiday attempting over 10 shots per game while shooting less than 38% from the field… billboards are warranted.
On the bright side…
Do you know who the Assistant GM of the Nuggets was at the time of that Doug McDermott for Harris/Nurkić draft-night trade? Artūras Karnišovas!
Bulls Twitter has already deemed him Artūras “Gonna Save Us”, and John Paxson recently told the Bulls owners he was “willing to step down”, if they so saw fit.
[Here is Karnišovas in a recent podcast interview with ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski]
All the stat nerds seem to like the decision, and Karnišovas was reportedly instrumental in the drafting of two-time (and counting) All Star Nikola Jokić.
Between the managerial overhaul, the upcoming premiere of the highly-anticipated Michael Jordan docuseries The Last Dance, and Zach LaVine sweeping Paul Pierce H-O-R-S-E to nothing in the opening round of the NBA’s H-O-R-S-E competition this weekend, it begs the question,
When was I last this excited to be a Bulls fan?
I think sometime during Spring 2013, when there was still hope in D-Rose returning to an MVP level of play, and telling myself Rip Hamilton would be a meaningful upgrade at the 2, replacing Keith Bogans’ forever-inexplicable Starter minutes.
As for the Jordan docs - I’m sure the original plan by Jordan’s team to release this in the summer of 2020, right around the projected twilight of LeBron’s career, was no accident. Right about when people, mostly 18-25, especially in the event the Lakers had won it all this year, were starting a debate. A debate about if maybe, just maaybee…
…that is, until a ten-part, all-access docuseries ended any future debates for good.
And I can’t wait! Hopefully you’ll be watching too. If you’re hesitant because sports/basketball don’t seem that interesting, let me remind you that you probably just watched a seven-hour series about tigers in Oklahoma last week.
Plus, you’ll better understand what I’m writing about next week, when I talk about the first two episodes of The Last Dance. US subscribers can view it on ESPN and ESPN+, and each installment will be distributed internationally on Netflix the following day.
A few things I enjoyed consuming this week:
Quick Read: an absurd article in The Guardian Australia: “Astrophysicist gets magnets stuck up nose while inventing coronavirus device”
Rarely does a site like The Guardian churn out the sort of article that genuinely cracks me up, but this dry, matter-of-fact reporting on such a stupid story got me real good. Some highlights for the mildly curious:
“I have some electronic equipment but really no experience or expertise in building circuits or things,” he told Guardian Australia.
…
Reardon said he placed two magnets inside his nostrils, and two on the outside. When he removed the magnets from the outside of his nose, the two inside stuck together. Unfortunately, the researcher then attempted to use his remaining magnets to remove them.
…
Before attending the hospital, Reardon attempted to use pliers to pull them out, but they became magnetised by the magnets inside his nose.
This piece is truly a gift that keeps on giving.
Entertaining Listen: Reply All’s March 5th episode, The Case of the Missing Hit
Awesome Watch: Searching for Sugar Man, a documentary available on Netflix
It’s best to go into both of these knowing nothing about the subject matter, and trusting they will be worth your time. Just press play and enjoy two of the most satisfying endings to things I’ve consumed since Ben Berman’s Amazing Jonathan documentary on Hulu. Both were recommended to me out of the blue, so just trying to pay that forward.
Quick Read: The Knowledge Project’s timely piece on “Preserving Optionality”
Fun Re-watch: Community was recently made available on Netflix.
Highly recommend Seasons 1-3 for those in need of a laugh.
See you next week,
And yes, I’m single.