AK end of season press conference?

[Stratmaster]

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Perfect. It's everyone's fault except Billy.

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Well it appears Cheeks may be stepping away on his own volition? He is 67 too.

Assistant coach Maurice Cheeks will also move off his full-time role on the bench but will shift elsewhere in the organization, a move prompted solely by Cheeks' decision.

Cheeks, 67, is a Chicago native and has been with the Bulls since 2020. He's been an NBA coach since 1993. He's been on Donovan's staff since their shared Thunder days in 2015, before Cheeks' head coaching stints with the 76ers and the Pistons.

Fleming was also a carry over from Boylen... so that's not a surprise:

Fleming, 54, was initially hired by the Bulls to be the lead assistant coach on Jim Boylen's staff in 2019. The Bulls retained his services following the hiring of Donovan as the head coach. Fleming also had an "extremely close relationship" with Coby White, who was assigned to Fleming as an assistant during his rookie year, per Johnson.

Billy has been here for 4 seasons. Whether Boylen was the coach initially doesn't seem meaningful to me at this point.

But I don't mean to make too much of the assistant changes. Billy just should have gone with them.

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[DuckIII]

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Whew! I was starting to get nervous AK would forget to start scapegoating.

[kodo]

Bobby Marks:
"Arturas...from people you talk to...rebuilding is not in his DNA so buckle up"

Nothing will change as long as he's here.

All that will happen is that he gets to keep changing the goalposts.
Last year: the goal was a championship and wouldn't accept mediocrity
This year: the goal is to be "competitive" and this group is "competitive"

[dougthonus]

Bobby Marks:
"Arturas...from people you talk to...rebuilding is not in his DNA so buckle up"

Nothing will change as long as he's here.

All that will happen is that he gets to keep changing the goalposts.
Last year: the goal was a championship and wouldn't accept mediocrity
This year: the goal is to be "competitive" and this group is "competitive"

FWIW, and I'm the last person to defend Arturas, he took full accountability in his press conference and reiterated that this wasn't an acceptable outcome and that he's not here for the play-in. He blamed on himself, not the players, not the coaching staff, but said he didn't bring in enough talent.

All of that is true, and none of it is going to change, because he has no assets to change it, and his entire GM philosophy is built on a foundation of idiocy and fundamental attribution error, but I will at least give him that this year he didn't try to hang a banner on the play-in like last year despite actually having a reasonable finish to the season after a disastrous 5-14 start.

[Jcool0]

Bobby Marks:
"Arturas...from people you talk to...rebuilding is not in his DNA so buckle up"

Nothing will change as long as he's here.

All that will happen is that he gets to keep changing the goalposts.
Last year: the goal was a championship and wouldn't accept mediocrity
This year: the goal is to be "competitive" and this group is "competitive"

FWIW, and I'm the last person to defend Arturas, he took full accountability in his press conference and reiterated that this wasn't an acceptable outcome and that he's not here for the play-in. He blamed on himself, not the players, not the coaching staff, but said he didn't bring in enough talent.

All of that is true, and none of it is going to change, because he has no assets to change it, and his entire GM philosophy is built on a foundation of idiocy and fundamental attribution error, but I will at least give him that this year he didn't try to hang a banner on the play-in like last year despite actually having a reasonable finish to the season after a disastrous 5-14 start.

He built probably the best team you could at the time with the assets he had. Once this teams moment had passed and it was clear this team was never going to work, his biggest problem was just sticking with the players hoping it would correct itself. And now he has almost no tradeable assets to work with.

[dougthonus]

He built probably the best team you could at the time with the assets he had. Once this teams moment had passed and it was clear this team was never going to work, his biggest problem was just sticking with the players hoping it would correct itself. And now he has almost no tradeable assets to work with.

His biggest problem was trying to build the best short term, no upside team he could with the assets he had instead of continuing to grow his asset base. Doing nothing would have yielded a better, younger, cheaper, more asset rich team within 2 years than what he built.

It's not super difficult to realize when you are a 30 win team, you don't try to trade all young, high upside, long term assets into short term, non top 30, depreciating assets in order to win now. Just thematically, you can't be more stupid than that.

Pick any moment in time post decision to embark on this idiocy, and it was a better point to pivot than the moment arriving 6 months later. So yes, he's also guilty of taking too long to figure out his plan was dumb as well, and given he still hasn't pivoted, we are only left with hope that he has figured it out now.

[MisterRoy]

He also doubled down on things that weren’t working. ( No real PF, Vuc at center not working like we expected and then resigning him, etc.) Seems like a very arrogant way of running the team. The dude has to admit to himself that things aren’t working as soon as he sees it. Not wait until there isn’t a lot you can do about it.


Sent from somewhere you’ve never been.

[DuckIII]

Bobby Marks:
"Arturas...from people you talk to...rebuilding is not in his DNA so buckle up"

Nothing will change as long as he's here.

All that will happen is that he gets to keep changing the goalposts.
Last year: the goal was a championship and wouldn't accept mediocrity
This year: the goal is to be "competitive" and this group is "competitive"

FWIW, and I'm the last person to defend Arturas, he took full accountability in his press conference and reiterated that this wasn't an acceptable outcome and that he's not here for the play-in. He blamed on himself, not the players, not the coaching staff, but said he didn't bring in enough talent.

I would agree with this if I had just read a transcript. But the delivery was the epitome of an insincere political script read to feign responsibility because it is known the public will demand it. He clearly did not believe his strategies failed, but rather the unfortunate circumstances of injuries are to blame. This is confirmed by everything else he said which, you already rightly interpreted, strongly suggests he intends to continue with more veteran oriented win now moves.

His words were hollow. He intends to change nothing. He learned nothing.

[dougthonus]

I would agree with this if I had just read a transcript. But the delivery was the epitome of an insincere political script read to feign responsibility because it is known the public will demand it. He clearly did not believe his strategies failed, but rather the unfortunate circumstances of injuries are to blame. This is confirmed by everything else he said which, you already rightly interpreted, strongly suggests he intends to continue with more veteran oriented win now moves.

His words were hollow. He intends to change nothing. He learned nothing.

Well he never said he would move away from veteran win now moves. He seemed to double down on his strategy. He is in over his head and has no idea how to make a good team which is evident by everything else he said.

I put his incompetence in terms of what he's done and what he's going to continue to try to do in a separate bucket than whether he accepted accountability. I think he accepted accountability. That doesn't mean he learned anything or will do anything better. I see very little hope of that. I think he'll shuffle some deck chairs, but thematically, the way he described fixing it isn't going to fix it, so the end result will (as you suggest) still be poor, and he's still awful.

[DuckIII]

Fair enough. I’m splitting a hair between accepting failure vs. accepting responsibility. He’s accepted failure. But if he’d accepted that his strategies are largely responsible for that failure he would not quadruple down.

Unfortunately all of the indications he gave suggest this is exactly what he will do. On the other hand, it’s pretty unusual for a GM to come out the day after the season ends and say he’s going to tear it down to the studs. So there’s still a chance.

And there’s the even greater chance that DDR is just going to leave and force AK to change.

[League Circles]

I think he knows he's accountable and that he's failed due to the specifics of his moves and injuries, as opposed to failure due to the general strategy of trying to win and not making moves just to make moves. I happen to agree with that, but I don't have any particular faith in his ability to make better moves. I strongly oppose the sinusoidal model of team "building" and so that I like about him, but his eye for talent and ability to identify weaknesses seems sub par.

For example, as far the trade to get Vuc, it's not the dynamics of the trade that I opposed (trading what I consider spare parts for an "all star" center even for a bad team). It's that Vuc has never been very good and AK should know that, but doesn't, or at least didn't until possibly now.

[Jcool0]

I think he knows he's accountable and that he's failed due to the specifics of his moves and injuries, as opposed to failure due to the general strategy of trying to win and not making moves just to make moves. I happen to agree with that, but I don't have any particular faith in his ability to make better moves. I strongly oppose the sinusoidal model of team "building" and so that I like about him, but his eye for talent and ability to identify weaknesses seems sub par.

For example, as far the trade to get Vuc, it's not the dynamics of the trade that I opposed (trading what I consider spare parts for an "all star" center even for a bad team). It's that Vuc has never been very good and AK should know that, but doesn't, or at least didn't until possibly now.

I get maybe him thinking he was a legit All-Star when he made the move but once Vuc started playing for the Bulls you could tell he wasn't what the Bulls hoped he was. Instead of just cutting bait he doubled down on it.

[Hangtime84]

Huston Rockets approach was the better choice. Keep your assets and maybe overpay for 1 or 2 vets.

Only young inherited asset they did well on trading was WCJ.