Bulls viewed AK's rebuild as a success / other tidbits

[DuckIII]

A couple tidbits from the By The Horns podcast (owned by CHSN and thus the Bulls) with KC Johnson and Cam Smith discussing the extension.

1: Extension runs through 27/28 season. I'm sure the Bulls could trivially just fire these guys, it's unlikely they're paying more than 5M a year combined for them, so at the end of this season you probably have a cap of 10M dollar hit on replacing them. In the context of team revenues that's very small.

2: The Bulls viewed AK's first rebuild as a success. They think he is 1 for 1 so far in his roster make overs and this next year is the start of attempt #2.

3: The Bulls intend to be methodical with this rebuild and we should be patient, we will not be looking to make big swings like the Vuc trade.

The Bulls appear to be overlooking the most important part of AK’s tenure: what he did after the first rebuild and before trading Lavine. That was the horror show of incompetence, it lasted multiple seasons, and the gross negligence was obvious and identified in real time.

But what is done is done. I hope and beg point 3 is true. I don’t really trust that part regardless of present intentions. If AK thinks he’s close his instinct will be to rush it again.

He’s made some really nice moves lately with Giddey and Matas. There is reason for some degree of hope. It’s just hard to trust the decision makers even if they currently have the intention to be smart and patient.

[kodo]

I'm an AK hater, but if they acknowledge that Vuc was a colossal mistake otherwise that rebuild wasn't bad.

Lavine - inherited, both good & bad parts. I don't think many GMs would have let him walk for nothing, boxscore-wise he was very similar to Steph in his all-star season.

Derozan for 1 1st round pick - not a bad value
Lonzo for Tomas - a good swing for a high value player that didn't work out, Lonzo's strange issues were really an outlier
Caruso - A+++ signing, obviously. Gave up no assets in this.
Lauri Markkanen - letting him walk for $17M (I believe we offered $14M) was a bad call, even before his Utah season. His #s on the Bulls while he started were still in the must-keep category

If you rewind the Vuc trade, we add to that team
Franz Wagner - I think it's very likely we still pick him just like Orlando, he's a very AK style player
#11 Howard - I don't think AK drafts Howard but there were no great players for the rest of this draft so likely irrelevant

A lot of the AK damage was fumbling the #4 so badly. OK so you pass on Haliburton even though Chicago was one of the few teams he wanted to be on, he also passed on the most common expected pick for Chicago Deni Avdija. And TBH I'd even take Obi over Patrick.

[jacoby1us]

Just sit back and think, if the Blazers weren't so dumb with that Sam Bowie pick the Bulls would be in the same tier as any other NBA team without a NBA title.

We have been in NBA hell since MJ left for good in the summer of 98, that is over 27 years folks. The Bulls have been a consistent laughing stock of the NBA with all of their failed rebuilds, lucked into D.Rose for a few solid years and then we returned to a rebuilding organization shortly after his injuries and have been in that state of mind since.

[sco]

I don't want to be a AK defender. I'm no fan. That said, I think it is hard to look at how things played out and not infuse a bit too much 20/20 hindsight.

On the Lauri note. I've done a full 360 on it. I was happy to see him go...thought he was too injury prone, unable to generate his own offense in a meaningful way, and a poor defender. Felt good about the move after seeing him stumble in CLE. Then felt bad when he excelled in Utah. Then felt better when he struggled with injuries and consistency more recently. I bring Lauri up because I'm conflicted on him and see a similar situation with Coby looking ahead. It's hard to figure out what to do with good players who just aren't going to become elite.

[DuckIII]

I don't want to be a AK defender. I'm no fan. That said, I think it is hard to look at how things played out and not infuse a bit too much 20/20 hindsight.

On the Lauri note. I've done a full 360 on it.

I agree the Lauri part is hindsight. But that wasn’t really the franchise killing debacle. That came later when he refused to pivot and allowed all of our veteran assets to rot and die on the vine before trading them.

At the end of the day, when all three of DDR, Vuc and Zach are traded, we will effectively have dealt all three for a return of our own pick in one draft plus the value of the Portland pick, which is quite limited. In addition to foregoing massively more valuable draft assets by continuing to scrape and claw for the meaningless play-in every year.

And none of that was hindsight. Nor was the Vuc trade. Many, many posters called out these tactics in real time with specifics as to why it was bad, what would likely happen, and then it all came true!

The hindsight thing is usually an excellent counterpoint in sports debates. This just isn’t one of those times. AK’s critical failings were observed, recognized and described when they were happening.

[TheJordanRule]

This is disturbing news that they view the rebuild as a success. We had one decent year. I can't understand how that was building much of anything after that first successful year. Zach subsequently had a falling out with DDR, who was our best player. Vuce at best was mid. Zo became a nonfactor due to injuries. It was a good vision that never came to fruition, yes, but it also never had the upside of becoming a title contender. Too many bad defenders on the same roster. Vuce, Zach, AND hobbled DDR. No way. Not a good gameplan.

[Red8911]

I don’t think there has been any GM/President where fans actually loved lol. Everyone has their own ideas of what moves should be made and get angry when they do the opposite.

Back when Gar/Pax was fired fans here were celebrating with the AK hire thinking he will do exactly what they think is right.

Since AK got an extension then that means he’s still running the show and hoping he can redeem himself. I’m not going to say he was totally terrible at his job, he did good things as well but he definitely wasn’t successful with reaching his goals. He’s lucky the Reinsdorfs gave him another chance.

[dougthonus]

Spin it as much as you want Doug. There is absolutely no way you are going to convince me the Bulls are not doing well financially.

Bulls ranked 7th in revenue in 2023/24, an 11% increase from the previous year. I have no idea why you would quote the past decade average and include their rebuild period when we are talking about AK's tenure. Either way they are FAR from struggling financially and are easily one of the most profitable teams in the NBA.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/193704/revenue-of-national-basketball-association-teams-in-2010/

Feel free to disagree.

I picked a longer back starting point because it reduces noise. The Bulls used to be the 3rd most valuable franchise, and in 2008 I wrote an article called a decade of profits showing they had generated the most profit of any team in the NBA for the previous 10 years even after Jordan sales crashed hard. Even more profit than the Lakers whom were a major market and won a bunch of titles. They are no where near that now.

I'm not laying this on AKME's feet. I'm just saying the Bulls on the whole have not been running an effective growth franchise, and AKME isn't turning it around either. They don't have good TV ratings, they don't have any interest, their ability going forward to negotiate contracts on TV/Radio has been poor (as seen by them getting murdered in the comcast deal for CHSN).

The Bulls on the whole are still making a crap ton of money, don't get me wrong. Just they should be making 1.5x whatever that crap ton of money is.

[TheJordanRule]

A couple tidbits from the By The Horns podcast (owned by CHSN and thus the Bulls) with KC Johnson and Cam Smith discussing the extension.

1: Extension runs through 27/28 season. I'm sure the Bulls could trivially just fire these guys, it's unlikely they're paying more than 5M a year combined for them, so at the end of this season you probably have a cap of 10M dollar hit on replacing them. In the context of team revenues that's very small.

2: The Bulls viewed AK's first rebuild as a success. They think he is 1 for 1 so far in his roster make overs and this next year is the start of attempt #2.

3: The Bulls intend to be methodical with this rebuild and we should be patient, we will not be looking to make big swings like the Vuc trade.

The Bulls appear to be overlooking the most important part of AK’s tenure: what he did after the first rebuild and before trading Lavine. That was the horror show of incompetence, it lasted multiple seasons, and the gross negligence was obvious and identified in real time.

But what is done is done. I hope and beg point 3 is true. I don’t really trust that part regardless of present intentions. If AK thinks he’s close his instinct will be to rush it again.

He’s made some really nice moves lately with Giddey and Matas. There is reason for some degree of hope. It’s just hard to trust the decision makers even if they currently have the intention to be smart and patient.

Agreed. Attempt #2's early returns look good. But if Attempt #1 is exactly what they wanted, they are setting a laughably bad, low bar. One lone year of success. Cringeworthy standard, tbh.

[nomorezorro]

even if you want to believe that the 2021 run was sustainable, and that AK shouldn't be held responsible for the fact that the team fell apart the moment a player with a long injury history got injured, and you overlook the fact that the front office basically spent 3 years letting that roster atrophy as the one brief stretch of good play got further and further in the rear view mirror...

there's still the undeniable fact that the first two big moves of The Rebuild were giant failures! the patrick williams pick appears to be a total whiff, and the vucevic trade sucked — he didn't fit with lavine at all, he was't even good during that 2021 hot stretch, and we gave up two lotto picks for the right to have him turn into a hard-to-move contract who still doesn't fit in with the rest of the roster

[Future Coach]

The fundamental problem is they do not have any idea how to analyze the actual things going on in the basketball world and judge success. They do not filter the noise properly or understand how to weigh the results relative to the various reasonable opportunities or alternate paths, and so they do not actually know how to weigh if things are good or bad properly even to their own standards of making money.

Exactly right. And not only do they not have this fundamental knowledge to make such decisions (even at a high level), but it doesn't seem like they even know what questions to ask, what to look for, how to critically assess. Even simple questions like what did they really expect from a performance (wins/losses) standpoint before the start of last season that justified not tearing things down then (if not sooner)? Or why Patrick Williams was given a contract extension? What is his actual role and expectations?

Plainly, this is a situation of the wrong people being in the wrong roles, which overall has the result of appearing like people are "asleep at the wheel."

[DuckIII]

A couple tidbits from the By The Horns podcast (owned by CHSN and thus the Bulls) with KC Johnson and Cam Smith discussing the extension.

1: Extension runs through 27/28 season. I'm sure the Bulls could trivially just fire these guys, it's unlikely they're paying more than 5M a year combined for them, so at the end of this season you probably have a cap of 10M dollar hit on replacing them. In the context of team revenues that's very small.

2: The Bulls viewed AK's first rebuild as a success. They think he is 1 for 1 so far in his roster make overs and this next year is the start of attempt #2.

3: The Bulls intend to be methodical with this rebuild and we should be patient, we will not be looking to make big swings like the Vuc trade.

The Bulls appear to be overlooking the most important part of AK’s tenure: what he did after the first rebuild and before trading Lavine. That was the horror show of incompetence, it lasted multiple seasons, and the gross negligence was obvious and identified in real time.

But what is done is done. I hope and beg point 3 is true. I don’t really trust that part regardless of present intentions. If AK thinks he’s close his instinct will be to rush it again.

He’s made some really nice moves lately with Giddey and Matas. There is reason for some degree of hope. It’s just hard to trust the decision makers even if they currently have the intention to be smart and patient.

Agreed. Attempt #2's early returns look good. But if Attempt #1 is exactly what they wanted, they are setting a laughably bad, low bar. One lone year of success. Cringeworthy standard, tbh.

My interpretation of Doug’s report is that the Bulls believe the first rebuild was sound and would have worked but for Ball’s injury.

[League Circles]

I agree with kodo that the atrocious Vuc trade has been the glaring terrible move and that subsequent moves have been criticized more than is warranted because of how bad he did on his first big move. Personally I don't have a philosophical problem with that trade ("future for present", etc), but I never thought Vuc was a valuable player before or after we got him and it just reeks of really bad talent evaluation by AK to bring him here. Other than that one terrible, first move AK has been mostly in the realm of OK. Not good by any means, but not insane.

[Dominator83]

I will say if I wanted to put a positive spin on this, I'd say that maybe AK has learned from his first round of mistakes and will be better this time around.

KC saying they want a draft oriented, methodical rebuild around young talents is at least a reasonable approach given our current position. Though I think he's largely been a disaster so far, the idea that he may have realized a lot of things he did were poor and that he needs to change gives me some hope.

I think the Giddey extension will be a good barometer of that. You just got burned by Pat/Vuc extensions where you bid against yourself. Do you do that now with Giddey or do you play hard ball? If he plays hard ball with Giddey, I will feel way more confident that he is taking on some of the lessons from his past failures. This is regardless of whether Giddey is the right move or not, just the idea that you realize you need to execute your leverage in negotiations would be a huge improvement.

Last year I think was a big improvement. Drafting Buzelis, getting Giddey for Caruso straight up (I feel that both teams won that trade) and was patient with Lavine. It was widely reported this time last year that they really didn't wanna enter the season with Zach, but at the time the only way to trade him was to pay someone to take him on. He rolled the dice on him building up atleast positive value and got his pick back from a previous mistake. Plus Zach Collins is a fine player on top of it. Hell, we probably would have ended up being happy with Zach for Zach straight up, let alone getting our pick back !

Of course though, extending Patrick to a big deal while buffing against nobody.... That still docks him a letter grade last summer.

[Peelboy]

I know it's a tiny non-move, but it's the one that completely pisses me off the most and to me, exemplifies this FO. Failing to trade Drummond at the deadline when you were 26-29 and had a deal for 3 2ds from PHL. Undervaluing picks, focusing on "success" as making the playin, institutional inertia as a strategy. Throw in overvaluing your own guys and ignoring either big picture or actual contributions from the players in question.

It's the same thing from the Vuc trade carried over (undervaluing picks), from the PW extension (overvaluing your own guys and ignoring actual contributions), from failing to make deals at the deadline involving the mid 3, from failing to demand a pick from OKC in the Caruso deal (and that's from someone who's bullish on Giddey). So I don't hold out much hope of "learning," their "build slow through the draft" (assuming that is the real plan) to me suggests "overdraft toolsy guys like Pat/Dalen and hope they develop, meanwhile passing on actual skilled basketball players."

I miss Garpax.

[dougthonus]

Last year I think was a big improvement. Drafting Buzelis, getting Giddey for Caruso straight up (I feel that both teams won that trade) and was patient with Lavine. It was widely reported this time last year that they really didn't wanna enter the season with Zach, but at the time the only way to trade him was to pay someone to take him on. He rolled the dice on him building up atleast positive value and got his pick back from a previous mistake. Plus Zach Collins is a fine player on top of it. Hell, we probably would have ended up being happy with Zach for Zach straight up, let alone getting our pick back !

Of course though, extending Patrick to a big deal while buffing against nobody.... That still docks him a letter grade last summer.

Directionally, it was probably their best year, that said, they did lousy in the DDR S&T and they bungled the Pat extension.

The Caruso/Giddey swap depends a lot on how you feel about Giddey, but I think the market value was fine and it was the better risk to take vs pick #13 based on what their options were at the time. Agree with your thoughts on the Zach trade, it was good to exercise patience.

I recommended moving Coby/Ayo in the off-season for as many picks as you can get, that definitely would have been the good play with Ayo, harder to say with Coby.

Overall though, they got younger and are still mediocre and have more flexibility. I don't think they're on the path to anywhere, but they did achieve some reasonable macro level success in doing those things.

[Dan Z]

Arturas’ quote “we won’t settle for mediocrity” has consistently rung in my head. Man oh man have the AK Bulls been the poster-child for mediocrity.

The Bulls haven't made the playoffs in three years. Mediocrity it too kind. I'd say it's flat out bad.

[Dan Z]

I don't disagree strongly with #2. I do think that team with a healthy Ball was a very good team. I think we all underestimate the import that Ball had to that team. He was both the prime playmaker and defender. Yeah, sure, the Vuc trade ended-up bad, but had Ball not had a horrific injury, those Vuc picks would have been in the mid-20's. Point being that AK had a plan for a roster build that wasn't bad and he executed it. It worked out horribly, but I can't put that all on AK.

I think #3 comes along with the realization that we don't have a #1 option of the roster and we don't have the assets to both land a #1 option AND retain enough talent to put around him to compete. Giannis with a bunch of scrubs is what he has now...that's not a winning model.

Lonzo's expected games missed per year when we signed him was 30 based on his previous history. We obviously did way worse than that, but on the flip side, DDR's expected performance was way less than what we got. We got an all-NBA season out of him that year, when he hadn't been even close to that level for the previous 3 years. At his age, that was an extremely unlikely event.

Just pointing out the bad luck and ignoring the good luck isn't a way that I would judge this. Yes, Lonzo was important, and Lonzo was a known large injury risk. DDR, Vuc, and Zach were an absolutely atrocious fit on paper going into this, and it more or less worked out that way.

The good year was also in COVID and relied on a crap ton of miracle finishes, tons of roster disruptions around the league, and overall had many ear marks of potential fluke.

But either way, if you want to say his roster construction was fine as a rebuild then it was still obvious he needed to move off of it at the trade deadline in year 2. He refused to move Zach for multiple picks, DDR for multiple picks, Caruso for multiple picks. He leaned on the Ball injury, literally for three straight years. He talked more about Ball being out than GarPax did about Derrick Rose being out, despite Rose being a dramatically higher level player and eating up 2x the money as a cap hit.

The Bulls traded for Vucevic on March 25, 2021. They traded for Lonzo in August 2021.

In between that time the Magic drafted Franz Wagner. If Lonzo was healthier it would only matter for the 2nd pick that the Bulls owed to Orlando (which ended up being Jett Howard at #11 in 2023).

[dougthonus]

He’s made some really nice moves lately with Giddey and Matas. There is reason for some degree of hope. It’s just hard to trust the decision makers even if they currently have the intention to be smart and patient.

The Giddey extension negotiation will be an important indicator on what he has learned on this front.

In terms of the draft, he's had six draft picks (if I haven't brain farted some 2nd rounder):
1st round: Pat, Dalen, Matas
2nd round: Marko, Ayo, Julian

I define:
Hits - Guys who give you better value than other options in your range
Neutral - Guys who give you similar value as other options in your range
Misses - Guys who give you less value than options in your range

Hits: Matas / Ayo
Neutral: Marko / Julian (more or less should expect no value and have received no value)
Misses: Pat / Dalen

For his two hits, they were both guys who dropped way below expected draft placement. It's good that he took them, but that doesn't give me an extreme amount of confidence in our drafting ability.

All said though, his last year was probably his best year as GM in terms of macro level goals. We got younger, more flexible, and don't owe any future assets anymore while not meaningfully lowering our talent level. I may not love all of the direction in the way he accomplished it, but that's a fairly good set of high level deliverables.

[Dan Z]

I don't want to be a AK defender. I'm no fan. That said, I think it is hard to look at how things played out and not infuse a bit too much 20/20 hindsight.

On the Lauri note. I've done a full 360 on it.

I agree the Lauri part is hindsight. But that wasn’t really the franchise killing debacle. That came later when he refused to pivot and allowed all of our veteran assets to rot and die on the vine before trading them.

At the end of the day, when all three of DDR, Vuc and Zach are traded, we will effectively have dealt all three for a return of our own pick in one draft plus the value of the Portland pick, which is quite limited. In addition to foregoing massively more valuable draft assets by continuing to scrape and claw for the meaningless play-in every year.

And none of that was hindsight. Nor was the Vuc trade. Many, many posters called out these tactics in real time with specifics as to why it was bad, what would likely happen, and then it all came true!

The hindsight thing is usually an excellent counterpoint in sports debates. This just isn’t one of those times. AK’s critical failings were observed, recognized and described when they were happening.

In regards to Lauri I never thought he'd work well with Vucevic and said so the minute the trade was made.

On one hand you have a 23 year old player, who is flawed, but showed some promise and on the other you have a 30 year old who just had a career year shooting from three and will cost you a young player (WCJ) and two picks to acquire.

I might understand the trade if the Bulls were "one piece away", but they weren't. It seems like a bad use of asset management to me.

However, I agree with your post...the biggest issue with AK is that he waited too long to move on from the first team that he put together.