Simmons: Reinsdorf Runs Bulls Like Small Market Team

[Scott May]

I think we need another 13 or so years to ascertain whether Simmons's claim has any merit.

[Professor Frink]

Why not? You try to have it both ways.

I believe that the Bulls have an average front office with average to below average sized pockets (in terms of willingness to spend, not actual amount of money that can be spent). There is nothing logically inconsistent about this.

On the other hand, there are people who constantly boast about the Bulls having a top notch front office with an ownership group that behaves like a big market. That's idiotic when faced with facts.

Only if you ignore their arguments. There is nothing logically inconsistent about their position. They tend to put the spending in context and give the front office the benefit of the doubt. People can hold positions you disagree with that are entirely consistent logically.

[Peelboy]

This is such a cop out... you realize that is exactly Simmons' point? Bottom line is that we do spend like we're the Bucks or Pacers. That's the point of this whole thread.

And what team wouldn't be paying for a real contender? People love this contender angle, but apparently more than half the league found good enough reason to spend more than the Bulls. Is more than half the league consistently better than Chicago over the past decade?

Honestly, I don't even want to bother debating you cause I already knew there are plenty of people like you. You are the reason I wrote:

"To be honest, people who don't want to buy into this won't be swayed by this anyway, so I didn't even want to do compile it and really don't know how much more time I want to invest."

As for the MJ stuff, I didn't make that comment.

Go back to your list. You can break it down into 2 categories (examples below are from the top 10):
- Teams with superstar/HOF caliber guys (Lakers, Mavs, Heat, Spurs)
- Teams without those guys who still spend a lot of money (Knicks, Blazers, Magic, Wolves)

This is exactly what the Bulls have said - spending money without that caliber of player = wasting money, which they won't do. You can call that cheap or you can call that sensible. When they didn't have that kind of player (i.e. most of the time post-MJ), they weren't spending for spending's sake. That is a testament to the poor job done by Krause post-MJ, but they weren't sacrificing contention to save $$$, which is what most refer to as cheap. When they got Rose, what happened - they jumped in payroll, i.e. willing to spend for a contender. And even during the post-MJ Krause era, while they were unsuccessful in acquiring superstars, it wasn't because of being cheap unless you really think their pitch to TMac/Hill/Duncan failed because they weren't offering max deals or the same with the LeBron/Wade/Bosh trio (belied by signing Boozer and Mercer to big deals).

If by cheap you mean - "unwilling to pay big money for a team that goes out regularly in the first round" then I'd agree with you. But most seem to think cheap means "unwilling to pay for a contender." They haven't had a contender but that's because of the post-MJ Krause mess of decisionmaking and then more recently because of Rose's injuries.

[organix85]

This is such a cop out... you realize that is exactly Simmons' point? Bottom line is that we do spend like we're the Bucks or Pacers. That's the point of this whole thread.

And what team wouldn't be paying for a real contender? People love this contender angle, but apparently more than half the league found good enough reason to spend more than the Bulls. Is more than half the league consistently better than Chicago over the past decade?

Honestly, I don't even want to bother debating you cause I already knew there are plenty of people like you. You are the reason I wrote:

"To be honest, people who don't want to buy into this won't be swayed by this anyway, so I didn't even want to do compile it and really don't know how much more time I want to invest."

As for the MJ stuff, I didn't make that comment.

Go back to your list. You can break it down into 2 categories (examples below are from the top 10):
- Teams with superstar/HOF caliber guys (Lakers, Mavs, Heat, Spurs)
- Teams without those guys who still spend a lot of money (Knicks, Blazers, Magic, Wolves)

This is exactly what the Bulls have said - spending money without that caliber of player = wasting money, which they won't do. You can call that cheap or you can call that sensible. When they didn't have that kind of player (i.e. most of the time post-MJ), they weren't spending for spending's sake. That is a testament to the poor job done by Krause post-MJ, but they weren't sacrificing contention to save $$$, which is what most refer to as cheap. When they got Rose, what happened - they jumped in payroll, i.e. willing to spend for a contender. And even during the post-MJ Krause era, while they were unsuccessful in acquiring superstars, it wasn't because of being cheap unless you really think their pitch to TMac/Hill/Duncan failed because they weren't offering max deals or the same with the LeBron/Wade/Bosh trio (belied by signing Boozer and Mercer to big deals).

If by cheap you mean - "unwilling to pay big money for a team that goes out regularly in the first round" then I'd agree with you. But most seem to think cheap means "unwilling to pay for a contender." They haven't had a contender but that's because of the post-MJ Krause mess of decisionmaking and then more recently because of Rose's injuries.

I didn't use the word cheap. Your writeup should explain why Simmons is wrong by saying we spend like the Bucks and Pacers. If it doesn't address that, I'm not really interested in the discussion.

[AirP.]

Why does Chicago spend money when they have a superstar? Because it's a great financial move. Chicago's average playoff's ticket price is $214.47 a ticket which equates to over 4.7 million a game in ticket sales. If you get into the 2nd round you're probably playing 5-6 home games(we'll go with 6) and with that you're making an extra 28 million dollars. But this is where it really comes down to is it a good risk to add talent to your roster, utilize your cap to get deeper into the playoffs or take the safe bet, lower your payroll and if you make the playoffs it's just a bigger profit?

http://www.slamonline.com/nba/bulls-pla ... ht-season/

Also, there's also money to be made from selling merch, food and drink at the stadium for each playoff game too.

Moving Deng for Bynum saved the Bulls 15 million, Gar pretty much cemented his position with the Bulls with that much savings for a team that didn't look like they'd make the playoffs, getting to the playoffs was free money for the owers.

[TruthSerum]

I can't think of one big-name player in over a decade our Bulls haven't had the resources to obtain.

What should we make of that?

[coldfish]

Under Paxson, the Bulls have hit the reset button multiple times. They have gone for capspace in 2006, 2010 and 2014. Four year cycles.

One side effect of hitting the reset button is the team saves a lot of money while generating fan interest. If you want to be cynical, this 4 year cycle is a big hamster wheel where all of us are the hamsters. Its a very profitable cycle.

The Bulls are in a good position this summer and if they do well, they will have a good team that needs depth. This is yet another litmus test. There are many scenarios where the Bulls blow it here just for profit. That would be tough to swallow.

Side note: Bulls profits don't include this year. This year Chicago didn't pay the tax, get a huge tax distribution AND got a big check from the insurance company for Rose. 2013/14 was probably Chicago's most profitable ever year. I REALLY hope the Bulls aren't going to be stealth cheap this summer.

[GetBuLLish]

Only if you ignore their arguments. There is nothing logically inconsistent about their position. They tend to put the spending in context and give the front office the benefit of the doubt. People can hold positions you disagree with that are entirely consistent logically.

An organization can't have a top notch FO while also trotting out teams so bad for ten years that the organization justifiably spends less money than 22 of the league's 30 teams over that span.

[musiqsoulchild]

Under Paxson, the Bulls have hit the reset button multiple times. They have gone for capspace in 2006, 2010 and 2014. Four year cycles.

One side effect of hitting the reset button is the team saves a lot of money while generating fan interest. If you want to be cynical, this 4 year cycle is a big hamster wheel where all of us are the hamsters. Its a very profitable cycle.

Or you can be logical about it and say that 4 year cycles merge very closely with Rookie scale cycles.

And that the Bulls have had cap space in the past which they have used to re-sign their own draftees/signees who they felt were worth the money.

The Brand - Tyson - Curry cycle. The BG-Deng-Kirk cycle and the Noah-TT - Thabo cycle.

Interestingly enough, we seemed to have avoided paying all the obvious bad deals (Eddy, TT, BG). And we just cleaned out the relatively bad deal that Deng had.

The only real conversion miss has been Thabo, especially when considering his fit with Rose/Taj/Noah.

[Rerisen]

The whole situation is under a fog the last few years because of Rose's injury.

But good chance the heat would be on far more if the team kept losing in similar fashion and the best offensive help they found for Derrick in 5 years since BG was let go, was Rip Hamilton.

[Betta Bulleavit]

I have defended the organization and it's spending habits and will continue to do so. I have never argued that the Bulls spend more than most teams and never will. There seems to be a disconnect between those that call the front office cheap and those that feel as though the front office has been smart. In my opinion, there is a difference between the two. Just because they have chosen to spend their money wisely doesn't make them "cheap" or "run like a small market team."

The problem that I have is those that look only at what the Bulls have spent and judge them based on that factor and that factor alone. I choose not to do that. I understand that there are circumstances involved outside of the money. Would our payroll not have been higher had we got TMac in 2000? What were we supposed to do? Spend all of what we would have paid TMac on lower tier talent? Would our payroll not look similar to Maimi's had we succeeded in getting two of the big three?

It's like I said in another thread. People can knock the organization for not being able to lure top level free agents all they want. They wouldn't get much of an argument from me. But to bash them due to a perceived lack of will to pay money is rather asinine. It's not a matter of trying to have it both ways, it's just a matter of the facts involved. All that matters to me is that JR has always said that he will pay for a contender and I don't see anything that suggests otherwise.

[Peelboy]

I didn't use the word cheap. Your writeup should explain why Simmons is wrong by saying we spend like the Bucks and Pacers. If it doesn't address that, I'm not really interested in the discussion.

The better question is why it matters if they do. Simmons is saying that the Bulls don't contend because they spend like the Bucks and Pacers. He's saying it in the context of the Bulls going after a Love/Melo as in "who knows if they'll try, they don't spend like that."

The Bucks/Pacers spend what they spend because they can't afford to spend more. So for example, they make moves with contending teams to stay under the luxury tax even though that hurts their ability to contend. This offseason, it's generally expected that unless Lance Stephenson takes a significant paycut, he won't stay with the Pacers. Not because they arent' allowed to pay him as much but because they won't pay the lux tax so they won't pay him enough and they'd rather lose him for nothing than pay the lux tax.

The Bulls spend what they spend because their team hasn't been good enough and more spending wasn't going to change that. When they had a contender, they were happy to pay the luxury tax. We'll see if that happens again this offseason, I expect it to.

The difference is making decisions because of basketball first and finances second for a contender but not for a non-contender (Bulls) v making decisions based on finances first regardless (Bucks/Pacers).

[Professor Frink]

Only if you ignore their arguments. There is nothing logically inconsistent about their position. They tend to put the spending in context and give the front office the benefit of the doubt. People can hold positions you disagree with that are entirely consistent logically.

An organization can't have a top notch FO while also trotting out teams so bad for ten years that the organization justifiably spends less money than 22 of the league's 30 teams over that span.

What 10 year period are you talking about? There was a six-year period following the dynasty years when the team was terrible (and had a different front office). Since then the team has made the playoffs all but one year. In many years the team delivered incredible value for the amount of money they spent.

[coldfish]

Under Paxson, the Bulls have hit the reset button multiple times. They have gone for capspace in 2006, 2010 and 2014. Four year cycles.

One side effect of hitting the reset button is the team saves a lot of money while generating fan interest. If you want to be cynical, this 4 year cycle is a big hamster wheel where all of us are the hamsters. Its a very profitable cycle.

Or you can be logical about it and say that 4 year cycles merge very closely with Rookie scale cycles.

And that the Bulls have had cap space in the past which they have used to re-sign their own draftees/signees who they felt were worth the money.

The Brand - Tyson - Curry cycle. The BG-Deng-Kirk cycle and the Noah-TT - Thabo cycle.

Interestingly enough, we seemed to have avoided paying all the obvious bad deals (Eddy, TT, BG). And we just cleaned out the relatively bad deal that Deng had.

The only real conversion miss has been Thabo, especially when considering his fit with Rose/Taj/Noah.

It would be easy for teams to extend their rookies and continue to add to a team. Maybe trade them for people of similar salary level instead of let them go. Its pretty easy to have continuing increase in salary even as you turn over the roster. Only by going for capspace does a team end up reducing its payroll to a much lower figure and "resetting" the base cost.

The 2010 tank for capspace made a ton of sense. The 2006 one really didn't. The only real free agent was an old guy that played a position of little need. The Bulls would have been better off just keeping the salary and adding to it. The 2014 effort only makes sense because Melo is suddenly available. After that, the free agent pickings suck. If the Bulls don't land Melo, they would have been better off keeping a high salary level.

Basically 2/3rd of the resets that Chicago has made under Paxson don't really make basketball sense so if you are cynical, you can assume that it was done for financial reasons.

Here is hoping the Bulls put all of this to rest. I hope they trade for Melo in a way that gives them a high payroll now and forces them to pay lux tax later as they contend for multiple titles. The Bulls put to bed the idea they would completely screw over the team for profit when they decided not to trade a pick with Hamilton. Spending now would cement Reinsdorf's mantra that he will pay for a winner.

[musiqsoulchild]

Another way of looking at this:

A team of Melo + Rose+ Taj + Butler + Noah + MLE + BAE will come of out the East just based on age alone.

I think Reinsdorf pays tax for that. And I also think they prepared for this, by making the tough choice to let go of Deng to avoid the repeater.

We will start fresh as a 1st time LT payer in 2015. And potentially trade away Butler for a pick and bring in Mirotic in 2015 offseason.

This keeps us in reasonable LT territory while winning chips. Winning more playoff games offsets LT spend.

[musiqsoulchild]

The whole situation is under a fog the last few years because of Rose's injury.

But good chance the heat would be on far more if the team kept losing in similar fashion and the best offensive help they found for Derrick in 5 years since BG was let go, was Rip Hamilton.

Really good offensive help added to Derrick includes:

1) Carlos Boozer
2) Kyle Korver
3) Marco Bellinelli
4) MDJ

Notice also, how the one thing that stands out is how bad our FO is in terms of paying large salaries...Boozer, Deng, Nocioni, Ben Wallace....the list is endless. We keep paying more, when really we have shown that we can find great deals like Marco, CJ, MDJ, Nate, DJ...etc.

Like you said, the Rose thing makes conclusions hard to draw because the first piece of evidence is ALWAYS that Rose missed 3 playoff seasons.

[Betta Bulleavit]

Only if you ignore their arguments. There is nothing logically inconsistent about their position. They tend to put the spending in context and give the front office the benefit of the doubt. People can hold positions you disagree with that are entirely consistent logically.

An organization can't have a top notch FO while also trotting out teams so bad for ten years that the organization justifiably spends less money than 22 of the league's 30 teams over that span.

That's simply not true. Again, for the earliest part of the 2000's, Pax was cleaning up the mess that Krause had created. We didn't really begin to see the fruits of Paxson's labor until the mid 2000's. What you are doing is clumping Krause's mess into Paxson's era and that's kinda messed up.

[organix85]

The better question is why it matters if they do.

The reason it matters is cause you have plenty of people in here bashing Simmons for being wrong when I think the statement was correct. No one has really convinced me that the Bulls have not been operating like those two teams he mentioned. I mean, the point is clear enough. You have teams willing to spend like crazy... then you have the super cheap ones... and then you have the rest. The Bulls fall into the middle. If the best excuse people have is that we haven't been spending a lot cause we sucked for over a decade... well, that just speaks volumes about the guys running things.

Simmons is saying that the Bulls don't contend because they spend like the Bucks and Pacers. He's saying it in the context of the Bulls going after a Love/Melo as in "who knows if they'll try, they don't spend like that."

All he's saying is exactly how he feels... he said he can't get a read on them. That's what he said and he still ranked them third most likely to get Love. He ranked Chicago above LA, GS, Houston, and Phoenix. That seems fair enough to me actually. You guys are trying too hard to find something to be mad about. Not everyone is going to slob the Chicago Bulls when we haven't managed to get anyone noteworthy in the past decade.

The Bucks/Pacers spend what they spend because they can't afford to spend more. So for example, they make moves with contending teams to stay under the luxury tax even though that hurts their ability to contend. This offseason, it's generally expected that unless Lance Stephenson takes a significant paycut, he won't stay with the Pacers. Not because they arent' allowed to pay him as much but because they won't pay the lux tax so they won't pay him enough and they'd rather lose him for nothing than pay the lux tax.

Yea, cause the Pacers are running at a 7.7 million dollar loss while JR is taking in 50 million. The Pacers limitations are actually real... while the Bulls just decide to avoid the tax. I mean, is the Stephenson move that much more different than letting go Deng? We also wanted him to take a significant paycut. The bottom line is we aren't a whole lot different... more the same than not the same at least in terms of spending. The Pacers are legitimately on the edge trying to keep that team together and they are looking like they'll get bounced in the playoffs again anyway.

The Bulls spend what they spend because their team hasn't been good enough and more spending wasn't going to change that. When they had a contender, they were happy to pay the luxury tax. We'll see if that happens again this offseason, I expect it to.

Plenty of teams that are in the middle spending tier operate this same way...

The difference is making decisions because of basketball first and finances second for a contender but not for a non-contender (Bulls) v making decisions based on finances first regardless (Bucks/Pacers).

Meh... that's weak. It's like when you argue with a woman and you say something very simple and they go way beyond the surface to find a deeper meaning to what you said instead of taking it at face value. I mean, are you really sure the Bucks/Pacers make decisions just based on "finances first" and not "basketball first and finances second for a contender but not for a non-contender"? The Pacers are right now showing that they will spend all they have and go into the negative cause the team is a contender. You think they'd do that if the team sucked?

It is this easy... the Bulls spend money on par with the Bucks and Pacers... end of story. There's no need to go "well, but in 2004 they had so-n-so and they weren't a legit contender... then this guy got hurt... then this guy signed there instead... but they really will when they are ready to contend!" Jesus, don't over-complicate it. The numbers are easy to just look at and get the point. You think free agents would look at that list and be happy to hear every little reason why they didn't spend? If you have someone make a mistake at work, do you want to hear the sob story and a laundry list of excuses? Every team has reasons they didn't spend. I bet a fan of all those teams can come up with reasons they didn't spend more in a given season just like we can. At the end of the day all that matters if they did or didn't... and the Bulls didn't more often than not. If you're happy with them not spending, that's fine... but that doesn't make Simmons wrong in what he said. A lot of those top teams will go above just being average to see if they can get some wins and the Bulls prefer to hold their wallets and let things fall in their laps before they spend. We lucked into Rose, so maybe we'll luck into Love or Melo as well and go on to spend like we're the Lakers.

[Betta Bulleavit]

One side effect of hitting the reset button is the team saves a lot of money while generating fan interest. If you want to be cynical, this 4 year cycle is a big hamster wheel where all of us are the hamsters. Its a very profitable cycle.

Or you can be logical about it and say that 4 year cycles merge very closely with Rookie scale cycles.

And that the Bulls have had cap space in the past which they have used to re-sign their own draftees/signees who they felt were worth the money.

The Brand - Tyson - Curry cycle. The BG-Deng-Kirk cycle and the Noah-TT - Thabo cycle.

Interestingly enough, we seemed to have avoided paying all the obvious bad deals (Eddy, TT, BG). And we just cleaned out the relatively bad deal that Deng had.

The only real conversion miss has been Thabo, especially when considering his fit with Rose/Taj/Noah.

It would be easy for teams to extend their rookies and continue to add to a team. Maybe trade them for people of similar salary level instead of let them go. Its pretty easy to have continuing increase in salary even as you turn over the roster. Only by going for capspace does a team end up reducing its payroll to a much lower figure and "resetting" the base cost.

The 2010 tank for capspace made a ton of sense. The 2006 one really didn't. The only real free agent was an old guy that played a position of little need. The Bulls would have been better off just keeping the salary and adding to it. The 2014 effort only makes sense because Melo is suddenly available. After that, the free agent pickings suck. If the Bulls don't land Melo, they would have been better off keeping a high salary level.

Basically 2/3rd of the resets that Chicago has made under Paxson don't really make basketball sense so if you are cynical, you can assume that it was done for financial reasons.

Here is hoping the Bulls put all of this to rest. I hope they trade for Melo in a way that gives them a high payroll now and forces them to pay lux tax later as they contend for multiple titles. The Bulls put to bed the idea they would completely screw over the team for profit when they decided not to trade a pick with Hamilton. Spending now would cement Reinsdorf's mantra that he will pay for a winner.[/quote]

No..the 2006 reset didn't make much sense in hindsight. In fact, I still view that as a black eye to Paxson's tenure. However, this reset makes perfect sense at is obvious that this team as constructed is not a real contender and wont be. And then when you look at the fact that there are players there that meet a specific need, having money this summer was very important.

[Rerisen]

Really good offensive help added to Derrick includes:

1) Carlos Boozer
2) Kyle Korver
3) Marco Bellinelli
4) MDJ

You're joking right?

Carlos Boozer had one pretty good offensive year here, but none in the playoffs. Korver was good. Marco had one of his worst seasons here in a role over his head, very inefficient and eventually got benched in the playoffs for Rip Hamilton. MDJ just finished one of his worse offensive seasons as a pro.

None of them were 'really good'. Really good is Chris Bosh, or Afflalo, or someone that actually scores efficiently and can do multiple things on offense. Not players that just take shots because someone on the team has to do it.

And none were better than Ben Gordon who was the comparison player we lost to hunt bigger fish in 2010.

It's been so long since we've had a great offense I don't know if we even recognize what really good offense is anymore. For three point shooting, its over 40%. For scoring role players, its over .570 TS% or so. For a go-to guy, its probably .550 TS%+, ability to draw double teams, and can actually abuse a mismatch and present matchup problems to a defense.