It's time to watch Paxson, not blame him.

[kyrv]

I hate to speak for Doug, but I think he may agree with this.

I have thought Wallace sucked for quite some time. IMO, my opinion was low enough of him that I didn't really think that him playing poorly would affect the team that much as I anticipated him getting 30 or less minutes per night.

So, in summary, I didn't think Wallace sucking would impact the Bulls' ability to win 58 games this year.

I'm not sure Paxson felt the same way, so that may be a moot point, but it reasonably can explain Doug's position. The people who have impacted this dramatic fall off are Hinrich, Gordon, Deng, etc. in my mind because I didn't expect them to suck this bad.

I posted and anticipated Wallace would play fewer minutes because he is older, to save him for the playoffs, and to let the kids play. That was assuming he was playing reasonably well.

I never imagined with his contract that if and when he started to decline (well, I should say when, not if), he would still start and get entitlement minutes. I did not imagine that.

Now Kirk/Ben/Luol not playing well, is not Wallace's fault, although he certainly didn't help anyone.

The Wallace signing did and has paid dividends, in my opinion, however today Chicago is probably one of the worst possible fits for Wallace, much like Randolph on the Knicks is not a good fit.

As Coldfish has pointed out many times, with details, Wallace is nothing short of killing the Bulls right now.

[Susan]

I hate to speak for Doug, but I think he may agree with this.

I have thought Wallace sucked for quite some time. IMO, my opinion was low enough of him that I didn't really think that him playing poorly would affect the team that much as I anticipated him getting 30 or less minutes per night.

So, in summary, I didn't think Wallace sucking would impact the Bulls' ability to win 58 games this year.

I'm not sure Paxson felt the same way, so that may be a moot point, but it reasonably can explain Doug's position. The people who have impacted this dramatic fall off are Hinrich, Gordon, Deng, etc. in my mind because I didn't expect them to suck this bad.

Gordon (the last I checked) was in the 14s for his PER while Deng was in the 17-18s. Wallace and Hinrich are both about 6-7 points off of their career highs and Nocioni is a white Antoine Walker. Skiles was bad this season but if he was fired because Wallace didn't want to sit, then there are major issues here. Even so, there are 4 very legitimate bigs on this roster so this season/core group is not lost. There just has to be some ownership from anybody not named Ben Wallace and I'm 100% sure that Noah is the man for the job.

And reading the Sun-Times today made me intrigued by Billy Donivan as the next coach of this team.

[BrooklynBulls]

-= original quote snipped =-



Gordon (the last I checked) was in the 14s for his PER while Deng was in the 17-18s. Wallace and Hinrich are both about 6-7 points off of their career highs and Nocioni is a white Antoine Walker. Skiles was bad this season but if he was fired because Wallace didn't want to sit, then there are major issues here. Even so, there are 4 very legitimate bigs on this roster so this season/core group is not lost. There just has to be some ownership from anybody not named Ben Wallace and I'm 100% sure that Noah is the man for the job.

And reading the Sun-Times today made me intrigued by Billy Donivan as the next coach of this team.

He'll take the job!

Then fire himself.

[Scott May]

And reading the Sun-Times today made me intrigued by Billy Donivan as the next coach of this team.

If the prospect of being paid $30-odd million dollars to get to coach Dwight Howard for five years in a warm weather, no income tax state didn't entice Billy to make the jump, I'm not sure our ragtag bunch and butt-cold city would.

[blumeany]

The saddest thing of all is that I bet we'll tank, we'll get a really high pick, probably #1 - and it will be a really **** draft. Go figure. We just can't win.

[Susan]

-= original quote snipped =-



If the prospect of being paid $30-odd million dollars to get to coach Dwight Howard for five years in a warm weather, no income tax state didn't entice Billy to make the jump, I'm not sure our ragtag bunch and butt-cold city would.

Does Dwight have a ponytail?

[topper09]

Now are you guys gonna start listening to me???

[JackFinn]

Only if you use red font, italics, and underlines.

[Susan]

Yellow font is better.

[JackFinn]

Touch

[Susan]

White font would really tie his posts together.

[jax98]

I've seen a lot of people really pissed about Paxson due to our poor play.

I don't think it's time to be pissed at Paxson. The poor play is not his fault. The poor play is the fault of players who have drastically underperformed their previously established ability levels. The additions to this years team (Joe Smith, Joakim Noah, and Aaron Gray) all look very good in their time (albeit limited for Noah and Gray). The problem is that previously established young veterans have inexplicably played considerably worse.

I don't blame Paxson for that, because there's no way to have predicted that. So the time to blame Paxson isn't now.

It is time to watch what he does. The team needs to be re-evaluated after this year from top to bottom. I don't think things will happen at the deadline, because at the deadline 2 types of teams make moves. Those selling off star players to rebuild (we aren't that team unless Ben Wallace or Joe Smith counts as star players), or the team selling off young pieces to get a star player to push for a title this year (we're definitely not that team either).

The time we can next really shake things up is the off season. We'll have a new coach to hire, and we'll be able to make trades without roster concerns as well as having Hinrich and Nocioni off of BYC deals and far more tradeable and making matching larger salaries far easier.

The time to call for Paxson's ouster as GM will be if he's ineffectual of making viable chances for this team next year and the team is still floundering around. My personal timeline is the end of the 08/09 season I want to feel good about our direction again.

Terrific post Doug.

I hope the majority of posters around here share your view on the current situation. This is exactly what should happen, and likely what will happen. I can imgaine John taking a look from every possible angle before he makes a move (Which is the right thing to do anyway). Obviously, something has to change. IMO, it starts and ends with Ben Wallace. He's eating up minutes while producing negative value. If the Orlando game was any indication, both Tyrus & Joakim needs to be out there.

Now are you guys gonna start listening to me???

Nope..

[dougthonus]

Yeah, Paxon's ultra-conservative gm'ing is frustrating as hell, but standing Pax just might be what we need.

I think it's funny that people blame him for being conservative when his biggest mistake in the NBA (the 06 draft) was him taking a gigantic risk in Tyrus Thomas over LaMarcus Aldridge.

[dougthonus]

I know Doug made a thread, but it is John Paxson's fault. The players are not performing but he assemebled every damn piece on this team. Its his players. Its his coaches. Its his fault along with the coach and the players.

Of course the roster is entirely John Paxson's fault. You're grossly misinterpreting my point.

My point is that we all expected this roster to compete and do well. Maybe not to win a championship, but we expected this roster to be one piece away. We expected this team to be in position to just try and wait for that final piece via trade while making the 2nd round of the playoffs or maybe the ECF.

When the team is very close to title contention, has some holes holding them back, and has some very good trade assets then you want to be patient and find the right deal to get us to the true title contender status. I believe that's what we were doing. We were involved in talks for KG and Kobe this summer. We were trying to find the last pieces to put together, but we were looking for the right deals.

So my point is not that the team's current predicament doesn't fall on Paxson's shoulders. My point is you don't blame Paxson for not predicting unpredictable events (like the team of hard workers completely quitting and falling apart).

This is entirely different from saying that we have holes on the roster. Right now, if we had a low post scorer and everyone else played the same, this team would still be on pace to win 30 something games. We're more than 1 player away right now. A lot more.

I'll try to set up this analogy:
Say I build a house in the far western suburbs (Gilberts, Huntlet etc). There are no good school districts yet, and I have to drive 15 minutes to get to the closest store, and those things suck. Then my house gets hit by a tornado and is destroyed. Then you say, well it's you're fault for getting your house destroyed. You had no school districts and were 15 minutes from the grocery store anyway.

The fact that this roster was a considered to have ECF talent with holes on the roster means to me that the holes on the roster are not the reason we are on pace to win 30 or so games. The 05/06 roster had worse holes and won 41 and our young players were less developed. The 06/07 roster didn't look as good as this roster and won 49 games. Our massive fall from grace does not appear related to these holes but to the players completely quitting, and that's something I would never have predicted.

[dougthonus]

Skiles was willing to confront Wallace about headbands, all the reports state that he never addressed Ben's lackluster play and piss-poor effort last season or this season. I think this was weak of Skiles, but in many understandable.

The youngs saw this at the same time that Skiles was riding their asses per usual. They got discouraged, and they started putting out a 98% effort, not a 99% one. That's all it takes to start getting your ass beaten a lot when a team wins so many games at the margins.

It's an interesting take on Wallace, and since I said in November of 06 that we should trade him for expiring contracts and admit or mistake before it's too late (and was flamed mercilessly for it). I agree with the train wreck that is the Ben Wallace signing.

My counter point to this is that Ben Wallace was a train wreck last year and the team won 49 games. I figured they would make the obvious adjustment of just lowering his minutes a bit (28 minutes a night) which would allow him to play with greater intensity while on the floor and maybe avoid some of his lazy periods). However, even I grossly misinterpreted what a douche Wallace was and that he would basically turn into stage 4 cancer if he didn't get his way on everything he wanted.

I don't know if we could have gotten out of Wallace's contract, but I agree that we need to dump him for someone with less years or be prepared to Tim Thomas his behind.

[Johnston797]

So my point is not that the team's current predicament doesn't fall on Paxson's shoulders. My point is you don't blame Paxson for not predicting unpredictable events (like the team of hard workers completely quitting and falling apart).

Why shouldn't we blame Paxson? Is the strategy of getting all hard workers and overachievers proven and unblamable? Or was it bound to flame out sooner or later?

I blame Pax for Wallace. I blame Pax for losing Chandler for squat. I blame him for putting a roster together than has too many tweeners. I blame for valuing the players too high. I blame him not anticipating these problems. I blame him for not overpaying on a trade to get value. I blame him for taking TT is he was not going to create an envirnoment where he can grow. I blame him for this pathetic interim coach.

[suckfish]

I think like most that Doug is spot on, as usual.

The pieces we had coming into the season were all expected to be better than last year, at the very worse just as good as last year. Many including me had us contenting for a conference title, I was happy with how the team was assembled.

What has happened was the completely unexpected, nobody could have predicted this. Players are severely under performing and appear to have somewhat regressed. You can't put that on Pax, just like us he thought that he had a legit Eastern Conference contender on his hands. Sure you can go back and pin the previous draft picks on him, I'm sure many will agree that Ty over LA wasn't a great choice or Thabo over Brewer...

Just like Scott Skiles, you can't blame the entire train wreck on Pax, it's a freak accident.

Paxson has said that he will play the youngsters good consistent minutes if it's clear that the bulls aren't going to turn this around. It's going to be interesting to see when he actually decides that the season is a wash, IMO it has to be soon. Things have gone from bad to disaster extremely quickly.

Everything thing this year has been completely unexpected, it's unfair to blame one person be it Paxson, Skiles, Hinrich, Wallace... Almost everybody has played a part in this mess. It's how we go about it from here on wards which is most intriguing.

Like the thread title, we will be watching from hear onwards.

[molepharmer]

I've seen a lot of people really pissed about Paxson due to our poor play.

I don't think it's time to be pissed at Paxson. The poor play is not his fault. The poor play is the fault of players who have drastically underperformed their previously established ability levels. The additions to this years team (Joe Smith, Joakim Noah, and Aaron Gray) all look very good in their time (albeit limited for Noah and Gray). The problem is that previously established young veterans have inexplicably played considerably worse. ....

Although I agree with the principle (i.e. Pax can't be blamed for current level of play), I disagree with the initial concept that 'a lot of people' do. As the contrarians are showing in this thread, their displeasure is overwhemingly with the roster that Pax has assembled.

And up until Dec 25th, Pax was recieving far less negativity on this board; I'd estimate ~90% of the disgust for the team's performance was being directed at Skiles. If you can't blame Pax for the underperforming, it seems similarly unfair to blame Skiles; though many people had no problem with it.

[waffle]

Haven't read whole thread

Pax is not a status quo, let's hide under a rock and pray kind of guy...

He'll do something.

[Shootdabull]

Hi Doug,

Good post. Just like I give Pax credit for the three playoff runs, I will also give him credit for the current mess. I don't think the roster is a complete disaster, but Pax needs to make some moves. Pax did a good job at eliminating the cancers JR left behind. Now lets see how he does with the cancers he created.

Pax has several challanges ahead:
Can Pax rid of of Big Ben without adding another cancer?
Will they be willing to play Ben behind Gray/Noah/TT?
Will they let TS play - can he play?
Is capt Kirk just a head case this year or is he feeling Big Ben's entitlement minutes (I don't know if he is part of the cancer or part of the cure)?
Is it time to trade BG or LD, before they turn into a crawford situation?
Do you ship out du - maybe pick up a second rounder. Unless he is our back PG of the future its a good time to cut bait and give his minutes to TS or Jameson.
Do you do Joe Smith a favor and send him to a contender?
New Coach?
Pax has more questions to answer as losses pile up. Sitting and doing nothing is an option, but it is not the one I'm looking for. I'm willing to wait it out until summer assuming team just want to raid our roster for little in return.