Road to nowhere

[coldfish]

2012 - Draymond Green, Jae Crowder
2013 - Gobert, Plumlee
2014 - Lavine, Capela, Anderson, Nurkic, Jokic
2016 - Siakam, Murray, Brogdon
2017 - Mitchell, Adebayo, Allen
2018 - Bridges, SGA, Brunson
2019 - Cam Johnson, Herro

2012 / 2013 agreed

2014 - I don't think there was a reasonable way to get Jokic, so wouldn't blame them on him, but it was a loser for trading up for McDermott when staying put gave you Gary Harris and Nurkic, and trading up could have gotten you LaVine, so still a big loss

2016 - Wouldn't blame them so much here, those guys were better, but none were in the reasonable draft range
2017 - Actually drafting Lauri ended up being fine, not as good as Mitchell, but he's become an all-star at 7, not a bad pick

2018 - Agreed - big loss at both picks #7 SGA/Bridges, #22 Brunson but even closer guys like Shamet, Robert Williams, Mo Wagner were way better than the Promise

2019 - Don't blame them much here, not sure Herro is really anything all that much more than Coby White to be honest, and Cam Johnson was viewed as a massive reach when he went at 11 and while his arch type is more valuable, he's not much of a star

Either way, even with my minor quibbles, that's still 2012, 2013, 2014, 2018 x2 that there guys you could have taken on 5 out of 8 picks that were in your range that might have been franchise changing, and on the other 3 picks, there were franchise changing guys that probably weren't reasonable guesses. The 2004-2012 version of the front office probably wouldn't have gone 5 for 5 in 2012-2019 on those reasonable picks, but probably wouldn't have gone 0-5 on them.

The AKME years:
2020 - Halliburton
2021 - Didn't draft
2022 - No one of note taken after Terry
2023 - Didn't draft
2024 - Jury is still out on Matas

This gets back to the comment about swings at the plate. AKME basically doesn't have any.

I give them medium grief on Haliburton, though he was a reasonable pick based on the mocks, and would have been in consideration, the reality is he went 8 picks later and I typically would say that means not in the reasonably close range. Also out of the guys between 4-12, only him and Vassell (11), taken today still seem like better picks than Pat. Maybe a couple other guys you could argue as toss ups.

One really bad thing about them is the misjudgment around Lauri (not that they were alone here). Ultimately, if they had believed in Lauri and developed him, they don't trade for Vuc (because Lauri fills the stretch big role) and they don't draft Pat (because Lauri is their starting PF) and would have been may more likely to have taken Haliburton instead (PG was a bigger need with how they entered the season).

in 2022, it's worth noting Christian Braun and Walter Kessler were both selections within 4-5 spots of Terry and both of those guys would have likely been much better picks. Kessler in particular would fill a big need for us as an interior shot blocker, so I would say Terry was a miss. Maybe there wasn't a near "superstar" type miss, but those are still big misses, especially because interior shot blocking is a massive problem at the time we pass on Kessler for Terry, and even at this moment, the roster is packed with guards.

But as you say, the real elephant in the room here is the strategy. The execution doesn't look great, but Ayo was a really huge selection that worked out well (even if it seemed super obvious at the time), so maybe their overall drafting is fine (Terry looks like maybe he'll turn into a role player, Pat is maybe a low rung starter, so not total busts), but their strategy put them in a spot where they are both missing the playoffs and not getting draft picks. If they had been a 6 seed the last 3 years, I probably still wouldn't be excited about it, but at least you'd have something even if you never advanced. To get no playoffs and then also not have a way to even have a chance to restock your talent base is really bad.

In comparison, the last regime up until the Jimmy build frequently had extra picks, and made the playoffs virtually every year up until they went into a purposeful rebuild and then had mid lotto picks every year. They also screwed up when they went rebuild by not leaning into it hard enough, but they didn't land in complete no man's land like this group.

I think that we are on the same page. To stick with the baseball analogy, what you want is the most quality at bats as you can get. Statistically you are eventually going to get a few big hits. People say that Derrick Rose was luck. I don't see it that way. The Bulls had a ton of high draft picks in the 2000's. Eventually one of them was going to work out.

The current Bulls don't get to the plate enough. The post 2012 Bulls got to the plate plenty but had some flaw in their system (more likely than not, Gar chasing fads) that caused them to come up empty.

Going forward, we can assume the Bulls are never going to go the Lakers route and try to buy a team. As such, they have to build through the draft like the pre-2012 Bulls did. In order to do so, you need to get as many swings as possible (accumulate picks, not give them away) and do a good job taking the best player available.

[League Circles]

2012 - Draymond Green, Jae Crowder
2013 - Gobert, Plumlee
2014 - Lavine, Capela, Anderson, Nurkic, Jokic
2016 - Siakam, Murray, Brogdon
2017 - Mitchell, Adebayo, Allen
2018 - Bridges, SGA, Brunson
2019 - Cam Johnson, Herro

2012 / 2013 agreed

2014 - I don't think there was a reasonable way to get Jokic, so wouldn't blame them on him, but it was a loser for trading up for McDermott when staying put gave you Gary Harris and Nurkic, and trading up could have gotten you LaVine, so still a big loss

2016 - Wouldn't blame them so much here, those guys were better, but none were in the reasonable draft range
2017 - Actually drafting Lauri ended up being fine, not as good as Mitchell, but he's become an all-star at 7, not a bad pick

2018 - Agreed - big loss at both picks #7 SGA/Bridges, #22 Brunson but even closer guys like Shamet, Robert Williams, Mo Wagner were way better than the Promise

2019 - Don't blame them much here, not sure Herro is really anything all that much more than Coby White to be honest, and Cam Johnson was viewed as a massive reach when he went at 11 and while his arch type is more valuable, he's not much of a star

Either way, even with my minor quibbles, that's still 2012, 2013, 2014, 2018 x2 that there guys you could have taken on 5 out of 8 picks that were in your range that might have been franchise changing, and on the other 3 picks, there were franchise changing guys that probably weren't reasonable guesses. The 2004-2012 version of the front office probably wouldn't have gone 5 for 5 in 2012-2019 on those reasonable picks, but probably wouldn't have gone 0-5 on them.

The AKME years:
2020 - Halliburton
2021 - Didn't draft
2022 - No one of note taken after Terry
2023 - Didn't draft
2024 - Jury is still out on Matas

This gets back to the comment about swings at the plate. AKME basically doesn't have any.

I give them medium grief on Haliburton, though he was a reasonable pick based on the mocks, and would have been in consideration, the reality is he went 8 picks later and I typically would say that means not in the reasonably close range. Also out of the guys between 4-12, only him and Vassell (11), taken today still seem like better picks than Pat. Maybe a couple other guys you could argue as toss ups.

One really bad thing about them is the misjudgment around Lauri (not that they were alone here). Ultimately, if they had believed in Lauri and developed him, they don't trade for Vuc (because Lauri fills the stretch big role) and they don't draft Pat (because Lauri is their starting PF) and would have been may more likely to have taken Haliburton instead (PG was a bigger need with how they entered the season).

in 2022, it's worth noting Christian Braun and Walter Kessler were both selections within 4-5 spots of Terry and both of those guys would have likely been much better picks. Kessler in particular would fill a big need for us as an interior shot blocker, so I would say Terry was a miss. Maybe there wasn't a near "superstar" type miss, but those are still big misses, especially because interior shot blocking is a massive problem at the time we pass on Kessler for Terry, and even at this moment, the roster is packed with guards.

But as you say, the real elephant in the room here is the strategy. The execution doesn't look great, but Ayo was a really huge selection that worked out well (even if it seemed super obvious at the time), so maybe their overall drafting is fine (Terry looks like maybe he'll turn into a role player, Pat is maybe a low rung starter, so not total busts), but their strategy put them in a spot where they are both missing the playoffs and not getting draft picks. If they had been a 6 seed the last 3 years, I probably still wouldn't be excited about it, but at least you'd have something even if you never advanced. To get no playoffs and then also not have a way to even have a chance to restock your talent base is really bad.

In comparison, the last regime up until the Jimmy build frequently had extra picks, and made the playoffs virtually every year up until they went into a purposeful rebuild and then had mid lotto picks every year. They also screwed up when they went rebuild by not leaning into it hard enough, but they didn't land in complete no man's land like this group.

Random thoughts:

Thanks for elaborating on the Gar / Paxson / Lloyd dynamic in the previous post. Just interesting to hear a personal account. I never felt like I had a good handle on Gar at all.

Why does anyone ever divide the previous FO era into Pax years and Gar years? I honestly don't understand and never have. Do people honestly think that Paxson pushed himself upstairs into a non-final decision making role and for some insane reason delegated that job to Gar? I have always believed that was an impossibility, even though I admit Pax once himself said that he can't overrule Gar, which I chalk up to being simply a super awkward and humorous way for Pax to give Gar some credibility in the media. I'm confident that Paxson considered and either nixed or approved every single player and coaching decision from 2003 to 2019 or whenever exactly AK was hired. It would really make absolutely no sense if things were the way many fans frame them as - with Pax making decisions until 2009 and then Gar taking over. And if that were the case, which it wasn't IMO, then Gar should actually be given a lot MORE credit than Pax, because he built a wildly better team, with a wildly better coach and wildly better roster chemistry.

Why are "common mocks" of any relevance whatsoever in grading who a FO should or shouldn't have drafted? IMO, mock drafts are simply attempts of media members to get views based on their own opinions and little bits and pieces of info from team FOs (which surely would include plenty of deliberate misinformation) and agents (which are laughable). Bottom line, there is no logical reason why teams would share their true mocks, at least ahead of time. And we know that the Bulls as an org most definitely believe in secrecy. I believe Reinsdorf has talked about it, plus it's an obvious good practice, plus their habits for 20+ years have proved it over and over. Then, of course, teams shouldn't be paying any attention whatsoever to who media guys think would be good, nor really much attention to what they think other teams will do. Because they should assume the media aren't knowledgeable enough to teach them anything they can't determine for themselves, and they should assume that anything they think they know about another team is 50% likely to be misinformation. My point is, every team in the league should be judged to have made a major mistake in not drafting a guy like Jocic #1 overall. Nobody should get a pass because nbadraft.net or whatever didn't have Jokic mocked higher.

[dougthonus]

Why does anyone ever divide the previous FO era into Pax years and Gar years? I honestly don't understand and never have. Do people honestly think that Paxson pushed himself upstairs into a non-final decision making role and for some insane reason delegated that job to Gar? I have always believed that was an impossibility, even though I admit Pax once himself said that he can't overrule Gar, which I chalk up to being simply a super awkward and humorous way for Pax to give Gar some credibility in the media. I'm confident that Paxson considered and either nixed or approved every single player and coaching decision from 2003 to 2019 or whenever exactly AK was hired. It would really make absolutely no sense if things were the way many fans frame them as - with Pax making decisions until 2009 and then Gar taking over. And if that were the case, which it wasn't IMO, then Gar should actually be given a lot MORE credit than Pax, because he built a wildly better team, with a wildly better coach and wildly better roster chemistry.

There was a moment where Paxson wanted to retire, he was just too stressed, and JR begged him to stay and they promoted Gar and pushed Pax away from stuff. Gar was definitely the face of everything at that point, and while I think Pax's input was there, I don't think he was doing the hard work anymore, so his input likely wasn't as valuable.

At this point, Pax is just no as invested, so his opinion isn't as useful even if it is still there. It's like he may weigh in on a draft choice, but instead of doing 1000s of hours of research on his own, he's not, so is his opinion really that meaningful now?

So to the extent Pax was still involved, Pax was also likely a lesser version of himself due to scaling back.

But as I said, I attribute a lot more of it to Lloyd than either Pax or Gar.

Why are "common mocks" of any relevance whatsoever in grading who a FO should or shouldn't have drafted? IMO, mock drafts are simply attempts of media members to get views based on their own opinions and little bits and pieces of info from team FOs (which surely would include plenty of deliberate misinformation) and agents (which are laughable). Bottom line, there is no logical reason why teams would share their true mocks, at least ahead of time. And we know that the Bulls as an org most definitely believe in secrecy. I believe Reinsdorf has talked about it, plus it's an obvious good practice, plus their habits for 20+ years have proved it over and over. Then, of course, teams shouldn't be paying any attention whatsoever to who media guys think would be good, nor really much attention to what they think other teams will do. Because they should assume the media aren't knowledgeable enough to teach them anything they can't determine for themselves, and they should assume that anything they think they know about another team is 50% likely to be misinformation. My point is, every team in the league should be judged to have made a major mistake in not drafting a guy like Jocic #1 overall. Nobody should get a pass because nbadraft.net or whatever didn't have Jokic mocked higher.

So I used to work at draftexpress.com which was one of the best mock sites in the world at the time (probably the best). The majority of the way we got our info was Jonathan (and other guys who worked with us) would go to all the events, and talk to all the other scouts, and get copies of their notes. Our mock wasn't really built on any particular genius that Jonathan had scouting the draft (though I'm sure he's fine as a scout), but it was actually a consensus opinion of nearly every scout in the NBA and talking to them multiple times.

I went to events with him, and he knew _everyone_ at every event and gathered all his intel from them. So it's not that the media knows more, it's that these things are actually built on the credibility of all the real NBA scouts and intel they gather. By the end, our mock draft was not built based on whom we thought was the best but built based on intel of what we thought would happen based on all the talk we had with insiders, and we were highly accurate overall.

So whether you want to value them or not is up to you, and certainly not suggesting every other mock is built in this way, just telling you how ours was built, but I would say our mock was a really good reference point to how the league as a whole graded out all of the prospects and not based on one random person's view of it.

[HomoSapien]

I still separate the Gar years and the Paxson years. Some time around 2012, the front office went to complete crap. Before then, it was really good. As bad as AKME has been, I would take them over the Gar years. Gar had no understanding or ability to cash in any chips. Even if the Bulls got assets, he would just squander them on guys like McDermott.

Let's not forget Hoiberg and Boylen either.

I think Matt Lloyd was a huge part of their success.

If you think about their great success in the 2004-2012 era it was primarily due to the draft:
Matt Lloyd was a scout in 2003
Promoted Senior Manager of basketball ops in 2004
Promoted to Director of College Scouting 2007
Resigned 2012

The promotions would show that the org highly valued Lloyd and that he was a key part of their success and good decisions. Where did everything go badly? 2012, the year Lloyd left. I had actually said in 2012 that they should have made Lloyd GM instead of Gar in order to keep him.

I've not talked with Pax, Lloyd, or Gar since whenever I quit my blog, which I forget exactly when that was, maybe 2013-2014ish, so it's been a super long time, but my recollection from that time in my private conversations with all three, Pax/Lloyd both struck me as very really bright and honest with a lot of depth. Gar was the personality guy. I know people didn't like him from his interviews, but he was by _far_ the nicest guy.

Gar actually would call me every year before the season started to check in, allow me to answer any questions, he was super nice and great to deal with, something Pax wouldn't have done (lloyd was never in position where it would have been appropriate). Gar viewed it as a priority to maintain relationships with media though, was very present, even with smaller media. In that sense, I'll actually always be a bit grateful for how well Gar treated me as an individual.

That all said, you know how when you meet someone that you can size up how bright someone is relative to yourself pretty quickly? Pax/Lloyd struck me as much brighter than Gar, way more thoughtful in their process and the way they talked about things. Kind of just talking with all these guys, I definitely got the impression that Lloyd was a big loss and Gar was probably not the right guy to be a lead decision maker.

That may be overly simplistic, because it was based on a relatively small amount of conversations, but it also matches the timelines of how things changed, so for me, it's a thought I would have had either way that also happens to match the actual results.

Really cool insight, Doug. If I remember correctly, you had a phone call from Gar angry about something you reported once too right? Either way, very cool that you would get to be in such close proximity with those guys during an interesting era in franchise.

Lloyd was almost an urban legend here for a while. A lot of people speculated that he was the special sauce in the dynamic and also noticed that things went downhill when he left. I was hoping he'd be in the mix when we hired AKME. Then again, he's now the GM of the Wolves and was responsible for the KAT trade.

[dougthonus]

Really cool insight, Doug. If I remember correctly, you had a phone call from Gar angry about something you reported once too right? Either way, very cool that you would get to be in such close proximity with those guys during an interesting era in franchise.

Gar called me demanding my sources for reporting that James Johnson had some incident in practice (maybe dogging it or was in the doghouse or something) in his rookie season before preseason games started and that Taj Gibson was standing out and looked like a stud. He was upset about the Johnson leak because no one else had it because it was a closed practice (I forget exactly what happened).

Lloyd was almost an urban legend here for a while. A lot of people speculated that he was the special sauce in the dynamic and also noticed that things went downhill when he left. I was hoping he'd be in the mix when we hired AKME. Then again, he's now the GM of the Wolves and was responsible for the KAT trade.

Lloyd isn't their main decision maker though, that's Connelly, Lloyd is in the Eversley role. That said, he's clearly a piece of that decision making process.

[League Circles]

There was a moment where Paxson wanted to retire, he was just too stressed, and JR begged him to stay and they promoted Gar and pushed Pax away from stuff. Gar was definitely the face of everything at that point, and while I think Pax's input was there, I don't think he was doing the hard work anymore, so his input likely wasn't as valuable.

At this point, Pax is just no as invested, so his opinion isn't as useful even if it is still there. It's like he may weigh in on a draft choice, but instead of doing 1000s of hours of research on his own, he's not, so is his opinion really that meaningful now?

So to the extent Pax was still involved, Pax was also likely a lesser version of himself due to scaling back.

But as I said, I attribute a lot more of it to Lloyd than either Pax or Gar.

OK, if people think Paxson wasn't doing as much work and therefore made worse decisions (due to relying on others such as Gar, and, in your view, notably not Lloyd), that's understandable. I happen to think it was probably more just that, as you said, he stopped being the "face" (which IMO is meaningless in grading him). But I'm talking about decision making. You think Paxson was perhaps only "weighing in on a draft choice" as opposed to telling Gar and the other people that worked for him "hey guys, thank you all for your input. I HAVE DECIDED that we are drafting player X"? Even if he didn't directly dictate who they were drafting at all times, I find it actually impossible to believe that he wouldn't know about moves ahead of time and overrrule people whenever he felt like it. Because of this, IMO, he should be considered ultimately 100% responsible for the roster and coaches until AK was hired. Otherwise, what exactly was his job? He wasn't a consultant. He even became more of a "face" later in his tenure once it became clear that Gar wasn't a good "face".

So I used to work at draftexpress.com which was one of the best mock sites in the world at the time (probably the best). The majority of the way we got our info was Jonathan (and other guys who worked with us) would go to all the events, and talk to all the other scouts, and get copies of their notes. Our mock wasn't really built on any particular genius that Jonathan had scouting the draft (though I'm sure he's fine as a scout), but it was actually a consensus opinion of nearly every scout in the NBA and talking to them multiple times.

I went to events with him, and he knew _everyone_ at every event and gathered all his intel from them. So it's not that the media knows more, it's that these things are actually built on the credibility of all the real NBA scouts and intel they gather. By the end, our mock draft was not built based on whom we thought was the best but built based on intel of what we thought would happen based on all the talk we had with insiders, and we were highly accurate overall.

So whether you want to value them or not is up to you, and certainly not suggesting every other mock is built in this way, just telling you how ours was built, but I would say our mock was a really good reference point to how the league as a whole graded out all of the prospects and not based on one random person's view of it.

Fair enough, thanks for the explanation, I knew of your work with DX. I guess it must just be me, but I'm having a really hard time wrapping my head around why anyone would share their opinion with him, much less make copies of their notes for him. Not saying they didn't. It's just so utterly strange to me. Especially since it was surely almost entirely based on conditions of anonymity. Like when people leak things in politics or whatever, they at least ostensibly do it out of some concern for public good. But that doesn't exist in entertainment like the NBA. Do you think it was just kind of a human experience thing where bonding over basketball and being patronized for their (expert) opinions was simply more important to them than maintaining competitive advantage for their employers?

[dougthonus]

OK, if people think Paxson wasn't doing as much work and therefore made worse decisions (due to relying on others such as Gar, and, in your view, notably not Lloyd), that's understandable. I happen to think it was probably more just that, as you said, he stopped being the "face" (which IMO is meaningless in grading him). But I'm talking about decision making. You think Paxson was perhaps only "weighing in on a draft choice" as opposed to telling Gar and the other people that worked for him "hey guys, thank you all for your input. I HAVE DECIDED that we are drafting player X"? Even if he didn't directly dictate who they were drafting at all times, I find it actually impossible to believe that he wouldn't know about moves ahead of time and overrrule people whenever he felt like it. Because of this, IMO, he should be considered ultimately 100% responsible for the roster and coaches until AK was hired. Otherwise, what exactly was his job? He wasn't a consultant. He even became more of a "face" later in his tenure once it became clear that Gar wasn't a good "face".

I don't know what was going on, I have four theories that all could have happened at about the same time, and it is possible that each of them is partially responsible and that it isn't a single thing (also possible there are other alternatives).
1: Matt Lloyd leaves
2: Gar becomes the biggest (or maybe just much bigger) voice
3: Pax has become demotivated and is now just worse (checked out) but still has a big voice
4: Nothing really changed, just variance that happened to be really good before a date and bad afterwards, but the process was basically the same

Fair enough, thanks for the explanation, I knew of your work with DX. I guess it must just be me, but I'm having a really hard time wrapping my head around why anyone would share their opinion with him, much less make copies of their notes for him. Not saying they didn't. It's just so utterly strange to me. Especially since it was surely almost entirely based on conditions of anonymity. Like when people leak things in politics or whatever, they at least ostensibly do it out of some concern for public good. But that doesn't exist in entertainment like the NBA. Do you think it was just kind of a human experience thing where bonding over basketball and being patronized for their (expert) opinions was simply more important to them than maintaining competitive advantage for their employers?

I went to a few of these events and believe me, people talked to him. People talked to me. A guy for the Wizards showed me how he keeps his detailed notes and a few of his exact things he was collecting for his team because I asked him about the process of scouting. They also all talk a lot, it's a long lonely job scouting, you are always on the road, you are seeing the same people at the same events, all the scouts talk to each other too. My guess is they are all friends or have pods of friends because of this.

Like we went to dinner one night with a group of like 8 people from different orgs (I think it was two NBA scouts, an NBA agent, and European scouts from a few different teams), and everyone was openly talking about who they liked from the day's action and what things they liked and debating players. My guess is they all do their own job better by sharing intel with each other and probably have a humanistic desire to help each other or gather opinions about different guys.

I'm sure there is an element of keeping certain things quiet, but generally, everyone already knows who the big names are, they are all scouting the same guys, the are all looking at the same things, they like to talk about it, they are all friends. At some point you get past the college season and you have to take in all that data and figure out your own rankings and bring guys in, and I'd guess around this point they circle the wagons, but early on while things are very much in motion and moving, information seems to be shared incredibly openly.

[League Circles]

I don't know what was going on, I have four theories that all could have happened at about the same time, and it is possible that each of them is partially responsible and that it isn't a single thing (also possible there are other alternatives).
1: Matt Lloyd leaves
2: Gar becomes the biggest (or maybe just much bigger) voice
3: Pax has become demotivated and is now just worse (checked out) but still has a big voice
4: Nothing really changed, just variance that happened to be really good before a date and bad afterwards, but the process was basically the same

The thing with this is that you have the order mixed up. They were mediocre under "Pax", and then when "Gar" took over allegedly, they completely remade the team into a wildly better one with virtually an entire new roster and coach. There were basically three eras under Pax:
1. Mediocre team before Gar
2. Excellent team under Gar
3. Poor team under Gar and/or Pax (the reason I call this era ostensibly undetermined is because IIRC Paxson started doing the press conferences again - IMO all Gar really ever did in a sense).

I believe the same guy was the decision maker for all three distinct eras. I just think that's how it works in this league. You certainly may be on to something regarding Lloyd for all I know. I just think it's humorous and baseless how people try to assign the positives of 2003-2020 to Pax and the negatives to Gar, when, if we were forced to attribute the moves and roster years to one guy or the other, Gar would clearly be better (I'm not doing that and not even saying you were - I asked it as a question that I was hoping someone would know the answer to).

I went to a few of these events and believe me, people talked to him. People talked to me. A guy for the Wizards showed me how he keeps his detailed notes and a few of his exact things he was collecting for his team because I asked him about the process of scouting. They also all talk a lot, it's a long lonely job scouting, you are always on the road, you are seeing the same people at the same events, all the scouts talk to each other too. My guess is they are all friends or have pods of friends because of this.

This makes sense. Kind of crazy to me, but definitely believable. Thanks

Like we went to dinner one night with a group of like 8 people from different orgs (I think it was two NBA scouts, an NBA agent, and European scouts from a few different teams), and everyone was openly talking about who they liked from the day's action and what things they liked and debating players. My guess is they all do their own job better by sharing intel with each other and probably have a humanistic desire to help each other or gather opinions about different guys.

Again, believable, but so contrary to my instincts that I'd have to wonder things like..... were they telling the truth or somewhat bsing/posturing? Were the two NBA scouts from different orgs or the same? Would they talk about who they like, discussing pros and cons, or go to the critical very point of saying "I like Kirk Hinrich more than Dwyane Wade" (directly tipping at least their own personal hand about comparing two players in the same draft)?

I'm sure there is an element of keeping certain things quiet, but generally, everyone already knows who the big names are, they are all scouting the same guys, the are all looking at the same things, they like to talk about it, they are all friends. At some point you get past the college season and you have to take in all that data and figure out your own rankings and bring guys in, and I'd guess around this point they circle the wagons, but early on while things are very much in motion and moving, information seems to be shared incredibly openly.

I always suspected that the guys running teams and working for teams are not necessarily any wiser than us. Now I know lol.

Thanks a lot for indulging me. I guess my point is that these guys should take who they think is best regardless of where they think other teams or media rank a guy. They should assume that if they think a guy is, say, the 4th best player in the draft, that even if chatter from other scouts, agents, etc suggests that other teams don't value the guy that highly, they should assume they're getting he wrong signals or intentional smokescreens and assume that the other team also believes what they believe, and will try to trade up to get the guy. Something along those lines. So I don't really give FOs any more of a pass for letting great player X slide to the second round just because nobody saw that coming than I would passing on great player Y that many think is going to be a great player. Essentially I find it hard to give guys credit or blame for their tendency to follow questionable-truth group think in the most important decisions they have to make.

[dougthonus]

The thing with this is that you have the order mixed up. They were mediocre under "Pax", and then when "Gar" took over allegedly, they completely remade the team into a wildly better one with virtually an entire new roster and coach. There were basically three eras under Pax:
1. Mediocre team before Gar
2. Excellent team under Gar
3. Poor team under Gar and/or Pax (the reason I call this era ostensibly undetermined is because IIRC Paxson started doing the press conferences again - IMO all Gar really ever did in a sense).

I would look at it differently, you can't focus just on team results. In 2003, the Bulls had very few assets, their recent lotto picks were busts, Jay Williams got hurt, they shipped out a ton of young talent for Jalen Rose whom immediately became a bad contract. They were in terrible cap spot and asset spot.

The resulting rebuild of the baby Bulls ended up being mediocre, but the decision making process around that point in time to dig themselves out of that hole was elite. They rebuild the asset chest really fast, the trade of Curry allowed them to bring in the players that made the next wave. The results are a trailing indicator of the process.

So from a GM perspective, I think their performance was really good up until 2012 and was really poor afterwards.

I believe the same guy was the decision maker for all three distinct eras. I just think that's how it works in this league. You certainly may be on to something regarding Lloyd for all I know. I just think it's humorous and baseless how people try to assign the positives of 2003-2020 to Pax and the negatives to Gar, when, if we were forced to attribute the moves and roster years to one guy or the other, Gar would clearly be better (I'm not doing that and not even saying you were - I asked it as a question that I was hoping someone would know the answer to).

Like I said in my four points, I think Pax was probably washed somewhere around 2010 or so when he asked to step away, so I think Pax at his best was really good in the 2004-whatever time era, but then to the extent he was still there, he was burnt out not doing the same stuff. Gar was probably never particularly good, Lloyd probably helped as an important and highly skilled counter balance.

FWIW, Lloyd was one of the first heavily analytics based guys, and so it may be that Lloyd provided a highly differentiated counterbalance to other guys by helping them avoid busts by using a lot of advanced metrics that weren't yet popular or known (not sure what he did or how he valued guys, but he was one of the first people that I know was heavily using analytical models to measure players and was known for having his own DB). It could be that Lloyd's voice was very unique in how it helped avoid some of the worst mistakes or whatever at the time.

It also makes sense why in that vein, Lloyd may not have scaled in the same way as his career went on, because he wasn't a crazy analytics developer / data science guy, and so the sport probably caught up with his edge when they brought in real heavy analytics guys.

A great example of this is a guy like Teague whom the Bulls took after Lloyd was gone. Lloyd would have hated Teague because there were a ton of metrics that said "not an NBA player" around him, whereas non analytics guys would have looked at his HS ranking, athleticism, and quickness and said "high potential if he fixes some things". Another one that would go against Lloyd is Tyrus, whom had a few analytical markets that typically translate really well from college to elite pro (like block+steal rate and a few other things known at the time), whereas Aldridge had a lot of poor analytical markets in translation, but passed the eye test. Easy for me to believe Lloyd was a big part of picking Tyrus which turned out to be a disaster.

That's probably getting pretty far down the theory rabbit hole though, so could be entirely fictional, just some random guesses. I also don't know what specifically Lloyd used, just know the reputation of him was very high internally and that he was known as an early pioneer in switching to more analytic measures for players.

Again, believable, but so contrary to my instincts that I'd have to wonder things like..... were they telling the truth or somewhat bsing/posturing? Were the two NBA scouts from different orgs or the same? Would they talk about who they like, discussing pros and cons, or go to the critical very point of saying "I like Kirk Hinrich more than Dwyane Wade" (directly tipping at least their own personal hand about comparing two players in the same draft)?

You ever watch a game with a group of friends and just banter about everything? It's like that. I don't think anyone is trying to get down to the nth detail about this or that, but people talk enough that a lot of the same basis is there.

I always suspected that the guys running teams and working for teams are not necessarily any wiser than us. Now I know lol.

Thanks a lot for indulging me. I guess my point is that these guys should take who they think is best regardless of where they think other teams or media rank a guy. They should assume that if they think a guy is, say, the 4th best player in the draft, that even if chatter from other scouts, agents, etc suggests that other teams don't value the guy that highly, they should assume they're getting he wrong signals or intentional smokescreens and assume that the other team also believes what they believe, and will try to trade up to get the guy. Something along those lines. So I don't really give FOs any more of a pass for letting great player X slide to the second round just because nobody saw that coming than I would passing on great player Y that many think is going to be a great player. Essentially I find it hard to give guys credit or blame for their tendency to follow questionable-truth group think in the most important decisions they have to make.

FWIW, I do think at the end of the day all teams DO take the guy they value the most and don't choose based on what they think the draft boards are saying.

I guess what I am saying is that I think there is a lot more group think in how EVERY team's draft board is made up than you think, not intentionally, but just organically it happens behind the scenes based on all these shared conversations. Also, you have huge groups of guys evaluating the same players, learning from each other's methods and stuff over long periods of times. Even if they aren't necessarily sharing all the tricks of the trade, highly skilled people are probably reaching similar conclusions based on processing the same data.

You have to also remember, scouts changes organizations regularly, so you will learn how other teams think and act in the different war rooms a lot too. Teams can't change staff and keep all their stuff fully confidential.

There is also just a ton of randomness to the outcomes of the draft and things you can't measure. You've got 10 prospects that are similar and the guy who ends up improving his 3 point shot is the one that hits. How do you predict which of the 10 is the one that 5 years later is hitting quick release, step back 3s at 40% and which guy doesn't get there? There is no way. A ton of it is also just luck with no meaningful way to project.

When you measure outcomes of the draft there is generally a pretty smooth graph going downwards in terms of something like WS related to draft position, so the overall league IS pretty good at getting it right, but on an individual pick by pick basis there is a ton of variance.

[bullsnewdynasty]

The fact that Pax tie choked a coach and still remained employed with the franchise will still be one of the most mystifying things that I've heard of with a sports franchise in my life.

Actually very emblematic of the lack of accountability that has permeated with this franchise from the very top down for decades at this point.

[dougthonus]

The fact that Pax tie choked a coach and still remained employed with the franchise will still be one of the most mystifying things that I've heard of with a sports franchise in my life.

Actually very emblematic of the lack of accountability that has permeated with this franchise from the very top down for decades at this point.

I don't know, your boss choking you out because you violated the minutes restriction of a player coming off injury seems like a pretty high level of accountability being pushed onto the coach. Didn't we all want to choke VDN?

On a serious note though, it's sort of a symptom of the times too. I worked in finance / trading, and the amount of verbal and physical abuse (never happened to me, but I have seen people get punched over errors / system issues) that happened in that space 20 years ago was pretty insane. I'd say the major cultural changes there happened in the mid 2000s. As a society, the amount of stuff like that which is tolerated is way down.

Funny story about how society has changed, in grammar school (80s), I'm probably the top student in my class of ~30. I'm a very quiet and introverted kid, extremely well behaved, never a disciplinary problem in my life. One day, I get a new digital watch for my birthday, and there is some alarm on it that starts going off in class, and I don't know how to turn it off immediately, so it's just beeping, I'm trying to muffle the noise and figure out how to turn it off, the teacher seems to think I'm doing this on purpose and trying to hide the fact that it's me.

He takes me out into the hall, picks me up off the ground by neck and slams me against a locker with one hand and rips the watch off my wrist with the other and takes it and tells me to never fing do that again. I got it back later and never wore it to school again though.

That kind of stuff just wasn't uncommon, and if you told anyone the school and parents would side with the teacher anyway. Today, if I found out a teacher did that to one of my kids, I don't know what I would have do, but I'd have ended up in jail if I was caught doing it, and I doubt I'm alone in that thought. I was probably at the very tail end of where this kind of rampant abuse was viewed as okay. I didn't get much of it, my dad used corporal punishment as his primary disciplinary tool too, but my parents were divorced so I only saw him 5 weeks a year, and was rarely in trouble there either, and he wasn't going nuts with it either when he did use it. Enough to send a message but not enough to leave me in tears for hours afterwards or anything, a lot of my friends had it way worse.

As a society we have steadily moved away from all these things. It hasn't ended overnight by any stretch, but athletics is probably one of the last areas where people feel the mental/physical abuse is okay in the guise of pushing people harder, but it's ending there too.

[jnrjr79]

The fact that Pax tie choked a coach and still remained employed with the franchise will still be one of the most mystifying things that I've heard of with a sports franchise in my life.

Actually very emblematic of the lack of accountability that has permeated with this franchise from the very top down for decades at this point.

I don't know, your boss choking you out because you violated the minutes restriction of a player coming off injury seems like a pretty high level of accountability being pushed onto the coach. Didn't we all want to choke VDN?

On a serious note though, it's sort of a symptom of the times too. I worked in finance / trading, and the amount of verbal and physical abuse (never happened to me, but I have seen people get punched over errors / system issues) that happened in that space 20 years ago was pretty insane. I'd say the major cultural changes there happened in the mid 2000s. As a society, the amount of stuff like that which is tolerated is way down.

Funny story about how society has changed, in grammar school (80s), I'm probably the top student in my class of ~30. I'm a very quiet and introverted kid, extremely well behaved, never a disciplinary problem in my life. One day, I get a new digital watch for my birthday, and there is some alarm on it that starts going off in class, and I don't know how to turn it off immediately, so it's just beeping, I'm trying to muffle the noise and figure out how to turn it off, the teacher seems to think I'm doing this on purpose and trying to hide the fact that it's me.

He takes me out into the hall, picks me up off the ground by neck and slams me against a locker with one hand and rips the watch off my wrist with the other and takes it and tells me to never fing do that again. I got it back later and never wore it to school again though.

That kind of stuff just wasn't uncommon, and if you told anyone the school and parents would side with the teacher anyway. Today, if I found out a teacher did that to one of my kids, I don't know what I would have do, but I'd have ended up in jail if I was caught doing it, and I doubt I'm alone in that thought. I was probably at the very tail end of where this kind of rampant abuse was viewed as okay. I didn't get much of it, my dad used corporal punishment as his primary disciplinary tool too, but my parents were divorced so I only saw him 5 weeks a year, and was rarely in trouble there either, and he wasn't going nuts with it either when he did use it. Enough to send a message but not enough to leave me in tears for hours afterwards or anything, a lot of my friends had it way worse.

As a society we have steadily moved away from all these things. It hasn't ended overnight by any stretch, but athletics is probably one of the last areas where people feel the mental/physical abuse is okay in the guise of pushing people harder, but it's ending there too.

Ha, yeah. I went to Catholic grade school in the early 90s and it was totally acceptable to paddle kids as discipline.

It’s also funny to me because NBA players not infrequently have fights in practice/training camps, and nobody really thinks that type of violence is somehow beyond the pale, but a little tie-yanking gets everyone riled up.