Butler calls out Hoiberg / Update pg 33: KC releases negative report on Jimmy

[keithmad42]

Your 4 game measurement period is completely arbitrary. But you know that.

The length of the period is arbitrary but the the period is not, it is the first 4 games after the comments were made. The comments that many posters and media say spurred on the 6 game streak and got them playing with more effort. I specifically said after those first 4 he starts playing out of his mind (as in very well). But the point was that after the comments were made the Bulls and Jimmy Butler specifically were not playing at a high level so the notion that they responded to those comments and immediately turned things around is factually incorrect.

put any measurement period you want on it. the team came together after those comments. nicely done jimmy jam.

Yes, sometime after. After a bunch of other stuff happened as well like the Paxson meeting, three days of practice. We will disagree which is fine but I would say the truly team came together in response to Jimmy taking an elbow to the mouth then exploding for the best scoring half in Bulls history which brought them back from a large deficit to win the game, at which point the group hug ensued. As the phrase goes "it's not really a fight until you get punched in the mouth" kind of appropriate here.

[chitowndish]

While calling out your coach by name in the media is a bad move I think the real issue here is Butler just happened to strike the one nerve that the Bulls simply can't tolerate right now. By putting out there in the media that Hoiberg is being too soft with players it undermines the story that Thibs was too much of a taskmaster and lost the team. The one single story that the Bulls absolutely need people to buy. So that's why I think the FO went after him so hard with this. They do kind of have a point too, what Jimmy said directly undermines the narrative that the Bulls have been trying to cultivate about Thibs, it undermines Hoiberg both in the media and with the players, also basically alienates the players in the same move. So while airing dirty laundry is a bad idea Jimmy basically aired one of the worst pieces of dirty laundry. Someone posted the podcast of Wilbon blasting Hoiberg for being soft, that's the exact problem with Jimmy's comments. It basically puts Hoiberg directly in the crosshairs, puts comparisons between Hoiberg and Thibs directly in the spotlight and brings right up front the fact that the issues that we had with Thibs are still around with Hoiberg. These are all very dangerous things for the organization and really the last thing Hoiberg needs right now. I do think Jimmy was right but he did a lot of damage here and we honestly aren't going to see the end of it now, the real damage is going to come when every time a writer wants to create the narrative that hiring Hoiberg was a mistake, Hoiberg is too soft, Thibs wasn't the problem Bulls screwed up, this is going to be the exhibit 1A that they point to regardless of what backpedalling Jimmy did after the fact saying that Hoiberg is a great coach.

I agree though that the Org didn't handle this much better but are we really surprised at this point? I mean this is what they do. When their contract negotiations with Skiles went south all the sudden the media had contract details on what he was passing up, the Gordon smears (again direct details on contracts), the Deng is being weak when he wouldn't play (then it comes out he had a broken leg) the Deng acts nice to your face but smears you in the media comments the Cavs aired, the Thibs smear campaign, the Rose leaks like he didn't show up to dinner for Melo or was cleared to play but refused. I mean yeah it's a problem but it's such a constant with this FO it's almost not even worth talking about at this point. Happened way before Gar too this is clearly a Reinsdorf thing and it isn't going to change any time soon. The sad thing is how well it works. Hell every single one of these worked, it's a sound strategy unfortunately because the fans seem to eat this stuff up every single time hook line and sinker. That's why politics is filled with so much negative attacks, it's scary how well this stuff works.

I wouldn't give credit for the turnaround to Jimmy's comments or the FO leak, honestly I think Hoiberg showed some really great leadership with this. He didn't get defensive and go to the media, he went directly to Jimmy to handle the situation. He tried to meet him halfway but I think his comments also kind of put Jimmy in his place a bit too (Jimmy is A leader on this team, Jimmy had a good talk with the other leaders on this team). While Jimmy is proclaiming himself THE leader, Hoiberg a few times directly said A leader. Overall a great way to handle it. Honestly this team was turning around before Jimmy made the comments they just hit a 2 game 4 OT back to back rough patch and Jimmy blew up. So to me the only person here that was really showing any good leadership was Hoiberg (probably Pax too) and it was good to see. Good to see how everyone handled it though going forward and I think this will be a good learning experience for Jimmy. He really hasn't been a leader at any point in his career so he is going to have growing pains here. Hopefully he takes this as a lesson going forward because it can be a great help to him if he allows it to.