Am2626 wrote:dice wrote:kulaz3000 wrote:
You can not compare adding someone like Rodman to the Bulls when they had estabished alpha leaders like Jordan, Pippen and Jackson. Or when JR had LeBron to crack him into shape. Compares to someone like Rodman or JR being added to a young and impressionable team. You're not making a fair comparision without also factoring in the unique situations of both teams.
That said, I don't disagree that there are situations where calculated risk should be made, and Paxson has shown he can make those types of decisions at times, when he signed Rondo who had his own reputatoins as a prickly player, as well as Ben Wallace. Both failed of sorts, however, let's not act like he only ever brings in only good character guys through and through because he only plays it safe.
rondo is another great example of a complimentary player who is great if you've got established leadership in place. he was great with the Celtics until the Brooklyn trade. he was good with the bulls because he meshed well with the butler/wade leadership tandem. there have been no issues in LA w/ LeBron...
Forget about JR Smith for a minute. If Paxson is the Bulls GM in 96, does he go get Rodman? In my opinion he passes and goes for the more conservative and safer path.
i think that's likely true. but i think that few GMs in krause's shoes would have gone after rodman. then again, the team did need rebounding and the cost was only will perdue. so it's hard to say
Maybe it doesn’t matter because the greatness of Jordan still would be enough to 3 peat again but maybe it does and the Bulls only win 1 or 2 championships instead.
sure. krause was also the guy who nearly traded pippen for kemp prior to MJ's return announcement, which might have put MJ's return to the bulls in jeopardy. and he was the guy who traded elton brand for chandler and curry. sometimes risks pay off, sometimes they don't
and if you don't have the superstar in tow, taking risks doesn't really matter. and krause inherited michael damn jordan
That’s the point. Paxson is a point A to Point B Executive and a very conservative low risk and safe pick type of guy at that. He doesn’t have the ability or vision to bring a championship to Chicago.
umm...he almost did. after having the best regular season record and spanking the heat in game one of the ECF the bulls were probably even money to win the series and be favorites in the finals
the only truly meaningful difference is that paxson lucked into derrick rose and krause lucked into michael jordan. and there's no comparison between the two players. give paxson a young jordan to work with instead of a young derrick and there's likely a clutch of rings. hell, there might have been rings had derrick not gotten injured
and getting back to j.r. smith, one of the complaints i'm hearing is that had paxson taken a chance on a guy like j.r. smith it might have put the '10-'11 bulls over the top. which is effectively an argument that j.r. smith would have been better than bogans. hard to argue that specific point, but it ignores the fact that bogans did not play big minutes. the guy that paxson SIGNED to start at SG (ronnie brewer) was easily the better player than bogans, but he was injured to start the year, thibs asked pax to sign his san antonio buddy bogans, and then refused to take him out of the starting lineup the rest of the season because he didn't want to mess up his cherished rotations. same reason he wouldn't take boozer out of the starting lineup for YEARS when it was clear that taj deserved the starting role. here was the split of SG minutes that season:
45% brewer
35% bogans
17% korver
pax's plan was to have korver back up both deng and brewer, which would have had korver playing a higher percentage of the SG minutes. obviously korver was the better shooter than j.r. and brewer the far better defender. and j.r. made more money than the other two players
the donald, always unpopular, did worse in EVERY state in 2020. and by a greater margin in red states! 50 independently-run elections, none of them rigged
