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Do Gar Forman & John Paxson deserve to keep their jobs?

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Do Gar Forman & John Paxson deserve to keep their jobs?

1). No they both should be fired.
59
58%
2). Yes they both should keep their jobs.
11
11%
3). Only Gar should keep his job.
3
3%
4). Only Paxson should keep his job.
28
28%
 
Total votes: 101

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Re: Do Gar Forman & John Paxson deserve to keep their jobs? 

Post#41 » by musiqsoulchild » Sun Aug 4, 2019 2:31 pm

dougthonus wrote:I think if the Bulls fired GarPax in 2016, and a new GM took over in 2017 and made the exact same moves as GarPax that we'd be pretty excited about our new GM.


Confirmation bias at its best.

I think a lot of people are going to be surprised at similar results which will follow under a different GM operating under the same organizational constraints.

Unless you change the variables of the game, moving around pieces and replacing one Noun with another does not give you a different outcome.
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Re: Do Gar Forman & John Paxson deserve to keep their jobs? 

Post#42 » by johnnyvann840 » Sun Aug 4, 2019 3:45 pm

I would love to know who the FOUR people are who think "only Gar should keep his job".

An overwhelming 83% of Bulls fans here believe that Gar should be fired. It would be hard to get 83% of people to vote for free pizza.
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Re: Do Gar Forman & John Paxson deserve to keep their jobs? 

Post#43 » by MeloRoseNoah » Sun Aug 4, 2019 4:15 pm

I’m giving them this season before making my decision. If Lauri is putting up a full season of March Lauri Dirk 2.0 production, they deserve another 2 years to analyze the draft picks of WCJ and Coby. If one of them ends up being a total stud, both of them deserve a 5 yr extension.

I honestly don’t care much about FA reputation bc guys will come if Lauri is Dirk 2.0
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Re: Do Gar Forman & John Paxson deserve to keep their jobs? 

Post#44 » by transplant » Sun Aug 4, 2019 7:58 pm

If someone can tell me what Gar does these days, I might be able to form an opinion. Further, if Forman’s fate could be determined by a message board poll, I think he’d be grateful that he escaped with his life.

As for Paxson, I think now would be a wrong-headed time to fire him. If this rebuild fizzles, I’m pretty sure he’ll resign.


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Re: Do Gar Forman & John Paxson deserve to keep their jobs? 

Post#45 » by League Circles » Sun Aug 4, 2019 8:24 pm

I truly do not understand how anyone could hate or blame Gar particularly.

The closest thing there is to a real blemish on his record is the scandal at New Mexico and Jimmy Butler's trainers vague, non specific criticism.

I've never thought Gar was in charge and allowed to make important decisions alone. I've never felt that Paxson essentially became nothing more than a consultant while Gar made draft picks and trades.

Thus, I choose to give all credit and blame to Paxson since 2003.

EDIT: it has also been clear that he was a big Hoiberg advocate, certainly at least until he was hired, which is definitely bad, and that it was his idea to let Ron Adams go, which is good IMO.

Other than Adams and Fred, I'm not really sure we have any evidence who Gar liked or didn't like and what deals he wanted to do.

IIRC, one of our insiders basically painted the personality types as Paxson getting high on his own picks, whereas Gar just wanted to "win" trades, and that these different, but concurrent reasons were why we didn't do many trades.

I'm not really trying to defend Gar because I truly don't think we know much about him.

Pax, on the other hand, IMO, pretty much for sure wanted to draft every player we have drafted since 2003 IMO.
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Re: Do Gar Forman & John Paxson deserve to keep their jobs? 

Post#46 » by League Circles » Sun Aug 4, 2019 8:25 pm

Also, IIRC, one of our insiders said that Gar was more wanting to keep Jimmy and add to him, whereas Pax wanted to deal him and rebuild. I wanted to keep him (at least vs the package we got).
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Re: Do Gar Forman & John Paxson deserve to keep their jobs? 

Post#47 » by transplant » Sun Aug 4, 2019 8:51 pm

League Circles wrote:I truly do not understand how anyone could hate or blame Gar particularly.

The closest thing there is to a real blemish on his record is the scandal at New Mexico and Jimmy Butler's trainers vague, non specific criticism.

I've never thought Gar was in charge and allowed to make important decisions alone. I've never felt that Paxson essentially became nothing more than a consultant while Gar made draft picks and trades.

Thus, I choose to give all credit and blame to Paxson since 2003.

EDIT: it has also been clear that he was a big Hoiberg advocate, certainly at least until he was hired, which is definitely bad, and that it was his idea to let Ron Adams go, which is good IMO.

Other than Adams and Fred, I'm not really sure we have any evidence who Gar liked or didn't like and what deals he wanted to do.

IIRC, one of our insiders basically painted the personality types as Paxson getting high on his own picks, whereas Gar just wanted to "win" trades, and that these different, but concurrent reasons were why we didn't do many trades.

I'm not really trying to defend Gar because I truly don't think we know much about him.

Pax, on the other hand, IMO, pretty much for sure wanted to draft every player we have drafted since 2003 IMO.

When Forman was more of the public face of the Bulls, the general reaction was that he was BSing you. I’ve seldom seen a less believable public spokesperson. He then was removed from the public contact and we were told that he was handling agent relations. This is when we began hearing reports that agents didn’t trust the Bulls’ FO. Hmm.

Since I don’t know what he does now, it’s hard to criticize, but I can’t help but believe that the Bulls could better spend the money.


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Re: Do Gar Forman & John Paxson deserve to keep their jobs? 

Post#48 » by Michael Jackson » Sun Aug 4, 2019 8:59 pm

transplant wrote:
League Circles wrote:I truly do not understand how anyone could hate or blame Gar particularly.

The closest thing there is to a real blemish on his record is the scandal at New Mexico and Jimmy Butler's trainers vague, non specific criticism.

I've never thought Gar was in charge and allowed to make important decisions alone. I've never felt that Paxson essentially became nothing more than a consultant while Gar made draft picks and trades.

Thus, I choose to give all credit and blame to Paxson since 2003.

EDIT: it has also been clear that he was a big Hoiberg advocate, certainly at least until he was hired, which is definitely bad, and that it was his idea to let Ron Adams go, which is good IMO.

Other than Adams and Fred, I'm not really sure we have any evidence who Gar liked or didn't like and what deals he wanted to do.

IIRC, one of our insiders basically painted the personality types as Paxson getting high on his own picks, whereas Gar just wanted to "win" trades, and that these different, but concurrent reasons were why we didn't do many trades.

I'm not really trying to defend Gar because I truly don't think we know much about him.

Pax, on the other hand, IMO, pretty much for sure wanted to draft every player we have drafted since 2003 IMO.

When Forman was more of the public face of the Bulls, the general reaction was that he was BSing you. I’ve seldom seen a less believable public spokesperson. He then was removed from the public contact and we were told that he was handling agent relations. This is when we began hearing reports that agents didn’t trust the Bulls’ FO. Hmm.

Since I don’t know what he does now, it’s hard to criticize, but I can’t help but believe that the Bulls could better spend the money.


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Gar more or less lost his job. Michael likes him so he has a position but he lost his real job and does something where he collects a pay check. Every last move he made was a bad one.
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Re: Do Gar Forman & John Paxson deserve to keep their jobs? 

Post#49 » by League Circles » Sun Aug 4, 2019 9:40 pm

Michael Jackson wrote:
transplant wrote:
League Circles wrote:I truly do not understand how anyone could hate or blame Gar particularly.

The closest thing there is to a real blemish on his record is the scandal at New Mexico and Jimmy Butler's trainers vague, non specific criticism.

I've never thought Gar was in charge and allowed to make important decisions alone. I've never felt that Paxson essentially became nothing more than a consultant while Gar made draft picks and trades.

Thus, I choose to give all credit and blame to Paxson since 2003.

EDIT: it has also been clear that he was a big Hoiberg advocate, certainly at least until he was hired, which is definitely bad, and that it was his idea to let Ron Adams go, which is good IMO.

Other than Adams and Fred, I'm not really sure we have any evidence who Gar liked or didn't like and what deals he wanted to do.

IIRC, one of our insiders basically painted the personality types as Paxson getting high on his own picks, whereas Gar just wanted to "win" trades, and that these different, but concurrent reasons were why we didn't do many trades.

I'm not really trying to defend Gar because I truly don't think we know much about him.

Pax, on the other hand, IMO, pretty much for sure wanted to draft every player we have drafted since 2003 IMO.

When Forman was more of the public face of the Bulls, the general reaction was that he was BSing you. I’ve seldom seen a less believable public spokesperson. He then was removed from the public contact and we were told that he was handling agent relations. This is when we began hearing reports that agents didn’t trust the Bulls’ FO. Hmm.

Since I don’t know what he does now, it’s hard to criticize, but I can’t help but believe that the Bulls could better spend the money.


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Gar more or less lost his job. Michael likes him so he has a position but he lost his real job and does something where he collects a pay check. Every last move he made was a bad one.

Again, who ever said that he was the one making the moves as opposed to Paxson?

Do people seriously think Paxson spent like 6 years just doing nothing but watching Gar make moves he disagreed with but for no good reason felt helpless to stop?
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Re: Do Gar Forman & John Paxson deserve to keep their jobs? 

Post#50 » by transplant » Sun Aug 4, 2019 9:57 pm

I wasn't able to vote on my app, but now that I'm on my PC, I can state that I voted that only Paxson should keep his job.

Because Forman's role has been so significantly reduced, I've often said that fans' insistence on his firing has been a form of blood lust. I still think that if you have a strong emotional feeling that you need to see Forman fired, you need to check yourself...he no longer appears to be very important in the overall scheme of things. However, as I said earlier, I think that the Bulls could spend their money better than to hide Forman.

Firing Paxson is just a non-starter. He's a good basketball mind and has the trust of ownership. If you fired him and replaced him with who you thought was the best player personnel guy available, there'd be an immediate problem with trust. You're dealing with human beings here. As I said earlier, let Paxson lead the team through this rebuild and if it doesn't work out, I'm confident that you won't have to fire him. Paxson will resign.
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Re: Do Gar Forman & John Paxson deserve to keep their jobs? 

Post#51 » by dougthonus » Sun Aug 4, 2019 10:15 pm

I don't know why people feel they have a good handle on what either of these guys really does or how decisions are really made. So much of it just appears to be conjecture that goes against explicitly what they tell you (which may also simply be PR speak anyway).

The one thing I will note, while Paxson was running things earlier and the Bulls were nailing all these draft picks, Gar was in scouting and got promoted multiple times. It sure seems like the reason he got promoted was because he was the one pushing out all this good draft analysis and should get a fair share of credit for those successes.

I don't know about all the other problems one way or the other inside the organization, clearly some things weren't going great if they decided to push Paxson back in the forefront though which implies that Gar was having problems of some kind.
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Re: Do Gar Forman & John Paxson deserve to keep their jobs? 

Post#52 » by transplant » Sun Aug 4, 2019 10:19 pm

dougthonus wrote:I don't know why people feel they have a good handle on what either of these guys really does or how decisions are really made. So much of it just appears to be conjecture that goes against explicitly what they tell you (which may also simply be PR speak anyway).

The one thing I will note, while Paxson was running things earlier and the Bulls were nailing all these draft picks, Gar was in scouting and got promoted multiple times. It sure seems like the reason he got promoted was because he was the one pushing out all this good draft analysis and should get a fair share of credit for those successes.

I don't know about all the other problems one way or the other inside the organization, clearly some things weren't going great if they decided to push Paxson back in the forefront though which implies that Gar was having problems of some kind.

Mostly agree. When Forman was the face of the FO, how do you think he performed?
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Re: Do Gar Forman & John Paxson deserve to keep their jobs? 

Post#53 » by dougthonus » Sun Aug 4, 2019 10:25 pm

transplant wrote:Mostly agree. When Forman was the face of the FO, how do you think he performed?


Hard to say. This gets back to the idea that everyone assumes they know who did what over the org over all of these years. It is reasonable to infer that Gar was pushing in directions Pax didn't agree with and that Pax's decisions would have been better over that stretch given that his role appears to be diminished.

At the same time, we don't really know how his role has changed, and they clearly didn't think so poorly of his performance that they let him go all together.
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Re: Do Gar Forman & John Paxson deserve to keep their jobs? 

Post#54 » by DuckIII » Sun Aug 4, 2019 10:32 pm

League Circles wrote:Also, IIRC, one of our insiders said that Gar was more wanting to keep Jimmy and add to him, whereas Pax wanted to deal him and rebuild. I wanted to keep him (at least vs the package we got).


That wasn’t a board insider. It was reported in the media. Gar and Michael Reinsdorf wanted to build around Butler, which led to the Theee Alphas. Pax wanted to trade Butler and rebuild. He lost out at first and then eventually go his way. (Thank god)
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Re: Do Gar Forman & John Paxson deserve to keep their jobs? 

Post#55 » by johnnyvann840 » Sun Aug 4, 2019 10:59 pm

Building around Jimmy wouldn't have been a bad thing, the Bulls just went about it the wrong way. The three alphas were a bad idea from the get go.
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Re: Do Gar Forman & John Paxson deserve to keep their jobs? 

Post#56 » by Michael Jackson » Sun Aug 4, 2019 11:22 pm

League Circles wrote:
Michael Jackson wrote:
transplant wrote:When Forman was more of the public face of the Bulls, the general reaction was that he was BSing you. I’ve seldom seen a less believable public spokesperson. He then was removed from the public contact and we were told that he was handling agent relations. This is when we began hearing reports that agents didn’t trust the Bulls’ FO. Hmm.

Since I don’t know what he does now, it’s hard to criticize, but I can’t help but believe that the Bulls could better spend the money.


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Gar more or less lost his job. Michael likes him so he has a position but he lost his real job and does something where he collects a pay check. Every last move he made was a bad one.

Again, who ever said that he was the one making the moves as opposed to Paxson?

Do people seriously think Paxson spent like 6 years just doing nothing but watching Gar make moves he disagreed with but for no good reason felt helpless to stop?



No one I have absolutely no definitive proof as I was not in the room. I can use deduction though on some moves. Dougie sure smells like a Gar move and Pax was in the background at the time. Fred smells like a Gar move. Also after that little run of moves Gar is ghosted and sent to siberia to never be heard from again, and suddenly Paxson is the face of the FO again. You are correct though I don't know who was in charge at the time but I have a hunch.
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Re: Do Gar Forman & John Paxson deserve to keep their jobs? 

Post#57 » by Michael Jackson » Sun Aug 4, 2019 11:27 pm

johnnyvann840 wrote:Building around Jimmy wouldn't have been a bad thing, the Bulls just went about it the wrong way. The three alphas were a bad idea from the get go.



In retrospect, it really would have been a better move I think. Now that is 100% hindsight vision because I was all for trading him for assets. The thing with Butler is I always undersold him, but that being said the way the league works we could have been much more likely in play for one for the free agents or AD blah blah blah. Not sure it really puts us any closer to a championship though, but say you keep Spencer and Butler you likely can woo Kyrie.... Now I'm not saying that lineup makes sense or is any good but it is a consideration of an alternate future.
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Re: Do Gar Forman & John Paxson deserve to keep their jobs? 

Post#58 » by transplant » Mon Aug 5, 2019 12:16 am

dougthonus wrote:
transplant wrote:Mostly agree. When Forman was the face of the FO, how do you think he performed?


Hard to say. This gets back to the idea that everyone assumes they know who did what over the org over all of these years. It is reasonable to infer that Gar was pushing in directions Pax didn't agree with and that Pax's decisions would have been better over that stretch given that his role appears to be diminished.

At the same time, we don't really know how his role has changed, and they clearly didn't think so poorly of his performance that they let him go all together.

Sorry, I wasn't specific enough. I was asking how you thought Forman performed as the management spokesperson.
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Re: Do Gar Forman & John Paxson deserve to keep their jobs? 

Post#59 » by TheStig » Mon Aug 5, 2019 1:26 am

johnnyvann840 wrote:Building around Jimmy wouldn't have been a bad thing, the Bulls just went about it the wrong way. The three alphas were a bad idea from the get go.

The 3 alphas were a stop gap and made the playoffs. I don't think that was the problem.

The problem was that they missed a whole bunch of draft picks and held onto assets till they lost all their value. For Rose, Noah, Deng, Gibson they ended up getting Rolo, Zipser and Cam Payne. They also were gun shy to pull a deal with first round picks and young players. There were a lot of stars dealt that we could have put in bids on that could of helped. It was one of the most extreme set of years of mismanagement seen.
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Re: Do Gar Forman & John Paxson deserve to keep their jobs? 

Post#60 » by Am2626 » Mon Aug 5, 2019 3:28 am

dougthonus wrote:I think if the Bulls fired GarPax in 2016, and a new GM took over in 2017 and made the exact same moves as GarPax that we'd be pretty excited about our new GM.


In the type of high profile jobs that GarPax have, mediocrity is not good enough. Based on their accomplishments they did not do a good enough job to merit keeping their jobs. Furthermore when they fired Thibs and hired Hoiberg their fate should have been determined with the success or failure of Hoiberg. They both should have been dismissed when Hoiberg was fired. I don’t care what marginal moves they have made or whether they are going to have success with this rebuild. Neither of them should have the privilege of still getting to make those decisions.

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