Sammy Sofa

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Sorry; 12-0.

Nah, better to give up a 10-0 run instead.

Nobody is saying Thibs isn't a good coach; many just disagree with just how great you think he is, that you think the players didn't get sick of him and instead were "turned" by the FO, and just how much of an impact he would have had this year. At their best he relied so much on Deng, Noah and Taj to anchor that defense, and now two of those guys are gone and one is an older, less effective version of himself. Again, Thibs is a better coach, but what would be so different this year? McDermott didn't play better under him (if he played at all). Rose was still maddeningly inconsistent. How would he have prevented Noah from inevitably falling apart? Or Dunleavy? About the only major difference that you could argue is maybe Mirotic wouldn't have stagnated since he seemed to improve throughout last season, so who knows if that would have continued under Thibs. The main problems are injuries, poor team construction and inconsistent players. I think those far outweigh the difference he'd bring over Hoiberg, and those are far more damning on the FO than firing a coach everyone was tired of playing for or working with.

I don't necessarily disagree with you. I just think he's light years beyond what Hoiberg will ever be. Oh, most definitely he's a better coach than Hoiberg. But this team's current issues run much deeper than improving the coach, and Thibs being their coach this year was never going to happen. It's not like he was fired only because he was clashing with GarPax; seemingly EVERYONE was done with him. He's a damn good coach, but a touch person to play for and work with and they basically missed their window to succeed with him (mainly because Rose turned out to be a depressing one-man show of disappointment for multiple seasons).

Ain't my money.

Heartless as it is, I really wouldn't mind them using him the next two seasons basically like their intention is to destroy him at the end of them.

Pretty much. There's little reason at this point to expect him to break out again.

You don't think Thibs typically had Bulls teams better suited to his defensive strengths? What would he do this year, tie Noah to himself for some kind of human puppet trickery? Construct a decent SF out of clay and give it life with lightning? Again, everyone was done with him; I think the idea that a FO could turn players on a coach as opposed to the players simply being fed up with the coach is silly. Thibs very much looks like a more talented Scott Skiles to me; any team he gets better win it all because otherwise (or, maybe even despite that) he'll probably be gone after 4-5 years because his team is sick of him. There's tough coaches, and then there's the hardass freaks that don't have a long shelf life with a team.

http://www.basketball-reference.com/players/r/rosede01.html#advanced::none He improved in January to a little above average. That seems as about a realistic expectation as anyone should have for him at this point. Yeah, you just listed almost all of it. It's a stank team. It likely wouldn't be much better with Thibs, if at all (especially since, again, the team hated him by the time he was fired).

You're really ignoring how messed up the current team is. Noah's dead, no Duleavy, Rose is one of the worst players in basketball, Mirotic is just a guy; Thibs isn't a sorcerer who would have just magically fixed that.

That's part of it, though as we've brought up multiple times, you've had key players regress or stagnate. Nobody was counting on Rose being anywhere near this bad if he could stay even remotely healthy, for McDermott to basically remain a non-entity and for Mirotic to not move forward at all from what he started to show last season. A healthy Rose and Mirotic seemed like good bets to keep this team chugging along with the other key parts they have, but now it's basically just Jimmy and a couple of decent older dudes and then a bunch of bodies most nights. Like I said, Hoiberg very well could be a bad hire, but right now he's coaching a Frankenstein's monster of a team that's not really consistently good at anything. And I don't think Thibs being here would make much of a difference in the overall picture. The defense would be better at times, but the offense would be even worse.

Thibodeau is way too one-sided to be considered one of the very best coaches in the game. He has his obvious strengths and is a good coach, but come on.

Believe whatever you want; they looked pretty done with him by the end of last season. Hoiberg very well could be all wrong for this team, but the Thibodeau era ran its course and was clearly burnt out by the time he was bounced. And Butler said nothing like, "I want the coach to be more like Thibs." He basically called Hoiberg out for being too laid back and called out the rest of the team for mostly playing like horsefeathers. There's a huge middle ground between being a pushover like Hoiberg and a freak like Thibodeau.

Well, the players all hated Thibs by the end, too, so there's that.

I think all of them are supposed to be there for the time being. I can't think of one I haven't been able to find, plus ESPN's own commercials are claiming you can watch them all on Netflix right now.

Does anybody need some coconut water?

Wait, what? They all up there this morning. Hell, ESPN was running commercials during the doc last night about how they're all on Netflix.

Big time. Or "Pony Excess"-like, that really charts the downfall. Basically if the point of it was to argue they were the best team ever, it failed. If the point was to figure out why they didn't go on to further greatness, it failed. It was just this muddled bunch of kinda fan-service basically just designed for the participating players and Ditka to talk themselves up. And it was weird how they didn't touch on the problems the Fridge has gone through at all. Watching it, I felt like Ditka wasn't painted in a positive light at all. Like I felt like minimizing him and making him look like a dummy was a major, if not completely overt, theme...between all the players directly criticizing him, McMahon talking about how he always called the wrong play, Wilson (IIRC) basically calling him an idiot for playing Flutie, the comments from Mongo (I think) about how they told the other guys to lift Ditka up at the end of the SB just so that he wouldn't whine about them raising Buddy up. Maybe that was my bias going in, but I came away thinking Ditka looked more along for the ride and less responsible for any success than ever, and I already didn't have a high opinion of him. To me, that IS the Ditka Myth; the big dumb animal who yelled and said dumb things and clashed with his players and the press but still got things done. As opposed to just an idiot who lucked into taking over a team with that defense.

The only ones that are truly critical of teams have been of college programs; that's why I said I was hesitant to say "more critical" because I wasn't looking for a hatchet job. Just something that looked more at what happened afterwards as opposed to the, IMO, boring and oft-repeated story of how they got to the top.

Yeah, it wasn't bad, but it could have been a LOT better. I would have preferred something a little less fanboy-ish; I don't know if more critical is the right term, but something that really did try to figure out why a team that great didn't go on to more. This seemed to have a similar tone to the one about the Bills, which I thought was really well done, but this isn't a team that needs praising or vindication. This basically needed the opposite: OK, you guys are great at talking up how great you are, but what happened? If it really was simply Ryan leaving, then this could have just been one of the shorts, if bothering to make it at all. Without having really experienced that era first-hand, I always got the impression that it was McMahon's injuries along with Ditka being a boob and being a boob with the QB position. And maybe some bad luck. I will fully cop to wanting to see the Ditka myth deflated some more along those lines. But yeah, McMahon not staying healthy, the organization's terrible approach in general to the QB, focusing too much on defense, Ryan leaving, issues with the owners, etc., etc..

Yeah, it wasn't bad, but it could have been a LOT better. I would have preferred something a little less fanboy-ish; I don't know if more critical is the right term, but something that really did try to figure out why a team that great didn't go on to more. This seemed to have a similar tone to the one about the Bills, which I thought was really well done, but this isn't a team that needs praising or vindication. This basically needed the opposite: OK, you guys are great at talking up how great you are, but what happened? If it really was simply Ryan leaving, then this could have just been one of the shorts, if bothering to make it at all. could it have used a little 30 for 30 The U type treatment? Big time. Or "Pony Excess"-like, that really charts the downfall. Basically if the point of it was to argue they were the best team ever, it failed. If the point was to figure out why they didn't go on to further greatness, it failed. It was just this muddled bunch of kinda fan-service basically just designed for the participating players and Ditka to talk themselves up. And it was weird how they didn't touch on the problems the Fridge has gone through at all.

Yeah, it wasn't bad, but it could have been a LOT better. I would have preferred something a little less fanboy-ish; I don't know if more critical is the right term, but something that really did try to figure out why a team that great didn't go on to more. This seemed to have a similar tone to the one about the Bills, which I thought was really well done, but this isn't a team that needs praising or vindication. This basically needed the opposite: OK, you guys are great at talking up how great you are, but what happened? If it really was simply Ryan leaving, then this could have just been one of the shorts, if bothering to make it at all.

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Well, that was a weird response. I had no idea I was on trial.