WrigleyField 22

Watching Pippen and Jordan age would have been one thing. Watching an aging MJ with a young McGrady would have been pretty interesting as well though. But Phil would have probably bailed and if MJ was serious about not playing for anyone, but Phil, that wasn't gonna happen either. So the hypothetical becomes if you would possibly trade the 6th championship for building around McGrady in 97/98 if that trade happens. the answer to this is not yes If I was 100% sure it meant the end of Jordan, obviously no. I'm sure Krause thought he could get MJ to stay at the end of the day even without Pip, so I do get it. Again though, grinding the axe with Phil and drawing that line was needlessly dumb and purely ego. Trading away aging Pippen, way less so.

Well Krause did go get Scottie too. And Grant during the first 3 peat. Not sure everyone appreciated a sharpshooting specialist like Kerr as much as he would obviously be highly valued today. Krause had his share of clunkers, but he did do a nice job building around Michael. I don't know if he was necessarily wrong to want to want to get out of the downside of an aging Pippen. The Jackson tension was a little different obviously and more egregiously his ego getting in the way it seems. If he threads the needle though, MJ could have carried a good team into his late 30s while you rebuilt around him on the fly. As it was he basically lost that battle in 97 and JR forced all the chips go in for 98, then Krause just got to do his rebuild with whatever he could get out of Kukoc, Kerr, Longley, etc and the rest walking. But there were a lot of other forces aiming towards that breakup, Krause just wanted to light a match on that kindling asap. Honestly, the dynasty was probably close to being done anyway. Like was said, that Pacers series was brutal. The Jazz were right there most of the games and were kind of a tough matchup. That being said, I would have loved to seen them let Phil go and let the rest of the team make a run just to see how it ended. Scottie's contract made that tough, but if Jordan was there I think he would have been. The strike shortened season is whatever. The Knicks team that won the East as an 8 seed was the same the Bulls used to beat up on. Them against the twin towers of the Spurs would have been interesting. But I would love to have seen the Bulls, slightly retooled with role players vs. Phil Jackson and the 99-00 Lakers. Jordan and Pippen in the twilight against a prime Shaq and young Kobe, with Phil as the coach. If not for Jordan getting his dad killed and Krause's ego, the Bulls could have legitimately threatened the Celtics 11 rings in 13 years with 11 straight. Watching Pippen and Jordan age would have been one thing. Watching an aging MJ with a young McGrady would have been pretty interesting as well though. But Phil would have probably bailed and if MJ was serious about not playing for anyone, but Phil, that wasn't gonna happen either. So the hypothetical becomes if you would possibly trade the 6th championship for building around McGrady in 97/98 if that trade happens.

No I think he was just a dick.

Well Krause did go get Scottie too. And Grant during the first 3 peat. Not sure everyone appreciated a sharpshooting specialist like Kerr as much as he would obviously be highly valued today. Krause had his share of clunkers, but he did do a nice job building around Michael. I don't know if he was necessarily wrong to want to want to get out of the downside of an aging Pippen. The Jackson tension was a little different obviously and more egregiously his ego getting in the way it seems. If he threads the needle though, MJ could have carried a good team into his late 30s while you rebuilt around him on the fly. As it was he basically lost that battle in 97 and JR forced all the chips go in for 98, then Krause just got to do his rebuild with whatever he could get out of Kukoc, Kerr, Longley, etc and the rest walking. But there were a lot of other forces aiming towards that breakup, Krause just wanted to light a match on that kindling asap. the minute your horsefeathers GM says hey lets do this move that alienates the best player of all time and makes him retire you fire him on the spot. Should a fired him when he traded Oakley!

that's what i was thinking last night. It's just unfathomable how this went down. If horsefeathering fat horsefeathers jerry krause is saying hey guys this winning championships thing is great but what about drafting eddy curry instead, don't you just say get the horsefeathers out of here, idiot. I mean you already have michael and scottie, someone else can't sign bill wennington and steve kerr? Well Krause did go get Scottie too. And Grant during the first 3 peat. Not sure everyone appreciated a sharpshooting specialist like Kerr as much as he would obviously be highly valued today. Krause had his share of clunkers, but he did do a nice job building around Michael. I don't know if he was necessarily wrong to want to want to get out of the downside of an aging Pippen. The Jackson tension was a little different obviously and more egregiously his ego getting in the way it seems. If he threads the needle though, MJ could have carried a good team into his late 30s while you rebuilt around him on the fly. As it was he basically lost that battle in 97 and JR forced all the chips go in for 98, then Krause just got to do his rebuild with whatever he could get out of Kukoc, Kerr, Longley, etc and the rest walking. But there were a lot of other forces aiming towards that breakup, Krause just wanted to light a match on that kindling asap.

We'll see. 8 more hours for any new bombs to drop. At this point in the documentary we already know the happy outcome of 1998. Will be interesting to see how much the fallout post 6th ring and the start of 1999 gets covered. Hopefully at least one or two new bombshells.

Oh, that's nice they can spread out that dead cap money. It's going to be interesting to see how they draft next week. I don't think spreading the hit is that impactful. I doubt they plan to spend that extra money. But all things equal, better to take the extra cushion now and roll it forward.

Listened to his press conference call. He definitely was not the type who was willing to offer up too much. Kept things very close to the vest. Still, he dumped Gar, so he's already gotten his first A grade. Let's hope it's not too much longer until Boylen bites the dust.

Here's the part where I get excited about FO hires I know nothing about, but for them being new faces; And in names I actually know, Cowley is throwing Adrian Griffin as a name for HC whos picking up steam. He seems like he'd be a solid hire.

Yea, all things considered that Jimmy move was a pretty decent one and nearly everything else has been awful about the rebuild.

Yea at the time it was all, you can't build around Jimmy on the supermax. But if he would have taken the regular max, it certainly seems like he was moved more to personality clashes than anything. And JB has clashed consistently, so I don't think it's just the Bulls just being sensitive, he's definitely difficult to work with, but would have been worth it. And I don't even know that they could have been a Championship team led by Jimmy, but maybe been a real fun like early 2000s Nets or early 2000s Kings that made a lot of conference finals or NBA finals even if they never won. Of course it would require so many other things than just Jimmy recruiting like not horsefeathering up the coaching hire. In that alternate timeline reality though, JB still ends up one of the all time Bulls greats and has his jersey in the rafters one day.

They wanted to interview and weren't granted permission on either Webster (Japanese descent) or Troy Weaver. So, after that, your complaint is on the throwaway interviews that they didn't throw a minority in? Ok, fine, I guess. I also think it's a huge leap to know what we know about Webster's background and assume that he said, "Nah, I'm good" to an interview for an executive VP of bball ops for the team he grew up a fan of just because John Paxson might still have a title somewhere on the website and get a paycheck. If that's been reported, I've missed it, but as far as I know the Raptors weren't going to let it happen. The Troy Weaver thing sounds like it was for the GM role, not the EVP role, fyi.

That is heavily speculative, at absolute best, unless I missed something. The odds that its just coincidence are so low. Maybe it was something other than GarPax, but when 75% of your first leak list decline you fucked up something

Okay, maybe like 85% wrong. Their inability to fire Gar and clear Pax out of the way I think led to the perception that this wasn't a full control job and led to 3 of their first 4 candidates bowing out. Even if they insisted on Pax helping with the process, the still should have had him turn in his recognition for his VP role and announce his role as a senior advisor with a definitive end date. The new EVP ould have always asked him to re-neg on his resignation after the fact. Then after being rejected multiple times over, they hodge podge together an awful list of filler candidates and manage to not get a single minority candidate after like 10 rumored candidates. Now this whole "were gonna hire a POC as GM thing" instead of just hiring a POC looks like they're just reacting to the negative press to appease people rather than maybe just actually looking at their old boys club hiring policy that's consistently led to them being one of the least diverse FOs.

I'm good with the hire, but still lol bolls for going about this process 100% wrong.

they interviewed those guys (ferry, colangelo, and the atlanta dude) but karnisovas is the clear front runner and is up for his second interview. by all accounts, he wants the job badly and he supposedly had a great interview. it would be terrible if one of those other guys was under serious consideration but it doesn't look like that's the case. i can only guess that they decided to do some due diligence (not sure why it had to be those jerks) and interview some people after the other 3 guys they wanted to interview were a no-go. Oh I'm not too too worried about those guys being hired. In fact, I think there are decent odds these three guys were candidates they threw together as face-saving interviews because they got rejected from 3 out of their initial 4 (or 5 depending on if Zanik was legit or not) and they didn't want it to look like they literally gave the job to the only guy who wanted it. And since they're all out of work, no worries of being blocked AGAIN. But even in the context of "throw a few candidates out there to make it look like a real search", they really scraped the bottom of the barrel as far as optics go.

Three more candidates leaked. All former GMs. Two with a history or racially insensitive/offensive remarks. A guy who trashed players on his burner Twitter account. Why are they so horsefeathering bad at this?

He sounds fine, but this whole search was still horribly embarrassing.

John just horsefeathering leave. Of course that still leaves Gar lurching in the background.

Apparently Justin Zanik, Jazz GM interviewed today. I have to imagine he was on the short list even if the initial reports didn't list him since they interviewed today. Either that or the Bulls pulled together a face saving interview really fast. Karnisovas to interview mid-week.

It's generally considered a rule across all sports that you can't deny permission if another team is giving the guy a promotion. If they offer Bobby Webster a President of Basketball Operations title then the Raptors would have to match that and they can't (Masai Ujirii holds that title). That is what the Cubs did to hire Theo away from the Red Sox. I don't know if the NBA has formal rules on this. Or if they do, it could be due to the suspension of play that this is still an "in season" move where they have total authority to block vs an offseason move.

Sounds like Simon is being denied permission too. Lol bolls. Pessimism time, these guys are being "denied" becuase they don't actually have interest in this horsefeathers show.

This was for little league, not HS. They'd frequently have two games going on at once and by the time we got to probably 5th grade and were hitting the ball further, the CF from each side would basically be facing each other.

is that heat thing based on joe cowley? Can't remember who. There was also a report that they were targeting Heat players.

Hollinger has reported that Buchanan and Simon were the two guys he heard the most buzz about. That and with the reports that the Bulls were most interested in the Heat as a FO model makes me think it's Simon's job to lose. And that worries me for issues I highlighted earlier. But I don't think we'll know for 12+ months how intense this FO reorg actually is either way.