After the other day’s brief review of some of the biggest moves in the off-season, today I’m diving into a complete breakdown of the biggest moves made by the Bulls since the end of last season.
As always, I will go through and give a grade to each transaction made during this time frame. B-/C+ is the cutoff between a good move and a bad move. In the end I bring it all together with a complete off-season grade.
While this off-season may be the most successful I’ve evaluated since I first took on this exercise a couple years ago, ultimately GarPax yet again failed to earn an even average off-season grade for the first time.
Coaching moves: F+
When it comes to Bulls’ coaching searches I don’t know what’s worse: the process to find one the or the selection itself?
Starting with the obvious: Jim Boylen should not be an NBA coach. Not only is his style is clearly outdated, there is no logical manner to seeing how he is qualified for the job. It’s probably the worst resume of any current coach in the League. He demonstrated no success during his time in college at Utah, and wasn’t under consideration for any other head coaching positions within the Association. He was the top assistant for Fred Hoiberg, who apparently was doing such a poor job that the Bulls had to fire him. If Fred was so bad, why would anyone think his right hand man would be the one to step in and save the day?
Giving Boylen the reigns to the team post Hoiberg made some sense, but nothing during that stretch proved the prior evidence invalid. Under his watch the Bulls had the worst loss in franchise history. For most that would probably be rock bottom, but Boylen managed to one up himself by almost causing a mutiny by having a group of professionals do High School Style toughness drills in the middle of season. Not only has this “old school” approach been phased out by 29 other teams who like using science when making decisions, but shouldn’t we be wondering why $78 million investment Zach Lavine started to have his knee flare up a couple months later? Just wait as John Paxson will continue to blame luck for his team’s injury problems again. Every well run team (and probably most of the other crappy ones) understand the importance of rest, but Boylen is stuck in 1970 trying to be Bobby Knight or something.
To be fair, over the course of the year he developed from easily the worst coach in the NBA, to probably a half step above Mark Jackson and Jason Kidd class. Then again if you let an 8 year old start driving a car, they’d probably be better at it after a month, but does that make it a good idea to start with? Seriously, go through every other head coach in the NBA and let me know which one you think Boylen is better than. Fizdale, maybe? Altman or one of the new guys? The Athletic did a poll asking various questions to 52 current NBA players including “Which coach would least like to play for. Guess who led the pack with 21% of the pack? Our Jimmy Boy! I wonder why Anthony Davis says he would love to play for his hometown team one day, just not now.
It’s not just they went with Boylen though. It’s the process they went through to select him. Why not interview other coaches and see if somebody blows you away? Why not be open to somebody blowing you away with an interview? What exactly did you see in his half year at the helm that made the thought of simply granting an interview to literally anyone else a waste of time? Nobody else does a less thorough job search than GarPax. It should come as no surprise the results always wind up so poorly.
It’s really hard to see the Bulls not giving some games away due to poor coaching. I really think I could’ve given them an F for this. There are two reasons I didn’t. The lesser one being that Boylen did in fact show some improvement, and Zach Lavine offering to pay his fine towards the end of the season showed that at least some of the initial damage he did had been wiped clean.
The more important one, however, was the hiring of Chris Flemming and Roy Rodgers as assistants. Both are really well respected within the league. If the plan is to let Boylen be the “Ra Ra” guy while giving the keys to his more intelligent assistants then there’s at least a path I can see the Bulls having an average coaching staff.
Welcome to being a Bulls fan. No way is this the best decision, but if you squint and bend your head a little bit you can see it working out OK.
Overall Draft Grade: C
John Paxson seemed to think Bulls are set 2-5 long term, and are now in a position in the rebuild to start filling needs instead of choosing the best player available in the draft. I……..don’t agree. This team won 22 games last year. Acting like any of these guys are sure things is nonsense.
I’m lower on Coby White than most. While most have him pegged as our long term answer at the 1, he showed no NBA level Point Guard skills during his time at North Carolina. If his PG skills hover around the Kris Dunn zone of, only passable enough to play the position and nothing more, he then will have to be able to really score efficiently to make it as a starter in the league. I’m not sold on this as he was only average 3 point shooter during his time in college. His funky shooting motion and results in the Summer League don’t offer much reason to think improvement is imminent either. The size and speed is obviously there. The makeup seems like it is as well, so by no means do I think this a guaranteed bust. It’s just there was way more value in potentially trading down to grab a Nickeil Alexander-Walker with another asset or something of that nature. Even if you’re higher on White than I am, you have to admit losing 60 games to get a guy who probably wouldn’t even have been a lottery pick in the draft the year before absolutely stings. Only Zion and maybe Morant could have justified that debacle.
Daniel Gafford was fine in the second round. However, even if he does turn into a rotation worthy player, his skill set is the easiest to find in the league right now. It would be a success if Gafford can become something like Willey Cauley-Stein, but lob men who protect the paint like that are dime a dozen. There is a reason why WCS barely got more than the league minimum in Free Agency this off-season. I would have preferred to see the Bulls take a more calculated roll of the dice on a guy like Bol Bol. Sure the injury history is scary, but to pass on that upside in a weak draft class at the point in the second round was wrong. At 38 the expected Return on Investment is a guy who will be out of the league in 2 or 3 years. Losing Bol to injury was worth the risk.
Free Agency:
Signing Thad Young: C
Signing Thad Young to a 3 year/ $41 million dollar contract makes sense in abstract. Before the off-season began, I would have pegged his true value at something like $40-45 million over the next 3 years. In that sense this is a completely fair deal.
So why the C?
1. By giving him and Satoransky 3 years, the Bulls took themselves out of the 2021 Free Agency game. Even though that third year isn’t fully guaranteed the Bulls will have no meaningful cap space to make any plays on that years Free Agency class.
2. He plays same position as the best long term prospect on our team Lauri Markannan. Lauri at the 5 has been a mess defensively, and neither really plays the 3. So a lot of value will be given away by having him sit on the bench or playing out of position.
3 Doing this deal took away cap flexibility to absorb an Andre Iguodala or Josh Jackson contract later that netted potentially valuable draft picks and young pieces. Those lottery tickets wouldn’t have won more games for the Bulls this year, but could’ve become assets come 2021.
When you factor all those other things in, giving Young a decent contract came at the expense of opportunities elsewhere.
Tomas Satoransky Sign and Trade: B
At 3 years/$31 million this is a pretty solid value for that a guy that fits both perfectly not only a Point Guard, but the kind of point guard you would want next to the young guys already on this team. Satoransky can space the floor, doesn’t need the ball in his hands to be effective, and has the size to take pressure of Lavine defensively in certain match-ups.
This still is not a great deal as the 2nd round picks going back to Washington take away some of the surplus value. It’s also interesting to note that Tyus Jones and Delon Wright, both of whom I view as better players as Resticted Free Agents at the same position, got less money than Sato.
Signing Luke Kornet: B+
To get a guy who hits 3’s at 36% and blocks shots at above average rate for the Bi-Annual Exception is good value no matter what. Granted other Centers like Kevon Looney, Ed Davis and Richaun Holmes all went for pretty much the same price as it has become super easy to find acceptable bigs in the League on the cheap right now.
Re-sigining Ryan Arcidiacono: A-
The best move of the offseason! Archy can defend both guard positions, splash three’s at an above average rate, and handle the point guard position. I would’ve been fine with doubling his salary.
Overall Grade: C
The Bulls did fine in Free Agency, an OK job in the draft, and continued down the road with their horrible coach. Maybe in a vacuum they deserve a higher grade than this, but when factoring the decisions made the past couple of off-seasons this just makes the GarPax regime look like what it is: directionless.
Working back, it starts with the questionable, yet not unjustifiable decision to move on from Jimmy Butler two off-seasons ago. It was easy to argue the realistic ceiling of the JB/Mirotic Bulls wasn’t championship level. The time had struck to rebuild. Even if you agree with that decision, do you honestly think this team has any kind of realistic championship ceiling now?
Reviewing the roster finds that Zach Lavine is an empty calories scorer. Lauri Markkanen is promising, but still well short of being a star. Kris Dunn is a hair above nothing. Otto Porter Jr. is solid, but not worth more than his contract. Wendell Carter Jr. will be a beast defensively, but was one of the worst offensive players in basketball last year. This “core” is textbook mediocre. If they hit their 60th percentile projections going forward Porter, Lauri, Lavine, Carter, and White can be the 3rd-7th best players on a championship team two or three years from now.
That’s semi-exciting I guess, but when there is no realistic path to add stars either via Free Agency or the draft going forward, it begs the question: Why did they decide to rebuild in the first place? So that they can be a 45 win team four years down the road instead of in the present?
As soon as they dumped Butler management should’ve been ready to buckle down and get ready for a bumpy several year ride. Instead it looks like they started to feel their seats get hot, and instead of figuring out how to use cap space to acquire more long-term assets, they instead pivoted to try plug holes and make the team as good as possible for the next season or two. All of that solely to justify their poor decisions from earlier, decreasing their long term ceiling with one low upside move after another.
The silver lining may be that with yet another off-season chasing average in the books GarPax will put themselves in such a bad position that not even Jerry Reinsdorf can go through another rebuild with these two leading the charge. It may be the only hope we have as fans.
Birthday wishes tend to get less flashy as you get older, but wanting a new General Manger for my favorite team sometime within 3 years is my new low. Here’s to the Bulls rebounding like Rodman in my 30’s!
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