| 04 May 2010
So after mourning the Bulls playoff ousting for the past week, I return with fantastic news. The Bulls have fired Vinny Del Negro. This should come as no surprise to anybody. In fact, the Bulls orchestrated this firing quite well.
Vinny, Vinny, Vinny. You played right into the hands of Gar, Pax, and the Chairman. You should have known that the triumverate were looking for any reason. ANY REASON whatsoever to fire you. In all likelihood, the decision was indeed made in December as Chris Broussard reported months ago, but still, there was hope for you. And then came Joakim Noah's plantar fasciitis. I don't blame you for going over the minute cap. You were coaching for your life. And to be honest, I don't blame you for getting up in Gar and Paxson's face in multiple occassions. Paxson may or may not have a temper problem, but your balsiness and refusal to back down may have cost you your job. Whether you started it or not is irrelevant. The fact is, multiple altercations have been confirmed. Yet, it is not easy to deal with such a meddling and constantly intervening front office, especially when you're dealing with 3 different people. When there are 3 different guys breathing down your neck, it's easy to get your panties in a bunch. But that's exactly what they wanted to do...get you upset and have a reason to can you.
Let's look at the facts here. Vinny takes over with no head coaching experience whatsoever, and with only a rookie point guard and no superstars, this team goes 41-41 and gets to the playoffs and takes the defending champs to 7 games...in the greatest playoff series of all time.
The very next year...
The Bulls lose Ben Gordon, their leading scorer. Derrick Rose, Joakim Noah, and Luol Deng, their three best players, all missed a very significant amount of time due to injuries. They traded away John Salmons, arguably the 2nd half MVP of the NBA, at the trading deadline, as well as their best shot-blocker Tyrus Thomas. Derrick Rose, Joakim Noah, and Luol Deng are all injured during a crucial stretch late in the season, causing the Bulls to lose 10 in a row. Still...the Bulls kept it together, didn't lose focus, and rallied during the home stretch to AGAIN go 41-41. They also managed to win a game against the favorite to win the NBA title in the first round...the same team that won its first 8 games last year in the playoffs. Not only that, they kept every game competitive except for maybe 1. It was actually an exciting series. All in the midst of the Vinny vs. Paxson fighting controversey with Craig Sager asking Vinny questions about it in between quarters during Game 1 of the playoffs.
And let's not forget that when Vinny arrived, there were no superstars on this team...and as he's leaving...there are now 2.
So how are Paxson, Gar, and Jerry getting away with firing Vinny? After all, the numbers don't lie. And if you look at the numbers and the outcome both seasons, the Bulls have performed admirably for what they had to work with. And so did Vinny.
Well, it all comes back to Fight-Gate. That's it. That's the reason they needed. Paxson and Vinny don't mesh. And if Paxson stays, no way Vinny can stay. Not if you want to show free agents you're trying to fix the mess that the organization currently resembles. And you know quite well Paxson, pretty much a life-long Bull, is not being dumped in favor of Vinny. So Fight-Gate was the perfect excuse. The Bulls were unbelievably clever about it. The way I see it, somebody inside the organization leaked it with a few weeks to go in the season to K.C. Johnson so that the press would get ahold of the story and the firing would become much easier to explain. Also, if you do it with a few weeks to spare, the controversey will die down by playoff-time and won't distract players. They didn't count on K.C. not publishing the story out of respect for Vinny and the team. Obviously, K.C. is a fan of the Bulls and not just a journalist, and didn't want to cause drama during the playoff push. So a few weeks later, when it was clear that K.C. was not moving forward with the story, someone leaked it again. This time to Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports. That guy publishes anything and everything. Now, in spite of Vinny's admirable performance, especially for a newly minted coach, the Bulls had a perfectly good explanation for letting him go. And not only that...they actually made it seem like they were giving it some thought in the week in between getting bounced from the playoffs leading up to the press conference tomorrow. This way they don't look like unreasonable tyrants and they show they at least wanted to give it some thought before canning their non-losing, non-winning, overperforming hardheaded coach. Don't fall for it.
Vinny got played. It's unfortunate for Vinny. Really, it is. But the Bulls know, as well as I know, as well as you know, that if they want to show a free agent that they are serious about winning now, then they had to fire VDN. Nowadays, free agents don't want to come and play for coaches with minimal coaching experience. Especially one who has been ridiculed in the media as much as Vinny has. I mean the media has absolutely been relentless since the day he was hired. And that's mostly the Bulls' fault, since he was seen as somewhat of a fallback option after the whole Doug Collins fake-out.
To the guy's credit, he's handled everything with dignity, class, and professionalism. He's incredibly articulate and he seems like he's tough as nails. He definitely has thick-skin. I admire his personality. That's never been the issue. The issue has always been the X's and O's. His coaching instincts, his questionable rotation choices, his timeouts (although he's gotten exponentially better here). He also uses the word "thrust" way too often and calls Kirk "Kurt", but I digress.
The problem is, with the most coveted free agent class of all time, you need a proven winner. Someone who's been out of the first round. Someone who's gone over .500. Someone who has never gotten in a fight with his GM. Basically, not Vinny Del Negro. Unfortunately, the coaching prospects out there aren't exactly enthralling. The rough list looks like this: Lawrence Frank, Kevin McHale, Mo Cheeks, Byron Scott, Dwane Casey, and Eric Musselman. According to K.C. Johnson, that list isn't "comprehensive." For some reason, Avery Johnson isn't mentioned. I'd be shocked if they hired someone not on that list. I like two guys...Lawrence Frank and Byron Scott. Frank made it to the playoffs 4 out of 6 seasons coaching the Nets, and got out of the first round 3 times. Byron Scott coached the Nets to the NBA Finals in back to back seasons in 2002 and 2003. Not bad. He also led the Hornets to their best record ever and handled a budding young point guard named Chris Paul very nicely. He can probably do some good work with Derrick. So my preferred choice thus far is Byron Scott.
I think Byron Scott is considered a player's coach, and I definitely think free agents will look at Byron's track record and the Chicago situation becomes that much more attractive. Definitely more attractive than Vinny Del Negro.
As for Vinny, I don't think he's done coaching. I think he's proven enough for him to land another job...eventually. And I don't think he got screwed or anything like that like a lot of sudden Vinny supporters are claiming. The Bulls gave him the deal of a lifetime. They let him, a guy with 0 coaching experience whatsoever, take over one of the most revered basketball teams in the land, immediately after drafting the number one overall pick and future superstar Derrick Rose. Not only that, but they signed him to a 3-year deal, knowing quite well they would probably fire him after the second year with the impending free agent class looming. I'm not exactly sure why they did that. In fact, I'm not exactly sure why they hired a coach knowing they would fire him within such a short amount of time. I'm not sure what they thought they were gaining by doing that. Maybe they thought there'd be more options for possible head coaching hirees a few years down the road? They were actually right. And they probably saved a few bucks. Bottom line, consider yourself lucky, Vinny.
And to be fair, as I said above, the VDN era went much better than expected. Two .500 seasons, two playoff appearances, and two solid playoff series in two years. I'll take it. Now hit the road.
