He needs to go. He's been nothing but terrible. He passed on Kobe, Gasol, and Garnett, 2 of his last 3 lottery picks have been horrible, and we currently have the most horribly constructed team in the NBA. For fucks sake Pax, do something with this pile of spiff you call a roster.

NOTE: Derrick Rose is exempt from this message.

Agreed, he is the reason for this mess. We have had the same exact problem for years now and he continues to pass on trades that would help in that area or help bring the team to the next level. Anyone of those guys that you mentioned, Kobe, Gasol, or Garnett would have raised our status to contenders but instead were stuck with a bunch of streak shooters and bad basketball players.

anyone catch what he said on sports nite today, i saw a preview for it but i missed it.

I don't know. I think Reinsdorf is the real problem. I think if Pax had his way D'Antonio would be on the Bench and we would be watching 120pt+ games with Rose putting up double doubles (pts and assists) like they are going out of style while the bulls would be looking like one of the elite teams in the east (maybe not on the same level as the boston celtics or the cleaveland lebrons but certainly better then the magic and the hawks.)

Don't tease me with the D'Antoni talk! Everytime I see this guy I think "What should have been." He's changed Chris Duhon into a really good player, think of what he could have done with Derrick Rose.

Reinsdorf is definitely a contributing factor, besides the coaching search fiasco they supposedly could have had Gasol but it was nixed because it'd require a hefty luxury tax committment.

D'Antoni wouldn't have solved all of our problems though, we'd still have poor production inside and we'd still be seeing an awful lot of small lineups with Deng and Nocioni as our forwards (Noc would play a ton, he loves big guys that can shoot) and possibly Tyrus at C . This also isn't really a team that you want to tell to shoot jumpers in the first 7 seconds of the shot clock. Instead of fighting for the 8th seed and getting crushed if we do get it we probably get the 6-seed and lose 4-1 to Dwight Howard and the Magic. We'd still be stuck with a lot of decent but not stellar players around Rose because we didn't deal any of our core players over the last couple of years and tried to build from within.

We'd probably also have Al Harrington because D'Antoni was the one who wanted him.

Depends on whether or not Golden State would have taken Kirk Hinrich for him (pre-injury obviously). It's possible, of course then we essentially have 3 forwards that fill virtually the same role and even fewer minutes for our post players (that could be a positive though ).

I'd rather have D'Antoni's style of play over Vinny's, especially in a rebuilding season (Trade values). D'Antoni is making it work with average players on his roster, and Reinsdorf was worried about the defense? Well I still don't see any defense being played with the team now! Guys like Rose, Gordon, Nocioni, Tyrus, Hinrich, Deng, and Hughes all would have thrived in his offense. Noah probably would have been Eddy Curry'd at the beginning of the season for not being in shape.

Well, no spiff D'Antoni would have been better, but he'd be working with a largely average cast of players here too so I don't know how many miracles he'd have been working. I'm not sure how well he's "making it work" in New York either, keep in mind that the Knicks are a game behind us even with numerous players that have been highly successful in that new scheme thus far, and they actually have something inside with David Lee (and Randolph pre-trade). They're not a good team, they're merely not a horrible one.

D'Antoni isn't going to suddenly make Tyrus a good shooter or finisher, or make Deng start hitting 3's, or make Hughes anything more than a mediocre player that has spurts of efficiency. You need more than just a PG that can create shots, you also need several versatile wing players that are capable of sticking 3's (especially important for us since Rose is nowhere near the sniper Nash is) and finishing in transition or the halfcourt (one of which has to be able to defend PF's) and a good interior player that can clean the glass and get some easy buckets inside. The backcourt would be a solid fit with Rose/Gordon (assuming he stayed long term) and Hinrich backing up, but we'd probably need an entirely new starting frontcourt since Deng can't hit the 3, Tyrus can't play outside and create mis-matches and none of our big men are more than passable (ideally Noc would be the backup at both foward spots but could/would probably start short term). We don't have a guy that fills the Marion/Harrington/Chandler role, a guy that fills the Stoudemire/Lee role, or the Joe Johnson/Quentin Richardson role, which would likely take a year or two to get anywhere close to ideal.

Well Gordon fills the shooters role like Barbosa but he isn't the defender Raja Bell is. Nocioni would have shot a ton of threes similar to Al Harrinton and Tyrus more than likely would have been taking more jump shots than what he has been but getting buckets in transition (Like the way he has been the last two games). David Lee is not playing the Stoudemire role, he is far from a scorer/dominater inside. D'Antoni has just never had a great rebounder before until Lee, and that's what he is doing. Its hard to see how much different Rose would be playing in this system because Vinny's system is built entirely around Derrick's strengths..

You're missing a lot of the point here. He can shoe-horn a lot of our guys into the system, that doesn't mean that they'll excell at it and maximize our win potential. You can throw a lineup of Rose/Gordon/Deng/Tyrus/Gooden out there and run the system, but they're not going to get anywhere near the desired offensive impact because there is only one shooter out there. D'Antoni teams typically hit 9 three's a game or more, the Bulls hit 6. It's kind of hard to spread the floor, attack with penetration and kill them from the arc if they collapse when you only have a handful guys on the roster that are a threat to bury the 3. The Knicks run it reasonably well because they can throw a lineup out there where 4 of the 5 guys on the floor are a legit threat to hit the 3, the only way the Bulls can even get 3 is if they play a lineup with Hinrich, Gordon and Noc.

The Bulls only have about half of the pieces to effectively run his system. Tyrus shooting jumpers is a very bad thing, unless he's going to be our center he doesn't fit this system at all. He can't slash to the basket, he can't hit 3's and he's a mediocre finisher (statistically that's being generous). Nocioni only fits in that he's 6'9" and can hit jumpers, he's nowhere near the versatile playmaking forward like Marion/Chandler/Harrington/Diaw to a lesser extent that is a key part of making the system work. He'd be a great forward off the bench for that system, but not one of the key cogs. Same thing with Deng, he's more like the Grant Hill addition in that he's an effective player but probably hurts the system more than he helps.

As for the Lee/Stoudemire part, are we talking about the same players? David Lee is a far better big man than anyone we have, he's averaging about 14-11 while shooting 56% from the floor, and that's in only 32 minutes. That's after averaging about a double-double over the previous two seasons as well. He's not the scorer that Stoudemire is, but few are. He still hits about 6 shots a game this season at a very high clip, which is more than we can say about any of our bigs. I'm also curious as to how Phoenix didn't have a dominant rebounder when their starting front line was Stoudemire and Marion. A down year for Marion was 9.8 boards per game and Stoudemire averaged about 9 a game as well. Sure, a team with a dominant front-line could abuse them because they're bad defensively, but they easily held their own on the glass.

Not if you're chasing a draft pick, which is what the Bulls really should be doing.

I somehow forgot about Shawn Marion being there, he did average 10 or so a game.. I wonder how Paxson would have went after players this summer if D'Antoni would have been the coach to get those type of players that fit his system.

Honestly, I don't think that's an effective strategy this year for two reasons:

1) There are several VERY bad teams out there, it'd take quite the tanking effort to get into OKC/Minnesota/Washington territory and we're still 5 games up on several other teams already. I don't think we can get higher than 5th in the lottery order, and even that would take some effort.

2) Outside of Griffin, this draft appears to be a crap-shoot at the moment. It doesn't look like there will be a whole lot of difference between #5 and #15 (honestly, outside of Griffin and Harden the guys I like are projected in the late lottery), though there's obviously plenty of time for that to change.