What could have been, should have been if the Bulls had not made so many mistakes or if things hadn't happened.

In no particular order:


1. We traded Brand and took Eddy Curry & Tyson. The problem was that Gasol went #3. We could have had him. Anyway, it's not that we drafted the high school tandem it's that it didn't work out b/c Paxson didn't want it to. Not only did it not work out but it kept us from ever drafting another high school player. In 2002 Amare went # 8.

2. In 2002 we took Jay Williams # 2. Why did Jay Williams have to get hurt.
He really came to life in his last 7 games of the year.
He put up stats of 14.7 ppg, 5.28 apg, 1 spg, 60.6 FG%, & hit 11 out of 16 3pfg's, in only 26.28 mpg
That's got to be close to 20 ppg & 7 apg if he were playing 35 mpg.

3. Why do we get high picks in the weak drafts? And then still not use them on the right player?
In 2000 we have the 4th pick, 7th, 24th pick, and 3 second round picks in the weakest draft ever. We take Marcus Fizer, Chris Mihm (& trade him for Jamal Crawford), Dalibor Bagaric, AJ Guyton, Jake Voscuhl, & Kalid El-Amin. Why!!!!!!

It was the worst draft ever. Still we could have taken Mike Miller instead of Fizer, & we could have taken Michael Redd (the best player in the draft) instead of any of our 2nd round players. Shoot me now. Why couldn't we have had that many picks in 1999, 2003, 2006, or 2007?

4. Why don't we ever get any great 2nd round players?
In 2001 we drafted Trenton Hassell on spot ahead of Gilbert Arenas. Why are we so unfortunate.

5. Trading players you shouldn't and drafting the wrong players?
I listed Brand above but we also traded Brad Miller & Ron Artest. The 2nd worst trade ever (and I argue could even be the worst) the Bulls traded Ron Artest, Brad Miller, & Ron Mercer to the Pacers for Travis Best and Jalen Rose. What a joke.

1998 - Bulls take Corey Benjamin at 28. At 32 the Sonics take Rashard Lewis. At 34 the Bulls take Shammond Williams. At 39 the Bucks take Rafer Alston (not a world win but still better).

1999 - might be the only year the Bulls got it right in the draft when the drafted Elton Brand #1, Ron Artest # 16, They then traded both players. The Bulls did miss on one 2nd round stud. They took Michael Ruffin 32, & Lari Ketner 49, instead of Manu Ginobili who fell to 57 thus ensuring the Spurs a couple of championships.

2000 - We went over this above. The worst draft ever and we have 6 picks. 3 1st & 3 2nd rounders. We take Marcus Fizer, Crawford, & some other garbage. We take 3 2nd round picks ahead of Michael Redd

2001 - Bulls trade Brand. Take the High School show. Then trade Tyson a few years later for way under value. The Bulls miss out on Pau Gasol, Joe Johnson, Gerald Wallace, Tony Parker. But by far the biggest blunder was when the Bulls took Tenton Hassell with the first pick of the 2nd round instead of Gilbert Arenas. But then again, defense does win championships. Where is Trenton Hassell? Maybe on his way to a title in Dallas?

2002 - Bulls take Jay Williams. He gets hurt. We need a PG but better players ended up out of that draft. Amare Stoudemire, Caron Butler, Chris Wilcox, Tayshaun Prince.

The Bulls have another huge 2nd round blunder by taking Roger Mason Jr. & 30, 4 spots ahead of Carlos Boozer.

2003 - The Bulls did what they had to do. They drafted Kirk Hinrich b/c of William's injury. Would TJ Ford have been better? David West was drafted 18, Boris Diaw 21, Josh Howard 29. The Bulls take Mario Austin in the 2nd round. Probably their best 2nd round selection. Too bad he's not on the team. He's dominating the Europe game.

2004 - Bulls take Gordon & trade for Deng. Good draft Paxson. But would Devin Harris & Iguodala be better? How about Al Jefferson at 15? But we were to scared to take a high school big man. Josh Smith at 17. Kevin Martin 26 (But we only draft from the big schools). Chris Duhon taken in the 2nd round. Good pick.

2005 - In the best PG year in some time, we have no picks. Williams & Paul highlight the draft. Atlanta like the Bulls takes the wrong player. If they draft a guard instead of Marvin they are in the playoffs today.

2006 - The one that will haunt us for years to come. The Bulls take Aldridge and then trade him for Tyrus Thomas & Krapola. It looked like the smart deal and I was super excited but Portland rapped the Bulls. They ended up with Aldridge & Roy. Then got Oden the next year. They have essentially rebuilt a horrible team in 3 years. To make it worse the Bulls take Thabo instead of Ronnie Brewer. The Bulls also could have drafted Rudy Gay (though we Deng). How about Rajon Rondo instead of Thabo?

2007 - Yet to be determined. Hopefully Noah pans out. I have a feeling Rodney Stuckey is going to turn into a steal at 15 for the Pistons.

Any other things I didn't think of. Feel free to share.

So this is what comes from you having a week off of work, eh?

Well, I think that it should be pointed out that Tyson was dealt just so Pax could make a foolish run at Big Ben.

Ouch.

We've had this conversation whilest drunk multiple times over, Edwin, and I have to say hindsight is 20-20, but Pax really screwed some stuff up so far.

The highlights of Pax were Kirk, Gordon, Deng and Noc... not exactly beating the world are we? He'd better make a move fast.

FWIW, everything before April 2003 happened under Krauses watch.

Oh we know. Krause made some good draft picks (Brand, & Artest). Just didn't keep them. Tyson and Eddy were great as well but Paxson let them go. What has that turned out for us?

I still think we would have been better off just keeping Tyson and Curry but I'm not going to go there again.

I'm not sure who has done worse. I think given a few more years, Krause would have been fine with the big 2. However, those 2nd round picks and the 2000 draft and who could forget the E-Rob show was what did him in.

Another big blunder:

The Bulls have the most cap room in 2001 of any team in the league. With the hope of signing any 2 of the following players, Tim Duncan, Tracy McGrady, Grant Hill, Rashard Lewis, or Tim Thomas, all the Bulls can muster is Eddie Robinson. All the players listed above turned down $68 million dollar contract offers from the Bulls.

So the Bulls took a rediculous amount of cap room into that season with only Eddie Robinson to show for it.

I never liked Gasol at the time, I though Tyson would be a stud along with Curry. I'd still love to have them to this day because both of them combined = 1 superstar. I hated getting rid of Crawford. He was my favorite player when we sucked for all those years, and to think we were a Donyell Marshall + a first round pick away from getting Dwyane Wade. Frigen Riley or whoever the GM was at the time thought long and hard about that deal but obviously declined and we were stuck with Kirk Hinrich who I did not really care for.

Paxson's biggest mistake was probably trading Chandler for garbage, but at the time I thought Big Ben would bring something different to Chicago but in reality, all he wanted was the money and left his game behind in Detroit. Tyrus over Aldridge is a big time factor in the legacy of John Paxson. I didn't really care who it was, just that it was either Lamarcus or Tyrus and we ended up with Tyrus. Now it looks more and more like it could be the wrong decision, we will see.

You know what disturbs me a bit about this analysis? It's the classic hindsight = 20/20 deal. Because now we know who the best players in the league from the early drafts this decade are, it's fairly nice to look around and wish that we'd landed all of them.

We haven't landed an Arenas or a Redd in the 2nd round. Fine. How many teams have?

Carlos Boozer went a few picks after one of ours? Blast. If only we'd been the team that drafted him...he could have shafted us and screwed us up for 3-4 years like he did Cleveland.

And damn, we never get anyone quality as a UDFA. Except that Nocioni guy.

We have no pick in 05, the best point guard year? Damn. Oh wait, didn't we trade that pick, which with the growing of Curry and Chandler wound up being around 19, for the 7th pick the year beforehand, that was Luol?

We traded Eddy Curry? Damn, but oh wait, we got a pick out of it and the rights to switch picks, so we wound up with Noah and TT and a boatload of cap space. And Eddy Curry is putting up solid offensive numbers in NY, but is still a disaster on the defensive end, and honestly shouldn't be starting for that team.

I'm farily happy with a lot of these. We didn't get lucky enough to get Lebron, but we got a decent player that year. We might not have pulled off the best possible draft in 04, but we sure came out with some good players, and now it all depends on development, esp. with Luol. We missed all those point guards, but we stole Deng out of it. We dumped Curry, but we got Thomas and Noah out of it.

If we're talking about Paxson, the 3 decisions that now are open questions in his evaluation are:

1. The Thomas/Aldridge trade. Right now it hurts. In a year or two, if it still hurts, then that really looks bad.
2. The Chandler/Wallace deal. I still think it makes sense, I don't think Tyson would be doing what he's doing today with us, and I think this team needed a veteran like Wallace. But it sure doesn't look positive right now.
3. Picking Noah.

All 3 of these I'm going to argue for time on, although #2 is certainly looking like a loss. But I for one would trade a loss on that for a bit more experience on a young team, so I'll still look past that if #'s 1 and 3 work out. To my eyes, Paxson's dealings in 03-05 and his building of this team and dealing with contracts/cap space have given him at least 2 more years. Beyond that, I will judge his performance based on those 3 criteria, and any future moves he makes (i.e. what happens with Deng and Gordon this offseason).

Oh man, did you really have to bring up the Jalen Rose deal? Man...


Dumping Chandler and taking Aldridge over Tyrus certainly don't look good. The first one it wasn't so much that they signed Wallace and unloaded Chandler, at the time I thought having a veteran to lead a young team would help a lot. My problem was that we only got two seconds and JR Smith for him. That just baffled me, you'd think teams would give up more for a young big man that's locked up for a while (even if it did seem like a big contract at the time), especially considering that guys like Joel Pryzbilla are getting fairly big deals. And any of you that have been on this board for a while will remember how I felt about Aldridge/Tyrus. I was livid when we took the athletic project over the more polished post scorer. Okay, Tyrus might be good down the road, but Aldridge is averaging 18 a game right now, and who knows what he's averaging when/if Tyrus develops, it's still only his second year. That post presence would be HUGE for us right now.

Yes Zoom, that presence would be huge for us right now, but when I look at this roster, I still see a team that is at least 2-3 years away from peaking despite all the protestations about winning now. Deng is still a baby in NBA time since he came out after 1 year. Gordon is still pre-peak at a whopping 24 years age. Hinrich is maybe at his peak time (scary with his performance this year) as is Nocioni, but that's about it. And on top of that we threw in Noah this year, along with a potentially decent pair of 2nd rounders.

Say what you want about Wallace and Smith, etc., and their ages...this is a team that's built for 2009-2010, because by then, Deng and Gordon should be at their peaks (roughly 27 or so) and Noah and Tyrus should have had a couple years under their belts in the league.

Of course, the way this season is going, I might be saying the same thing about the other Gordon or Mayo in a year or two.

Age has nothing to do with peaking. Not every player gets better just because they get older. For Gordon & Deng I think your right. They have not and will not peak for a couple of years. But they are good enough NBA players to win a title with if we had the right players around them. All this BS about getting veterans. Skiles can't coach the veterans. They don't put up with the stuff that the young guns do b/c the young guns don't know what to expect. Wallace probably came here and spiff a brick. It all started with the headband thing. He was an outcast from the beginning. He's even more an outcast now. Everyone wanted to run Chandler out of town instead of find a post up player to play with him. That's the only way Chandler was ever going to be effective.

A Chandler/Aldridge combo would be sick. Both can block shots and Chandler would get all the boards. Say what you want about peaking, if you are right that we didn't have a chance to win for 2 more years then that makes the Wallace signing even that much more retarded b/c by then Tyson would be at his peak according to you and at $10 million per season that's not too much.

The Ben Wallace deal was a joke. I thought it might work out but it definately didn't. The first time we finally get to give a player a contract like that it has to be for the player with no offensive game and someone who is in their 30's. I'm sure Paxson wanted to make Detroit weaker but he should have been more focused on making us better. AD was a better vet than Wallace. Not to mention we gave Adriann Griffin a 3 year deal I believe which was another joke. He should never play on this team. They are probably trying to make him a coach or something.

Personally, I think Gordon and Deng have gotten as good as they can get. They have peaked..

I'll agree on Gordon, but Deng is only 22 and can get much, much better.

Deng sucks. Just kidding.

2006 kind of sucked. I was an Aldridge guy, and I wanted Brewer. I trusted Pax on this one, and I'll still have faith in his decision until it is clear that it has backfired. However, it scares me to think how good the Blazers will be with Oden, Aldridge, and Roy. What if they end up with another lottery pick. They could add Rose, Gordon, or Mayo and then their NBA Champs for the next 10 years (if Oden pans out).

Maybe not 10 years. They'll have trouble paying all of them to stay in Portland. Especially the Oden/Aldridge combo if they both turn into all-stars.

Aldridge and Oden will win several championships together. You just don't get that kind of youth and talent combined in the front court like they have right now. They just need a great point guard and they'll win their fair share of rings. Oden will win several DPOY awards and Lamarcus while I don't think he will be a superstar, he will be an all star caliber player that will provide their scoring. Roy gives them a swingman who can score and do all the intangibles as well. I obviously like where they are headed but just think, with Oden out for the year they could possibly end up with another top 5 pick that would come with one of Rose, Beasley, Mayo, or Gordon.. Its scary to think about how good they could be.

Paxson also took a 13 win team to a perennial playoff team, so you have to give him some credit.

The only negative things I'll say about Pax is his drafts the past couple years. I've hated them.