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From The Great One's column on aol.com ;o)
Mariotti is still awful as a writer (sorry Mac). He still hates Jerry. He still can't understand how One White Sox World Series triumph is worth any number of Bulls Championships.
Mariotti is still an Idiot...
The Weed King
What Happened to Bulls? Their Owner
Is an Idiot
Jay MariottiPosted Feb 13th 2009 10:00 PM by Jay Mariotti (author feed)
Filed Under: NBA
PHOENIX -- On the day Michael Jordan was named a finalist for the Basketball Hall of Fame -- shocking as a cactus in Arizona, huh? -- we learned much more about the dysfunctional franchise he once graced.
Ten seasons since the Jordan Dynasty was prematurely wreckingballed, the Chicago Bulls are reminding us that they've accomplished absolutely nothing since he left. In fact, all considering, they might be the dumbest operation in sports.
No? Since June of 1998, when Jordan pushed off Bryon Russell and flicked his shooting wrist with such finality that he struck a pose for eternity, the Bulls have won exactly one postseason series. They've lost 541 of 863 games, blown more high draft picks than I can count and struck out on the free-agent market, not surprising when early recruiting attempts involved sending the Luvabulls dance squad and mascot Benny the Bull -- the one who's always getting busted by the police -- to greet Tim Duncan at the airport. Four of their head coaches, including current novice Vinny Del Negro, have been undeniable flops, and the only good one, Scott Skiles, was fired when the players fessed up to quitting on him.
And you know what's most ridiculous about it all? The team's longtime owner, Jerry Reinsdorf, talked periodically in the '90s about wanting his own crack at a dynasty. Pause here for the loudest, silliest laugh track you can find. When Jordan, Scottie Pippen and Phil Jackson -- three Hall of Famers -- rebelled at the idea of Jerry Krause remaining the general manager and chose to make the sixth NBA championship their last, Reinsdorf didn't work real hard to pacify them and maintain the nucleus for a couple of more trophies. He and Krause broke it up, said they couldn't wait to win their own championships without Jordan ... and turned the dynasty into a travesty.
The demise of the Bulls, and how Reinsdorf's blurred vision frittered away all Jordan-related momentum, came full circle Friday.
Amid the otherwise fun proceedings on All-Star Game weekend, reports circulated that general manager John Paxson has conveyed to Reinsdorf that he could leave his job at any time, no later than at season's end.
TNT reported Paxson has a health concern that he would prefer not fester. Clearly, stress has taken over Paxson's well-being, a byproduct of the franchise's struggles. He did well in his infancy on the job, cleaning up Krause's toxic spillage and creating a level of respectability. But amassing high picks didn't amount to good on-court chemistry, and his reign began to tumble when he thought Tyrus Thomas was a better plan with the No. 2 slot of the 2006 draft than Brandon Roy or LaMarcus Aldridge. Since then, though handed the gift of hometown phenom Derrick Rose via the ping-pong lottery, Paxson has become a civic pariah.
"Booooooooooo!!" the crowd serenaded him the other night at the United Center, a particularly harsh reaction during a halftime ceremony honoring the ailing Johnny (Red) Kerr, the team's venerable announcer.
A sensitive guy who has hated losing dating back to his Notre Dame days, Paxson is tiring of the job and the frustrations of spinning in idle. But I need to point out today that it's hardly all his fault. Why haven't the Bulls attracted the premier free agents? Oh, because Reinsdorf doesn't do basketball business in a dynamic way and has said several times that his one World Series ring as White Sox owner means immeasurably more to him than six NBA banners. Why would anyone say something so stupid? Because the man's ego can't handle the truth:
Without Jordan, the Reinsdorf Bulls never would have sniffed the NBA Finals, as demonstrated during their sickly decade without Jordan. He can say he won one baseball championship without Jordan, but wasn't that more about the White Sox finally stumbling into success than Reinsdorf being a good owner -- keeping in mind he has reached one World Series in 28 years? His supporters say he has brought seven championships to Chicago, but that nonsense should be affixed with the biggest asterisk available, with Jordan's Jumpman logo as a silhouette.
Recently, Reinsdorf stepped out of his bunker and gave a rare interview to a TV station that pays him rights fees.
"When you have a team that's not performing, it's an organization failure," Reinsdorf said of the Bulls. "You win and lose as an organization."
Seeing how it's his organization, that makes Reinsdorf the failure behind the failure, the idiot who wasn't smart enough to keep Jordan around longer as a player -- or, for that matter, in the organization -- and the overseer of the 1999-to-2009 farce. If he insists on prioritizing baseball over basketball, he should do the city a favor and sell the Bulls to someone who cares.
Such as Jordan, who is misplaced as a Charlotte front-office executive and would carry considerable Chicago business clout with a cigar in a private suite -- far, far away from all basketball decisions, thank you.
Reinsdorf helped screw up the current Bulls by botching last summer's courtship of Mike D'Antoni, whose fun-and-gun system would have made sweet music with Rose's point-guard gifts. They live near each other in the Phoenix suburb of Paradise Valley, yet Reinsdorf found a way to irritate the free-agent coach by questioning his commitment to defense. If you want a coach who's in demand, you don't insult the guy. But Reinsdorf has a way of irritating many people, and D'Antoni ditched him for New York, where he's exciting fans with entertaining basketball and has a better playoff shot with a hodgepodge roster than the Del Negro-led Bulls. It's convenient to blame Del Negro, as Reinsdorf has done by showing him little support, but why is a man who never coached in his life coaching this team? Because Paxson, who wanted D'Antoni dearly, was forced to settle for scraps after D'Antoni and Rick Carlisle were swept up. The Bulls sought Doug Collins briefly, but Reinsdorf stopped that potential marriage, too, saying he didn't want his friendship with Collins to suffer.
Huh? Is this is a professional sports franchise or a male-bonding society?
The fans also booed Reinsdorf on Kerr Night, which surely didn't thrill a man who likes bamboozling the paying customers by blaming media. He tried that lame tack again Friday, bashing longtime pro basketball writer Peter Vecsey after he broke the Paxson story. "Pete Vecsey is not a credible enough source to comment on," Reinsdorf said. "Two weeks ago, he had John being fired; now he has him resigning."
Look, no one cares what he thinks of Vecsey. Fans want to know why the Bulls, 11 years and counting since Jordan, still stink. It's Reinsdorf who likes building with youth, even though the NBA -- and the Jordan Dynasty -- was built on superstars. Only once of late has he rubberstamped a major free-agent signing -- center Ben Wallace, a client of Reinsdorf's friend, agent Arn Tellem -- and that was an abject failure when Wallace played poorly and sought lunch dates with his ex-Detroit teammates when the Bulls were trying to beat the Pistons in the playoffs. Earlier this decade, Jordan and Pippen were known to badmouth Krause to potential free agents, another reason the likes of Tracy McGrady and Grant Hill never took the Bulls seriously. Kevin Garnett once came out and blurted he'd never play for the Bulls with the Jerrys around.
All the while, Jordan sat back and shook his head, wondering why the Jerrys were so quick to part ways with the greatest individual resource basketball could offer. He never became even a partner in ownership, fading away and resuming his playing career with the Washington Wizards, a more awkward fit than Brett Favre in New York, Joe Montana in Kansas City or any of the declining-legend datelines. If anyone deserved a one-team run, it was MJ. But Reinsdorf sided with Krause in the power struggle, and Jordan left his statue behind.
He hasn't performed well himself as a basketball executive, in part because he's lazy and tries to run franchises from his Chicago home. Jordan was fired by WIzards owner Abe Pollin for various blunders, including the drafting of Kwame Brown with the No. 1 pick in 2001. In Charlotte, working for friend Bob Johnson, he has watched attendance dwindle dramatically while the Bobcats lose more than they win under nomadic Larry Brown. In a rare chat with reporters, Jordan actually admitted -- or as close as he could come to admitting -- that he hasn't been Red Auerbach or Jerry West as an executive. His latest mistake was Adam Morrison, the No. 3 pick in 2006, who was traded to the Lakers last week.
"I think we've grown from it," Jordan said. "I've grown from it, and hopefully down the road when you make a choice, you try to make a better choice. People are going to point out the mistakes. Very rarely do they point out the successes. I understand that. It's part of the game."
In my conversations with him, it's clear he would rather own a team than be a glorified GM. Would he like to buy the Bobcats? "I don't know if Bob is looking to sell the entire team. He's considering a lot of things, a lot of opportunities," Jordan said. "My (desire) to grow as an investor is still strong. Purchasing the whole team, I don't think that's an option right now. But if parts of the team become available, and I can afford it as much as anybody, I'd definitely like to grow my investment in the Bobcats."
Chicago is where he belongs. While the fans were booing Reinsdorf and Paxson on Kerr Night, they greeted Jordan with the usual roars.
They managed a laugh when Jordan revisited his old nightly ritual of clapping his hands with resin in the face of Kerr, who always sat courtside and took it. "I don't know how it started," Jordan said.
"I think he had a nice suit on and I wanted to mess him up a little. It became a pregame ritual. Now LeBron (James) has taken it to another level. You see LeBron do it, I think of me and Johnny way back when."
That's when Michael Jordan and the Bulls were pop-culture phenomenons, the greatest entertainment extravaganza known to sports.
Today, thanks to the wondrous vision of their owner, they're a laughingstock whose general manager can't find the escape hatch quickly enough.
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