PAXON'S TOP 10 MISTAKES !!! LIST EM

[ptpablo]

3) BW signing - Which I consider only a mild mistake given the information at the time. I won't even go into. It's been well chronicled on this board.

2) BG over Iggy - This is more of a personal thing. It's not really a mistake in that Iggy is a much better player than BG because I don't think he is. It's just that I love versatility. When I think of a title team I think of our dynasty Bulls and think of interchangeable, versatile wing players with size. Undersized = bad, has always been my philosophy. Drafting a small 2 guard has handcuffed us by having us need to keep Kirk or obtain a similar Kirk-like player (of which there aren't many of his level) and also use a pick specifically to address the size issue.

1) Thabo over R. Brewer - I am in the minority that still has hope for Thabo in Chicago, but I wanted Brewer as did many here. Wasn't he perfect for the role we needed and more of a known commodity? Pax already took the risk when he drafted TT earlier that night. He shoulda stayed with the better known Brewer than the mysterious international rapper.

I agree with you Wingy. I did not minc the Wallace signing until they traded Chandler. I love size and versatility. BG was drafted very high for an undersized player at his position. Especially since he is not playing any PG. And Brewer was staring us in the face. I heard he had the second best athlete rating at the "combine" behind TT. Plus he played in America. No offense to European players, but they just seem to have more buzz and are more potential to busting.

[TB#1]

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it was not a mistake. it was the only thing that distinguished him from kyle macy at the time, which maybe is what catapulted his career

Ok. Ok. I concede the point.

Positively brilliant, Granville. I'm dying, here.

Still, Pax with the 'stache looked like an outtake-extra from Boogie Nights, so it has to count, overall, as a -1.

[SherronShabazz]

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Not only are you dwelling on an internet rumor started by Sam Smith that has since been discredited - you are confusing the teams. It was supposedly Toronto who had the 4th pick who was willing to make the swap - althought their GM had often said that they intended to draft Bosh & never discussed trading the pick with anyone.

Look - there is more than enough stuff to criticize Paxson about. It is not necessary to condemn him for stuff that never was a possibility

i have never heard these things about toronto. if i am wrong, i am wrong. i however am not condemning paxson. i love the guy. look at my top 10 list. its mostly fluff in my opinion. i tried hard to think of horrible things he has done. i think some people want his head... i think hes done a great job.

[JeffJordan]

The main things are: Not getting crap for Chandler, drafting TT over LMA, Roy and Gay, drafting Thabo over Brewer and Rondo, signing Ben Wallace to a ridiculous contract and NOT getting a good big man on our team that can score.

[Tommy Udo 6]

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i have never heard these things about toronto. if i am wrong, i am wrong. i however am not condemning paxson. i love the guy. look at my top 10 list. its mostly fluff in my opinion. i tried hard to think of horrible things he has done. i think some people want his head... i think hes done a great job.

Sam Smith started a rumor in 2003 that Toronto offered Lamond Murray & the 4th pick for Marshall & the 7th pick

That story has been denied by everyone concerned.

[JGeils]

Making no sense is that it (throwing Murray in) wouldn't be an example of Toronto trying to start over and clear cap room. Marshall's contract went on for even longer than Lamond.

And Lamond is getting larrrrrrger.

[dougthonus]

Paxson's real top 10 mistakes:

10: Cutting Corrie Blount after the deadline to sign with another team's playoff roster. A minor black eye, but obviously no big deal.

9: Signing Scottie Pippen again. It didn't really have a positive effect on the team, and Pippen basically just got free money out of the deal. It didn't really have any real repercussions though.

8: Letting Trenton Hassel leave for Linton Johnson the 3rd. Not a big deal, and Hassel was subsequently overpaid in Minnesota, so maybe it's better that we weren't the team to overpay him. Not keeping him was a mistake, but if we had kept him and signed him to Minny's deal it'd have been worse, so no big deal really.

7: Hiring Jim Boylan as interim coach. Boylan seems to be leading the franchise to maximum pain. No development for young players, no lotto pick, no playoff success. If he achieves one of these three goals then I will take this one back, but I don't think he'll achieve any of them. I can't say this is a huge mistake yet, because we don't know what will happen the rest of the way, but the ones listed behind it had no significant effect long term, this might.

6: Signing both Andres Nocioni and Joe Smith this summer. I was afraid this move would crowd our front court and leave our rookies out in the cold, and it has done exactly that. I think Nocioni is a bit overpaid (though not horrendously so) and that's not helping things out much either. I would have loved to see us sign Joe Smith and do a S&T with Memphis for whatever picks we could get in an effort to balance out our roster better.

5: Taking Thabo Sefolosha over Ronnie Brewer. Another move that really surprised me at the time, and Ronnie Brewer has shown himself to be a high quality NBA player while Sefolosha has not.

4: Trading Tyson Chandler for squat. This is more of a hindsight move a little bit, so I cut him some slack on it. It was also about saving money and thinking Wallace could replace Chandler. Given the Bulls salary constraints the move made sense in many ways. That being said, it has turned out to be ridiculously dumb. Tyson is a quality player in the NBA, and we could really use him on the roster right now. This trade forced us to basically go small constantly whereas with Chandler we had much better size advantages.

3: Signing Scott Skiles to an extension after the 04/05 season. I think he was in a tough spot there due to the success of that season, but Skiles still had one more year on his deal. Given his history of wearing thin on his players, if we had waited that one more year, it's probably dramatic how big a difference it would have made. No way would we have still extended him after 05/06. We could have then brought in Rick Adelman or another quality coach instead. Tyson Chandler may not need to be traded in this case because a huge portion of his problem (as well with others) was relating to Skiles who crushed his confidence. Skiles ways probably greatly limited Tyrus and Thabo as well.

2: Taking Tyrus Thomas over LaMarcus Aldridge - I waffled on whether this is #1 or #2. The reason it I ultimately went with #2 is that I still have some hope that Tyrus will be a high quality player in the NBA. Our coaching staff hasn't given him a chance despite him showing htat he can be very good over long stretches when given a fair chance. On the other hand, we went with a riskier pick which didn't fit our needs as well either. It didn't make sense to me unless Tyrus became a much better player than Aldridge, and I didn't think it was likely at the time given his age and current productivity.

1: Signing Ben Wallace - IMO this guy is a negative on this team right now. I would gladly trade him for an expiring contract. To have a tremendous asset like 15 million in cap space and turn it into a massive negative is just awful.

[coldfish]

Doug:

Good synopsis. I agree with most of the points. A few thoughts:

- Thabo over Brewer really high. Possibly number 1. Brewer is starting at 2G for Utah and would be a massive upgrade over Duhon.
- Aldridge over Tyrus conflicts with a number of other mistakes. Wallace, Nocioni, Smith, Boylan, etc. all come together to make Tyrus look bad. I'm not saying that Tyrus is better than Aldridge, but I suspect the talent difference in the same situation would be much smaller than it now appears.
- I would add paying too much money to Chandler as a panic move really high. Basically, it started the moves that brought Wallace here and got Chandler dumped for nothing.
- I would also add a comment about not having a quality group of assistant coaches. IMO, not at least having a big man coach has hurt the team.

[richard]

1: Signing Ben Wallace - IMO this guy is a negative on this team right now. I would gladly trade him for an expiring contract. To have a tremendous asset like 15 million in cap space and turn it into a massive negative is just awful.

how did you feel at the time of the signing? were you against it? to me, it was pretty obvious that the team needed an offensive big man or at least a slashing guard. this didn't fill any team need, i was pissed off when i heard the news.

[dougthonus]

how did you feel at the time of the signing? were you against it? to me, it was pretty obvious that the team needed an offensive big man or at least a slashing guard. this didn't fill any team need, i was pissed off when i heard the news.

I wasn't excited, but I didn't think it would be antwhere near this bad.

[dougthonus]

Doug:

Good synopsis. I agree with most of the points. A few thoughts:

- Thabo over Brewer really high. Possibly number 1. Brewer is starting at 2G for Utah and would be a massive upgrade over Duhon.
- Aldridge over Tyrus conflicts with a number of other mistakes. Wallace, Nocioni, Smith, Boylan, etc. all come together to make Tyrus look bad. I'm not saying that Tyrus is better than Aldridge, but I suspect the talent difference in the same situation would be much smaller than it now appears.
- I would add paying too much money to Chandler as a panic move really high. Basically, it started the moves that brought Wallace here and got Chandler dumped for nothing.
- I would also add a comment about not having a quality group of assistant coaches. IMO, not at least having a big man coach has hurt the team.

I can't see Brewer being the number 1 miss just because I don't see him as a future star. Brewer is the starting 2 guard in Utah, but he still doesn't have much offense. I like him, but I don't see him as being a monumental difference maker if we could add him on to our team. LaMarcus Aldridge might have been a monumental difference maker for us in that he adds so much we don't have. I could see him being a bit higher on the list than I had him though.

I also agree that the Aldridge over Tyrus thing is harder to judge based on all the other things on the list. There are a lot of barriers in front of Tyrus that if removed may allow him to be much better. On the other hand, they may not. However, even if Tyrus was close to as good as Aldridge then his lack of fit in our team with the personnel that we have is still a big problem.

I don't see overpaying Chandler as an issue. You have to ask yourself if we could have signed Chandler for less, because if the answer is no, then there's no way we get anything for him the next year anyway. Considering he took about the same as Zydrunas and Dalembart I don't think you could have convinced him to take less money. He was considered a better guy than either player entering free agency. So I don't think we could have gotten him for less, and I don't think our situation is any better if Chandler is playing on the QO. Maybe if we played ultra hardball we could have gotten him down a couple million, but that wouldn't have changed anything in the grand scheme of things. There's no way he was going to play for 6/50 or something like that after 2 guys ranked lower got 60 million. You also have to remember that his QO was really 6.3 million as well, so if he signs for much less than we signed him for he wouldn't have lost much in year 1 to take the QO and be a UFA.

I can definitely see the assistant coach thing as a big issue, but that's harder to judge without being around the team a lot and a lot of other teams to see how our assistants do. I'm not sure how helpful big men coaches have really been, and I don't think our current big men would benefit from traditional big men coaches as much. I would probably still shove this on my list after boylan though just because the other mistakes really didn't cost the franchise anything.

[JackFinn]

Pax is also to blame for bumming out Fleetwood MacBull. We miss you, pal.

[coldfish]

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I can't see Brewer being the number 1 miss just because I don't see him as a future star. Brewer is the starting 2 guard in Utah, but he still doesn't have much offense. I like him, but I don't see him as being a monumental difference maker if we could add him on to our team. LaMarcus Aldridge might have been a monumental difference maker for us in that he adds so much we don't have. I could see him being a bit higher on the list than I had him though.

From a mistake standpoint, I put Thabo up there pretty high. With all of the other player decisions, including Wallace, I can see what Paxson was thinking at the time. With Thabo over Brewer, you have to ask, what the hell?

Duhon as a starter: 3.6p 4.0a 1.6r 26mpg 18%
Brewer as a starter: 12.2p 2.7r 2.9a 29mpg 53%

I don't see overpaying Chandler as an issue. You have to ask yourself if we could have signed Chandler for less, because if the answer is no, then there's no way we get anything for him the next year anyway. Considering he took about the same as Zydrunas and Dalembart I don't think you could have convinced him to take less money. He was considered a better guy than either player entering free agency. So I don't think we could have gotten him for less, and I don't think our situation is any better if Chandler is playing on the QO. Maybe if we played ultra hardball we could have gotten him down a couple million, but that wouldn't have changed anything in the grand scheme of things. There's no way he was going to play for 6/50 or something like that after 2 guys ranked lower got 60 million. You also have to remember that his QO was really 6.3 million as well, so if he signs for much less than we signed him for he wouldn't have lost much in year 1 to take the QO and be a UFA.

I think Paxson learned his lesson with this. Just because someone else overpaid, it doesn't mean that you have to. I think the Bulls should have played super hardball, Varejao style.

[bshadow]

i miss matt maloney...
good 3pt shooter

[JGeils]

Geez, forgot about Fleet. Where's he been?

Doug's list is pretty spot-on, can't argue with anything beyond the placement of the Skiles re-signing, but that's up to conjecture (I assumed in 2003 that Scott would burn out after three years after showing signs within the first two years of losing control), but as I saw with Jeff Bzdelik, bringing a coach back on a lame-duck basis tends to get to a young team's head. But this is guesswork. Great list.

[bullzman23]

From what I remember at the time of the extensions, Skiles' agent often maintained that it was usual and appropriate for coaches to get extensions at that time, and that it would be considered disrespectful to not give him one. Still, he had earned the extension, and only deserved to be fired this season.

The Thomas drafting is still a question mark. There's a good possibility that Aldridge wouldn't find playing time in Chicago either. We'll have to wait anoher year and a half or so before we really have an idea of what Thomas is. He's proven that he can make impacts when he plays so I'm having trouble calling it a bad choice.

It's also way to early to put Boylan on this list.

I'd put the Curry trade on this list, even though we luckily got good return. Paxson ended up trading a player that he wanted to keep for no real reason. That team had so much momentum that we took a real big step behind when we really didn't have to. We were a young team on the rise, we shouldn't have messed with that.

An overlooked loss, is the loss of Pargo. We could really use his offense.

I also think it's a failure that he was unable to get anything out of PJ Brown's contract. I don't wan't to hear, "well that's not fair because we don't know what was available" jargon. It seems pretty clear that we probably could have traded PJ for Kurt Thomas and a pick(s).

[richard]

i forgot to add the tim thomas mess. he didn't let him play, nor did he trade him and get something back. that year, thomas was huge in the playoffs for the suns.

and i was also against the re-signing of adrian griffin, especially for 3 years.

[Clint Eastwood]

Paxson's real top 10 mistakes:

10: Cutting Corrie Blount after the deadline to sign with another team's playoff roster. A minor black eye, but obviously no big deal.

9: Signing Scottie Pippen again. It didn't really have a positive effect on the team, and Pippen basically just got free money out of the deal. It didn't really have any real repercussions though.

8: Letting Trenton Hassel leave for Linton Johnson the 3rd. Not a big deal, and Hassel was subsequently overpaid in Minnesota, so maybe it's better that we weren't the team to overpay him. Not keeping him was a mistake, but if we had kept him and signed him to Minny's deal it'd have been worse, so no big deal really.

7: Hiring Jim Boylan as interim coach. Boylan seems to be leading the franchise to maximum pain. No development for young players, no lotto pick, no playoff success. If he achieves one of these three goals then I will take this one back, but I don't think he'll achieve any of them. I can't say this is a huge mistake yet, because we don't know what will happen the rest of the way, but the ones listed behind it had no significant effect long term, this might.

6: Signing both Andres Nocioni and Joe Smith this summer. I was afraid this move would crowd our front court and leave our rookies out in the cold, and it has done exactly that. I think Nocioni is a bit overpaid (though not horrendously so) and that's not helping things out much either. I would have loved to see us sign Joe Smith and do a S&T with Memphis for whatever picks we could get in an effort to balance out our roster better.

5: Taking Thabo Sefolosha over Ronnie Brewer. Another move that really surprised me at the time, and Ronnie Brewer has shown himself to be a high quality NBA player while Sefolosha has not.

4: Trading Tyson Chandler for squat. This is more of a hindsight move a little bit, so I cut him some slack on it. It was also about saving money and thinking Wallace could replace Chandler. Given the Bulls salary constraints the move made sense in many ways. That being said, it has turned out to be ridiculously dumb. Tyson is a quality player in the NBA, and we could really use him on the roster right now. This trade forced us to basically go small constantly whereas with Chandler we had much better size advantages.

3: Signing Scott Skiles to an extension after the 04/05 season. I think he was in a tough spot there due to the success of that season, but Skiles still had one more year on his deal. Given his history of wearing thin on his players, if we had waited that one more year, it's probably dramatic how big a difference it would have made. No way would we have still extended him after 05/06. We could have then brought in Rick Adelman or another quality coach instead. Tyson Chandler may not need to be traded in this case because a huge portion of his problem (as well with others) was relating to Skiles who crushed his confidence. Skiles ways probably greatly limited Tyrus and Thabo as well.

2: Taking Tyrus Thomas over LaMarcus Aldridge - I waffled on whether this is #1 or #2. The reason it I ultimately went with #2 is that I still have some hope that Tyrus will be a high quality player in the NBA. Our coaching staff hasn't given him a chance despite him showing htat he can be very good over long stretches when given a fair chance. On the other hand, we went with a riskier pick which didn't fit our needs as well either. It didn't make sense to me unless Tyrus became a much better player than Aldridge, and I didn't think it was likely at the time given his age and current productivity.

1: Signing Ben Wallace - IMO this guy is a negative on this team right now. I would gladly trade him for an expiring contract. To have a tremendous asset like 15 million in cap space and turn it into a massive negative is just awful.

a fair and interesting list. i disagree on the aldrige over TT mistake. i still think aldridge is soft for a big man, and TT will have the better career. however, the real mistake was not taking brandon roy over TT. he was ready, and clearly the best player with the "it factor". but he was passed over out of need. never should draft out of need when selecting number 2 over all.

the ben wallace signing is a hindsight thing. i think almost everyone was behind this move. too bad he sucks and should be cut and bought out.

the thabo thing bummed me because i couldnt believe brewer was available. that being said, i think the bulls coaching staff has destroyed thabo and if given a chance, i actually think he could be better than brewer. we may never know this. i do think this board unfairly judges thabo.

[Clint Eastwood]

i forgot to add the tim thomas mess. he didn't let him play, nor did he trade him and get something back. that year, thomas was huge in the playoffs for the suns.

and i was also against the re-signing of adrian griffin, especially for 3 years.

thomas was and is a loser. great move to bounce him to send a message to all wusses and non-hard working players.

i suppose you would be a guy who liked eddie robinson, curry and crawford?

[richard]

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thomas was and is a loser. great move to bounce him to send a message to all wusses and non-hard working players.

i suppose you would be a guy who liked eddie robinson, curry and crawford?

well, other teams obviously valued him, so it would have made sense to at least get something in return for him.