You know how I feel about Patrick Williams but man...I would much rather pay Patrick Williams 20 mil a year than 40 mil for derozan cause at least with PWill we are leaning towards the youth movement...
I'm no fan of the deal myself, but shit at least you get something for derozan in comparison with your other 2 main guys, that old dog has some tricks to teach at least
I think he’d take 70/3 to be in somewhere like LA or Philly to give him a chance to win then sign a 80/2 with us. It’s a huge annual difference but money wise for someone like Demar who’s made 230+ million there’s 0 difference and that’s why they are going overboard on the numbers. They’re desperate to keep the only marketable star they have because money.
He won’t do it. I’ve realised Demars goal to secure his legacy has shifted away from winning a chip to climbing the all time scoring rankings, which is why he didn’t mind taking on that ridiculous minutes load last season. There’s nowhere in the NBA currently that will allow him to fly up the rankings as fast as Chicago will
And even for his legacy it feels like he wants to be tied to a team and right now he’s done close to enough really be a part of Bulls history. So now his legacy at the least is young derozan on the resistors with Lowry and old man derozan who gained purpose with the Bulls
Jerry is about to given DeMar DeRozan more money over 2 years than he’s given any White Sox player ever over the lifetime of their contract.
It’s maddening.
So I’m talking about a single contract.
Andrew Benintendi is the recipient of the richest contract in White Sox history. That was 5 years/$75 million.
Paul Konerko made $129 million with the team over his 16 year career. Frank was something like $80 million.
I mean, Garpax moved on from Jimmy. Probably a contract too early, but he got two guys who made all-star teams at some point back for aging Jimmy.
AKME just out here trying to squeeze mediocrity out of a stone.
I was a big "let's give them time" guy for AKME but this move feels very much like the typical Bulls, outbidding themselves once more.
I like keeping Demar but I was thinking closer to $60M over 4 years, presuming other teams would be offering closer to 2 years at $20M a year.
$40M for Demar in 2025 makes no sense.
Because AK isn’t making the decisions. The fact he still has a job is proof of that. Reinsdorf clearly wants a team that can sell tickets and unfortunately Demar sells them more so than anybody on this roster. We are witnessing greed destroying the franchise in real time because the longer we stay in this path the longer a much needed rebuild will take. We are so fucked.
I don’t believe that. Ok I believe Jerry/Michael are sending down info on the general direction they want the franchise to go in from the top, but the poor asset management on the way to that direction is all on AK.
If the owners are having a hand in where the team is going and now you have an additional responsibility as GM to liaise with the owners, you have to sell them the vision for how you’re going to achieve their goal while maintaining a healthy direction for the team.
A rough outline for my pitch would be:
- We’re currently missing the playoffs already so taking a step back to take a leap forward won’t hurt our short term competitiveness and will help our long term competitiveness
- The previous regime showed us that the Bulls’ attendance remains at #1 even during a tank. It took the 3rd consecutive year of tanking for the attendance to drop below the top spot so one year taking a step back won’t affect attendance.
- Numerous franchises have shown us that taking that step backwards is necessary in order to build something long lasting. The Warriors took a step back after trading Monta in 2012 and became a dynasty shortly after. The Celtics took a step back in 2013 and became perennial ECF contenders every year shortly after. Even going nostalgic, the Spurs took a step back in order to get Tim Duncan and won a chip two years later.
It’s not about attendance, it’s about price point. For 300s against Detroit it’s still $40+. They couldn’t charge that and still fill up the UC every night with a rebuilding team. I can drive to Milwaukee, get better seats, some food from concessions, have a better viewing experience because they’re not completely ass and still end up spending less money then trying to buy a ticket in the 200s at the UC right now.
You include merch sales, outrageous concessions prices, parking and all the other ways they’re profiting right now, going in and saying “ let’s take a step back for a little” just doesn’t sound good to a guy who’s only goal in owning the team is money.
Could AKME have found better common ground? Absolutely but at the end of the day the owner of the team doesn’t care and that’s crux of the issue. Until he says “this is unacceptable” we will stay on this path of profit over actual competitiveness. I’m done waiting for a GM to save us, we need a new owner.
That’s actually a fair point, [we did bounce back huge after we put together the current core](https://www.statista.com/statistics/381511/gate-receipts-of-the-chicago-bulls-national-basketball-association/) but I’m interested to see what the gate receipts total for this season was. Because you can already see people start to get fed up from 2022 to 2023, I’m sure the drop off was even bigger for 2024.
That being said, it is quite interesting though, the drop off from the 3 alphas year, (16/17) to the first year of the rebuild isn’t as big as I would’ve expected. I would’ve liked to see average ticket price but the stats I could find only go up to 2016. But knowing Jerry any loss is too much considering we busted our ass at the end of the regular season to squeeze out one additional home court game in the play-in just to go on to lose to Miami anyway
He has all the power in the world to leave on his own. He is by no means shackled at this point. If we resign him, it would be just as much his decision as the FO’s. He said at the last post game press conference he’s tired of losing. We’ll see if he meant that
Shackle 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣he has 80 million reasons to stay if he does. If he really wants to win he will take a smaller deal which I'm sure someone will offer. All up to him. "Schackle" is actually crazy
It's unbelievable that bulls fan can't connect the dots in that the guy who plays the most minutes in the entire nba might be one of the reasons we are a losing team. All a winning team would have to do is look at derozan's playoff stats and they wouldn't give him 10 mil a year
So you’re just gonna ignore how the rest of the roster really just doesn’t shoot threes well? The Bulls roster is constructed awfully and is reliant on Lonzo and Lavine (both don’t play and one is about to get traded). Demar obviously isn’t a great shooter, and he doesn’t help, but Coby and Ayo are our best shooters, and the only shooters that shoot well commonly with good volume. The bulls at one point were dead last in 3 point percentage.
Solely blaming Demar when a player like Vooch, who is meant to be a spacing big, contributes to the issue more by shooting like shit isn’t really fair.
This is a thread about derozan specifically I'm well aware that the rest of the team is mediocre as well. It has been 3 years straight now of this sub blaming everyone but derozan and it continues into the off-season. The bulls are last in most offensive categories and are also ass at perimeter defense. The guy with the highest usage rate and the most minutes deserves the lion's share of the blame
Again, not sure how usage rate correlates to what he has around him though as a roster. He’d be a good 6th man on a contender in a Malik Monk type role but you’re undervaluing him.
He has never been a 6th man in his life. The 6th man of the year this year was naz reid who is a 100% 3 and d player. The literal opposite of derozan. Nobody in the world wants a bench player that can't play without the ball in his hands.
If the offense is terrible the guy with the ball in his hands the most deserves most of the blame. It should be obvious
Why are you pretending that players can’t adjust to different roles with lower minutes? Malik monk isn’t an elite 3&D player, he’s a scoring sparkplug, and he almost won 6moy. DeRozen would be like Monk if he were to shift.
I get you don’t like him but give DDR some leash, you can’t blame just him for all of the Bulls issues when the roster is poorly constructed in the first place and doesn’t play modern basketball.
There is no pretending going on. Derozan is the one of the least versatile players in the entire league. He plays the least "modern basketball" of anyone on our entire team. The roster is poorly constructed because we added derozan/vuc and they complement the rest of our team terribly.
Malik Monk shot 43% on catch and shoot 3s this year as well as being extremely active cutting off the ball. If demar can do those things why tf is he standing around every play he doesn't have the ball in his hands
Just don't watch this shit team anymore until the owner and front office change. Aside from the perpetual bottom dwellers of the league (Washington, Detroit)--who has a team that's as boring and directionless as the Bulls? Seriously?
I'll watch again when AK decides to make intelligent moves, Reinsdorf sells the team or one or both don't have jobs anymore.
And to all of the morons who enjoy watching a 42 win team every year--your insane ability to enjoy mediocrity is only reinforcing this organization's shitty decisions.
The team has actual legends that spent their careers here like Joakim or Luol but somehow we end up giving the giant paydays to dwayne wade and demar derozan. We give our biggest conference rivals their retirement tours instead of the people trying to win
That's the thing, it is. 40-42 wins a season keeps the people attending games and hoping to see some form of "playoff games" in the playins, that draws enough revenue from fools and keeps the fans entertained/coping.
I see this a lot, but that only really makes sense in baseball with how the salary cap works there. There is no advantage economically to try to be mediocre in basketball. The brass are making bad decisions, but not intentionally so.
If the Bulls had a championship caliber team they would likely have to pay the luxury tax which can be hundreds of millions of dollars per year. There's no way their revenues would increase that much by winning more. The Bulls absolutely are better off from an economic standpoint to be cheap but superficially competitive.
Like we said what we knew, the "playoff push" doesn't have the bulls entering the luxury tax/extra costs of being a truly expensive yet playoff team compared to mediocre .500 team in playins that draws in strong crowds still/money.
Your argument is just based off a bunch of assumptions you are taking as truth. Acquiring young talent is necessary to be good in the NBA and even if you wouldn’t want to pay them (the Bulls would lol) they are valuable as trade pieces.
As for the economics, that's just the reality. A championship caliber team would cost more and make them less money. Would the Bulls prefer that? Maybe, but what is the evidence for that? They refuse to make any significant changes to a team that's in the play in tournament every single year. To me that clearly says that they accept mediocrity.
Yeah the Bulls actually being good would make Reinsdorf even more money and I don't see why he wouldn't want that, AK is actually trying to win a lot he's just really bad at it
He's signed a few solid contracts like Coby Caruso and Ayo, but he's also given out some abysmal contracts like Zach's, Vooch's and now DeMar's upcoming one that outweigh the good contracts.
He got slaphappy and made a bunch of win-now moves early on in his tenure but got fleeced on every single one so now he's terrified of making a trade and overvalues the hell out of our players. He's just genuinely terrible at his job lol
The Bulls are one if the the most renowned team that is continually alive and thriving in most monetary and attendance categories due to Jordan era. They don't have to seriously put effort into going into the serious puzzle of figuring our how to get BETTER seriously. They can accept these 40ish win seasons and not mess with because of all those components put together. Could they make more becoming a serious championship team? Undoubtedly, are they willing to go through the actual growing pains of it?(Jerry and his yes men entourage) absolute not, or at least it doesn't appear that way. I don't know how else you don't see it that way when it wasn't even Jerry to fire GarPax but them basically stepping down and then Jerry having to be convinced to host the all star by his son. There are much more examples even with the White Sox.
I’m already so out on this team, I feel nothing about this. Just another awful idea by one of the worst FO’s in the league. We couldn’t be farther from being actually competitive or starting from scratch to rebuild a competitive team… so it’s just more par for the course from AKME.
The dumbest thing is that the next best offer for Derozan is probably around ~$20M. None of the teams with cap space are at all interested in a 35 year old who keeps his team to the league's slowest pace.
Look, we all love Demar, but I think we can all agree that giving north of 40 mil per year to a guy every other team wouldn't give north of 20 to is an insanely terrible idea.
Let’s be real tho you are a little mad that he got most of the praise since he been on the bulls while lavine got kicked to the curb. Which again is why I say dw lavine on his next team will go back to being the guy again
It has nothing to do with him receiving praise over other players, but it's that he's getting praise at all. What exactly are we praising him for? The team sucks and we are ranked last or near last in a bunch of major offensive categories. We basically threw away any attempt at building offensive identity so Demar could play his game.
Demar's bread and butter don't lead to winning. I don't get what this team has been trying to do since trading for Vucevic years ago. Why sign Demar instead of trying to fill the hole at PF. The fit sucked and instead of laying the groundwork to become contenders, we double down on a guy on the wrong side of 30.
Those are valid opinions and I agree the front office is completely lost and confused. I’m just addressing why you hate him like all he’s done is accept a deal the bulls offered him and gave his all since he’s been here. If there’s anyone to hate for this it’s AK for being delusional thinking this team would work
AK just doing goofy AK things. Ever GarPax wouldn't want to resign Demar to that type of money. I love Demar and what he's done here but, it makes zero sense to keep him at this point. Hopefully he values winning more than money and decides to sign to a good team.
This is just a nightmare for years years we been saying blow this team up and it just won’t happen sucks the fans know more than the gm coach and owners ….
The whole front office has extensions, I don’t understand what’s stopping them from a complete tear down? Trade every player that can bring picks and future cap flexibility.
This might be the last straw for me. I have no connection to Chicago and I only started liking this team because of Mike. My fanhood is hanging by a thread
I like DeRozan a lot. I really do. Id be happy to sign him to a 2-year contract no matter what direction this team is headed in because he's a great vet and I don't believe in a team of only 22-year-olds. Young guys need good vets to learn from
BUT
It's is a criminal act to give him that kind of money. It simply cannot be done. Maybe like half of that amount. But more than $40M a year. NO. N. O. That's pure crazy.
I promise you I won’t be watching if this happens. I’ll catch some highlights here and there if someone has a big game but don’t expect me to be invested in the same mediocre team for the third straight year, this time sans LaVine and Pat, who despite their flaws brought electric play at times. Fuck that.
Because that huge contract basically ensures no new blood ends up on the team besides the #11 pick and if Craig potentially leaves, whoever signs here on that freed up vet min
Lmao, how bad do akme want to do their at their jobs? They keep doubling down on terrible mistakes and it'd just hilarious at this point
Well, I got more time for other chicago teams
There are very very very few fans who don’t want to rebuild or st least majorly overhaul the roster this season. Most people wanted that last year and even the season before that.
But at this point we are all on board. This front office is far too loyal to a team that hasn’t worked. They seem hellbent on trying to “compete” every year, including next year and yet it is obvious that this team has very few options at improving the roster with our lack of assets, injuries, and players with bad contracts. In my mind, this forces us to rebuild in one way or another, but the front office seems to disagree.
At this point we just have to wonder what the hell they are thinking. Are they incompetent? Is ownership getting in their way? Are they too picky about trades? Are they even doing due diligence and calling other teams at all?
So many questions because their performance has been abysmal
Ownership will always be an issue. It’s one of the biggest markets in the league, yet they refuse to ever go into the tax.
Jerry Reinsdorf has zero drive to win in the current landscape of modern sports. As long as he is alive the Sox and Bulls will accomplish nothing on meaning
Love DeRozan but what a fucking ridiculous suggestion. Let him go get a ring. Let us become bad enough to pick up a decent pick and hopefully an FA or two.
I can understand wanting to re-sign demar, but why 40 million dollars? If he walks, no other team is going to give him more than 20-25 million. We are just completely handicapping our ability to build a new roster by paying him that much
Because Demar has made over $230+ million in his career and is likely entering the last 2-3 seasons of his career. If they offered him $30-35 and a contender offered $20-25, he’s in a financial position to where that doesn’t affect his life at all so things like comfortability and winning would take priority. To eliminate that you royally over pay him.
They’re desperate to keep him so they have excuses to charge $60 for seats in the 300s. It’s ownership. I’m tired of even mentioning AK, dude is a puppet
Derozan can perform his final act of heroics for the Bulls by selflessly choosing a contending team over the biggest possible payday
No one is going to offer him even close to 40 mil a year....
Just like no one was offering 27 million except for us last time. Oh yeah I forgot, he came here because of VUC.
You know how I feel about Patrick Williams but man...I would much rather pay Patrick Williams 20 mil a year than 40 mil for derozan cause at least with PWill we are leaning towards the youth movement...
I'm no fan of the deal myself, but shit at least you get something for derozan in comparison with your other 2 main guys, that old dog has some tricks to teach at least
I think he’d take 70/3 to be in somewhere like LA or Philly to give him a chance to win then sign a 80/2 with us. It’s a huge annual difference but money wise for someone like Demar who’s made 230+ million there’s 0 difference and that’s why they are going overboard on the numbers. They’re desperate to keep the only marketable star they have because money.
You want to give him 80/2 in three years from now?
His final act should be taking a 20mil a year for two years...that would be a cool heroic play.
He won’t do it. I’ve realised Demars goal to secure his legacy has shifted away from winning a chip to climbing the all time scoring rankings, which is why he didn’t mind taking on that ridiculous minutes load last season. There’s nowhere in the NBA currently that will allow him to fly up the rankings as fast as Chicago will
And even for his legacy it feels like he wants to be tied to a team and right now he’s done close to enough really be a part of Bulls history. So now his legacy at the least is young derozan on the resistors with Lowry and old man derozan who gained purpose with the Bulls
Wow what a player to have on the team. Someone prioritizing personal scoring records over winning games
40+ mil a year for a 35 year old non-allstar when our ceiling is like the 8th seed is wild
that’s jerry for ya
Jerry is about to given DeMar DeRozan more money over 2 years than he’s given any White Sox player ever over the lifetime of their contract. It’s maddening.
Thats the difference between one of the highest attendance rates in the NBA and one of the lowest in the MLB.
Are you trying to get me to call White Sox fans smarter than Bulls fans? Because that’s how you get that.
I promise you if the White Sox sold out every game, the roster construction would be the same.
Is that real? I haven't checked but frank Thomas I figure has to be close right?
So I’m talking about a single contract. Andrew Benintendi is the recipient of the richest contract in White Sox history. That was 5 years/$75 million. Paul Konerko made $129 million with the team over his 16 year career. Frank was something like $80 million.
Ah that makes sense, cheers
No problem. Fuck Jerry Reinsdorf.
A-fucking-men!
I will honestly say if this happens I won’t be watching any games or openly supporting next year unless we some how make it to the playoffs
AK sees this team needs change. Decides to spend MORE money on one of the biggest reasons we need change 🤦♂️ I can’t with this guy
Yeah let's just call it what it is, AKME is officially just a less toxic GarPax.
At least Garpax could draft tho.
And they didn’t blow our picks on bums like Vuc
I will always give GarPax and Jerry Krause(99-03) credit they could draft, they never panned out for us but they go on to be great.
I mean, Garpax moved on from Jimmy. Probably a contract too early, but he got two guys who made all-star teams at some point back for aging Jimmy. AKME just out here trying to squeeze mediocrity out of a stone.
I was a big "let's give them time" guy for AKME but this move feels very much like the typical Bulls, outbidding themselves once more. I like keeping Demar but I was thinking closer to $60M over 4 years, presuming other teams would be offering closer to 2 years at $20M a year. $40M for Demar in 2025 makes no sense.
I was a let’s give them time guy too, and I think we’ve given them that time and this is the result.
Because AK isn’t making the decisions. The fact he still has a job is proof of that. Reinsdorf clearly wants a team that can sell tickets and unfortunately Demar sells them more so than anybody on this roster. We are witnessing greed destroying the franchise in real time because the longer we stay in this path the longer a much needed rebuild will take. We are so fucked.
I don’t believe that. Ok I believe Jerry/Michael are sending down info on the general direction they want the franchise to go in from the top, but the poor asset management on the way to that direction is all on AK. If the owners are having a hand in where the team is going and now you have an additional responsibility as GM to liaise with the owners, you have to sell them the vision for how you’re going to achieve their goal while maintaining a healthy direction for the team. A rough outline for my pitch would be: - We’re currently missing the playoffs already so taking a step back to take a leap forward won’t hurt our short term competitiveness and will help our long term competitiveness - The previous regime showed us that the Bulls’ attendance remains at #1 even during a tank. It took the 3rd consecutive year of tanking for the attendance to drop below the top spot so one year taking a step back won’t affect attendance. - Numerous franchises have shown us that taking that step backwards is necessary in order to build something long lasting. The Warriors took a step back after trading Monta in 2012 and became a dynasty shortly after. The Celtics took a step back in 2013 and became perennial ECF contenders every year shortly after. Even going nostalgic, the Spurs took a step back in order to get Tim Duncan and won a chip two years later.
It’s not about attendance, it’s about price point. For 300s against Detroit it’s still $40+. They couldn’t charge that and still fill up the UC every night with a rebuilding team. I can drive to Milwaukee, get better seats, some food from concessions, have a better viewing experience because they’re not completely ass and still end up spending less money then trying to buy a ticket in the 200s at the UC right now. You include merch sales, outrageous concessions prices, parking and all the other ways they’re profiting right now, going in and saying “ let’s take a step back for a little” just doesn’t sound good to a guy who’s only goal in owning the team is money. Could AKME have found better common ground? Absolutely but at the end of the day the owner of the team doesn’t care and that’s crux of the issue. Until he says “this is unacceptable” we will stay on this path of profit over actual competitiveness. I’m done waiting for a GM to save us, we need a new owner.
That’s actually a fair point, [we did bounce back huge after we put together the current core](https://www.statista.com/statistics/381511/gate-receipts-of-the-chicago-bulls-national-basketball-association/) but I’m interested to see what the gate receipts total for this season was. Because you can already see people start to get fed up from 2022 to 2023, I’m sure the drop off was even bigger for 2024. That being said, it is quite interesting though, the drop off from the 3 alphas year, (16/17) to the first year of the rebuild isn’t as big as I would’ve expected. I would’ve liked to see average ticket price but the stats I could find only go up to 2016. But knowing Jerry any loss is too much considering we busted our ass at the end of the regular season to squeeze out one additional home court game in the play-in just to go on to lose to Miami anyway
I don’t know why we continue to shackle Demar to a losing team, he deserves to try to win somewhere.
boy I wish someone would shackle me to 40m a year
I mean, DeMar can leave. But, I do not blame him for re-signing and getting tens of millions of dollars more to play for the Bulls.
DeMar wants the money my guy lol any team would take him for 10M, even a championship team, but DeMar wants the dough. Not shackled to shit
He has all the power in the world to leave on his own. He is by no means shackled at this point. If we resign him, it would be just as much his decision as the FO’s. He said at the last post game press conference he’s tired of losing. We’ll see if he meant that
Shackle 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣he has 80 million reasons to stay if he does. If he really wants to win he will take a smaller deal which I'm sure someone will offer. All up to him. "Schackle" is actually crazy
It's unbelievable that bulls fan can't connect the dots in that the guy who plays the most minutes in the entire nba might be one of the reasons we are a losing team. All a winning team would have to do is look at derozan's playoff stats and they wouldn't give him 10 mil a year
So you’re just gonna ignore how the rest of the roster really just doesn’t shoot threes well? The Bulls roster is constructed awfully and is reliant on Lonzo and Lavine (both don’t play and one is about to get traded). Demar obviously isn’t a great shooter, and he doesn’t help, but Coby and Ayo are our best shooters, and the only shooters that shoot well commonly with good volume. The bulls at one point were dead last in 3 point percentage. Solely blaming Demar when a player like Vooch, who is meant to be a spacing big, contributes to the issue more by shooting like shit isn’t really fair.
This is a thread about derozan specifically I'm well aware that the rest of the team is mediocre as well. It has been 3 years straight now of this sub blaming everyone but derozan and it continues into the off-season. The bulls are last in most offensive categories and are also ass at perimeter defense. The guy with the highest usage rate and the most minutes deserves the lion's share of the blame
Again, not sure how usage rate correlates to what he has around him though as a roster. He’d be a good 6th man on a contender in a Malik Monk type role but you’re undervaluing him.
He has never been a 6th man in his life. The 6th man of the year this year was naz reid who is a 100% 3 and d player. The literal opposite of derozan. Nobody in the world wants a bench player that can't play without the ball in his hands. If the offense is terrible the guy with the ball in his hands the most deserves most of the blame. It should be obvious
Why are you pretending that players can’t adjust to different roles with lower minutes? Malik monk isn’t an elite 3&D player, he’s a scoring sparkplug, and he almost won 6moy. DeRozen would be like Monk if he were to shift. I get you don’t like him but give DDR some leash, you can’t blame just him for all of the Bulls issues when the roster is poorly constructed in the first place and doesn’t play modern basketball.
There is no pretending going on. Derozan is the one of the least versatile players in the entire league. He plays the least "modern basketball" of anyone on our entire team. The roster is poorly constructed because we added derozan/vuc and they complement the rest of our team terribly. Malik Monk shot 43% on catch and shoot 3s this year as well as being extremely active cutting off the ball. If demar can do those things why tf is he standing around every play he doesn't have the ball in his hands
This franchise is a disgrace
I left after the rondo, wade signing. Have never regretted it. I’ll wait for the complete tear down/rebuild to see if I’ll care again
As long as Jerry breathes oxygen it will never happen
You’re right.
I take years off here and there but I keep coming back 🤦
I still care but I’m done spending any money or even following the team until they make some major changes.
Just don't watch this shit team anymore until the owner and front office change. Aside from the perpetual bottom dwellers of the league (Washington, Detroit)--who has a team that's as boring and directionless as the Bulls? Seriously? I'll watch again when AK decides to make intelligent moves, Reinsdorf sells the team or one or both don't have jobs anymore. And to all of the morons who enjoy watching a 42 win team every year--your insane ability to enjoy mediocrity is only reinforcing this organization's shitty decisions.
Boring and directionless is the exact wording I've been trying to come up with. Perfectly put.
Would kill for a 42 win team. We're not even that right now
that's still a 9 seed lol we can raise our expectations a little
By expectations for this team are insanely low right now
I’d put Charlotte in there too but yeah your point stands
I don't know man lol I think I'd switch position with Charlotte right now (and yes that hurts me very much as a Bulls fan of 30 years LMFAO)
This team is a joke. Their goal isn’t even to win basketball games
Yeah the Bulls aren't a team, they're a money-making vehicle for the Reinsdorfs
The team has actual legends that spent their careers here like Joakim or Luol but somehow we end up giving the giant paydays to dwayne wade and demar derozan. We give our biggest conference rivals their retirement tours instead of the people trying to win
I never thought about this but god damn you are so right and it’s embarrassing
That's the thing, it is. 40-42 wins a season keeps the people attending games and hoping to see some form of "playoff games" in the playins, that draws enough revenue from fools and keeps the fans entertained/coping.
I see this a lot, but that only really makes sense in baseball with how the salary cap works there. There is no advantage economically to try to be mediocre in basketball. The brass are making bad decisions, but not intentionally so.
If the Bulls had a championship caliber team they would likely have to pay the luxury tax which can be hundreds of millions of dollars per year. There's no way their revenues would increase that much by winning more. The Bulls absolutely are better off from an economic standpoint to be cheap but superficially competitive.
Like we said what we knew, the "playoff push" doesn't have the bulls entering the luxury tax/extra costs of being a truly expensive yet playoff team compared to mediocre .500 team in playins that draws in strong crowds still/money.
Your argument is just based off a bunch of assumptions you are taking as truth. Acquiring young talent is necessary to be good in the NBA and even if you wouldn’t want to pay them (the Bulls would lol) they are valuable as trade pieces.
As for the economics, that's just the reality. A championship caliber team would cost more and make them less money. Would the Bulls prefer that? Maybe, but what is the evidence for that? They refuse to make any significant changes to a team that's in the play in tournament every single year. To me that clearly says that they accept mediocrity.
Yeah the Bulls actually being good would make Reinsdorf even more money and I don't see why he wouldn't want that, AK is actually trying to win a lot he's just really bad at it He's signed a few solid contracts like Coby Caruso and Ayo, but he's also given out some abysmal contracts like Zach's, Vooch's and now DeMar's upcoming one that outweigh the good contracts. He got slaphappy and made a bunch of win-now moves early on in his tenure but got fleeced on every single one so now he's terrified of making a trade and overvalues the hell out of our players. He's just genuinely terrible at his job lol
The Bulls are one if the the most renowned team that is continually alive and thriving in most monetary and attendance categories due to Jordan era. They don't have to seriously put effort into going into the serious puzzle of figuring our how to get BETTER seriously. They can accept these 40ish win seasons and not mess with because of all those components put together. Could they make more becoming a serious championship team? Undoubtedly, are they willing to go through the actual growing pains of it?(Jerry and his yes men entourage) absolute not, or at least it doesn't appear that way. I don't know how else you don't see it that way when it wasn't even Jerry to fire GarPax but them basically stepping down and then Jerry having to be convinced to host the all star by his son. There are much more examples even with the White Sox.
Sure I can agree the Bulls are risk averse and scared of change, but I vehemently disagree that they *prefer* to have a .500 record.
So then their goal is to make profit. If their goal was really to win they wouldn’t happily sign up for mediocrity
Not winning would be fine if they wanted to lose (at least for a few years), but they don't even want to lose either.
Exactly. They can’t look at the big picture whatsoever. Just the profit margin for the year
$40m a year for 35yo DeRozan. 
This is terrorism.
I’m already so out on this team, I feel nothing about this. Just another awful idea by one of the worst FO’s in the league. We couldn’t be farther from being actually competitive or starting from scratch to rebuild a competitive team… so it’s just more par for the course from AKME.
The dumbest thing is that the next best offer for Derozan is probably around ~$20M. None of the teams with cap space are at all interested in a 35 year old who keeps his team to the league's slowest pace.
"good will" "this way FAs will know the Bulls are good to their guys"
Our front office is failing us…..
RIP any chance of good basketball for 2 years. His ball dominance and salary hit will doom us to mediocrity and slow player development
Look, we all love Demar, but I think we can all agree that giving north of 40 mil per year to a guy every other team wouldn't give north of 20 to is an insanely terrible idea.
Nah, I hate Demar. Agree with the rest.
Jerry’s mad demar snatched lavines team from him lol dw tho lavine will be the guy again on the pistons soon enough
I just hate his ugly ass shoulder tattoos and how terrible our offense is because of him. I'd rather watch paint dry.
Let’s be real tho you are a little mad that he got most of the praise since he been on the bulls while lavine got kicked to the curb. Which again is why I say dw lavine on his next team will go back to being the guy again
It has nothing to do with him receiving praise over other players, but it's that he's getting praise at all. What exactly are we praising him for? The team sucks and we are ranked last or near last in a bunch of major offensive categories. We basically threw away any attempt at building offensive identity so Demar could play his game. Demar's bread and butter don't lead to winning. I don't get what this team has been trying to do since trading for Vucevic years ago. Why sign Demar instead of trying to fill the hole at PF. The fit sucked and instead of laying the groundwork to become contenders, we double down on a guy on the wrong side of 30.
Those are valid opinions and I agree the front office is completely lost and confused. I’m just addressing why you hate him like all he’s done is accept a deal the bulls offered him and gave his all since he’s been here. If there’s anyone to hate for this it’s AK for being delusional thinking this team would work
You're probably right, but now it's my turn to double down on hating Demar for no reason.
Is anyone even remotely surprised? The blind is leading the blind in our front office.
Surprised? No. Annoyed? Honestly, at this point I'm just kind of becoming apathetic. I wish more people would. Giving a fuck just fuels them.
If we pay freaking Demar Derozan 40 million dollars a year it’s time to put up another billboard.
Just let him go to LA already
Just gotta hope demar wanna ring chase elsewhere because this front office compromised. 40+ million insane
May the lord have mercy on my soul...
AK just doing goofy AK things. Ever GarPax wouldn't want to resign Demar to that type of money. I love Demar and what he's done here but, it makes zero sense to keep him at this point. Hopefully he values winning more than money and decides to sign to a good team.
This is just a nightmare for years years we been saying blow this team up and it just won’t happen sucks the fans know more than the gm coach and owners ….
Yeah it is just a repeating cycle of poor decisions. We will eventually be forced to rebuild in a couple of years with no assets to rebuild with
This organization is so stupid
Oh fuck you
The whole front office has extensions, I don’t understand what’s stopping them from a complete tear down? Trade every player that can bring picks and future cap flexibility.
I prefer watching the NFL and European football now anyway. This team is hopeless.
Rather we sign some 3pt shooters and bigs that can block.
Sunken Cost Theory 101: The Chicago Bulls
It’s time to move on from those aging never achieved anything core
I will refuse to watch if they do this.
Don’t fall for it DeMar, go back to Toronto!
This might be the last straw for me. I have no connection to Chicago and I only started liking this team because of Mike. My fanhood is hanging by a thread
I like DeRozan a lot. I really do. Id be happy to sign him to a 2-year contract no matter what direction this team is headed in because he's a great vet and I don't believe in a team of only 22-year-olds. Young guys need good vets to learn from BUT It's is a criminal act to give him that kind of money. It simply cannot be done. Maybe like half of that amount. But more than $40M a year. NO. N. O. That's pure crazy.
I hate this franchise.
I promise you I won’t be watching if this happens. I’ll catch some highlights here and there if someone has a big game but don’t expect me to be invested in the same mediocre team for the third straight year, this time sans LaVine and Pat, who despite their flaws brought electric play at times. Fuck that. Because that huge contract basically ensures no new blood ends up on the team besides the #11 pick and if Craig potentially leaves, whoever signs here on that freed up vet min
Crazy dumb
Depressing
Beyond stupid.
We’re dumb as fuck
No
Isn't this just the same rumor from like 3 months ago?
FIRE AK
Jerry is such a freakin jerk
Malpractice
Lmao, how bad do akme want to do their at their jobs? They keep doubling down on terrible mistakes and it'd just hilarious at this point Well, I got more time for other chicago teams
Blow. It. Up.
NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO
Bulls in shambles ... But I can say that about any post regarding the current team and FO
Don't fall for this, y'all. The team and DeRozan are smarter than this.
Blow this team up I beg of you
Fucking kill me
This is why the Bulls are who and what they are.
This team is a Bum!
Non-bulls fan here. What’s the general opinion about the state of the team and the seeming unwillingness to commit to a rebuild?
There are very very very few fans who don’t want to rebuild or st least majorly overhaul the roster this season. Most people wanted that last year and even the season before that. But at this point we are all on board. This front office is far too loyal to a team that hasn’t worked. They seem hellbent on trying to “compete” every year, including next year and yet it is obvious that this team has very few options at improving the roster with our lack of assets, injuries, and players with bad contracts. In my mind, this forces us to rebuild in one way or another, but the front office seems to disagree. At this point we just have to wonder what the hell they are thinking. Are they incompetent? Is ownership getting in their way? Are they too picky about trades? Are they even doing due diligence and calling other teams at all? So many questions because their performance has been abysmal
Ownership will always be an issue. It’s one of the biggest markets in the league, yet they refuse to ever go into the tax. Jerry Reinsdorf has zero drive to win in the current landscape of modern sports. As long as he is alive the Sox and Bulls will accomplish nothing on meaning
DeRozans my favorite player but I hope he just goes and gets a ring somewhere else man :/ Bulls just need a proper rebuild
Love DeRozan but what a fucking ridiculous suggestion. Let him go get a ring. Let us become bad enough to pick up a decent pick and hopefully an FA or two.
I'm happy to do this for Derozan. But Lavine, Lonzo, Patrick Williams, Vooch gotta be kept far from this team
I can understand wanting to re-sign demar, but why 40 million dollars? If he walks, no other team is going to give him more than 20-25 million. We are just completely handicapping our ability to build a new roster by paying him that much
Because Demar has made over $230+ million in his career and is likely entering the last 2-3 seasons of his career. If they offered him $30-35 and a contender offered $20-25, he’s in a financial position to where that doesn’t affect his life at all so things like comfortability and winning would take priority. To eliminate that you royally over pay him. They’re desperate to keep him so they have excuses to charge $60 for seats in the 300s. It’s ownership. I’m tired of even mentioning AK, dude is a puppet
Upcoming season is already a dead year anyway. This is a much longer rebuild than 2 years