A startling lack of success since the Jordan era was not enough for Chicago to shake things up at the top... until now
Tuesday 14 April 2020 09:10, UK
Even as the Chicago Bulls made major moves on Monday to bury the recent past and set up the future with Arturas Karnisovas as their newly hired executive vice president of basketball operations, Michael Reinsdorf was careful to keep the team positioned in the present.
"This organisation is at a crossroads," said Reinsdorf, the Bulls' president and chief executive officer, before turning a media conference call - conducted remotely per coronavirus social-distancing guidelines - over to Karnisovas, most recently the Denver Nuggets' general manager.
The crossroads metaphor is apt, but a little overdue. Consider what it has taken for the franchise, through the eminently forgettable past five seasons and recent history before them, to reach this fork in a horribly pot-holed road:
Good for the Bulls that only now do they feel they have reached a crossroads. Some might have seen a dead end a few years back.
There's no turning around now, though, with Chicago opting to clean house. In the works for weeks, Reinsdorf and his father (and team chairman) Jerry shunted John Paxson into an advisory role, fired general manager Gar Forman and hired Karnisovas for the acumen and promise he had shown as first lieutenant to the Nuggets' Tim Connelly.
The pair had been in Denver since 2013, steering the Nuggets through a rebuild in the post-Carmelo Anthony era. Finding, adding and gambling on players such as Nikola Jokic, Will Barton, Gary Harris, Jamal Murray and Michael Porter Jr, Connelly, Karnisovas, their staff and coach Michael Malone have driven the Nuggets to steady improvement in each of the past five seasons.
They missed the playoffs in Game 82 in 2018, reached the West semi-finals in 2019 and, at 43-22 (.662) last month when the Big Pause came, were headed for possibly their best finish yet.
It was not all winners for the Denver front office. Emmanuel Mudiay, the 2015 first-round pick, made little impact before being traded away and they were in position to keep both Rudy Gobert and Donovan Mitchell rather than shipping them to Utah on their respective Draft nights.
But Karnisovas, a native of Lithuania, got high marks from those who knew the 48-year-old when Michael Reinsdorf began inquiring, and even higher ones after the two had a series of phone conversations in recent weeks.
"It was so clear Arturas checked every box," Reinsdorf said.
As a player, Karnisovas faced Bulls legend Michael Jordan and the rest of the Dream Team in 1992 (his job: guard Charles Barkley!) while playing in Europe from 1987 to 2002. He hooked up with the NBA in 2003, joining the Rockets as a scout in 2008.
Karnisovas offered a lot of expected boilerplate comments on Monday regarding the style of play and the structure of the front office he envisions for the Bulls. He is not about to give away any trade secrets now with the season in limbo.
Besides, that's what new bosses do, talking in generalities about spacing, defense and rebounding until they can actually roll up their sleeves, flesh out their staffs and nail down their roster's strengths and deficiencies.
Evaluating the new guy similarly will require some time - and further test the patience of Bulls fans who feel the rebuild they had been sold has dragged a season or two too long.
What was most significant on Monday was the sense of relief, even rebirth, in a market somewhat beaten into submission by the elder Reinsdorf's unwavering loyalty to Paxson and Forman (along with a long-rumoured priority on profits over winning). The chairman has run his MLB team, the White Sox, that way, keeping exec Kenny Williams around beyond his effectiveness - or so it seemed - while moving around deck chairs beneath him.
Baseball is Reinsdorf's first sports love, and his management team has produced a 2005 World Series title and, lately, the rumblings of a contender. Letting Karnisovas work freely with minimal oversight from Paxson is considered the key to getting anywhere close to the Sox's success.
Michael Reinsdorf, in relating a conversation he had with Paxson, acknowledged the Bulls' front office has been a) small by modern NBA standards and b) too set in its ways. The time when teams could be run like Mom-and-Pop operations should have ended with the last century.
Sounds like it's ending for Chicago with this hire - with Forman's departure and Paxson's slide to the side, too. And at some point, with a decision on coach Jim Boylen's fate.
It's hard to imagine - unless Karnisovas just wants to buy time before he can make his first headline move - that Boylen will last long once the season (or next?) is up and running. You either press a reset button or you don't.
Karnisovas' stated goal on Monday was to bring a championship to Chicago. He might as well have said "another" because no one ever forgets the first six in this city.
A better measure of success, though, will come from changing leaguewide perceptions about the Bulls. They are viewed by so many as a top-down, suits-friendly operation, a culture that lingers from the Jordan/Phil Jackson/Jerry Krause tussles and is blamed for turning off free agents to this day.
That's the crossroads really facing Chicago now, with the Reinsdorfs at least looking up the right path.
