Prior to this week, the Bulls acquisition of Jaden Ivey at the trade deadline was merely a bust due to his physical deterioration. He had recently been shut down for the season with persistent knee issues, and with his gigantic cap hold wasn\u2019t likely to return – Arturas Karnisovas negotiation skills aside – outside of maybe a bargain-basement contract. <\/p>\n
Then Ivey\u2019s mental deterioration became too prolific to ignore. Being away from the team\u2019s road trip while rehabbing, Ivey\u2019s consistent and escalating Instagram rants<\/a> broke Reddit containment and received mainstream media attention. First from the Chicago Sun-Times\u2019s Joe Cowley, who reported<\/a> that the Bulls had had enough – this was apparently just the latest and worst of Ivey\u2019s behavior – and were \u2018working on an exit strategy\u2019. By the time I started openly wondering exactly what \u2018work\u2019 needed to be done when you could simply cut the guy loose, the Bulls did exactly that. <\/p>\n I don\u2019t believe anywhere but the fringe of the internet thinks it wasn\u2019t a proper cut-and-dry decision to cut Ivey immediately. Even before his latest rants (he has continued multiple times since<\/a>, in case there was any benefit of the doubt not burned through yet), the physical and mental issues Ivey was exhibiting meant the Bulls weren\u2019t going to re-sign him. <\/p>\n Would the decision be different if Ivey was contributing, or had a good chance of contributing in the future? Yes, of course, those are different circumstances. The NBA, and Chicago Bulls, have employed players who\u2019ve done worse because of their performance. <\/p>\n It\u2019s easy to let go of people who aren\u2019t producing. The Bulls should take a similar approach to their front office, and fire Arturas Karnisovas immediately. <\/p>\n I don\u2019t need to lay out the multitude of reasons AK should be canned. He should\u2019ve been replaced years ago, and instead received a secret contract extension over the summer<\/a> with the message from ownership being that he succeeded once (?) and deserved another chance to shape the next iteration of the six-time world champions going for the sixth seed in the East. <\/p>\n This past trade deadline was the easiest, lowest-risk step in this next \u2018stage\u2019, as AK called it. And while Ivey was one of the more high-profile additions, it was only at the cost of Kevin Huerter. Perhaps, like so many times before, the draft pedigree of Ivey gave AK tunnel-vision in his ask, but the Pistons were not going to offer much different if not Ivey. <\/p>\n Given the cost, Ivey already looking like a bust was not an indictment in and of itself. It was the kind of low-risk swing at talent that the Bulls put themselves in position to have to attempt, and it always had a low likelihood of working out. <\/p>\n But we didn\u2019t know just how much of a longshot that was, with the added problem of organizational embarrassment, given Ivey\u2019s personality. And that Karnisovas either knew about Ivey\u2019s behavior and went for it anyway, or didn\u2019t perform proper due diligence (not the first time<\/a> this very deadline!), is just the latest reason to fire this guy already. <\/p>\n The knives are out for Arturas Karnisovas. We recently saw Billy Donovan start to backchannel<\/a> his own exit strategy, publically distancing himself from this mess. In the wake of cutting Ivey, Donovan was forced to face the media before a game and be the only person in the organization to address the issue beyond PR\u2019s \u201cconduct detrimental to the team\u201d.<\/p>\n Julia Poe of the Chicago Tribune had a fantastic column about how that public-facing dynamic is reason to fire Karnisovas<\/a>:<\/p>\n It\u2019s impossible to extend this grace, however, to an executive too cowardly to face any public acknowledgment of his error. Karni\u0161ovas offered nothing \u2014 not a public statement, not a private comment \u2014 in the wake of Ivey\u2019s tirades. Instead, he placed that burden once again on the shoulders of Donovan, who handled Monday\u2019s meltdown with a stoic professionalism that has become his standard over the many, many times he has been asked to answer for another man\u2019s actions.<\/p>\n How many more times will the Reinsdorfs allow this loop to be repeated? Karni\u0161ovas made a mistake. The Bulls paid the price. The man in charge ducked responsibility. It\u2019s a dull, exhausting, pointless pattern. <\/p>\n Poe follows with further rationale that the Bulls used with Ivey: It\u2019s not as if AK is doing a good job! <\/p>\n Cowley also had a column calling for AK\u2019s head<\/a>, speculating that if he stays Donovan is walking. The only reason there aren\u2019t more publications like this is because, sadly<\/a>, the third biggest media market (with one team) has no other full-time independent coverage. <\/p>\n When finally relieving Bulls fans from GarPax\u2019s multi-decade reign of terror, it was cited that the national embarrassment was the final straw. Ownership performed an actual outside-the-organization search to hire Karnisovas, whose first action was bringing in Billy Donovan at a high price for \u2018stability\u2019 to clean up after Jim Boylen\u2019s clown show.<\/p>\n It didn\u2019t work. But like with Ivey, wiping your hands of Karnisovas has no downside. The only better time than doing it now would\u2019ve been doing it earlier.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Prior to this week, the Bulls acquisition of Jaden Ivey at the trade deadline was merely a bust…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":693510,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3771],"tags":[7,920,919,329,3824,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-693509","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-chicago-bulls","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-bulls","10":"tag-chicago","11":"tag-chicago-bulls","12":"tag-chicagobulls","13":"tag-nba"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116334188477283460","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/693509","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=693509"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/693509\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/693510"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=693509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=693509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=693509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}