Rozner: Good luck finding good guy in Bulls' soap opera
There are times in sports when there is no bad guy.
Sides have a differing opinion on value or ability, and they split up with no hard feelings, going their separate ways and wishing one another well.
And then there are times when there is no good guy, when both sides are at fault, acting childish, foolish and boorish as they destroy a relationship.
This is where we wish good riddance to the senseless soap opera known as the Chicago Bulls and Tom Thibodeau, who was fired by the team Thursday with neither side looking anything but petulant.
So now we move on to damage control, which began with a Bulls news conference Thursday afternoon.
Both sides will spend the next few days and weeks accusing the other of leaking information to get fans and media on their side, but both sides used the press to make the other look bad.
Thibodeau, for his part, shouldn't have trouble finding another job, as he's an excellent coach, but he won't last long in the next job because he doesn't work and play well with others — just like Bulls coaches Doug Collins and Scott Skiles before him.
It seems to be a constant problem in Chicago, Bulls coaches and management not getting along, and while the coaches change, management stays the same.
John Paxson will be onto his fifth coach in 12 years when he has the next news conference, and there will extraordinary pressure on him to get it right after dumping a very good coach who had some very big issues.
Thibodeau took nondescript players and developed them into good NBA players, but he also took stars and played them into the ground.
He overachieved in the regular season when it didn't matter, and underachieved in the postseason, the only time it does matter.
Thibodeau overplayed aging veterans and injured players and coached every regular-season possession like it was his last, leaving nothing left for the postseason, when LeBron James would give the Bulls their annual spanking.
Minutes restrictions from management drove the head coach crazy. He couldn't believe someone would meddle in his coaching affairs, and he couldn't understand why players weren't robots.
In a perfect world, management stays out of the dressing room and let's a coach do the coaching, but Thibodeau — a brilliant defensive tactician who could not muster an offense under pressure — was incapable of managing minutes and players.
He was joyless in his work and Bulls players were therefore joyless in theirs. He appeared to have no life beyond film study and thought all others should approach the game the same way.
And that is no way to survive a long and meaningless NBA regular season, and it may in part explain why the Bulls quit on Thibodeau when they had a chance to take out a wounded Cavs team a couple weeks ago.
This is the best coach Paxson has hired, and yet he found so many ways to butt heads with Thibodeau, even firing the coach's top assistant — Ron Adams — in 2013, thus beginning two years of venom-filled shots between the sides, in public and private.
Was Paxson trying to drive Thibodeau away then? Perhaps.
Paxson is also the man who hired Vinny Del Negro and once physically went after the coach because he wasn't adhering to minutes restrictions.
Sensing a pattern here?
On the other hand, Thibodeau will have problems with management everywhere he goes unless he has full control over personnel.
But Paxson has also had issues with coaches, and his track record of winning championships thus far is approximately zero.
Yes, he won as a player. So what? So did that Michael Jordan guy and how's he doing in the front office?
Paxson admitted that he wouldn't have been there Thursday explaining the firing if the Bulls had won a championship this year, which means if the Bulls were good enough to win, Thibodeau would still be there.
But the Bulls weren't good enough to beat Cleveland, and Thibodeau doesn't build the roster.
Thibodeau also hasn't won as a head coach and had trouble getting hired for years when he was the top name available, maybe for the reasons we've seen over the last few years.
He is stubborn and difficult to manage, as he wants no managing of any kind.
Paxson wants a great coach but he wants that coach to coach as Paxson would coach, which leads you to wonder why he just doesn't do it himself.
In the meantime, have any Bulls coaches under Paxson improved or grown while in the job here?
Positions have already been staked out and there will be much arguing about who the bad guy is in this fight.
You have a successful coach who is his own worst enemy, a man who seems unable to coexist with others, and you have management that has won nothing, acting like it has the answers, but has yet to find a good coach it can work with and keep in the fold.
These two sides found each other and a couple times were close to reaching the NBA Finals with a chance to win it all.
Rather than build on it, they carpet bombed their common ground and engaged their conflict through the media, and it's possible neither side will come as close to winning apart as they once did together.
As far as that goes, you could understand a Bulls fan wishing a plague on both their houses.
brozner@dailyherald.com
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