Rozner: Where do Bulls go from here?

There's so much wrong with the Bulls that you can probably take your pick of the moment it began traveling in the wrong direction.

But if you go back to the day John Paxson hired Tom Thibodeau instead of just taking the job himself, that's as good a place as any to start.

Crazy as it sounds, Paxson always has his view of how the Bulls should be directed on the floor, so why hasn't he simply taken the reins?

He never seems to like the way his coaches do their jobs, so he probably ought to do it himself.

Yet, he hired Thibodeau, who did a great job with the Bulls. Thibodeau had his faults, for certain, not the least of which was wearing out his players and coaching every possession as if it were the last of the season.

But the Bulls hired him when no one else would, giving him a chance to prove he could work and play well with others.

There had to be an adult in the room willing to make it work, but Bulls management instead chose to begin phasing out Thibodeau when he wanted more authority and pushed back against meddling from above.

The shame of it is they found a great coach and instead of discovering a way to work with him and make Thibodeau better, helping him grow into the job and helping him become one of the best in the game, they chose to behave in the same childish way as the coach.

The relationship past fixing, they fired Thibodeau, sending a message to the players that the next coach would be management's guy.

That put Fred Hoiberg in an impossible spot before he held his first practice. The players understood who was really in charge and their respect for the coach was compromised from the start.

Already limping, Jimmy Butler cut the coach's legs out from under him in December when he openly challenged Hoiberg.

"We probably have to be coached a lot harder at times," Butler said. "I'm sorry. I know Fred's a laid-back guy and I really respect him for that, but when guys aren't doing what they're supposed to do, you got to get on guys, myself included."

The response from management was precisely nothing. Hoiberg ate it. And that was that.

With Joakim Noah gone because of injury, there was no one left to keep the locker room together, and what you have is a fractured group.

There are the players who believed in Thibodeau's defensive posture, and those who like Hoiberg's more relaxed attitude.

There is Derrick Rose, who wants to dominate the ball - on the rare occasions he's healthy enough to be at full strength - and Butler, who also believes the offense should flow through him.

The injuries from the start have made it difficult to fairly judge Hoiberg, who is getting the pass Thibodeau never did. Hoiberg is a victim of injuries, goes the narrative, while Thibodeau caused them.

What's certain is that the Bulls can't play defense when it matters, something that wasn't a problem under Thibodeau even when the Bulls were short-handed.

What's apparent is the lack of discipline on and off the court, where Tony Snell missed a team flight to Orlando and was nevertheless allowed to dress and play Wednesday. That was the same game in which Aaron Brooks got himself ejected and skipped off the court like he was thrilled to be done for the night.

What remains is a team capable of playing well when healthy, working for a coach it doesn't seem to believe in, while trying to make the playoffs, which will only hurt their draft position.

Playoffs or not, the Bulls are a mess, confused about who they are, what they intend to be, how they're going to get there and when they hope to do it.

Is Rose nearing the end of his Bulls run? Is Butler a championship-caliber player around whom they can build? Is the lottery their only hope? Do free agents take the Bulls seriously?

So many of their wounds are self-inflicted and in a league in which a single bad decision can cost you five years' development, the Bulls make bad decisions annually.

For a decade they've been treading water. Now, standing still would be a step up.

brozner@dailyherald.com

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