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Rozner: Maybe Bulls finally see big picture

The Chicago Bulls have long been an organization in denial, operating in a fantasy world in which they saw themselves getting past LeBron James in the Eastern Conference.

It has never happened. It was never going to happen.

You can go back even further, as far back as the 2006-07 season, when the Bulls had a fine young core of players with a promising future, but they had no inside presence to speak of and it was easy to see a gaping hole in any plans they had to compete.

Kevin Garnett was going to be available in Minnesota, and the Bulls, led by John Paxson, simply sat back and watched it happen.

They had Luol Deng, Ben Gordon, Kirk Hinrich, Andres Nocioni, Chris Duhon, Tyrus Thomas and Thabo Sefolosha. Plenty of assets to get it done and make a run at a title, but the Bulls were unwilling to move their favorite draft picks.

Garnett went to Boston in the summer of 2007 and won a championship in his first season with the Celtics.

The following February, Pau Gasol was traded from Memphis to Los Angeles. Again, the Bulls watched from a distance as the very player they needed was traded to a title contender.

After losing in the first round the previous two seasons, the Lakers got to the NBA Finals in 2008 - in Gasol's first season in L.A. - and lost to Garnett's Celtics but won the next two titles with Gasol a dominant force.

The Bulls, under Paxson and Gar Forman, have consistently overvalued their own players, unable to take a realistic look at the rest of the conference and see a path to the NBA Finals.

So it's a positive that they were willing to move on from Derrick Rose on Wednesday and were shopping Jimmy Butler up to and throughout the NBA draft Thursday.

If they end up trading Butler, they will have moved on from Joakim Noah, Butler, Rose and Gasol, four players from their starting lineup at this time a year ago.

"We needed to start changing the roster," Forman said. "We needed to start getting younger and more athletic."

Consider that they refused to deal Gasol at the last trade deadline, at the time still delusional about their playoff chances.

"I wouldn't call it a rebuild," Forman said. "I guess I would call it a retool, because we still really like a lot of the players we have on this roster and we like a lot of the young players we have on this roster, starting with Jimmy Butler, who's 26."

No, it's a rebuild.

Call it whatever you want, but the Bulls need to start thinking about how to win an NBA championship, and it wasn't going to happen with the roster they had, so regardless of semantics this is a step in the right direction.

The next step is moving on from Butler, who humiliated his coach early in Fred Hoiberg's first campaign and the coach never recovered from it, as Butler continued on and off the court to run his own program.

The Bulls fired a really good coach - albeit one who was frequently off kilter - and brought in Hoiberg, who has four years left on his deal.

Butler also has four years left and something has to give. Given that management went out on a limb for a new head coach, it seems more likely that they would move a player before this particular head coach.

So it doesn't sound like the Bulls are done dealing, and they shouldn't be. They ought to be thinking about 2017 and beyond as they search for a way to get to the top of the NBA, not merely a playoff spot.

If indeed this is what's on their minds, it's about time.

brozner@dailyherald.com

• Listen to Barry Rozner from 9 a.m. to noon Sundays on the Score's "Hit and Run" show at WSCR 670-AM.

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