Paxson supports Hoiberg, but adds some suggestions
A year ago, when the Bulls finished the season with a 42-40 record, but out of the playoffs, Bulls vice president John Paxson offered an improvement plan for coach Fred Hoiberg.
"Fred is going to have to work at it," Paxson said on that night in 2016. "He's going to have to devote a lot of time and energy to determining what he wants to be as a head coach and how he wants his teams to play.
With a much different roster, Hoiberg's second season with the Bulls ended at 41-41 and a first-round playoff loss. Paxson confirmed the obvious Wednesday, that Hoiberg will return next season, but he offered a different goal for his coach's growth.
"I think Fred's challenge this offseason is to find ways to be a better leader," Paxson said at Wednesday's season-ending news conference. "I think he showed progress in that area. The team did rally around him at times."
Paxson and general manager Gar Forman were generally supportive of Hoiberg, but made a couple of pointed performance-related observations. Both members of the Bulls management team were critical of Hoiberg's frequent changes in the playing rotation.
It's true that Hoiberg fiddled with the rotation frequently, sometimes leaving players confused by why they were benched. To be fair, though, Hoiberg was handed a roster filled with wildly inconsistent young players.
"There was too much inconsistency in the rotations and trying to plug holes from game to game," Paxson said. "That's stuff we talked to Fred about during the year, and we'll continue to.
"Our expectation is our young guys will have a more consistent role, a more defined, consistent role. I firmly believe and I think Gar does too that as a young player, the only way we can find out anything about them, they can find out about themselves is to have consistency."
Consistency would be an appropriate goal for the entire team. The easiest way for the Bulls to improve next season is to play against the Sixers and Suns the way they do against the Cavs and Raptors. Since Hoiberg became coach, the Bulls are 13-2 against Cleveland and Toronto, who are facing off now in the Eastern Conference semis.
Paxson and Forman did acknowledge this fact: Hoiberg arrived in town with the goal of turning the Bulls into more of an offensive-minded, fast-paced, outside shooting team. The current roster doesn't exactly fit those characteristics, though the Bulls did improve their 3-point shooting as the season progressed.
"Yes, we have to continue to look at the style he wants to play, and look at players that fit that," Paxson said. "Last year, maybe we did plug some holes and do some patchwork stuff that maybe did not turn out. And again, that's our responsibility.
"Fred's our coach. And we have to support him, continue to give him the resources he needs to be successful. And that's on us. That's what we're diving into every day now."
Paxson and Forman also talked about the Bulls' management structure and mentioned they expect no significant changes. Paxson compared it to a COO and CEO relationship, where he and Forman both have a say in what happens, but ultimately Paxson has the final word, along with chairmen Michael and Jerry Reinsdorf.
Paxson has clearly taken on more of a visible role in the past year after essentially letting Forman take the lead during most of the Tom Thibodeau years.
"My responsibilities lie mostly in defining the culture of what we do every day; Gar's responsibility as GM is in the day to day grind of this business," Paxson said. "That's the way we've always handled it. We feel we have a good staff, we have a very small staff, we use all our resources. So we will continue to do so. That's as plain as it can be said."
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