Thibs vs. Bulls management

I believe the players all feel he's a genius coach, but when you lose, this is what happens. You start getting frustrated, you start relaxing, and this is what Thibodeau fights all the time. However, if the Chicago Bulls' management and ownership are looking for another coach, good luck finding someone better than that guy, because there aren't many. You can call Brian Shaw if you want. With Thibs, you've got to take the bad with the good, because the good is so overwhelmingly elite-level.

Chad Ford: I think the tensions exist in almost every front office, mainly between the direction the front office wants to go and the direction the coaches want to go. The coaches are single-mindedly obsessed with winning; they live from day to day, from game to game. They might love a player one day, but then he has a bad game and they want to trade him the next. Front offices have to take the long view. Then you add Thibodeau and his personality -- Gar Forman is a little bit more laid-back -- and then add John Paxson, who's also a very competitive, hard-driving guy. There are going to be clashes.

I don't think this is an issue of whether Thibodeau can coach; I think he's maybe the best coach in the NBA after Gregg Popovich. But coaches and front offices must work together. Larry Bird said: "An NBA coach really can only last about three years before NBA players start to tune them out." I think he would make exceptions for the Popoviches or perhaps the Phil Jacksons and Pat Rileys of the world, but it's also partly because of their coaching style. When you have coaches who coach as hard and as aggressively as Thibodeau, there's a certain shelf life, if you will, before players start to tune them out. As good and as talented coaches as they are, that's just one of the realities in the NBA. It works in college because the coach is god, but at the NBA level, the players are god.

It doesn't help Thibodeau that the Bulls' front office has been pretty dang good. They've drafted well, I think they've signed the right free agents, and I think they've made the right calls, over Thibodeau's objections, such as letting Luol Deng go. I think they have put this team in a position to win, and if they had a healthy Derrick Rose and if everyone on this roster were healthy, I think we'd be talking about them as a potential favorite to win it all. I wouldn't be surprised if there's a change made after the season, a change that both sides want at the end of the year. I agree with David: I don't think there's as good a coach out there as Tom Thibodeau, but I wouldn't be shocked at all if they tap Fred Hoiberg of Iowa State to come in and take over. I think he's the hottest college name right now. He played in the NBA, he worked in an NBA front office, and he has a demeanor they might think the players will be more responsive to.

Amin Elhassan: You guys know what happened to the last Iowa State coach who went to Chicago, right?

[Laughter]

Ford: That was very, very different.

Kevin Pelton: I'd be a little cautious before attributing the defensive downslide to players' turning on Thibodeau. I started to look into this earlier in the season, and a major issue for them was the Pau Gasol-Joakim Noah frontcourt, which was exacerbated by the fact that Noah was coming off a fairly serious surgery and wasn't the same player physically for the first two to three months of the season. They were asking him to chase around quick forwards on the perimeter, rather than protect the paint the way he did so effectively last year, when he was defensive player of the year. Now it seems we're seeing a little bit of a healthier Noah, and I think that's a factor in why they were playing well defensively before Rose's injury.

Elhassan: I know you guys mentioned there's always a natural tension between the coach and front office, but I think the best organizations are the ones where everyone is on the same page. You look at Miami and San Antonio. I think what makes them special, beyond the fact that they have iconic figures -- Pop and Riley -- is there really isn't that much tension between the two factions, or if there is, it's never, ever outwardly expressed. I'll go back to Utah during the Kevin O'Connor and Jerry Sloan days. They were on the same page about what type of players they liked, about how they wanted to play. When you have that kind of harmony, that synchronization between upstairs and downstairs, it really does alleviate a lot of issues. Like Coach Thorpe said, if you get rid of Tom Thibodeau, you better have a very good name coming in behind him, because otherwise you're in a heap of trouble. This is not a Sacramento situation, where you get rid of your guy and have no idea what the next step is. Beyond that, I'd like to believe the Bulls and Thibs can step back from the edge of the cliff and figure out a middle ground. Do we have to be that dogmatic, to the point that someone's going to have to leave?

Thorpe: So Chad, maybe expect a phone call soon because there's no one better than you at resolving conflicts. [Ford also is an attorney and Brigham Young professor who teaches conflict resolution.]

[Laughter]

Amin is totally right. That really is where management has to sit down and have a frank conversation and say, "Coach, we have brought in hypercompetitive dudes who, even if they have one arm, they're going to play their butts off. But we need to consider sending them out there less often." Players in every franchise, when they see the rift, they see the problems. And very often, they'll end up picking a side, and that's not what you want. You want it to be "we" -- not "us" or "them." You need to make sure that when you go into the offseason, you're back to a "we" approach in terms of the Chicago Bulls as a franchise. We're not going to be best friends, we don't have to take each other to dinner and send birthday cards and all that, but we have to have a professional respect. The front office should make clear the following: We're paying you a lot of money, we're a storied franchise, and we think you're one of the best coaches on the planet in any sport -- so let's make sure we walk together.

Penn: The biggest threat to the relationship is the blame game. Every loss is like a death; it requires an autopsy, an identifiable cause of death, and it's human nature to assign blame. More often than is fair, the blame lands at the coach's feet. It's the same with fans -- the easiest target is the coach. If the coach senses this friendly fire is coming at him from within, he will shut off and shut out the threat.

Elhassan: By the way, let's give some credit to the players, beyond just being good players. These are good teammates and good locker room guys. Thibs has a special group there. It's not easy to get leadership such as that in a locker room and guys who would run through a brick wall for their coach and one another. On the other side of the coin, you've got Brian Shaw, whose firing last week elicited the following response from Ty Lawson: "Oh yeah, I was really broken up about [Shaw's firing] for two or three hours."

Pelton: I think we have to assume at this point that Bulls management has tried to have those conversations, and if you base it on Thibodeau's statement in the media, it's clear he is not willing to be flexible on the kind of minutes he plays his players. He has a philosophy of what they need to be able to do and how he's going to be successful. I think we kind of have to take it as an assumption, as part of this exercise, that's who he's going to be. The question then becomes: Are the many terrific things Thibs brings -- defensive schemes, getting guys to play hard, all of that -- worse than the strain we are putting on our players by having them out there as many minutes per game as we do?

Elhassan: I was recently talking to someone in a different organization who was telling me about [former Suns owner] Jerry Colangelo. Jerry Colangelo's thing was that he always had the replacement on the bench. So he had Cotton Fitzsimmons, and Cotton passed the baton to Paul Westphal, and Westphal passed the baton to Danny Ainge, and Ainge passed the baton to Scott Skiles, and Skiles passed the baton to Frank Williams, and Williams passed the baton to Mike D'Antoni. Continuity remains -- even though they were going to change the coach, it didn't necessarily mean they needed to change everything. If the Bulls have reached the point -- and remember, I'm not saying Thibs needs to be gone, but let's just assume the Bulls reached the point where there's an impasse -- is there anybody on that bench who can retain some of the many things we like about Thibs and his schemes?

Thorpe: Assistant coach Ed Pinckney is well-respected. I know his interview in Denver was very, very impressive. I guess it was last year or two years ago. Very impressive guy. Pinckney isn't necessarily Thibodeau, but then again, maybe that's a good thing. He'd have to do it his way but perhaps could retain some of what you had before with Thibs.

Elhassan: That's why I like [Grizzlies coach] Dave Joerger. He's a perfect example of that. He's not Lionel Hollins, the coach he replaced. Joerger has his own style, but it's not like he dumped everything Lionel ran. Much of it was really successful and got the Grizzlies to the conference finals. Rather, he figured out how to tweak it.

Ford: I still think it's going to be Fred Hoiberg.

[Laughter]

Thorpe: He's definitely the hottest name.

Ford: What they need is a third party. What makes the Spurs so great is common purpose. Everyone's on the same page about common purpose, and regardless of personal agendas, everything is defeated over the common purpose. Pop is a hard coach, and he will ride you hard. But you see the way the players react to him, how much they know he cares about them, what he's done with Tim Duncan's minutes and other veterans' minutes to try to elongate their careers. It's a long-term view of what success means in the NBA, not a day-to-day view. I think there's a way to find that balance between that long-term and that short-term. And I think it's in Thibodeau's best interests. As great a coach as he is, if he can't find that same sort of balance, there are going to be problems with him wherever he goes. But I do think this Bulls team will be good with another coach because, as you guys have said, they have good players, they have high-character players, guys who by their very nature work hard. Do I think Tom Thibodeau will be great with another team? Absolutely. I think he'll come in and immediately, wherever he coaches, be a major asset.

Penn: The Bulls' owner, Jerry Reinsdorf, could also be a perfect third party to broker some happiness and create alignment. Talented sports agents can sometimes help, as well.

"

If the Chicago Bulls' management and ownership are looking for another coach, good luck finding someone better than [Thibs], because there aren't many.

"-- David Thorpe

Ford: Yeah, the owner is someone who has that clout, but there are a lot of skilled people out there. The NBA has skilled people who can do this and have respect for both parties. There are options for the Bulls. But I'm sure the Bulls look at it and say, "Yeah, we can go get Fred Hoiberg," and I'm sure Thibodeau looks at it and says, "I'll have 10 job offers at the end of the season from teams that want me."

Pelton: It seems to me like the issue here is a loss of trust between the two parties, based on the back-channel leaks and things that have gotten out in the media. That is, to me, what makes me think this relationship might be irreparable.

Thorpe: Which is why they have to explore it. They have to look into it. In fact, I would argue strongly that there are probably 25 to 29 other franchises that would not get this kind of production out of the lineup or even close to what Jimmy Butler has given the Bulls. There was a long way for that young man to get to where he is now. But when that coach/front-office relationship begins fraying, you start having real concerns -- is it salvageable? Because once that snowball starts, it's very, very hard to stop it and roll it back up the mountain. Not impossible, but almost impossible.

Penn: Would we be here talking about the Bulls if Thibs had his entire complement of players healthy?

Pelton: I think that's the paradox. It's hard to draw a causation between playing time and injury. But when players are playing as many minutes as Deng and now Jimmy Butler have played, it certainly increases the risk factor, I think, down the road.

Elhassan: Practice time too. That's the thing no one talks about. Thibs runs hard practices. They don't have enough down time or rest time to recover from the hard games they play.

Thorpe: It's easy to swallow when you're winning. I've been talking to Bulls players over the years. When things are rolling, they can put up with it. It's when they hit bumps in the road, such as suffering an embarrassing loss or going through losing streaks, that the frustration starts to show up. So management decides a change needs to be made. But sometimes management loses track of reality and the injuries a coach must deal with. Were it not for injuries to Denver's Danilo Gallinari and Lawson late in the 2012-13 season, our good friend George Karl might not have lost in the first round in six games to Golden State. Alas, the Nuggets fired George and, obviously, have been awful since.

Pelton: That's the cautionary tale for Chicago, right? Looking at what happened to Denver and how quickly it all fell apart -- not entirely because of the coaching change, but I think we can agree they downgraded there.

Penn: Injuries affect everything all the time. We never put an asterisk next to the loss to indicate that, for example, four players were playing injured during that game. The loss goes on the coach's permanent record. No one else gets that "L" behind his name. We don't know Riley's record as a GM, but we do as a coach -- a Google search will lead with his coaching record. That's why there is so much pressure on the coach.