Reinsdorf Owns Bulls, Lots of Money, No Responsibility for Anything

There's much to yell and scream about when it comes to this interview with Reinsdorf (it really has to be read to be believed), but I just want to focus on one aspect of Jerry's astonishing self-regard. W/r/t the Ben Wallace signing, Jerry sez:

Was Ben Wallace a mistake? Probably. What we didn't think about was Ben needs to play alongside somebody who can score a lot of points. But it's not the thought of Ben Wallace that makes us be careful. It's just the thought of when you make a mistake, you own that mistake.

Okay, first of all: "Probably":???? Ben Wallace is out of the league, and the final year of his contract money is now going to two guys (Tim Thomas and Jerome James) who will not play one minute for the Bulls this year. I think we can safely change this to "Certainly." And I love that the lesson Jerry's taken away from this signing is not "Don't give large, long-term contracts to under-sized overachievers whose number have begun declining and who are on the far side of their prime," but rather that "Ben needs to play alongside somebody who can score a lot of points." Give. Me. A. Fucking. Break.

But it's not even that that astonishes. Rather, it's his sentiment, "when you make a mistake, you own that mistake," which, considering the context of the rest of the interview, in which Jerry runs, hides, prevaricates, and outright lies to avoid any responsibility for or ownership of the wayward direction of the Bulls franchise in recent years, that is absolutely gobsmacking.

To wit: "I wasn't talking about Vinny that day [when he called the season a "disaster" and an "embarrassment"]. It got totally misinterpreted." This is simply bullshit. In that interview, Jerry praised Pax to the heavens, and so North and Jiggets followed up with the question on whether this meant he was specifically disappointed in Del Negro. His response? "I have a lot of thoughts on that, but they're nothing I can really say publicly."

On Ben Gordon: "Actually, we made a decision a year ago not to commit long term to Ben. ... We have [John] Salmons and a hell of a three-guard rotation with Salmons, [Kirk] Hinrich and Derrick [Rose]. Ben wasn't going to get a whole lot of playing time. His time was going to be diminished." I love this. No reckoning or reasoning as to why Kirk might be a better fit than Gordon; no, rather he chooses to slag Ben Gordon as a player, the dude who led this team in scoring for the past four years and who was nothing but professional during his time here. Stay classy, Jerry; I'm sure the 2010 free agents are going to be running over themselves to play under someone like you.

He does the same thing when responding to why the team didn't pull the trigger on the Gasol deal: "Gasol made sense for the Lakers because, what is he, their third best player probably?" Again, Jerry could simply explain that Pax believed Memphis wanted too much for him, or that the Bulls didn't want Brian Cardinal's contract. But no, he has to diminish Gasol the player, calling him the Lakers' "third best player." (Obviously, he is their second best, and in a lot of ways, he is really the straw that stirs the Lakers' drink.)

There's a lot more fatuous, complacent babble to shred in this interview, but it's hard to work up the energy to do so. I love the city of Chicago, and I love basketball, and so, ergo, I love the Bulls. But loving something owned by Reinsdorf manages to suck away a significant amount of one's passion.

Ugh...

What Matt said.

I don't have much else to add, particularly about a team that could have re-signed a 20 ppg player for almost $1.5 mil. per year less than his market value (indeed, would've basically gotten a free year out of him) last summer, except that doing so would've meant backtracking from their own arbitrary bullshit deadline. So Jerry got to keep his pride, and the Bulls' best offensive player goes to their longtime rival, where he will undoubtedly torch us a couple of times each season.

Any talk that this is all part of the Bulls' master plan to get Wade needs to keep in mind that this is the Bulls, and there is no master plan. So far as I can tell, there are Jerry's whims ("I like Ben Wallace (and his agent, Arn Tellem)!", "I like Luol Deng!", "I like Kirk Hinrich!", "I don't like Mike D'Antoni!", "I don't like Ben Gordon!", "I don't like Tyrus Thomas!"), and that's about it. There are a ton of teams that are going to have salary cap space next year, and why any of the top free agents would choose to play for a franchise this fucked up and screwy is beyond my ken.

Think I'll be taking a break from the blog for a while, because at this point, what's the fucking point?