Doug Thonus has released the 89th episode of the Bulls Beat Podcast.
Vinny Del Negro has to go. That is what Doug is yelling these days. Del Negro is gone a the end of the year. Doug thinks the Bulls should just fire Del Negro right now since they have three legit NBA head coaches sitting on the bench in Bob Ociepka, Bernie Bickerstaff, and Del Harris.
The players have completely tuned out Vinny. During the summer, Vinny made a bunch of promises to the players on how he was going to run the team that he failed to keep.
Vinny is a players coach who the players don’t like.
Vinny was just being spiteful when he fined the guys for eating in the locker room. The team provides food to its players in the locker room. This was a team rule, but no one has followed it in the past. (Apparently not even the Bulls staff, who provides the players with food).
So far this season, Vinny has not been leaning on his assistant coaches. The assistants have just been working on player development.
If there is one thing to take away from this is podcast is that Doug thinks that Vinny Del Negro has to be fired, and has to be fired soon. I completely agree.
Here’s something interesting—Coach Vinny Del Negro has a new “grading system” for effort, which he wrote up on the board before tonight’s game. Players were each given a number grade for how much effort they put into the last game against Cleveland, and that, according to Del Negro, is to help bring attention to what certain guys can work on, to make them aware of what he expects from them. Personally, I’d just have a conversation with a guy if he wasn’t giving 100%, but I’m also not being paid to head coach an NBA team.
I really hope this wasn’t one of the fresh ideas that sold Vinny on Paxson. This is what happens when you hire someone who has never coached at any level as the coach of a NBA team. How exactly did Vinny determine the effort the players put out? Does he have a formula to determine it? How does one determine effort?
To put it simply, someone cannot determine the effort that someone is exerting. A player could be putting forth their full effort, but might have some muscle strain, which is hindering his performance, making it look like he is not giving full effort. To quantify something that is so uncertain is beyond idiotic.
While the Bulls are unlikely to fire Vinny during the season, it is hard to see the Bulls retaining Vinny past this season. He’s just been too bad to warrant it. He’s been worse than Jim Boylan.
How low can they go? Tonight, the Chicago Bulls lost to the fourth worst team in the league, the Minnesota Timberwolves, 102 to 92.
Both teams came out showing their ineptitude, showing an inability to score at the beginning of the game. It took 4:15 into the game before Ben Gordon finally scored the first points in the game.
The Timberwolves didn’t win because they were particularly good tonight. They were just less bad than the Bulls.
It doesn’t look to get any for the Bulls either. Looking around the league at what the other interim coaches around the league are doing, the Bulls seem content to let Vinny finish out the year before going in a different direction. While an interim coach might not help drastically improve the Bulls, what Vinny is doing to the team has to stop. He is not properly developing Derrick Rose and is probably souring Ben Gordon on the Bulls, which might lead to Ben ditching the Bulls for greener pastures, even if the Bulls are competitive money wise.
Tonight, Derrick Rose started bad, but had a good second half. Rose finished with 22 points and 5 assists.
Ben Gordon had a bad shooting night, finishing 7-21. Those bad shooting nights will happen, so this is nothing to get worried about, especially since Gordon finished with 17 points and 6 assists.
Tyrus Thomas had a really nice game tonight. He finished with 15 points, 8 rebounds, 4 assists, and 8 blocks. It was really nice seeing Thomas being active on help defense. Unfortunately the Bulls other bigs man defense was horrendous.
Al Jefferson finished with 18 points and 14 rebounds and Kevin Love had 18 points and 12 rebounds. They weren’t completely killing the Bulls front court, but took advantage of it in a very methodical manner.
Ryan Gomes scored 19 points hitting clutch shot after clutch shot late in the fourth.
Derrick Rose struggled guarding anyone on defense. The Timberwolves backcourt had good games as well. Randy Foye scored 21 points and Sebastian Telfair added 18 points.
Aaron Gray had 10 points and 9 rebounds.
With the loss, the Bulls fall to 14-20. It will be interesting to see what it will take to get Vinny fired during the season. Dropping the rest of this home stand, with the Bulls three next games against Sacramento, Washington, and Oklahoma City might just do the trick.
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