As many Bulls fans know by now, Vinny Del Negro fined Ben Gordon for missing a team flight deadline. This led to a heated exchange between Gordon and Del Negro in front of the media, before the two went off to a disclosed area.

Whether Vinny was right that Gordon missed the flight deadline or not, Del Negro is still in the wrong.

The Bulls last road game was against the New York Knicks on Monday. The game was played at noon, so there might have been some uncertainty over the flight departure time. These things happen. Just yesterday, Stan Van Gundy chose not to fine Dwight Howard for arriving to the stadium late, because Van Gundy was understanding of the circumstances that made Howard late.

But the big thing, was Vinny’s approach. Why did it take until Thursday to inform Gordon of a fine for an offense that he would have had to committed on Monday at the latest, as that was the last time the Bulls would have been flying. Did Ben Gordon irk Vinny during practice that he had to go fine Gordon for something that happened a few days ago? Players should be fined then and there, not eons after the incident occurred.

And the approach was unprofessional. Leaving a note in a player’s locker informing him he was fined? Is Del Negro too scared to confront a player face to face? If that’s the case, Vinny has no business coaching any team in this league or even a junior high team. This is very reminiscent of the communication breakdown between Scott Skiles and Tyson Chandler, when Skiles insisted that he had sent Chandler emails. Vinny was sold as a great communicator, but it turns out that he isn’t a very good communicator, which begs the question, what is he good at?

It is time for Bulls fans to rise up and demand a real coach. The Bulls should currently be coached by Mike D’Antoni, the choice of general manager John Paxson. Unfortunately, Reinsdorf scared D’Antoni away with his cheapness. There is no reason why the Bulls fans should have to suffer through another incarnation of Jim Boylan. It’s time for the Bulls to get a real coach. Coaches like Jeff Van Gundy and Avery Johnson fit the bill. Hopefully Bulls fans will be blessed to have a coach of that ilk next year.

According to K.C. Johnson of the Chicago Tribune, Ben Gordon was fined earlier today for missing a team flight deadline.

The Bulls fined guard Ben Gordon on Thursday for missing the team deadline for a flight, and the typically stoic guard expressed his displeasure during an animated conversation with coach Vinny Del Negro.

The incident took place after Del Negro addressed reporters and had answered a direct question about whether players respect the rookie coach by saying this: “They should. They better. But you ask the players that.”

Del Negro declined a request through a team spokesman to address the issue further. Reached outside the Berto Center, Gordon said the incident was no longer an issue and he had no problems with Del Negro.

Gordon did not curse his coach directly but used profanity to emphasize his frustration, believing he had been falsely accused of the transgression.

This is pretty silly, either Gordon missed the flight or he didn’t. This is just a case of one man’s word versus another. Given Gordon’s superb track record and Del Negro’s dubious character and small tactics, one’s initial reaction would be that Del Negro was the one in the wrong here, although it is still unclear whether or not Gordon actually did miss a flight deadline.

Vinny Del Negro will never work as the Bulls coach if the players don’t trust him, and players cannot possibly trust him if they think that he is falsely accusing them of fineable actions to show his role as the dominant figure on the team. This is clearly the case with Ben Gordon, the Bulls’ best player, who doesn’t seem to trust the coach or think much of his coaching ability.

Earlier in the month, in a mouthpiecesports.com piece, Ben Gordon failed to say anything positive about his coach, calling him a players coach while making quotation marks with his fingers, and saying the major difference between Skiles and Vinny is experience.

If the players don’t trust or respect Vinny Del Negro, then he needs to go, it’s as simple as that. It is unjust to the fans of Chicago to force them to watch more of Vinny’s horrid coaching, especially given how much talent is being misused on this roster. It is time for John Paxson to do what is right, and that is to fire Vinny Del Negro immediately.

From the Inside the Bulls blog that the Chicago Suntimes hosts, Brian Hanley wrote:

Minutes after coach Vinny Del Negro told media to ask his players if they respect him, Ben Gordon was seen by some of the same media confronting Del Negro and using expletives toward the coach in a Berto Center hallway. Gordon was upset at being fined for breaking a team rule. “I respect Vinny, everybody respects Vinny,” Gordon said, declining to go into detail. “This is not a `respect’ issue. It’s a non-issue.” Del Negro declined to comment through a team spokesman.

It will be intriguing to find out which team rule Gordon broke. It could be the ridiculous “no eating in the locker room” rule that he broke. If not that, probably something equal in ridiculousness.

The one thing that is certain of this is that Vinny Del Negro has gotten the one player who doesn’t cause waves to cause waves. It never happened under Scott Skiles, despite having his role yanked around, because Ben Gordon respected him. Jim Boylan couldn’t even get it to happen.

Vinny Del Negro stands alone in this department, getting the ultimate professional to lash out publicly against his coach. There is a good reason for this, Del Negro is the worst coach that Gordon’s ever had. Scott Skiles took the Bulls to the playoffs three times, Jim Boylan won 42.9% of his games coached. Del Negro? 41.9%. Del Negro is doing a worse job as coach than Jim Boylan, who some Bulls fans refuse to speak his name, and Del Negro has Derrick Rose on his team, Jim Boylan did not.

There is no use keeping around Vinny any longer. He is stunting the development of Derrick Rose and causing unrest throughout the rest of the team. The situation Del Negro came into was ideal. A talented team that disappointed that added the top pick in the draft. The team should easily be sitting in a playoff spot, but Del Negro messed up. It’s time for John Paxson to end this charade that Vinny presents as Bulls coach, and fire Vinny Del Negro right now.

In today’s Full Court Press blog post by K.C. Johnson of the Chicago Tribune, there were three John Paxson quotes. Here they are.

* “We’re not very good right now. We’re not playing well enough to win those (close) games in my opinion. I don’t expect any of our guys to sulk. They have to come to practice every day and work. It’s a lot of little things. The turnovers we had throwing the ball away in the backcourt, it’s just concentration and focus. I’m not going to say I’m pleased we’ve been competing better because we want to win. I don’t like where we’re at. I don’t think anybody does.
* Asked how he believes the coaching staff is faring, he said this: “The only person I’ll evaluate right now is myself and I obviously haven’t done the job of putting the type of team that I want to have on the floor in terms of competitiveness and effort. That falls on me. That’s the only person I’m going to critique.”
* “I’m obviously not happy with how we’re playing. I don’t think my expectations were such going into the season that we were going to be a top, top level team. But what I want to see is the team play together. And right now, through 40-plus games, we’re not that. And that concerns me.”

The sulking comment is clearly regarding Larry Hughes, who has received DNP - Coach’s Decisions for the past five games. It also may be directed at Ben Gordon, who has been jerked around once again by the organization with the return of Kirk Hinrich. It seems kind of feeble minded to jerk Gordon around given his role on the team, his contract status, and the fact that the Bulls have played worse since Kirk Hinrich has returned (.333) than before he returned (.432). If the Bulls played better with Ben Gordon in a reduced role, then it would be fine, but the Bulls have managed just to win 33.3% of their games since Hinrich has returned, despite better play out of Luol Deng, Tyrus Thomas, and Joakim Noah.

As said by Rosenbloom in his blog post today, this is a dig at Vinny. Paxson has not given a vote of confidence to Vinny, and he will likely be disposed of at the end of the season.

Sounds like the Bulls are going to be active at the deadline too, given the state of the team. Derrick Rose, Ben Gordon, and Luol Deng are the safe bets for players who will still be around after the deadline.

From Joel Brigham of Hoopsworld.com, who wrote:

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.

From Hoopsworld evening scoop, Bill Ingrim reveals more on the Bulls food situation. It turns out that five players were fined, including Ben Gordon. It also turns out that the Bulls provide food within the locker room to their players.

Every once in a while you run across a story that makes your jaw drop. This is one of those.

There’s a story in the Chicago media today about head coach Vinny Del Negro fining three players for eating in the locker room before a recent home game. HOOPSWORLD has learned that the number of players fined was actually five, but whether it was five or three, this story keeps getting wierder.

We’re talking about a team that provides food (at least a fruit tray) to the visitor’s locker room before each game and makes food available to their own players as well. It’s also a team that has never had an issue with players eating before a game, even at their lockers. Ben Gordon has often taken ribbing for his habit of making - not just eating, but actually whipping out condiments, constructing, and eating - peanut butter sandwiches in his locker before games.

So all of a sudden Del Negro decides to not only go off on a group of players, but also fine them for eating in the locker room before a game. Fines were less than a thousand dollars each, but still it’s a strange way to make a point.

It seems to be par for the course for Vinny Del Negro, however, who is going to great lengths to try and establish his authority in the locker room. Given that he’s failed to do it in any traditional way, he beginning to do it in ways that make him seem small and petty.

In case you’re wondering why it’s a bad idea to hand an inexperienced coach the head chair for an NBA franchise, you’re starting to see it in Chicago. Del Negro got the job despite his complete lack of experience coaching at any level, and the Bulls are now bearing the brunt of the consequences for that decision.

This is a team that fired Scott Skiles at about this time last season because his shrill, power-hungry ways were alienating players. Now it seems they replaced him with someone equally as shrill. It would be almost impossible for the Bulls to fire him this season without becoming even more of a laughing stock in NBA circles, but don’t be surprised if he’s one of the first ones picked off next season.

Things are going to get really ugly in Chicago, and that’s not a good situation for a team with so many young players seeking identities and veterans who will be walking away as free agents this summer.

When news first came out about Vinny fining Tyrus Thomas, Larry Hughes, and Joakim Noah for eating in the locker room, it all seemed really strange to me. I was thinking in the back of my mind, what about Ben Gordon’s pregame PB&J’s? I just figured that since Gordon wasn’t listed in the players mentioned, he was doing his eating somewhere else. Turns out my original inclination was right, and that Gordon wasn’t doing his eating elsewhere. What type of long standing team rule could there have possibly been? Remember, this is the team that wouldn’t let Ben Wallace go onto the court with a headband, so surely they would enforce other silly rules as well.

It was never a secret that Ben Gordon liked to enjoy a pregame meal. Here is Ben Gordon speaking about his pregame delicacies a few years ago: “I eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich before every game. Whoever invented that was smart. That’s got to be one of the best sandwiches ever.”

Pregame meals aren’t just something that the Bulls “no good” players came up with. Early in his career, Kobe Bryant used to eat Big Macs before games. Now, he eats much healthier of course.

It is ridiculous for the Bulls to be enforcing such a rule. Logically, a rule book would have been passed out, and players reading it would have objected at a silly rule. It’s hard to see a player who reads as much as Gordon does not reading the rule book. He surely would have objected as one of his pregame rituals was outlawed. Perhaps the Bulls just hand out food in the locker room to try to tempt their players, kind of like God putting a snake in the Garden of Eden.

These players are hardly bad seeds, they’re just feeding their bodies so they can go out and perform a professional sport at the high level. It’s not like they are doing some pregame drinking like Shawn Kemp.

If true, it is a good thing that the Bulls are prepared to let Vinny Del Negro go. If they fire him after the season, there is a wide array of prospective head coaches they could go after. They could sign former Mavericks coach, Avery Johnson, who has the highest regular season win percentage of any coach in NBA history. Or they could go after Boston’s defensive guru, Tom Thibodeau.

According to the morning report on Hoopsworld.com, Ben Gordon wants to remain a Bull, has always wished to stay with the Bulls, but the money is still an issue.

While the luxury tax was an issue in offering Gordon a contract next season, those problems are unlikely to come up again this offseason because of Drew Gooden’s expiring contract.

The Bulls real problem is finding their way into the picture for the 2010 free agency. Letting Drew Gooden walk in free agency, or signing him to a short, two year deal, is a given if the Bulls want to get into the mix in 2010.

After not giving Gooden a contract that is lasts more than three years, the Bulls next task is to play the trade markets. The Bulls have three players who will for sure be under contract in 2010 and those are, Luol Deng, Derrick Rose, and Joakim Noah. The Bulls will then probably look at trading Kirk Hinrich, and probably Nocioni as well.

The Bulls have a problem working towards creating cap space for 2010 if they cannot find a take for either Kirk Hinrich or Andres Nocioni. If the Bulls still have Andres Nocioni and Kirk Hinrich under contract next summer, John Paxson will have to decide whether to re-sign Gordon or not. Not re-signing Gordon would make the Bulls a less desirable destination for some of the 2010 free agents, while simultaneously flushing a third overall draft pick down the toilet. However, there are a host of players that are better than Gordon available, and if they were able to land one of them, it would make letting Gordon walk look brilliant. If they cannot land one of the superstars, the move could end up costing the Bulls, or making the free agent signing a lateral move.

If the Bulls re-sign Gordon with Hinrich and Nocioni still under contract, Paxson could go directions immediately. The first direction is to continue pursuing trades involving Hinrich and Nocioni, and try to get in the 2010 game. The second direction would be to sign a solid free agent like Shawn Marion to the MLE this summer, while the rest of the league is scared to spend money. No matter what direction the Bulls choose to take in this scenario, they would be able to leverage Larry Hughes expiring contract for something good. Going the first direction, a Hughes trade would be the result of the Bulls not finding a taker for Hinrich or Nocioni. Going the second direction, Paxson could proactively seek trades involving Hughes’ contract.

Nonetheless, it is good to hear that Gordon wants to remain a Bull. Hopefully Paxson can find a taker for Hinrich or Nocioni this season so the Bulls can avoid another scary summer when it comes to free agency in 2009.