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.
