According to Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo Sports, Ben Gordon will become a member of the Detroit Pistons for $55 million over 5 years.

The Detroit Pistons have reached agreement with free-agent guard Ben Gordon(notes) on a five-year contract worth around $55 million, a source with knowledge of the talks told Yahoo! Sports Wednesday evening.

Well, looks like the Bulls are going back to the lottery next season. The Bulls lost their best player and will suck next year.

Everytime John Paxson and Gar Forman said that the Bulls would like to have Ben Gordon back, they were lying. $11 million a year is a reasonable amount for Ben Gordon, you had to expect he would want something in that neighborhood. Although those two are not to blame, they were just lying for their boss.

This move all comes down to Jerry Reinsdorf. All he cares about is his how much money he can make, he doesn’t care about winning. The man is a disgrace of an owner for letting the Bulls’ best player walk. Unless the Bulls can get lucky in the lottery and land another superstar potential player in the draft, as they did a year ago with Rose, they will be unlikely to compete for a championship for awhile.

Today is a big setback for the team on the court. They will suck next.

The Chicago Bulls introduced James Johnson and Taj Gibson in a press conference today. Here is a rough recap of what was said during the press conference today.

Gar Forman: We are very excited about how things turned out.  Think with both players there is great versatility, both for the roster, but also as far as their games are concerned.  James can play inside and outside.  He can play at the 3 and the 4.  Taj is a skill player, who brings length and activity to the floor that will really help us.

James Johnson: Chicago is a great city, going to be happy to play here.  They’re a great young team.  Going to be fun running with Derrick and the rest of the guys.

Taj Gibson: I feel the same way.  I’m blessed to be here, a great city, a great team.  Looking forward to filling any need the team has, looking forward to the season.

Reporter: Do you liken yourself to anyone in particular or the kind of style of play?

James Johnson: I watch everyone.  I have a couple guys, inside and out.  Try to take everyone’s game who makes great moves, and make them in my game.

(more…)

Jillian Jesk goes one-on-one with the Chicago Bulls general manager. Take a look at what Forman’s plans are for the off-season and whether or not re-signing unrestricted free agent Ben Gordon is his top priority.

Gar Forman was officially named the new general manager of the Chicago Bulls yesterday.

Forman, unlike Paxson, made it clear that re-signing Ben Gordon is the goal, and not just something that management will try to do.

“We like Ben. Ben’s been a key component to our team. I think he’s our kind of guy. He has great make-up and character, a great work ethic. Obviously, he’s a very talented player. Our goal is to re-sign Ben Gordon,” Forman said.

“The conversations that we’ve had, I think Ben wants to stay here in Chicago and be with the Bulls.”

Forman would then extend an olive branch to Ben’s agent, Raymond Brothers.

“I think Raymond understands, like I do, that as we hit the July period, every negotiation is a new negotiation.”

“I’ve read some of his comments and Ben’s comments that say the same thing. It’s going to be a new negotiation.”

He finished off the talk about Ben by saying, “Ben will know that we want to have him back, with the Chicago Bulls.”

It is good to see Forman come out right away and set the tone for negotiations for Ben. Gordon is an unrestricted free agent this year and could be signed by another team and be gone. There will not be any goofing around in negotiations by the Bulls this year. Ben is one of the premier unrestricted free agents, and the premier unrestricted free agents usually have their fate decided in the first few days of free agent, so it’s important for the Bulls to come out with a strong offer from the get go.

When Forman talks about Gordon knowing that the Bulls want him back, I would assume that Forman means that the Bulls are going to make a strong offer from the get go. I would hope that the Bulls offer Gordon more than they did last year, just to show that they’re rewarding him for going out, playing hard, and having a good year. If the Bulls don’t offer Gordon more than they did last year ($54 million over 6 years), there may be no hope at re-signing him.

That is the danger, words won’t get the job done, and the Bulls need to understand that. Just talking won’t get the job done, they need to follow their words up with actions, and that action is making a good contract offer to Gordon, likely in excess of $10 million a year. In the past few years, the Bulls have given $9.5 million a year to Kirk Hinrich, $10.5 million a year to Tyson Chandler, $11.8-13.3 million (depending on incentives) a year to Luol Deng, and $15 million a year to Ben Wallace. The Bulls have shown that they are willing to spend big money on players, and none of those four players deserved big money more so than Ben Gordon.

According to Bulls.com, Gar Forman will be named the general manager of the Chicago Bulls.

It’s nice to see someone like Gar Forman get promoted to Bulls General Manager, which will be made official at a Berto Center press conference Thursday.

John Paxson will remain in charge as Executive Vice President of Basketball Operations, which is Paxson’s current title. The shorthand for that title around the NBA is General Manager. The Bulls have not officially had that title in recent years. Forman was Director of Player Personnel. So he gets a new title and some additional day to day internal responsibilities.

There was a fuss back in February about an erroneous report that Paxson was resigning.

That never was the case. But Paxson has been trying to get away from more day to day operations with the franchise and concentrate more on personnel decisions. So Forman figures to be involved in more of the daily “office manager” type activities that also fall on a general manager in addition to other responsibilities he’s taken on in recent seasons, including more direct relations with agents in contract talks.

The team’s hierarchy won’t change with Jerry Reinsdorf at the top with Paxson the ranking figure in Basketball Operations.

It’s good to see that John Paxson will remain the chief decision maker for basketball decisions. He is a great basketball mind. We can only hope that Jerry Reinsdorf will listen to him, and give him the financial support to fulfill his plan.

General Manager John Paxson confirmed today that Luol Deng will not play for the rest of the regular season.

# GM John Paxson confirmed to reporters on Thursday that Deng will not play again in the regular season
# Paxson also said that if the Bulls were to make an extended run in the 2009 NBA Playoffs, he would not rule out Deng’s return if his symptoms have improved

It sounds to me like Deng won’t be back for the first round of the playoffs either. If we have an extended run in the playoffs, Deng could be useful. But we all know that Deng isn’t that good whne he is playing somewhat banged up, so even if Deng begins coming back for the playoffs, the Bulls may be better off just letting him rest and play Tim Thomas as the backup small forward.

This past week, John Paxson appeared on Lunch With a Legend to discuss various issues surrounding the Bulls. Here is a recap of what was said during the radio appearance.

• The roster is better since the deadline deals.
• He would like to see an 8 or 9 man rotation with Luol Deng in there.  He is not sure what will happen with Deng for the rest of the year.
• The Bulls have a scouting staff.  It is Jay Hillock’s job to go out and identify players in the league who are a little undervalued.  The Bulls were on John Salmons since the beginning of the year.
• The key to making the trade happen was the willingness to take on Brad Miller’s contract for next year.
• There is still some work to do to prepare the Bulls for 2010.  The Bulls have options on their roster to allow them to do it.
• Paxson likes what Salmons can do off the dribble.  Longterm, he can play either at the 2 or 3.  He doesn’t have a lot of mileage on him because he didn’t play a lot of minutes so far in his career.  Salmons can be really good for a number of years.
• There is a definite injury in Luol Deng’s leg.  They have chosen to take activity away from him.  He is starting to run a little bit.  They have a treadmill that takes his body weight off of him.
• Luol Deng is the only one who can give an answer to why there is an organizational divide.  Paxson would have liked for Luol to tell the organization which doctors he wanted to talk to first.  However, the Bulls still got on board with the doctor Luol chose.  The Bulls’ diagnosis was right from the beginning.
• The problem with the Big Mac booing was that Kirk Hinrich had an unbelievable game.  Wishes that people would get in their cars saying what a great game it was, but they booed Kirk instead. You’d like to see the fans up on their feet cheering, especially when you beat the Pistons.
• Paxson has never claimed his free Big Mac after the game.
• He is not fearful that Luol Deng will not become the player they thought he would be.  He thinks that Deng is more of a system guy who plays off the strengths of others.  He still thinks that Deng will become a very good player.  He evaluated last year that the small forward position is a really valuable one.  He believes that Deng will have value and has value now.  Down the road you may have Deng to move in a deal, to which Paxson recovered with, “We don’t have any intention of moving Luol Deng.”  He has talked to teams around the league, and Deng does have value.
• He thinks that Neil Funk and Stacey King have a nice rapport.
• The Bulls have always battled the small backcourt.  John Salmons gives the opportunity to play with a bigger backcourt.  he thinks with Derrick’s size that can be a formidable backcourt, and that’ without talking about Ben Gordon, who Paxson thinks can play a terrific role for the Bulls.  He feels tha tthe Bulls now have some real scorers on the team with John Salmons, Ben Gordon, and Derrick Rose.
• Some of Ben Gordon’s future is financial.  Money deals aer becoming a reality in the league right now.  He would love to keep Gordon.  They tried the last two years, made substantial offers, and for whatever reason it didn’t work out.  He doesn’t assign blame to anyone for the failed negotiations.  They will have a chance to look at the big picture this summer and try to get him back.
• Again reitererated that he is the GM now and plans to be the GM.  If anything changes he will let everbody know.  Peter Vescey, the Suntimes, and David Aldridge were bogus and so out of reality.  The health stuff especially, he has no idea why Aldridge would bring that up.  he feels no obligation to lend credibility to these uys.  He thinks he proved that he is committed to the job at the trade deadline.
• Being able to break Larry Hughes big contract into two smaller pieces could help the Bulls make a trade in the future.
• When the Bulls got John Salmons they knew Thabo Sefolosha wasn’t going to play.  Of course, they could not have foreseen Luol Deng’s injury.  Having Sefolosha’s contract on the books next year would have caused some problems.
• They have another promotion going where they are going to be wearing a different color of green.  An environmental green.
• They are going to wear Los Bulls against the Heat.  Los Bulls and El Heat is the way the Hispanic speakers say it, not Los Toros.
• He thought Derrick Rose was terrific off the bat.  Has seen significant improvement in two areas: 1.  His shot has gotten more consistent, especially from the elbows.  2. His decision making has gotten better.  He thinks that Rose will probably be a higher turnover guy, but the greatest assist guy, John Stockton, was a high turnover guy as well.  He needs to grow on the defensive end.  he gets caught watching the ball a lot of the time.
• There was never a mandate for Vinny Del Negro to put Derrick Rose on the floor in clutch time.  They all know that Rose is the b iggest part of their future.  The whole organization wants to see him learn at the end of games.
• Had a preference for Rose to be in the game in the first Miami game.  Have to allow learning on the job when you hire someone with no head coaching experience.  The goal is to try to help Vinny become the best head coach he can be.  He is beginning to grow into that role.  Vinny is under contract the next couple of years, you don’t just give a guy a contract and then just get rid of him.  There is so much pressure to win, that decisions are made.  But if you do something like that, you have to ask yourself, what are you going to do.
• Paxson thinks we have a great opportunity to make the playoffs.  Maybe the biggest reason to make the playoffs is to get Rose some playoff experience.
• He can’t do anything about Noah and Thomas’ age and maturity.  The biggest thing for those guys was getting consistent time when the injuries occurred.  Noah is a guy who just cares about winning.  He thinks that Noah has played very well since getting consistent minutes and the starting job.  He thinks Thomas is similar.  When Drew Gooden got hurt, Tyrus Thomas got the minutes.  His ability at times has shown.  If tThomas would run the floor more, he would get a few more dunks a game.  Him and Noah have a nice thing going and Brad Miller is helping those two.
• Paxson throws things during games.  He kicked in the panel by the TV in the lockerroom.  He fins it frustrating that with all the things done to make players’ lives easier that you don’t see them recripocating what your doing for them.  There stll seems to be a distrust of the organization’s intentions which he cannot understand.
• The White House day was odd.  He first heard about Norm Van Lier when they were getting on the bust to the White House.  People were drawn to Norm because he was going to tell it like it was and people liked to hear it.  Norm was part of those Bulls teams that were endeared by the city for the way they played.  He remembers when they won their first championship that Norm felt a part of it.  The Bulls were so fortunate to meet the president, especially with the historical significance of President Obama.
• Paxson showed a picture of his son Ryan to Obama.  Paxson’s son Ryan, joined the military.  Paxson has great respect for every young person who decides to join the military.  Ryan’s path was a little bit different becauseh e was playing basketball, but felt it in his heart to enlist.  It shows that there are young people out there willing to take something more difficult on.  He is proud that Ryan, as a person coming from an affluent situation not having a sense of entitlement.
• Johnny Red Kerr was in a lot of pain for the last several weeks.  He was a good man.  He did just about everything for the Bulls outside of playing.  You can call him a homer ,but that’s because he loved the Chicago Bulls.  Today, it’s more analysis, but Johnny was going to tell you how much he loved the Bulls players.