K.C. Johnson of the Chicago Tribune recently interviewed Jerry Reinsdorf, and some of Reinsdorf’s answers were shocking. Here are a few of the more interesting things Reinsdorf said during the interview:

Actually, we made a decision a year ago not to commit long term to Ben. We tried. And he turned it down. But then near the end, John and Gar decided it probably wasn’t a good idea to make a long-term decision and to see what other options might develop over the season. So we withdrew the offer we had on the table. Ben ultimately came in and said he would take it. But it was too late. Now, fast-forward to the end of the year. 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. And now we’ve added [Jannero] Pargo for the limited time the fourth guard will get. Ben just no longer fit. He’s a terrific player. But he needs minutes. And he wouldn’t have been happy with the minutes he was going to get here.

It is hard to see John and Gar making such a decision. John Paxson has always been a big fan of Gordon, and Gar Forman was stating how Ben is his kind of player, and how it’s a top priority to re-sign Ben. I think what happened is Reinsdorf made a decision, and self-deluded himself into thinking that the basketball minds made the decision.

He also says that by the end of the year the Bulls had a terrific three guard rotation of Rose, Hinrich, and Salmons. This is a half truth, yes, the Bulls had a terrific three guard rotation, but it was of Rose, Gordon, and Hinrich. Salmons spent most of his time as a Bull last year at small forward. Does he even watch the games?

Finally, if the Bulls did bring Gordon back, why wouldn’t he get minutes? He is a better player than Kirk Hinrich, John Salmons…and even Derrick Rose. (Although hopefully Rose is at least on Gordon’s level, if not better starting this year). What other team in the league plays inferior players over their best players? This is crazy talk. I think Vinny would have played Gordon if he was re-signed. If Vinny wants to keep his job, he has to win, and playing Ben as many minutes as he can get out of him would hel pthe Bulls win the most.

We’ve made a lot of trades. I don’t think we move too slowly. [ Pau] Gasol, we didn’t move slowly. We said no. We were prepared to give them players. What they wanted to do was dump stuff on us that we would be immobilized and we wouldn’t be able to improve our team. Gasol made sense for the Lakers because, what is he, their third best player probably? He would’ve been our best player at that time. It would’ve been the wrong role for him. John and Gar decided they didn’t want Gasol under those circumstances where he would be the last piece and we’d be immobilized under the cap.

Now we have closure on what happened with Pau Gasol, and that is that the Bulls said no. The rumored deal was a trade that involved the Bulls sign and trading P.J. Brown, who would have a contract that was only guaranteed for one year, for Gasol as the principle. The trade would have thrusted the Bulls into luxury tax area, but would have greatly improved the team.

He also states that Gasol is the Lakers third best player. That’s crazy talk. Gasol is better than Lamar Odom, Ron Artest, Trevor Ariza, Andrew Bynum, Derek Fisher, or whoever he feels is the Lakers third best player.

Again, he says that John Paxson and Gar Forman decided. Once again, I find it more likely that Jerry decided, and is just saying that John and Gar decided.

Another part I found particularly bothersome is “where he would be the last piece and we’d be immobilized under the cap.” Why would Gasol have to be the last piece? Why would we be immobilized? We would still have the MLE and LLE to add talent, and we would have had expiring contracts in either Ben Wallace (2010) or Drew Gooden (2009) and Larry Hughes (2010), which we could have moved for more talent. The only reaosn why Pau Gasol would be the final piece, is because the owner doesn’t want to spend any more money.

The Chicago Bulls fell to the Los Angeles Lakers 117 to 109 tonight in the United Center in a hard fought game.

The Bulls fell behind early, but came surging back to take a double digit first quarter lead behind the hot scoring of Derrick Rose, Ben Gordon, and John Salmons.

Gordon would taper off, but Salmons and Rose would continue on with their hot scoring to maintain the Bulls lead. But then, in the fourth quarter, the Lakers role players started draining threes. When it rained it poured, and the great three point shooting of the Lakers role players was the death of the Bulls.

The undoing of the Bulls tonight was definitely their turnovers. They had 23 turnovers in the game, and you aren’t going to beat a great team like the Lakers when you have that many turnovers. Ben Gordon was the biggest culprit with 7 turnovers.

Derrick Rose was phenomenal tonight, scoring 25 points. This game should definitely help him in the rookie of the year race, although not quite as much as a Rose led win over the Lakers would have helped him. But with two strong performances late in March, Rose looks like the favorite to win the award.

John Salmons was great once again, scoring 30 points. He’s a scorer, and he seems perfect for what Vinny’s trying to do on offense. He is able to hit jumpshots at ease, why corkscrewing his way to easy layup attempts.

For the Lakers, Kobe Bryant had 28 points, but did it very inefficiently, taking 25 shots to score that with. But Kobe had some bothersome defense and had 7 assists, setting up his teammates for easy looks.

Pau Gasol struggles a bit in the first half, but hit his groove in the second half to score 23 points and grab 10 rebounds in the game.

Tyrus Thomas had a nice game scoring 15 points, securing 16 rebounds, and blocking 3 shots. His performance was huge, and was a big reason why the Bulls were competitive with one of the best teams in the league.

Ben Gordon was probably the downfall of the Bulls tonight. He just didn’t have a very good game at all. He had 16 points on a scoring efficiency that was still better than Bryant’s, but it wasn’t a good scoring efficiency by any means, and he left too many points on the board. Gordon had a good 3 or 4 wide open three pointers that he missed. If he makes those, the Bulls probably win. Gordon also had 6 assists, but he also had a lot of turnovers tonight.

That was actually a problem with the entire team. The Bulls gave up 23 turnovers but also 14 offensive rebounds to the Lakers. If the Bulls took away some of these extra scoring opportunities from the Lakers, the outcome could have been different.

Gordon hit 2 three pointers in the game and is now sitting at 744 career three pointers, just 7 three pointers away from breaking Nick Van Exel’s record for most three pointers in the first five years of a players’ career.

Kirk Hinrich had 9 points and his defense on Kobe Bryant was very good.

Lamar Odom finished with 16 points, Trevor Ariza with 18 points, and Jordan Farmar for 13 points. These three combined for 7-13 from three point land, and were the key difference in the game.

With the loss, the Bulls fall to 32-38 on the season and posess a 1 game lead over the Charlotte Bobcats.

Closing Comments

This was a game I thought the Bulls were going to lose coming in. The Lakers are one of the best teams in the league, and they simply don’t lose a lot of games. But the Bulls came out swinging after the Lakers early attack to take a 16 point lead. They held onto this lead for most of the game. The Bulls didn’t lose because they lost confidence or spirit, and that is a positive to take from this game. They competed for the entire 48 minutes. As they go into the playoffs, they will need to focus more to avoid a lot of these bad turnovers. If they reign in their turnovers, they will be a tough team to beat. Nonetheless, competing for almost the entire game against a very good Lakers game is a positive. Hopefully the Bulls can look at this game, look at their mistakes, and ralize what they need to do to beat the best competition in the NBA.

The Bulls survived a tough stretch of their schedule, which included the New Orleans Hornets, Boston Celtics, and Los Angeles Lakers going 3-1, with their only loss being against the Lakers. They come out of the stretch with a 1 game lead for the eighth spot in the East, and have a soft schedule going forward. You have to be happy with where the Bulls are positioned going into the stretch run.

John Paxson appeared on Monsters in the Morning to discuss a lengthy list of topics regarding the Chicago Bulls.  Here is a recap of what was said in the interview.

• The trade deadline passed and Paxson is still here, therefore the rumors weren’t true.  Paxson is always going to be loyal to the Bulls.  As long as Jerry wants to keep him around, he will be here.  Will always have some position in the organization.
• The job is getting bigger and bigger.  You don’t just have a GM, you have other people who carry a lot of responsibilities.  Gar Forman is the player personnel director.  Irwin Mandel has been the cap guy for years.
• The league is going in a different direction.  There are some issues that the league is going to be facing in the next year or two.  The star players are always going to get paid waht they deserve.  In the last CBA, the average player got paid more than they probably should have.  The MLE has probably ballooned some salaries.  These are some things in the next CBA that might be addressed.
• When you have to make a deal, you’re matching salaries.  You have to take on a player you maybe don’t want to in order to make the deal.  Lots of things prohibit trades, such as trade kickers.
• Lots of teams dancing under the tax.  The teams under the tax receive a portion of the tax money from the teams that are over and pay.  There are a lot of teams out there that are losing money.  He doesn’t care how much money certain owners have, you don’t want to conduct your business in a manner where you lose money.
• Gets emotional when he sees the team play and that’s why he can never coach.  He gets frustrated with himself and everybody, but that’s in the moment of watching the game.  He doesn’t get frustrated with individuals, but how they play as a group.  Would like for the Bulls to compete hard every night, defend, and share and move the ball better.
• He thinks that they are a better team than they were 2 weeks ago.  John Salmons is a very good player.  Their pro personnel guy was on him all year.  They took on a little more money next year to make it happen.  Going to be looking to sign some free agents or make some trades, pointing out Tyson Chandler getting traded.
• It was Paxson, not Skiles, who made the decision to send Tim Thomas home last time.  Thomas had a personal issue with his wife in an acident.  Just made the decision, since Thomas was in the last year of his deal, that they were just going to use him as a trade chip at the deadline, and play the young players, that Thomas should stay home.  So far, Thomas has been great.
• All players get a little antsy at the trade deadline, more so now than ever.  Back in his day they didn’t have the internet.  Now when these rumors come up, they have their friends and agents calling them.  He doesn’t know how it doesn’t affect them.
• Luol Deng had an MRI yesterday and it came back negative.  He’s day to day.  He was battling the injury for awhile and was wearing a sleeve on his shin.  He felt something a little bit different when he came down in the Houston game.  The X-ray showed what could have possibly been a line.  The MRI showed it being soft tissue.  Stress fractures take a little time to show up, so the Bulls are going to monitor it.  They won’t know for awhile.
• Talks to Vinny Del Negro about things.  It’s a team game, bt Derrick Rose is a big part of what they’re going to be doing in the future.  They have discussed some of the end of game playing time issues.  In Houston, Rose played and was phenomenal.  He’s going to have some successes and failures.  Even Michael Jordan missed some shots once in awhile.  Rose has to be in there to continually learn.
• Paxson has a very good relationship with Del Negro and they are on the same page.  The whole purpose is to help Vinny and maybe offer thoughts that he hasn’t had.  They knew when they gave Vinny the job that he never coached before, so he was going to make mistakes.  That’s the reason why they got him a really veteran staff to help him organize practice and game situations.  Vinny has a very open mind about everything.  He’s learning that the hard part when you’re on the outside is you have so many ideas, but you can’t implement them all.  For him, less is more.  When he just focuses on a few things, what he wants to be as a coach, that will come in time.
• Young guys need consistent minutes.  Right now, Joakim Noah and Tyrus Thomas are getting consistent minutes and now they’re seeing who those players are.  Getting some real consistency out of them.  Thought that Joakim Noah played very well at the end of last year, but was set back this year with a couple injuries.
• Does not fall in love with the guys that he drafts.  Everybody istalked about in trade talks.  He just doesn’t want to make a bad trade.  Lots of times he talked about certain players, the trades made absolutely no sense to him.
• The Kobe Bryant thing came about from a youtube video where the Bulls got mentioned.  With Paul Gasol, the Bulls didn’t have the expiring contracts that Memphis wanted.  With Kevin Garnett, look at what Minnesota got for Garnett in Al Jefferson, and Paxson says he’d be pretty happy if he was them.
• Ben Gordon knows that Derrick Rose is a great point guard.  Gordon is such a unique player, he can help you win games by putting the ball in the basket.
• Would love to see the ball in Derrick Rose’s hands off of rebounds.  Thinks that they will be a better running team with some of the moves they made.  Thinks that it’s evolving, the mindset always looking for Derrick on the outlets and getting the other guys to run.
• The league changed the contact rules and that’s why you see so much of the screen and roll action because you really can’t do anything to contain a good point guard’s speed.  The mantra in the league office is freedom of movement.  The new game evolved from the game getting too physical and also from scoring going into the low 90’s.
• The Bulls will not be active in this summers free agent market.  Starting to position themselves to have some flexibility for 2010.  Hard to get the good players to leave their own team since they can make significantly more money with their own team.  Don’t see the great players moved that often.  Lots of it has to do with whether they’re winning.
• The Bulls still need an inside scorer.
• Thinks that Rose can be the go to guy.  Thinks the Bulls need more than one though.  Derrick’s getting that midrange shot because of his ability to drive to the basket.  It’s not a signature shot, but that little floater in the lane is effective for Rose.
• 72% of fans said No to question, “Should John Paxson resign as GM?”
• Paxson’s son Ryan told his mom that he was joining the marines before him.  He waited to tell John until after the trade deadline, and wrote down his intentions for his father.
• Most of the players who don’t get iit don’t have the right counsel around them.  Paxson is in the best interest of the players, but a lot of times the players think that management is out to hurt them.  There is a natural conflict between agents and management.  Some great relationships with agents.  Some not so great relationships with agents when things get unrealistic or you can’t do anything, things can get pretty heated.  The dollars have gotten so big and everyone wants a piece of the pie.
• Thinks that Mike D’Antoni felt a little bit underappreciated in Phoenix.  New York threw so much money at him, that we all would ahve taken that offer over night.
• Norm Van Lier was a unique character.  He was a tough minded, hard playing guy.  Listening to him was the treat.  He would tell it like it is.  It was all born out of that he wanted the Bulls to do well.  Just really sad that he went so unexpectedly.
• Johnny Red Kerr was sick for a long time.  Insiders knew how bad he was.  He lived every day and had a lot of fun.
• Paxson was only bothered by the booing at Johnny Red Kerr’s ceremony because of what the night represtented.
• Michael Jordan was once playing blackjack against the entire team on a plane trip.  John was betting like $5 while the other guys were betting big money.

The Los Angeles Lakers defeated the Chicago Bulls 116-109 yesterday at the Staples Center. The Bulls start off their annual circus trip 0-1 once again.

The Bulls’ biggest problem in the game was their front court. Drew Gooden, Joakim Noah, and Tyrus Thomas, once again did not have great games on the offensive end, but not only that, the Lakers front court destroyed them on the other end. Pau Gasol scored 34 points and Andrew Bynum scored 18 points.

Ben Gordon had another cold shooting night. Gordon finished the game with 23 points (6-22 FG 8-8 FT), 5 rebounds, 4 assists, and 2 steals. The good thing though is that Gordon’s bad games are no longer those 4 point, 1-15 FG games, and are more in line with the bad games of other star players.

Gordon and Deng were effective on defense all night. The Bulls started the game by having Luol Deng guard Kobe Bryant. Bryant finished the game with 21 points. The Bulls did a good job of slowing Bryant down.

Derrick Rose was a really bright spot for the Bulls. Rose finished with 25 points and 9 assists. Rose just looked great out there and continues to compound the evidence of why he will be this year’s rookie of the year.

While losing is never fun, fan’s have to keep in mind that these games are part of the circus trip and we always do horribly on this. A win against the best team in the league on the circus trip would be extremely unlikely.

The Bulls next game is tonight against the Portland Trail Blazers.