Best Bulls Moments of 2010: Part 1

8 )  Bulls Fire Vinny Del Negro

It was no secret Vinny had either out-stayed his welcome or expedited his welcomed stay in Chicago. The Bulls fired him after his extremely average stay with the Bulls. He had sort of returned pride to the Bulls after all he did lead the team to the playoff in both his seasons as head coach. The counter to that weak, weak argument is he went 41-41 in both seasons, you literally can’t get anymore average than that. Just how involved in the four classic overtime games against the Celtics he was, is really unknown. Some can say he was the one drawing up the plays, other can say it was the talent on the floor breaking free from his control. It seems strange that the Bulls played the way they are now for that series against Boston, then somehow regressed once the season started.

Either way, the low point of Vinny’s stay in Chicago, and arguably the straw-that-broke-the-camels-back moment that lead to his dismissal, was the altercation he got into with John Paxson after a game. The fight was about the playing time of Joakim Noah which backs the theory that Vinny really didn’t have anything to do with the Bulls success against the Celtics the season prior. Del Negro wasn’t the long term answer for Chicago who really haven’t found a coach to fuse with the team since the days of Phil Jackson. The firing of Vinny was both the relief of a lot of tension, and the birth of a powerful new era for the Bulls.