The Bulls front office should listen to Daryl Morey

This is nothing new: The Chicago Bulls front office has a terrifying disconnect from the sound realities of successful franchise building in the modern NBA. On the latest Lowe Post podcast, Zach Lowe of ESPN sits down with Houston Rockets GM Daryl Morey and there was some rather illuminating discussion. None of it casts the current tenor in Chicago as good.

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The Bulls have been winning games that are fun and maybe give their pride a boost, but these wins ultimately amount to absolutely nothing. Chicago is a little over .500, but they have no plan for how to manage their roster for the rest of this season and don’t appear to have taken the future into account in a tangible way.

The current approach championed by Gar Forman, who is just as much a talking head as a functioning general manager, is that the Bulls will build a new empire from first-round draft picks in the 14-22 range and use excessive cap space to lure in all the free agents that have consistently passed up on Chicago since forever.

There hasn’t been an impact player to sign with the Bulls in free agency. Maybe they got key pieces during the days of Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen, but we’re quickly approaching 20 years since those times. Now, they missed on every marquee free agent from LeBron James to Carmelo Anthony to in-his-prime Dwyane Wade and however else they have chased that we don’t know about.

The heat is starting to turn up. Fans have organized a positive protest, the team’s television ratings are falling through the floor, down more than 20 percent for a second consecutive season. In reaction, Forman has been making the media rounds in defense of the front office approach. Stephen Noh of The Athletic did a great breakdown of the beige declarations from Forman, and you should read it.

We know all about this kind of nonsense from Forman, John Paxson and Michael Reinsdorf. However, the information that Morey shared on Lowe’s podcast points out just how problematic the Bulls situation is at this point in time.

On the Lowe Post, Lowe and Morey jumped right into a discussion about Houston’s acquisition of James Harden and then ping-ponged over to the Kyle Lowry trade and how the pick the Rockets received in that trade was instrumental.

"“…I showed our ownership of where we need to go from here. And one, one of those slides was, hey, you know, here are how great we need, we need at least one great player. Obviously, more than that’s even better. Here are the ways it’s happened, you know. The most reliable way is to, to get a very high pick. It actually, if you do the odds, you know, what the Philly was doing is absolutely the most reliable way, like it’s the one with the highest odds of success.”"

The information provided here is crystal clear. The very best way for a franchise to go through a rebuild that can yield results, such as competing for a championship or have generally exciting basketball, is to get very high draft picks.

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The Bulls hate draft picks. They wasted a handful to acquire Doug McDermott, then it started circulating that they were looking to acquire first-round picks for any of their veteran assets at the trade deadline. The only move Chicago made at the deadline was trading McDermott as part of a package centered on Cameron Payne and Taj Gibson. Oh, and they sent out a second-round draft pick. The bumbling Bulls front office says they need more picks and want to trade players for picks. Instead, they gave up yet another pick and got no closer to adding a cornerstone piece for the rebuild of the franchise.

The Philadelphia 76ers and The Process, enacted by Sam Hinkie, made it into this conversation as well. Morey’s take on The Process?

"“They were acting, in my opinion, optimally.”"

He clarified that he felt that they acted optimally based on their position as a franchise, implying that it may not be the best approach for all franchises.

The last nugget that we have from Morey, very much worth discussing, gives an even better look into the world of general managers and how to approach no just rebuilding, but building a franchise in general.

"“…We’re all super competitive people so we’re like, ‘What is the other, is there any other way?’ And it’s not quite as optimal, but the way we went is, you know, you’ve got to trade guys for picks so that’s how we ended up in Kyle Lowry. But the reason, uh, long way to get to your answer. One of the bars of getting a great player you have, either you trade for him, you get him in free agency, you draft him, or someone you currently have becomes an All-Star.”"

We could pretend that Forman, Paxson and Reinsdorf are super competitive, but that is a farce. Clearly the impetus is keeping the money rolling.

That explains why they’re so mind-numbingly obtuse when it comes to running an organization that wants to maintain the guise of pursuing a championship. It’s easy to run through the Morey checklist and see the depth of this abject failure.

Bar One: Trade

First among the bars of getting a great player is to trade for him. This is a route that a team like the Boston Celtics are positioned perfectly to do. They have almost too many draft picks, a few that may end up being the No. 1 overall in consecutive drafts. They have an impressive rookie in Jaylen Brown. The roster is full of mid-tier talent, some of it with room to grow and the rest already capable of being a long-term starter or primary backup for the next five years. Chicago does not have any of that. If they wanted to acquire a star player, every conversation would have to start with them trading their own star player.

Bar Two: Free Agency

Second bar is getting that player in free agency. GarPax brought in Dwyane Wade and Rajon Rondo, both the 2017 versions, not the 2008 versions. As we already noted, they never stole LeBron, couldn’t convince Carmelo, never grabbing Kobe Bryant, weren’t in the conversation for Kevin Durant, and probably don’t get a sit-down with players like Blake Griffin or any other free agent this summer. There is zero reason to believe that the Bulls have the ability, acumen, or pieces in place to attract the biggest names in the league.

Bar Three: Draft

Third bar – the draft. We’ve already covered this. They had two incredibly lucky drafts. They were supposed to be at the very bottom of the lottery and lucked into the No. 1 pick, getting Derrick Rose. Then, every other pick of the entire first-round of the draft had to come off the board before they took what was the best available in Jimmy Butler. They also drafted Cameron Bairstow, Erik Murphy, Marquis Teague, and Malcolm Lee. They’re pretty terrible at drafting dating back to 2009 and they have basically no draft assets. They have a grand total of one draft pick guaranteed this summer and right now it would fall at No. 17, far away from land of impact players and “very high” draft picks that Morey was talking about.

Bar Four: All-Star

The fourth and final bar, a current player becomes an All-Star. Check! The Bulls actually got this one. Problem: It still isn’t enough to carry the rest of this dreadful roster. Butler is a fantastic player, without him Chicago is probably a high lottery pick right now. But the team messed up the first three bars so badly that they got the fourth and it still isn’t making them a competitor and they’ve even messed this up. They have an All-Star on a career and salary arc that doesn’t match up with the rest of this roster. Further, it won’t match up with any incoming pieces via draft.

They just don’t have a clear path to anything other than bumbling mediocrity and that’s the kind of thing that makes a truly competitive GM, like Morey, go insane. Unfortunately, Forman, Reinsdorf and Paxson are experiencing an uncomfortable amount of peace of mind right now.

Bar One: Trade

Bar Two: Free Agency

Bar Three: Draft

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Bar Four: All-Star