Chicago Bulls CEO Michael Reinsdorf said a lot of things that Chicago Bulls fans wanted to hear in his press conference on Tuesday, in which he discussed the team moving on from Arturas Karnisovas and Marc Eversley as the primary decision-makers in the team's front office. He talked about building a sustainable winner and laid out a clear plan for what the next front office should focus on.
He also said some things that will make the fan base wince — namely, he implied more involvement from ownership (I.E, him) in the next administration:
We do give a lot of autonomy to our people. But that doesn’t mean they can make any decision they want. Our job is to ask the right questions and to push back when needed. It (shouldn’t be), ‘Okay, we hired you now and now we are done and we’re going to go off and see you in a few years and hopefully we are good.’ We’ve got to ask the right questions, challenge, look at other situations and ask a lot of questions. I need to do a much better job of that.”
If you hire a GM and president who know what they're doing, you don't need to be involved in every decision. In fact, competent front offices are more often run by the folks who know basketball with minimal intrusion from ownership. The reason it didn't work with AK and Eversley isn't because Michael Reinsdorf wasn't involved enough, it was because AK and Eversley didn't know how to run the team!
More ownership involvement is a scary thought for Bulls fans
I understand how Reinsdorf could see the past six years unfold and not want a repeat of that muddles mess. I also don't think that him saying he wants to ask "a lot of questions" doesn't necessarily mean he'll be involved in basketball-related decisions. There's a chance I am overanalyzing one quote from a 30-minute long press conference.
With how poorly the last front office was run, it's hard to blame Reinsdorf for this train of thought — things should be different. But if he makes the right hires in the first place, that autonomy given to the GM and president would be a positive, not a negative.
The line between a present owner and an over-involved owner is razor thin. If Michael Reinsdorf can make the right hihres and remain the former in his role, there's reason for hope in the next era of Bulls basketball. But as soon as he creeps toward the latter, the next front office might be in trouble no matter who they are.