If you’ve ever read “Freakonomics”, there is a chapter analyzing how certain words in real estate listings are correlated with either higher or lower sale prices later on.  Essentially, words that are used to describe specific attributes – for example, “granite countertops”, “new hardwood floors” or “remodeled bathroom” – are highly correlated with higher sale prices.  On the other side, adjectives that really don’t describe anything in particular, such as “charming” or “quaint”, are associated with lower real estate prices – they’re really just B.S.

Check out the adjectives for Joakim Noah that we keep seeing: “high energy”, “simply a winner”, “has presence in the locker room”,  “hard worker”,  “gym rat”, etc.  Those certainly aren’t bad descriptions – it’s a good thing that Noah isn’t described as being a loser or a lazy player.  However, it’s more of the lack of the concrete descriptors that bothers me, such as “scores well in the post”, “hits 10-15 foot jumpshots with consistency” or “makes more than 75% of his free throws”.  Joakim somehow has a reputation as a good defensive player, but it’s not as if though he’s really a shut-down defensive post player or talented shot-blocker.  Noah is like one of those real estate listings that has a lot of amorphous B.S. adjectives without giving any indications of the concrete attributes.

I’ll be honest – I never was a Joakim Noah fan while he was in college.  That being said, I’m also not one of those guys that’s going to hold disdain for a player while he was in college against him when he joins one of my favorite pro teams.  I mean, former Michigan Wolverine Anthony Thomas was the central culprit in the most scarring sporting event that I have ever witnessed live in person, yet I gladly took his NFC Offensive Rookie of the Year performance a couple of years later as a member of the Bears in leading the team to the playoffs.  Joakim was definitely annoying with the Florida Gators, but it’s not as if though he ever reached a J.J. Redick level of hatred for me.

The problem, though, is that the Bulls already have an abundance of severely offensively-challenged big men with Ben Wallace and Tyrus Thomas.  With the Bulls in pretty good position to challenge for the top spot in the Eastern Conference this season, this would have been one of those times where they should have drafted for need as opposed to who they might have thought was the best player on the board at the time (besides, after Greg Oden and Kevin Durant, the next 10 or 15 players were essentially rated the same).  Spencer Hawes, despite having the complete goofy lanky white guy look perfected by Brad Miller, would have been the better pick here (and it’s not as if though that would have been a stretch considering that he went only one pick later to Sacramento).

Of course, what I’m hoping is that there is some method to John Paxson’s madness here.  For me, that would mean that the Joakim Noah pick is a precursor to a big-time trade for Kevin Garnett or Kobe Bryant, either in terms of trading Noah himself or allowing the Bulls the flexibility to move Ben Wallace and/or Tyrus Thomas.  (By the way, what’s up with Isiah Thomas getting some GM-sense, all of the sudden?  That Zach Randolph trade was a complete fleecing by him.  A few weeks ago, I was hearing the Bulls would have to give up Luol Deng or Kirk Hinrich if they wanted Randolph.  After seeing the Knicks only have to give up Steve Francis and Channing Frye, though, I’m shocked the Bulls weren’t in the mix with an offering of, say, Andres Nocioni plus maybe Thomas.)  If that’s the reason for the Noah pick, then I’m perfectly game for that scenario.  However, if all three of Big Ben, Thomas, and Noah are still on the roster in the fall, I’ll be completely befuddled as to why this pick was made.

(Image from Chicagoist) 

The Chicago sports scene has certainly been hopping lately, with the White Sox having the greatest collection of sluggers that have failed to slug in history, Wrigley Field turning into the world’s largest Ultimate Fighting Championship venue and the media going nutty on some random Tommie Harris comment about Donovan McNabb being taken as a slap at Rex Grossman. Of course, it’s hard for me to think about any of those other items when Kobe Bryant says every other day that he wants to be traded with the Bulls as the most probable destination. I still don’t buy that this is going to happen this summer, but it certainly seems to have a bit better odds than the complete crapshoot that it was a couple of weeks ago.

What’s interesting to me is that it seems as though a majority of Bulls fans, at least the blogging/message board-types, are opposed to bringing Kobe to Chicago. The argument on that side of the ledger are that the Bulls as currently composed have a strong core of young players that just need a legitimate post-up scorer (Pau Gasol or the cheaper but “riskier” Zach Randolph would probably work) in order to become the top team in the East. If we were in a vacuum and guys such as LeBron James didn’t happen to play in the Bulls’ same division, I might buy that argument.

However, if a transcendent superstar such as Kobe Bryant truly comes onto the market, John Paxson has to explore that option hot and heavy. Pax has done a great job of putting together a team of, well, John Paxson-type players – hardworking gym rats that bust their asses on both ends of the floor on the court and keep their noses clean off the court. So, it’s natural that the Bulls GM has a lot of affinity for his guys. Still, I think Paxson is a pretty smart basketball man, and he knows that his own personal high moments of his career – the hot-shooting fourth quarter in Game 5 of the 1991 NBA Finals against the Lakers and his three-point shot to clinch the 1993 NBA Finals against the Suns – were a result of Michael Jordan drawing double and triple-teams and getting Pax the open shots. At the end of the day, as I’ve noted many times on this blog, you need a superstar to win championships in the NBA, namely one that can draw a double-team that leaves other teammates open.

Once again, I don’t want to get ahead of myself since there’s still a much less than even chance that Kobe gets traded this summer, but the fact is that the Bulls are really the only place that he could possibly end up. The Knicks are only mentioned as a potential destination because of their New York location. It’s nice to say that a superstar of Kobe’s stature ought to end up playing in Madison Square Garden every night, but let’s not forget what Isiah Thomas did to that franchise in terms of pretty much having no one of any trade value whatsoever. Go ahead and try to find a combination of Knicks to trade to the Lakers that wouldn’t cause any sensible basketball fan to laugh his or her ass off. It’s just not possible. Meanwhile, the other rumored destinations of Phoenix and Dallas are absolutely positively never happening ever – they might have the personnel to trade, but the Lakers aren’t stupid enough to trade Kobe to another team within the Western Conference.

Therefore, that leaves the Bulls. Chicago provides the huge media market that Kobe needs, the Bulls have good players to trade and, assuming that Paxson wouldn’t have to completely gut the team in a deal, a Kobe-led squad at the United Center would be the best team in the Eastern Conference. To get Kobe, the Bulls would definitely have to give up Luol Deng, probably Ben Gordon, maybe Tyrus Thomas, and throw in a first-round draft pick (either this year or next year) on top of all of that plus maybe another bench player or two. That might sound like a lot, but I’m telling you if the Lakers offer that up, John Paxson HAS to take it. If you’ve read me regularly, you all know that I love LeBron James, yet I can tell you unequivocally that Kobe Bryant is head-and-shoulders the best single player in the NBA. LeBron was able to single-handedly take the Cavs to the NBA Finals at age 22 and he’s going to be around for another decade and a half. The Bulls can either take on the role of the late-80s/early-90s Cavs teams – the nice hardworking group-oriented team that didn’t have a superstar and ended up getting squashed in the playoffs by the superstar-led team (as in MJ’s Bulls) – or they can fight power with more power.

I think a lot of us, including me, got a little too heady in thinking of how good the current Bulls are.  This year’s Bulls team swept a Heat team with an aging Shaq and an injured Dwyane Wade in the first round and only got 2 wins against a Pistons team that’s on a downward slide when Detroit decided to mail it in after going up 3-0. I’ve seen many arguments that the “young” Bulls core needs more time to “grow” – I call bullshit there. This team has been to the playoffs three seasons in a row and I cannot tell you with great confidence that they have really significantly improved over that time (remember, the 2004-05 Bulls were the #4-seed in the East just like this year and they took a big step back in 2005-06). At the same time, the Bulls signed Ben Wallace to a monster long-term contract in order to win TODAY, not a couple of years from now. If the Bulls really wanted to pursue a multi-year plan, then they should have just kept a younger Tyson Chandler as opposed to getting Wallace for an outrageous price at the tail-end of his career.  I believe that Scott Skiles is a masterful coach that has been able to squeeze out every last bit of effort and talent out of this team, but that also means that there really isn’t much more of a ceiling to this Bulls team – they’re just not going to get much better than they are now.

As long as the Bulls keep one of Hinrich, Deng or Gordon (I think Hinrich would be the most likely to stay) and then trot out Big Ben and Kobe, that’s bar-none the best team in the East. LeBron, who as of today isn’t the all-around player that Kobe is (even though the potential is there), was able to get out of the East this year with a lot less talent than that around him. If the Bulls are then able to also add, say, Zach Randolph or someone of his ilk down low, then I think they would be right there with the Spurs, Suns and Mavs in terms of being at the top of the league.

Bulls fans cannot get complacent here.  If you actually think that the Bulls as presently constructed can win the NBA title, then more power to you and I’ll let you get back to ingesting your shrooms.  If you’re just satisfied with a nice clean-cut team that won’t ever win it all, then move to some place other than Chicago where they don’t care about sports.  For those grounded in reality (at least in terms of the ceiling of the current Bulls – the realistic chances of Kobe being traded is a different matter), however, this is an opportunity to create another dynamic true contender to win in the NBA Finals.  When the franchise legacy is six titles with Michael Jordan at the helm, nothing less than more championships will suffice.

(Image from Chicago Sun-Times)

Well, all of you can finally get a reprieve with my nearly 2-year obsession with this year’s NBA Draft Lottery… after this monster superpost due the confluence of this event along with pent-up frustrations from the Bulls – Pistons series. With only a 1.9% chance of landing the #1 pick, I didn’t have very high hopes for the Chicago Bulls leaping into the top 2 to grab either Greg Oden or Kevin Durant. Still, like one of those schmucks that buy lottery tickets every week and spend all of their days dreaming of what they would do with all of that money if they ever won, the fact that the Bulls had even a small chance of ending up with Oden or Durant made this about as heart-pounding of an event that you could ever have in an office building in Secaucus, New Jersey. Nonetheless, the Bulls ended up right where they were projected to be at #9, while the Portland Trailblazers and Seattle Supersonics got the ultimate prizes of the top two franchise-altering picks. Here is the postmortem on the NBA Draft Lottery in general followed by my thoughts on the Bulls offseason:

• With the Trailblazers effectively winning Greg Oden (I know some people think they might take Durant considering that they already have some size with LaMarcus Aldridge, but considering that every dynasty in NBA history that didn’t have a guy named Michael Jordan was anchored by a dominant center, I can’t see how Portland isn’t taking Oden), Brandon Roy, who was the team’s representative in lovely Secaucus, got a ton of airtime. This brings to mind the headline for my post the day before last year’s NBA Draft: “R-O-Y Spells Rookie of the Year for the Bulls” in an argument for the Bulls to pick Roy if they didn’t parlay the pick in a blockbuster trade for Kevin Garnett. Well, Roy certainly went on to win the Rookie of the Year Award but the Bulls ended up passing on him to grab Tyrus Thomas. I love Thomas’ defensive presence and freakish athleticism (I swear that he can jump up and grab the top of the backboard without a hitch), yet it’s pretty clear that Roy would have contributed a whole lot more pretty quickly, which would have been key for a club that (a) needs to make the most of its substantial financial investment in Ben Wallace as soon as possible and (b) could have done it in a year where you would have found better competition on an average night at Rucker Park than the Eastern Conference. Instead, the Bulls got bounced out of the playoffs again, while Roy is going to be paired up with Oden in what might very well become the next great NBA duo along the lines of Michael and Scottie, Shaq and Kobe (in happier times), and Magic and Kareem. I’m not saying that Roy would have propelled the Bulls over the Pistons, but they certainly would have had a better chance considering that he’s a go-to scorer and the team from the Chi shot around 35% from the field in each of their round 2 losses.

• Speaking of the hapless Eastern Conference, it figures that the top two franchise players in years are going to both end up on the West Coast to further cement the inferiority of the collection of teams east of the Mississippi River. At least we’re not going to get many “David Stern frozen envelope” theories out of this draft – I can’t imagine that the NBA would have wanted the balance of power in the league to tip even further to the West.

• I’ll have to say that the Blazers and Sonics fans are two constituencies that can argue that they truly deserve the next superstars of Oden and Durant. Even though they aren’t located in the marquee media markets of Chicago or Boston (more on them in a moment), at least basketball fans didn’t have to suffer through the indignity of one of these stars toiling away with franchises such as the Grizzlies or Hawks (who dodged a huge bullet since if they drew anything lower than the #3 pick, which they got, would have resulted in losing their first round choice to the Suns). Sure, the Sonics seem bent on leaving Seattle, but that’s because of the ludicrous transfer of ownership there as opposed to the lack of a fan base. I still don’t buy that they’re heading to Oklahoma City, even though that town showed great support for the Hornets. In a perfect world based purely on the viability of markets, the Sonics would stay in Seattle (too large and wealthy of a market for the NBA to leave) and then Las Vegas and Oklahoma City would respectively get the Grizzlies (Memphis just can’t sustain that franchise) and Hornets (politically incorrect to move them in the relative wake of Hurricane Katrina, but New Orleans wasn’t a good NBA market way before the levees ever broke). Hopefully, the star power of Kevin Durant is to spark a greater movement to keep the Supersonics where they belong in the Pacific Northwest.

• While watching the Bulls get the expected #9 pick prompted an internal “Oh well, what can you do with those odds?” response from me, I audibly gasped with no one around me when I saw the Celtics come up at #5 – the worst possible position that they could have ended up with. Now, it’s hard to have much sympathy for the most successful franchise in NBA history – this would be akin to a lot of the intimations that UCLA is “due” on the college basketball side for not winning a national championship in (OMG!) over a decade. That being said, Bostonians are home to one of the few groups of fans from a particular city that I have great respect for (to me, Chicago, Detroit, Boston, and Philadelphia are the standard-bearers for across-the-board fandom, as opposed to, say, the single sport obsessions of St. Louis with the Cardinals or Green Bay with the Packers), so while places such as Memphis will move on from this evening with nary a scratch, I feel a little tinge of sadness that the 2007 NBA Draft Lottery will be vividly remembered as yet another infamous event in Beantown sports history to be included with Len Bias, the Tim Duncan draft, Bill Buckner, Bucky Dent, etc. Of course, since the Red Sox are the best team in baseball and the Patriots look like a force again with the thought of Tom Brady tossing it deep to Randy Moss next season, no one should cry too much for New England.

So, this gets to the most prominent question on my mind: what should Bulls do this offseason? If you recall my thoughts during the Final Four, I stated the following: “Lord help me if Joakim Noah ends up in a Bulls uniform.” Well, the Bulls have the #9 pick and I probably don’t have to tell you who the authoritative NBADraft.net projects at that spot right now… just drop a piano weighted down by an anvil on my head if this happens.

All of the Chicago media prior to the lottery today had reports of Bulls general manager John Paxson’s comments that seemed to give the impression that he wasn’t interested in moving this year’s pick, even assuming that it would end up at the projected #9, or making many changes to the team. I really hope that this is just a display of Paxson coyly keeping his cards under wraps before making a monster move, but I really fear that the Bulls are just going to go through the motions of the draft and make a few changes around the edges without taking any risks for greater success. I have stated before that I enjoy the effort and hustle of the Bulls team as presently constructed, yet also made it clear that simply having great character guys isn’t good enough for me – I want more NBA championships. Therefore, if that means that we need to take a risk with a guy that might not necessarily fit into the team’s “culture” on paper, then so be it.The last thing we need is a solid-but-not-game-changing young player (i.e. Joakim Noah) – it’s time for a trade for a cornerstone guy that should have been executed a year ago. Of course, that’s a whole lot easier said than done. Kevin Garnett would obviously fix all of the Bulls’ problems, but the Timberwolves GM Kevin McHale seems to be on the opposite end of the spectrum from Paxson, where he’s so obsessed with keeping his star that he refuses to make changes that would get more wins overall. Pau Gasol’s name is constantly tossed around as being the next Bull and he would certainly provide the low-post scoring presence that the team sorely lacks, yet I just don’t get the heart-fluttering feeling from him. That is, does Gasol really scare anyone outside of the fear of getting caught in his nappy neckbeard? I don’t know if that’s the case. The Bulls are already filled with highly-skilled players that opponents might respect but don’t necessarily fear.

With all of this in mind and assuming that McHale continues with his stubborn refusal to move Garnett, the Bulls need to make a real move for Jermaine O’Neal of the Indiana Pacers. He’s not the prototypical Paxson type of guy, which is exactly what the Bulls need, meaning someone with a real edge. Granted, O’Neal needs some help on the mental front with his supposed desire to join Isiah Thomas and his cesspool Knicks franchise, but I think if he’s presented with the opportunity to latch onto a Bulls team that would probably become the best team in the Eastern Conference and a true championship contender next season with his presence, he’ll pass up Broadway for the Madhouse on Madison. He won’t come cheap, but if the Bulls offer Larry Bird and the Pacers Ben Gordon, Tyrus Thomas, and the #9 pick in this year’s draft, I think (a) it would be enough of a return for the Pacers for this to be a justifiable trade and (b) the loss of an outside scorer in Gordon would be more than tempered by the prospect of giving Luol Deng and Kirk Hinrich more freedom to roam the perimeter with O’Neal as a top-tier scoring option down low.

All in all, it turned out the NBA Draft Lottery wasn’t the instant solution for the Bulls. Greg Oden and Kevin Durant, not to mention LeBron James at a mere 22 years old, are going to be in the NBA for a very long time. As a result, John Paxson can’t be lulled into thinking the Bulls as they stand today are simply going to keep progressing in a linear fashion – I have serious reservations as to how much better this team can get. While Paxson made a bold move in signing Ben Wallace last summer, this offseason is going to require an even bigger splash in order for the Bulls to really be in contention for another ring.

UPDATE: For the record, Nick Collison is definitely not my idea of bold move by the Bulls.

(Image from Philly.com)

By virtue of an ugly loss at New Jersey last Wednesday night, the Bulls managed to go from a virtual lock to getting to the NBA Eastern Conference Finals as a #2 seed down to underdogs in the first round as the #5 seed against the Miami Heat.  Even though the Bulls were able to dispense of Shaq and Dwyane Wade yesterday in game 1, I still have a ton of aprenhension as to the prospects of this team.  Certainly, the Bulls are improved from the last year’s playoff run while the Heat are weaker with a less-than-100% Wade (which is still probably better than anyone else in the league other than Kobe Bryant and LeBron James).  Yet, the Bulls pretty much had to ride a smoking performance by Luol Deng and a fourth quarter where Shaq and D-Wade spent a lot of time on the bench due to foul troubles in order to pull out a win in the comforts of the United Center.  I think the Bulls may have enough energy and depth to get past the Heat in what could very well be a seven game series, but with the Detroit Pistons looming in round 2, it’s going to be extremely tough to get to the Eastern Conference Finals for the Bulls this year.  That’s the thing with this Bulls team – I love their energy and defensive intensity, which means that they are able to hang on most nights with the elite teams such as the Pistons and Heat, yet they are also very capable of getting beaten by mediocre teams in any given game (i.e. their continuous problems with the Nets) since they don’t have a type-A scorer or a low-post force.

Which brings us to the other side of this equation: this year’s NBA Draft.  I’ve been writing about the potential Bulls 2007 draft pick ever since I started this blog, which was several months before Greg Oden even started looking for tuxes for his senior high school prom.  As much as you hear about living for today, the fact of the matter is that this is going to be one of those history-shaking drafts that will determine the balance of power in pro basketball for the next decade.  Unfortunately, the Bulls suffered another huge loss on Wednesday with the Knicks winning and moving up one place in the final league standings.  That drastically reduced the chances of the Bulls getting one of the top two picks in the draft by virtue of Chicago owning New York’s pick from the Eddy Curry trade.  Still, is there any NBA executive, shoe company, or basketball observer outside of the 4 or 5 Memphis Grizzlies fans out there that could possibly want the Tennessee club that holds highest odds to the top pick to get either Greg Oden or Kevin Durant when the marquee large market teams of the Celtics, Bulls, and 76ers are in the same lottery?  David Stern can talk all he wants about how the 1985 Patrick Ewing draft wasn’t fixed in favor of the Knicks, but it’s time for him to give a little push in the best interests of the league.  Even if the Bulls don’t end up with one of the top two picks (as you can tell by my over one-year long obsession with this draft, the Bulls being at the top of this lottery ranks just behind the Illini winning the national championship in terms of future sports wishes), the thought of the NBA’s next superstars in Oden or Durant toiling away in Memphis as opposed to one of the large markets, regardless of the presence of Pau Gasol, is simply horrifying.  The Bulls already have the talent that could get to the top of the Eastern Conference in 2007.  The outcome of this draft, though, is going to determine whether the Bulls becomes the only NBA franchise other than the Celtics and Lakers to have multiple dynasties starting in 2008.

(Image from Chicago Tribune)