Most ways you look at it, the Chicago Bulls' trade of Kirk Hinrich for Justin Holiday, a second-round pick and a trade exception in February was a good one. Hinrich, 35, has barely been able to get on the floor for the Atlanta Hawks. Holiday, 27, has played the best basketball of his career, and has made 39.7 percent of his 3-point shots as a Bull. According to the Chicago Tribune's K.C. Johnson, though, the move was not a popular one in the locker room:
That those assets could become trade chips and Holiday has played well hasn't assuaged some players' puzzlement over Hinrich's departure. Beyond his limited-minutes defensive aptitude, Hinrich possessed a powerful, behind-the-scenes presence of accountability and quietly helped teammates in a well-received manner.
…
Hinrich's trade, which was strongly debated internally, had another ripple effect in an already fragile locker room.
Let's put this in perspective: Chicago is 41-40 and it has been eliminated from playoff contention. This has been a frustrating, forgettable, fan-angering season. When a team massively underachieves like this, people want to know how things went so wrong. This Hinrich tidbit is just one factor, but as Johnson explains in his story, there are a whole bunch of them.
Injuries were a part of it. A disturbing lack of effort was a huge part of it. It looks like the Bulls misjudged things when they decided to replace Tom Thibodeau with Fred Hoiberg without making any significant roster changes last summer.
It's not news to say that Chicago's dysfunction predates Hoiberg's arrival. The Chicago Sun-Times' Joe Cowley suggests that, as a result, Hoiberg's job was almost impossible:
If there was an instruction manual on how a front office can mess up a situation, John Paxson and Gar Forman just spent the last two seasons writing the outline.
It was in training camp 2014 that the front office told several core players like Rose and Joakim Noah that it was OK to tune Thibodeau out. That was verified by several sources, including current players.
Gar/Pax sold the players on the idea that Thibodeau’s perceived heavy workload was leading to injury problems.
Once a roster is empowered like that and given the stamp to ignore coaching it’s hard to get them back in line. Hoiberg found that out far too often this season, as sound game plans were forgotten or ignored by this group in far too many key moments.
The fact that Gar/Pax have brought in too many offensive-minded players, as well as several swings and misses in the draft over the last four years all falls on their resume, but cutting the legs off the coaching seat is what’s unforgivable at this point.
When Hoiberg was introduced as the Bulls' new coach, he raved about the talent he'd have at his disposal, and he pledged to improve the offense by picking up the pace and improving spacing.
"I love this roster," Hoiberg told reporters last June. "I absolutely love this roster. I love the versatility of the players, the different lineups that we're going to be able to play."
Unfortunately, Hoiberg never quite found the right lineups, and it's unclear if that was even the main issue. He might have been fond of the players, but part of his job was to earn their trust and get them on the same page, so that something like the trade of a veteran wouldn't make much of an impact. It might be easier to do that next year, as long as the front office realizes that Chicago desperately needs some new faces.
Nobody looks good in this mess. Nobody except for Thibodeau, that is.
