Farewell to Vinny

I think the Bulls were just waiting for the next holiday to fire Vinny on, and decided that Cinco de Mayo was good enough. It was long expected, not entirely fair, and quite possibly leaves them without a coach going into the July free agent signing period. Paxson gave a half-hearted apology for attacking Vinny, and unfortunately said that he himself was sticking around. Forman seemed to indicate that the Bulls were in no hurry to hire a new coach, even though that makes no sense at all. None of the coaching candidates being tossed around sound very promising to me.

Am I sounding down? Well, let's try to be optimistic. The Bulls played three good games against Cleveland. Unfortunately, they lost two of them -- one because the Cavs were too hot to beat in game two, and the other because of some poor calls and bad luck in game five. Still, it was as good an effort as could be expected. Our core of Rose, Noah, and Taj, all got valuable playoff experience and all did a decent job. The Bulls are about $20 million under the cap (which was boosted a few million from what was projected earlier). We'll lose Brad Miller, who was valuable, but everyone else of consequence (and some with none) will be returning.

However, for all the talk about how great the 2010 free agent class is, it does seem unlikely that the biggest names will leave. LeBron is either going to get a ring or get very close to it, so he's not likely to leave. And even if he did, he's far more likely to go to New York or Brooklyn than Chicago. Wade has stated that he wants to stay in Miami. Dirk Nowitski, Paul Pierce, and Manu Ginobili are all very unlikely to leave. Joe Johnson isn't terribly likely as well.

So, that basically leaves Chris Bosh and Amare Stoudemire as the only big names likely to bolt. The Bulls best bet is to sign Chris Bosh early and then dangle that in front of some of the less likely stars. Maybe they could get someone like Joe Johnson to change their mind. That would be my best case scenario (minus LeBron and Wade): Bosh and Johnson, but even just getting one of those two would be a huge step up. Keep in mind that the Knicks and the Nets will have exactly the same strategy -- signing one big name early and using that to lure a second, so the Bulls really have their work set out for them. Plus LeBron and Wade will attract free agents to whatever team they decide to play with.

Clearly there is a lot of pressure on the front office to both sign some free agents and hire a decent coach. The Bulls have a bad track record with both, but at least we're in a position to hope, for the moment anyway.