Wow, who could have ever seen this coming? A terrible front office making terrible coaching hires leading to a terrible environment for players and it all happens because of terrible ownership with no sense of actual change happening any time soon. What a lovely time for Bulls fans and by that I mean, what a complete shit show this franchise has become.
Lauri Markkanen is supposed to be one of the core players in the latest version of a Bulls rebuild, (that's been a failure so far) but in the third year of his NBA career the 7-footer appears to be over the clown show at the United Center. And who can blame him when you have Jim Boylen ruining your development during an important stage of your career.
Jim Cowley, who covers the Bulls for the Chicago-Sun Times, was on 670 The Score on Thursday and boy did he paint one depressing picture on the current state of the team. That includes Cowley saying that Markkanen wants out ASAP.
Via 670 The Score.
"The internal culture is not good," Cowley said. "If everything stands as it is right now, I'm telling you this right now, Lauri Markkanen doesn't want to stay here, doesn't want to play here, doesn't want to play with this structure that he has right now. So he's gone. If they don't want to make any moves, he's gone. When he can go, he's going to go. And that was one of your foundation pieces. So you're flawed there."
"He hasn't said anything like that publicly, but you just hear things. If you talk to the right people, you kind of hear what's going on."
And the sad thing is that nothing substantial is going to change. We've seen the reports of Gar Forman possibly getting the boot from the GM position, but what confidence do Bulls fans have that his replacement won't just be another terrible version of him. Oh and as for Boylen? He's not in danger of going anywhere because of course Boylen is John Paxson's guy and guess what, Paxson isn't going anywhere either.
Ask yourself this, what is the current plan for the Bulls? How are they trying to get closer to winning a championship? Zach LaVine has been pretty good this season on the verge of being an All-Star player, but then what? The offense hasn't worked with LaVine and Markkanen, and now one of your core guys wants to get the hell out of town if there isn't a change.
Spoiler alert: there won't be a change.
Markkanen is under contract through the 2020-21 season and after that he can hit restricted free agency. He'll be eligible to sign a long-term extension with the Bulls this upcoming offseason, but at this point it doesn't sound like Markkanen will want to make that commitment.
