In their season-ending news conference, executive vice president John Paxson and general manager Gar Forman emphasized significant change will be hard and that player development will be crucial to the Bulls' improvement.
With news already established that their jobs and the job of coach Fred Hoiberg all were already safe, the big takeaways were that the $13.4 million option on Rajon Rondo likely will be picked up, that they value Nikola Mirotic and, barring a monster offer sheet, likely will re-sign the restricted free agent, and that while they value Jimmy Butler, they have to keep all options open.
"We have those discussions all the time," Paxson said on whether or not to do a full rebuild. "But the opportunity has to be right. To say to just blow it up, for example: If we don't get something in return that puts us in a position to really move forward, you can't do that.
"The Jimmy component, we've talked about. Ideally, in the system Fred wants to run, we need to play with pace and push. Jimmy's a different player than some of these other guys. He has the ball in his hands a lot. Honestly, there was a stretch of games late in the year where he had some big assist games. We understand that. We know his value. But to say just blow it up when you don't have some certainty that this is really you taking a major step positively in terms of young players you have, that's a tough one to do. It's easy to say it. It's tough to do it."
The Tribune reported on Sunday that the Bulls' front office dynamics could feature a subtle shift this offseason. Multiple sources confirmed that will feature more consistent dialogue between Paxson, Forman and ownership throughout the season and Paxson taking a more public approach after several seasons with Forman as the face of the organization.
More front-office voices like director of basketball operations Jim Paxson, a former general manager, will be heard as well as ownership seeks to promote debate and discussion.
"We work well together," Paxson said. "This is very much like in the business world, CEO, COO relationship. My responsibilities lie mostly in defining the culture of what we do every day. Gar's responsibility as GM is in the day-to-day grind of this business. That is a difficult job what he has to do every day in dealing with agents and everything. That's the way we've always handled it. We feel we have a good staff. We have a very small staff; we use all our resources. So we will continue to do so."
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