It was easy to continue applauding the aggressiveness of head-man-in-charge Arturas Karnisovas on Friday.
The new face of the Bulls front office restructure hadn’t even officially been announced to the media, but there he was, continuing to expand the build-out of an organization that had fallen way behind the times.
Early in the day, news broke that Karnisovas had grabbed salary-cap specialist – and Illinois grad – J.J. Polk away from the New Orleans Pelicans, handing Polk the title of assistant general manager. A good get? Make that a great get, as the cap consigliere had been with the Pelicans the last 10 years, and was highly-praised by New Orleans executive David Griffin.
By late afternoon, Karnisovas struck again, reportedly landing player personnel guru Pat Connelly from a place Karnisovas knew very well – the Nuggets. Connelly also served as an assistant GM in Phoenix, before making the jump to Denver.
Come dinner time, Karnisovas was already moving on a list of candidates for the title of general manager, as sources told the Sun-Times that Oklahoma City’s Troy Weaver and Nazr Mohammed were in play, as well as Dallas’ Michael Finley, Denver’s Calvin Booth and Orlando’s Matt Lloyd.
In assessing that group, one executive said that Booth might be the most ready – but also the hardest to get with the Nuggets willing to promote him into Karnisovas’ old position, and Mohammed could be the one that really excels in a few years, but has the least experience.
So what does all this mean for current Bulls GM Gar Forman and his future with the organization? Not much yet.
All indications are that Karnisovas will have the final say on keeping Forman as a scout or letting him go, but that is yet to be fully discussed.
Even further down the list is Jim Boylen remaining head coach, with Karnisovas obviously getting front office personnel in place before making a final decision on either moving on from Boylen or allowing him another season to show what he could do with a healthy roster.
What doesn’t bode well for Boylen, however, is there was growing smoke around former Bulls assistant coach and current Raptors assistant Adrian Griffin emerging as the head guy, but as of Friday it was more speculation worth watching than fact.
Meanwhile, almost lost in how quickly and fluid this Bulls restructure has been in the last 24 hours is COO Michael Reinsdorf.
Did the decision to completely reboot the front office come over night? Absolutely not, and that’s likely why so many Bulls fans were growing impatient with the younger Reinsdorf since he really grabbed power three years ago.
But he always had his eye on getting to the basketball side of the product after immersing himself in the business side of the organization. Michael Reinsdorf has been doing his due diligence in how he’s wanted this to go for more than a year, and has privately said that when it did come time to act money would not be an issue.
A source said that Karnisovas did not come cheap from Denver, but the negotiation was never even an issue. A sign of how things are really changing with Bulls ownership, especially because of the reputation chairman Jerry Reinsdorf had of being a hard negotiator.
