Dear Gar Forman & John Paxson,
Before I begin, let me introduce myself. My name is Sami Hassan, and I’m responsible for the Fire Gar Forman Petition that was made on Feburary 9th, 2016. With over 12,368 signatures on the petition and counting, it was enough for Bleacher Report to cover it by sharing Fansided’s article which focused on the petition. Also, other media outlets such as Chicago Sun-Times covered my petition as well. So after the fog has cleared and we can all see how disastrous this season turned out to be after missing the playoffs, I wanted to write you both a letter from a die-hard Chicago Bulls fan.
First of all, John Paxson, stop feuding with our coaches. Your relationship with Scott Skiles went sour, then you had a well documented physical altercation with Vinny Del-Negro, which all was followed up by a two year process of firing an elite coach in Tom Thibodeau because you couldn’t get along with him like the past coaches. Let the guy do his job and you do your job by putting a good roster together. Instead, you fire the guy and bring back the exact same roster for your puppet to coach. Hey, that’s not a shot at Fred Hoiberg, that’s just the reality of it. Whether he can coach or not is still unseen, but it’s clear that you hired your buddy over the best coaching candidates. It doesn’t take a genius to realize a rookie head coach wouldn’t survive with a group of veterans. If you want to hire a young coach, make your roster younger so they can grow together. Guys like Pau Gasol, Joakim Noah, Derrick Rose, Mike Dunleavy Jr., and Jimmy Butler are trying to win now, not grow together and eventually win one once the coach realizes how to do his job.
Gar Forman, I just have to ask: what the hell are you doing? I can’t even begin to comprehend what direction you’re taking this team to. Lucky for you, you’re in Jerry Reinsdorf’s grace, so I guess you don’t really need to know where you’re going. You put together a great roster in the summer of 2010, but it’s time to move on from the past. I don’t want to blame you for missing out on the marquee free-agents year after year, so I won’t. But can you at least trade for them? Hey, nobody wants to come to Chicago, I don’t blame them because the franchise is so dysfunctional, so why not force them to come by trading for them? Why do you stand pat every year at the trade deadline? Clearly we don’t ever have enough. I’m not sure what you see in this roster, but there’s always room for improvement. It’s mind boggling how highly you think of this roster, and this coach. You promised us a championship caliber roster with a coach that will pick up where Thibodeau left off. That doesn’t happen, instead we took a few giant steps back. Who’s being held accountable here? It should be you. The roster changes, or lack thereof, is on you. The inability to land good players or overvaluing our talent is on you.
Who was held accountable when Tom Thibodeau wanted to draft Draymond Green but you decided to roll the dice with Marquis Teague? No one. Who was held accountable for letting Luol Deng go for basically nothing at this point? No one. Who was held accountable for overvaluing Tony Snell, Nikola Mirotic, and on some level Doug McDermott? No one. Who was held accountable when you brought back the exact same roster despite losing to the Cavaliers? No one. Who’s held accountable for missing the playoffs after firing Tom Thibodeau? No one.
That’s the problem. This is frustrating. There’s no sense of direction for this team. Rumors are spiraling out of control about feud between teammates. The coach seems incompetent compared to Tom Thibodeau, or most coaches for that matter. And we’ll try to get better by free agency once again, but we’ll miss out on key marquee players once again. There’s never enough money to do anything big. Our players are overpaid. Players who should be traded aren’t traded until their value drops. We are in basketball hell. We don’t have the talent to make a championship run, but we’re also not bad enough to improve drastically through the draft. This is why you should be fired. So please, do everybody a civil service to the people of Chicago and give your two-week notice, that’s the direction the Bulls need to go in.
Sami Hassan
