ESPN - Bulls fire coach Skiles; no replacement named yet - NBA

Bulls fans will probably be happy about this.

Is there a coach Ben doesn't hate?

Flipper is pretty amazing

Cola did not survive Big Ben
Pound for Pound did survive Big Ben
Skiles did not survive Big Ben

Flipper survived Big Ben and evidently patched things up with Uncle Sheed.

I just hope we win the title this year mostly because it would make Pistons fans very happy, but also because I got a feeling that we are stuck with Flipper at least until his current contract runs out regardless of whether we win a title with him as coach or not.

Would KG had left (been traded) MN earlier if Flipper had left earlier? He was out pretty quickly after Flipper left and we all know that KG thinks a lot of Flipper. It is going to be quite a while before the T-Wolves get back to the playoffs.

I'm sitting here giggling a bit thinking about Larry Brown's head blowing off trying to coach Ben Gordon.

Looks like the other Van Gundy will be coming back.............

Little surprising since this year is starting off the same as the others. For whatever reason most Bulls fans feel differently about this 9-16 start and Paxson must be under a lot more heat. Firing the coach is a popular 1st line of defense for a GM.

Pistons meanwhile are off to the leagues 2nd best record so far. The leagues not just the East.

Actually they recovered far better last year from their slow start than they did this year. Their low point last season was losing the first 6 games of their circus road trip to fall to 3-9, but they immediately won 12 of their next 13 and never fell below 3 games over .500 the rest of the way, eventually finishing 49-33. Their record after 25 games was 15-10. But now that they're 7 below .500 after 25 games, it's pretty clear that they've taken a step back.

Just to stir the pot a little.

Except against us Big Ben's performance this year for the most part has been off quite a bit. Of course he has been injured, but he hasn't missed that many games.

I was just thinking.

Big Ben has got an awfully large contract, which it appears at this point the Bulls are probably stuck with. There is no way, in my opinion, given Ben's huge salary that they could trade him, unless they agreed to eat a big chunk of his salary but would that do them any good?

One of the salary cap experts on this forum could probably explain if the Bulls traded Big Ben but ate some of his contract how that would affect their cap.

In any case, he will not be too easy to trade because his performance has been way off this year against everyone but us.

Right now the Bulls are really hurting financially because of the deal that they gave Big Ben. So maybe Paxon thought it would be better and cheaper to get rid of Skiles, depending on how much of his contract that they have to eat and hope that Big Ben's performance improves enough to warrant most if not all of his salary.

My guess is that Big Ben's performance is going to improve starting now.

Did I just say that he has been dogging it in order to force Paxon's hand to fire Skiles?

Ben has obviously been struggling a lot in recent weeks, but I think he has way too much professional pride to dog it for any conceivable reason, no matter how bad his relationship might be with whomever the coach is.