As you probably already know, former Bulls head coach Scott Skiles was fired by the Bulls on Monday after a disappointing start to the season. Many attribute the poor start in part to the struggles of Luol Deng and Ben Gordon who both passed on extensions to their contracts. Gilbert of course talked about the situation several times in his blog and even talked with Gordon about it recently. After that meeting, Arenas took Gordon and Deng’s side on the issue. But why? Jay Mariotti of the Chicago Sun Times has an idea:
The dysfunctional news doesn’t stop with a Christmas knife in the back. Even Paxson (the Bulls’ GM) acknowledges that the rah-rah, hustling, defense-and-grit foundation began to collapse in October, when Luol Deng and Ben Gordon rejected extensions. Both players voiced a deep desire to stay with the Bulls for the long term, yet both were offered extensions that were considered moderate lowballs in the current NBA marketplace. No, I’m not impressed by the sluggish play of Deng and Gordon in the wake of their contractual disappointments. Neither was Arenas, the injured star of the Washington Wizards, who criticized Deng and other young players for rejecting extensions in a Dec. 7 blog entry.
Seems Gordon, who wasn’t even part of Arenas’ screed, was upset about the blog shots. So when the Bulls played in Washington recently, Gordon sought a conference with Arenas to tell the real story — one that doesn’t reflect well on Paxson and, by extension, Reinsdorf (the Bulls’ owner).
Writes Arenas of his personal chat with Gordon: “He was telling me, `They didn’t even negotiate with me. They were like, `This is what it is, take it or leave it’ and that was it.’ I’m thinking, `Damn, that’s kind of messed up’ in my mind, because when you have a player who has done a lot for your franchise … two years ago y’all would have been signing this man to $75-million plus, and now two years later it’s just like, Take this or leave it! … And the same thing with Deng. I ended up finding out that with Deng, they didn’t even offer him $60 million. No, they didn’t even come close to that money. Ben was like, `I heard if they would have offered him $58 million, he would have took that.’ So Luol didn’t actually end up turning down what people thought he turned down.”
I realize Gilbert Arenas is a little loopy. But a lot of rich, loopy superstars run the NBA these days and create bad reputations for franchises. Remember when Jordan, Scottie Pippen and other dynasty Bulls badmouthed Jerry Krause and Reinsdorf? Remember how the smear campaign hurt efforts to sign major free agents? Well, Arenas and his blog have influence in the league.
So let’s review: Jerry Reinsdorf lowballs Deng & Gordon on their contract extensions so they pass and as a result don’t play as well this season. Then, Gilbert comes out and criticizes them for not taking the money. After he learns what’s really going on he joins their side and blogs about it on December 22nd. Two days later, Skiles is fired as Reinsdorf’s scapegoat for the Bulls’ woes to deflect attention away from the criticisms brought up by Arenas regarding Deng and Gordon’s contract issues. I’ll admit it’s a little bit of a stretch, but crazier things have happened.
