I once wrote that Scott Skiles was Larry Brown Lite. I meant it as a compliment.
You hire Skiles as a coach and you get better, like with Brown. He’s smart and demanding. Those are good things. He sees the game more quickly and clearly than most coaches working today. He has a plan and a system of play that’s appealing to watch. He emphasizes the right things: defense, teamwork and accountability.
I’d recommend Skiles to just about any team in the NBA.
Like Brown, he tires of his players, in part because his standards are so high.
Which is why the firing of Skiles has been coming; not from the day he was hired, as they say about all NBA coaches, but earlier this season when Skiles began to doubt his team.
Players are not stupid. They know. Why can’t they play above it because they are professional and are paid so much? They just don’t, and Brown had eight NBA jobs on his way to the Hall of Fame.
Skiles will have a job next season, and his team will improve. I wonder about Miami — Pat Riley has become a big fan of Skiles, and the two spent time together at the coaches’ annual meeting in September. The Knicks, Nets, and 76ers probably will give him a hard look. They won’t be sorry. And then he’ll go somewhere and make a team better.
Though it was a surprise to everyone as to when Skiles was fired — certainly me; I hardly expected Christmas Eve — those around the team have doubted Skiles would last beyond this season, with next year his lame-duck season. The thinking was general manager John Paxson would wait until midseason before making determinations about everyone. He got fed up more quickly after consecutive blowout losses last week, but associates say he was leaning in that direction long before.
One said it started the first week of the season when the Bulls opened badly again and Skiles supposedly told Paxson the team wasn’t responding, might not be up to it and he wasn’t sure he could do anything about it.
It sounded a lot like the circumstances when Skiles was fired in Phoenix with the Suns 25-26 after he’d taken them to the playoffs twice and to the second round once, just as he’d done with the Bulls.
Suns insiders complained that Skiles didn’t believe he could coach the team anymore. Skiles’ allies say he is honest and direct to a fault and was merely telling management the team wasn’t good enough after trading Jason Kidd.
It sounds sort of like what occurred here.
Skiles began to lose faith in the players’ ability to reach the expectations set for them. Some decided Skiles was giving up on them and they’d reciprocate. Management felt it had to act to save the season, and its accumulation of talent.
It’s one of those chicken-and-egg things: Did Skiles give up on them or they on him? Or did they begin to give up, so he gave up?
Skiles is hardly the ogre some have described him as being.
With some players — Ben Gordon, say — some believe he was too loyal. A former player, Skiles believes in being loyal to those who made a difference in his career. Gordon was a big part of the Bulls’ success when Skiles arrived, and Skiles didn’t forget. He’d stay with Gordon for long stretches when his defense and decision making were poor. A double standard?
Skiles grew fond of Gordon and would try to counsel him about the NBA. Likewise, with Kirk Hinrich and Ben Wallace, Skiles would put up with more mental errors than he would with others. Skiles did have issues with certain veteran players; Wallace, Joe Smith and P.J. Brown last season rebelled over their roles. Skiles gave them plenty of rope, but his demanding nature still clashed with players more set in their ways.
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Skiles faced more uncertainty than outsiders realized coming into this season.
He openly worried, associates said, about the contract extensions offered Gordon and Luol Deng, and the effect if both signed and one got more than the other. Paxson conceded Monday the whole mood of the team changed when the Oct. 31 deadline passed and neither player re-signed.
“I told the guys I felt there have been personal agendas on the floor this year,” Paxson said. “I believe that. I don’t think there’s any doubt the contract stuff had an effect on what happened. I thought in camp we were practicing great and once the deadline came and went, we deflated.”
Team insiders began to feel Skiles was changing. He was working just as hard but seemed to be lacking the passion, just as the players did. He had always been sharp with in-game adjustments, but he wasn’t making as many — he’d sit and let deficits mount and not try as many new things.
Yet Skiles was talking regularly with the players, asking them about their obvious lack of passion, about playing selfishly, shooting quickly. At times he seemed baffled. He wondered as far back as training camp about whether the pressure of trying to live up to contracts (Hinrich) and expectations were too much for the team.
In meetings, coaches said players were often silent.
“It was like they were 2nd-graders who were afraid of being called on,” one observer said.
Management grew concerned. In trying to win games and stay loyal to his core, Skiles seemed harsher on his young players. The team expected improvement this season from second-year players Tyrus Thomas and Thabo Sefolosha.
Players say Sefolosha crawled into a personal shell over clashes with Skiles, who was merely trying to push him. Thomas’ advocates claimed the issues had become personal, and Skiles apparently was asked to apologize to Thomas after condemning him for not running the court.
As the record declined, the fear was the value of players was also diminishing.
Paxson said when he took the job his goal was to accumulate assets and turn them into something better. It’s the right plan to pursue if you don’t get lucky in the draft, and the Bulls haven’t. Though they bypassed an opportunity to land LaMarcus Aldridge and Brandon Roy in the 2006 draft, Paxson did build the nucleus of a 50-win-type team that was much-admired around the NBA and seemed to have the right coach, even though Skiles was getting few offers when the Bulls hired him.
Paxson was said to be taking a chance on Skiles, but the team improved basically every season when it didn’t have injuries … until this season.
Skiles remained firm, resisting suggestions to change roles or use different players. He said he believed in the players who’d gone into the second round last season. But some, like Deng, were struggling, though it’s difficult to say whether contract issues or game situations were the larger cause. He talked about playing Deng more in the backcourt, but it didn’t happen, and Deng grew uncertain.
In the end, Skiles seemed relieved, sensing it was inevitable, if not imminent — he’d already had a pre-practice meeting with his assistants Monday when the ax fell.
The Bulls went from an underachieving league lottery joke to a popular choice for the East finals this season. Perhaps they weren’t that good and we all overestimated them — we get a chance to find out now.
The Bulls ought to figure Skiles will be coaching against them somewhere soon. He was the right coach at the right time, and it probably was the right time to go, though perhaps a day or two later would have made everyone feel a little less uncomfortable.
– – –
WHAT THEY SAID
‘I hope nobody’s feeling sorry for me because it’s Christmas Eve. In the real world, someone loses their job at Christmas and doesn’t have money. Nobody should feel sorry for me.’ — Scott Skiles
‘I think the difference last year was we were losing games knowing that we played hard. This year we were losing games knowing that guys, they just looked like there was no interest out there, a lot of unhappiness. This year [Skiles] was a lot more frustrated. … We kept turning it around, but it was really hard to do when you’re just not playing against your opponent, you’re kind of playing against each other.
— Luol Deng
‘I wouldn’t say we stopped playing for Scott. We let each other down. … Hopefully this will wake us up.’
— Kirk Hinrich
‘Maybe he was too hard on guys at times. Overall, I thought he was professional and good at what he did. … [Veterans around the league] say sometimes a coach loses grasp of a team. If that’s what happened, I guess it made sense for Pax to make that decision. I don’t know [what’s happened to the team].’
— Ben Gordon
‘Scott is a fiery guy. I play with a lot of passion. Anytime you take two guys like that they’re always not going to see [eye to eye]. We always found a way to coexist. I have great respect for what he was able to do. … I think Scott, even though he isn’t here, he’d still want to see this team do well. So I think we owe him that much.’
— Ben Wallace
‘I’m disappointed in the way we’re playing, the way we’re competing, the energy or lack thereof that we’re playing with on the floor. I know expectations coming into the year were really, really high, and we’re not even close to those. I honestly believe we’re a better team than we’ve played this year.’
— John Paxson
‘I’m the one responsible for the performance on the floor. I’m the one who should be on the line and judged for that.’
— Scott Skiles
‘The onus [is] on us as players more than before. We’ve got to step up and accept the challenge. I know we can def initely snap out of it.’
— Ben Gordon
‘Our players now are put in a position where they have to look in the mirror and see what they can do to get this back on track. The message wasn’t being received by them. A lot of the pressure is on them right now.’
— John Paxson
‘Scott is a great coach. I’m not worried about him. He’s going to be OK. He can coach. … He took a team from nowhere to respectability. The fire is there.’
— Assistant coach Pete Myers
– – –
The Skiles era
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In his five seasons as Bulls head coach, Scott Skiles compiled a 165-172 mark and led the team to the playoffs in each of the last three seasons.
2003-04 (23-59, 8th in Central)
(19-47 under Skiles)
Nov. 28, 2003: Hired as 15th coach in franchise history with Bulls at 4-12.
2004-05 (47-35, 2nd in Central)
PLAYOFFS: Lost in 1st round to Washington 4-2
Nov. 22, 2004: Bulls tie franchise record for worst start, falling to 0-9 after 100-82 loss at Phoenix.
Jan. 24, 2005: Bulls hold 26th straight opponent to 100 or fewer points, a franchise record.
January 2005: Skiles named Eastern Conference coach of the month after guiding Bulls to NBA-best 13-3 mark, including seven-game winning streak.
April 2005: Bulls finish regular season leading league in opponents’ field-goal percentage (.422) and earn first playoff berth in seven years.
June 7, 2005: One day after publicly declaring his contract-extension talks had broken off, Skiles calls team Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf and agrees to three-year, $13.25 million deal.
2005-06 (41-41, tied for 3rd in Central)
PLAYOFFS: Lost in 1st round to Miami 4-2
April 2006: Named Eastern Conference coach of the month for guiding Bulls to 9-1 record and second straight season as league leaders in opponents’ field-goal percentage (.426).
2006-07 (49-33, 3rd in Central)
Beat Miami 4-0, lost to Detroit in conference semis 4-2
April 29, 2007: Bulls become first team in NBA history to sweep defending NBA champion in first round of best-of-seven series.
2007-08
(9-16, 5th in Central)
Dec. 24, 2007: Fired by general manager John Paxson after Bulls got off to disappointing 9-16 start.
Source: Tribune research
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