As has become tradition for the Chicago Bulls(See Tim Floyd), John Paxson fired Scott Skiles this morning, on Christmas Eve. The fallout and repsonse from the media, fans and players has been overly predictable. "Skiles is an A to B type coach." "Skiles lost his players." "Skiles lost his job because Aaron Gray isn't getting enough tick."(yes, someone actually threw that one out there. Other speculation is that he was fired so the Bulls could trade for Jason Kidd.(Trading for a point guard a year after giving Kirk Hinrich 10 million per over five years, yeah, that really makes sense.) The fact of the matter is that this firing is no different than almost every other coaching change in any other sport. The coaches go, well, because someone needs to go and they are the only ones that can't be fired. How much has Rick Adelman done for the Rockets? Phil for the Lakers? Isiah for the Knicks? Some coaches are worse than others, but it is a bit ludicrous to think that Skiles is to blame for Ben Gordon's and Kirk Hinrich's severe regression.

To understand what Skiles has had to deal with, lets take a look at the challenges he has this season.

1) His guards: Kirk Hinrich, Ben Gordon, Thabo Sefolosha, Chris Duhon. 

            While Kirk has always been a favorite of Skiles and Paxson, i have never really been a big fan of his. He puts up respectable numbers in the traditional categories, but his defense is overglorified, his passing(for a point guard) is subpar and his shooting is as streaky as it gets. I say his defense is overglorified because with his trouble staying out of foul trouble, his defensive abilities, which admittedly are very good, are rarely able to be used. Ben Gordon is a sixth man, and anybody that has watched the Bulls consistently for the last few years should know that by now. His defensive effort is there, but his defensive abilities and size aren't. He can score in bunches but play no defense, and players with those skills are best utilized off the bench against the opposition's second wave. Thabo Sefolosha, although given very little chance to showcase his skills, has done little to impress. He is a strong defender and has good size, but he can't shoot a lick, has mental lapses way too often and seems to think he can do things which he clearly can't. I like Chris Duhon as a backup point guard and a floor general, but he isn't a starter. He is a smart player who was clearly taught very well at Duke, but he is physically challenged and is not starter material.  To sum it up, Skiles had a streaky, frustrating combo guard in Hinrich, a one dimensional bench player in Gordon, a defensive 2 guard(2 guards must be able to score in this league) in Sefolosha and a nice bench guy in Duhon.

2) Small Forwards: Luol Deng, Andres Nocioni, (Tyrus Thomas).

            This is the only position where the Bulls have adequate talent. Luol Deng is perhaps the only balanced and complete player on the entire roster. He can rebound, pass( a bit), shoot and defend. The problem is that although he can do everything pretty well, he does nothing amazingly well. I really like Luol, but he is not a centerpiece type player like The Carmelo's, Lebron's and Kobe's of the world(although there is no shortage of Bulls' fans that would argue vehemently against that.) Andres Nocion is a good player and has probably been the Bulls' second best player this season, but he is just a solid player. He is easily frustrated and often gets too trigger happy on a team with better outside shooters, although this year the latter is probably false. Tyrus Thomas, at this point, is more of an athlete than a basketball player. He clearly has worked on his shot and it has shown in some of the latest games, but he still is somewhat of an offensive liabilty and lacks the size to match up one on one against most of the better post players in the game. His help defense is very good, but i sometimes wish he would block balls into play instead of into the stands, which looks better but is not all that beneficial.

3) Power Forwards/Centers: Joe Smith, Joakim Noah, Aaron Gray, Ben Wallace, (Tyrus.) 

            This is probably the weakest unit on the Bulls. Only one of these players has performed well for the Bulls over an extended period of time, that being Joe Smith. He is scrappy, runs the floor pretty well, has an above average mid-range game and is a good mentor for the younger players. On the other hand, the trio of Wallace, Gray and Noah, for lack of a better word, sucks. Wallace is washed up, and even with the recent article on Fox Sports on his dicline, people that don't watch the Bulls really have no idea how worthless the 60 million dollar man has become in just over one full season. He isn't even starter material at this point, making him the most expensive one-dimensional bench player in all of sports. Noah and Gray were both very good in college, but they are both clearly overmatched at the pro level. They get their shots, and easy putback dunks/layups, blocked routinely and aside from scrappy play and decent size, offer almost nothing. They warrant no more than ten-fifteen minutes a night, but since the Bulls are weak at the position, are forced to play starter's minutes pretty often.

There is not just one problem with the Bulls. Rather, there are problems up and down the organization. The players do seem top have given up on Skiles, but could it be that they are just burnt out? The amount of effort this team has to exert to play competitve ball is greater than any other team in this league, and the last few years of intense work may have finally taken a toll on them. A team can only scrap and scrape for so long. John Paxson is also responsible for this, probably more than anybody else. The contract extension to Hinrich looks really foolish right now, but pales in comparison to the ontract Wallace got, which by the way will hamper the Bulls for another 2+ seasons. The draft day trade of LaMarcus Aldridge for Tyrus Thomas looks terrible right now, as does picking Noah ninth overall just a few months ago. From the looks of it, either Deng or Gordon, or possibly both, will be gone after this year, leaving the Bulls in even worse shape than now, if at all possible.

Scott Skiles is a hell of a coach, and i highly doubt that any other coach in the league could have done significantly more with the Bulls than he has done. The Bulls simply are not that talented of a team, and it's a shame that Paxson hasn't come to terms with that yet.

PS- It appears that many fans that are happy with the firing seem to think that Skiles' biggest failure was his inability to develop his young players, Tyrus Thomas, Thabo Sefolosha, Aaron Gray and Joakim Noah. The idea that Skiles, while coaching a team expected to go to the conference finals, can afford to play severely underdeveloped players AND take his team to the next level is laughable. This isn't baseball people. To really develop a player, a coach must give him real time experience, and with a team only able to put 5 players on the court at one time, a coach of a team with championship expectations can not afford to put his lineup at a disadvantage to help bring along a specific player. Baseball has the minor leagues and even when a player comes up, he can be shoed in the seven or eight hole and learn from there, but in basketball, players and teams don't have such a luxury. John Paxson put Scott Skiles in an impossible situation. Teams that win champonships grow together and eventually reach their pinnacle together; championship teams usually don't consist of a couple of role players and first and second year projects. John Paxson will see that while the team he assembled in Chicago was decent enough to fight it's way into a second round exit, it was nowhere good enough to meet the expectations put upon it. You see, Paxson, and perhaps Skiles, were naive enough to believe that a team full of solid but not excellent players with great work ethics, good values and team-first mentalities could win championships. The idea is great and can work in the college level(see Duke), but the NBA is a big boy league with mean, grown-#### man that feast on the type of players that the Chicago roster is full of.

Oh, and to the inevitable "Well the Pistons won a championship" comment, please. In their championship season, the Pistons had four players better than any one on the Bulls right now. Rip, Chauncey, Sheed and Tayshaun are all all-star calibur players and would be superstars on any other team aside from the one they find themselves on. All of those players, aside from Rip(maybe), could create their own shots and take advantage of mismatches. Tell me one player on the Bulls that on their best day could hang with any of the  aforementioned Pistons.