Bulls General Manager John Paxson sat down with Dan Roan for a lengthy interview. For more with Pax, make sure to watch the "Bullseye" pregame show Saturday night at 7pm on WGN-TV, right before we air the Pacers-Bulls contest.
Are things coming together the way you thought they would?
I've felt all along that it would a work in progress, just because we've got so many new guys. I think we've seen flashes of what we can be and we've seen some weaknesses of ours. What I have seen is that when we bring energy and a defensive intensity to the game, we have a pretty good basketball team. When we don't, we can struggle. I can take these games as hard as anybody when we lose, but I've got to keep in perspective that there's 82 games. You want to win every game, but I'd like to see us come together as the season goes along and then, hopefully, we're sitting there in March and April playing our best basketball. That's really the idea.
You guys are balanced and don't have that big scorer or go-to guy. The only other really successful team out there that is like that is the Pistons. Do you look at Detroit as a role model for your team?
I've always respected how they played, but our personnel decisions have always been made with the idea that as information comes up, we make the best possible decision at that time. I'd love to have a guy that every night you can pencil in 25 points a game - we don't have that. What we do have and what need every night is consistency and scoring every night from our four guys: Kirk, Ben, Luol Deng, and Andres Nocioni. They can't be 6 points one game and 30 the next. There's got to be some consistency with them. I realize as well as anybody that we don't have that one go-to scorer, but that doesn't mean you can't win. I know that a lot of people look at it and say you can't win a championship this way, but I still look at it as a process. I like our team, I like our guys, and I like the fact that defensively we should be a good team. We should be able to rebound more and run the floor because of our ability to rebound and defend. We need consistency from those four on the offensive end. We also need PJ Brown to give us something like he did in the Milwaukee game - 8-10 points and 7-8 rebounds a game, which he can do. We also need our bench guys to come in and provide something. I understand the limitations as well as anybody, but given the decisions our staff has had to make along the way personnel-wise, we like the decisions we've made. We're not going to make the mistake, not right now, of trying to bring in a scorer that's going to disrupt some of the other things we do well. That's kind of where we're at as a team.
