July 01, 2019 at 08:42AM
(670 The Score) Thaddeus Young is solid and fine and professional and experienced, and there's little chance he's on the Bulls when or if they contend for an NBA championship.
Watch sports now on fuboTV.It's perfectly on brand for the John Paxson era for the Bulls to sign the 31-year-old Young to a three-year deal, the accretion of a competitive core that will play hard and provide ample nightly entertainment for the dinner theater that United Center games have become. It might be NBA hell -- scrapping for the seventh or eighth playoff spot while losing potential draft value in the process -- but it's a lucrative hell with which they know we play along. Our learned helplessness has created a new normal in which we celebrate not being awful.
The Bulls are OK with being fine for the moment, moving to shore up their coaching staff with genuine NBA assistants who will do much of the actual work for evangelistic cheerleader Jim Boylen while the franchise makes decisions that assure a moderate level of basic competence across the board.
Young is Taj Gibson but three years younger, a similarly reliable and versatile player and leader, a setter of working example who will produce as the first big off the bench until the inevitable injury forces him to start at whatever frontcourt position. He's good, in a way that complements a typical effort to achieve the absence of bad, while waiting in theatrically absurdist fashion for a chance at great to arrive.
And assessing the financial value is pretty much just silly anymore, as we live in world in which Zach LaVine's deal is now at or below market value for who he is and what he does. So three years and $41 million for Young sounds like relief-pitcher stuff at this point.
For a team with real aspirations, Thaddeus Young is a guy who plays minutes. For the Bulls though, he'll be the newest flavor of what this regime serves: something above average and newly different enough to be added to their bland and distant concept of hope.
It's not his fault.
Dan Bernstein is a co-host of 670 The Score's Bernstein & McKnight Show in midday. You can follow him on Twitter @Dan_Bernstein.
(670 The Score) Thaddeus Young is solid and fine and professional and experienced, and there's little chance he's on the Bulls when or if they contend for an NBA championship.
Watch sports now on fuboTV.It's perfectly on brand for the John Paxson era for the Bulls to sign the 31-year-old Young to a three-year deal, the accretion of a competitive core that will play hard and provide ample nightly entertainment for the dinner theater that United Center games have become. It might be NBA hell -- scrapping for the seventh or eighth playoff spot while losing potential draft value in the process -- but it's a lucrative hell with which they know we play along. Our learned helplessness has created a new normal in which we celebrate not being awful.
The Bulls are OK with being fine for the moment, moving to shore up their coaching staff with genuine NBA assistants who will do much of the actual work for evangelistic cheerleader Jim Boylen while the franchise makes decisions that assure a moderate level of basic competence across the board.
Young is Taj Gibson but three years younger, a similarly reliable and versatile player and leader, a setter of working example who will produce as the first big off the bench until the inevitable injury forces him to start at whatever frontcourt position. He's good, in a way that complements a typical effort to achieve the absence of bad, while waiting in theatrically absurdist fashion for a chance at great to arrive.
And assessing the financial value is pretty much just silly anymore, as we live in world in which Zach LaVine's deal is now at or below market value for who he is and what he does. So three years and $41 million for Young sounds like relief-pitcher stuff at this point.
For a team with real aspirations, Thaddeus Young is a guy who plays minutes. For the Bulls though, he'll be the newest flavor of what this regime serves: something above average and newly different enough to be added to their bland and distant concept of hope.
It's not his fault.
Dan Bernstein is a co-host of 670 The Score's Bernstein & McKnight Show in midday. You can follow him on Twitter @Dan_Bernstein.