That's a start, but it's not enough and far from ideal. A new basketball boss must not be saddled in any way with the past, instead allowed full autonomy to be advised or not as he/she chooses. Without full control, such a move is doomed from the outset. If the search is indeed on, the options can't be limited by forcing candidates to work within any existing structure, particularly one this ingrown and backward.
As far as who's currently in charge of any of these moves to come, the situation is nebulous at best. McGraw joined the Bernstein and McKnight Show on 670 The Score on Monday to elaborate.
"Things are still in the process of being decided," Mc Graw said. "I think one of the questions is who's going to make the decision. Obviously Michael and Jerry Reinsdorf are running the show, but they've kind of sat back and let Paxson and Gar Forman and Doug Collins run the basketball operations. There are still a lot of questions, and it's in the process of being decided, still."
If this decision still involves any of those people, that's not how this works. An actual new boss is just that, with the authority to retain people in their current positions if desired. This has to be ownership-level discussion only, with the new hire reporting to them directly.
And that raises fair and troubling questions of whether the Reinsdorfs would even know where to begin, having not been involved in the actual basketball for so many years.
"Jerry Reinsdorf has been in Arizona, he focuses a lot on baseball, who is he going to turn to for advice on what he should do?" McGraw said. "Michael Reinsdorf has been focused on the business side -- does he have connections around the league or a good idea of what he wants to do? I'm not sure they do. I think they're trying to figure out how to go about this."
The default setting has always been to go to Paxson and his brother, Jim, and Collins for such advice, but now it can't be. The groundwork for a move like this should have begun months ago with quiet intelligence gathering and outreach around the NBA, if not even into other sports in which the next great executive may be employed.
Two obvious calls would be to Blackhawks owner Rocky Wirtz and Cubs chairman Tom Ricketts on how to overhaul an entire operation. The Blackhawks finally moved Bob Pulford officially out of his imperial power in 2005 in a multifaceted process of across-the-board modernization that eventually produced three championships. The Cubs gave Theo Epstein free rein and blank checks to drag a retrograde franchise into proper competitive position and eventual glory.
That has to be the model for the similarly sclerotic Bulls if indeed they're finally discovering the courage to act after seeing the dwindling United Center crowds and declining enthusiasm for a continuously inferior product. They must identify their Epstein and name the individual their team president. The hires beyond that are the equivalents of Jed Hoyer and Jason McLeod, then on down the masthead.
It might finally be the time so many of us thought would never come, and if the depth and scale of it is improperly conceived, it still may not.