SAN ANTONIO — The Bulls/Jaden Ivey saga needed a ‘‘Godfather’’ type of ending.
Instead, it felt like the final episode of ‘‘The Sopranos’’: incomplete and fade to black.
That was the disappointment to come out of Monday. Bulls ownership had an opportunity to take care of all family business at once, but it stopped after dismissing Ivey for conduct detrimental to the team.
It should have played out like this: Ivey should have been sent packing and should have been followed by the front office, which did no homework on him before acquiring him from the Pistons. Then ownership should have worked out a deal with coach Billy Donovan in which he could choose the general manager/executive he wanted in place. Then, once he feels as though he’s done with coaching, he would take the Brad Stevens route to a front-office job to help with personnel decisions.
That possible ending is still in play, but it’s a long shot now.
In reality, the Bulls continue to learn that executive vice president of basketball operations Arturas Karnisovas can’t handle the job. The acquisition of Ivey itself is not grounds for Karnisovas to be let go. What it is, however, is the latest mistake dropped on a dumpster pile that was already in flames.
Before Ivey even stepped foot in Chicago, there were rumblings from Detroit that he was a ‘‘preacher.’’ Those rumblings undersold it. His interviews became sermons in which he asked reporters whether they had been ‘‘saved’’ and whether they had ‘‘fornicated before marriage.’’
My bad. I was just checking in on how your knee felt.
It’s great that he has religion in his life, but the relationship between reporter and player isn’t built like that after just a few interactions. While reporters were left feeling as though they didn’t need to be preached to by a 20-something kid a few years removed from walking around with a silver spoon in his mouth on the AAU circuit, his Bulls teammates were left shaking their heads at the latest distraction foisted on them by the front office.
Not one Bulls player shed a tear for Ivey’s removal from the roster. And not one Bulls player — former or current — has believed in Karnisovas’ plan since the start of the season.
It is over.
The trades have been a disaster, the draft picks have been a joke and the idea of chasing ‘‘competitive integrity’’ at the expense of better draft odds has been a misguided exercise in organizational malpractice.
The Ivey fiasco shouldn’t be the straw that broke the camel’s back as much as a reminder that the camel had damaged legs, one working eye and a bizarre-looking hump for years.
If Karnisovas stays, there’s a growing chance Donovan will leave at the end of the season. Then the Reinsdorfs will leave Karnisovas with a coaching search, a draft choice in the lottery and free-agent decisions with money to spend.
This front office can’t even get trade dumps at the deadline right, let alone be trusted to map out the immediate future of an organization that has gone from bad to national embarrassment.
In all fairness to team president Michael Reinsdorf, not one NBA person thought Karnisovas was a bad hire six-plus years ago. In fact, the Bulls were widely applauded for the decision. But billion-dollar companies need to pivot when decisions go bad, and that’s where the Bulls are.
Ivey’s social-media rants showed the make-up of the man and why he didn’t fit in the Bulls’ locker room. More important, they put the spotlight on the failed front office that brought him to Chicago in the first place.
