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CHICAGO -- With about nine-and-a-half minutes left in the third quarter of the Los Angeles Clippers' 96-86 win over the Chicago Bulls, ESPN’s play-by-play man Mike Breen started to introduce a juicy storyline: The perceived conflict between Bulls coach Tom Thibodeau and his general manager, Gar Forman, and vice president of basketball operations, John Paxson. Breen first asked Mark Jackson to speak a little about the matter, to set up the main reason he was bringing this topic up on national TV: His partner Jeff Van Gundy, a good friend and former boss of Thibodeau, had famously inserted himself into the story this season. But in classic Bulls fashion, an injury, this time Jimmy Butler's hyperextending his left elbow while on defense on a DeAndre Jordan screen, delayed things for a few minutes. After a commercial break, Breen asked Van Gundy if he could discuss his previous comments, which occurred on-air in a January game between the Bulls and Dallas Mavericks and then this past week, to a Chicago media writer. Van Gundy told Ed Sherman, writing for the Chicago Tribune, that he was asked by Thibodeau's agent to "tone it down" after the Mavericks game, while noting Forman yelled at him at the Dallas game. “Can you speak about it without sleeping with the fishes?” Breen said. Van Gundy was happy to, and during his conversation with Breen, the ESPN cameras cut to Forman and Paxson, with the latter staring intently at his phone. “What I said previously, I stand by,” Van Gundy said. “I think, over the course of time, they’ve been unfriendly and they haven’t been pro-coach. “I think you go all the way back to Doug Collins’ time here, then Phil Jackson, and go on and on and on. So I don’t really feel the need to reiterate too much. That’s what I said. That’s what I believe.”
But Van Gundy’s relationship with Thibodeau complicates the story. After the January comments, Thibodeau told Chicago reporters, "My job is to coach the team. That's what I worry about. [Van Gundy] doesn't speak for me. I don't speak for him." There is certainly some truth to that. Van Gundy is outspoken and typically defends his fellow coaches in a league that shuffles through coaches on a regular basis. "The only thing I have to be concerned with is that everything I say, unfortunately, is taken like it’s coming from Tom, which is not true,” Van Gundy said. “Because I speak for myself. This is something I believe in.” Then, Van Gundy being Van Gundy, he slipped in a zinger. "John Paxson, to be fair, said he thought what I said was ‘pathetic,’” Van Gundy said in reference to a different Chicago Tribune story. “He was so mad at me I thought I had traded LaMarcus Aldridge for Tyrus Thomas and not him.” The Bulls, naturally, aren’t pleased with Van Gundy’s comments, though Paxson declined to comment when reached by text message Sunday afternoon. But no one cares if a broadcaster doesn’t like a front office. The concern is the possible breakup between Thibodeau, who has won 242 of 371 games (65 percent) in five seasons -- Derrick Rose has played in 176 -- and the Bulls, who have given him a strong group of players with which to work. For all the jokes about Tyrus Thomas, the Bulls got ridiculous values late in the first round by drafting Taj Gibson (No. 26 in 2009) and Jimmy Butler (No. 30 in 2011) and trading for the rights to Nikola Mirotic (2011) and Omer Asik (2008) on draft night. Picking Joakim Noah ninth in 2007 worked out as well. The funny thing is this isn’t the time for this story. The Bulls and Thibodeau have a lot more to do this season. The Bulls (37-23) are a half-game out of second place in the Eastern Conference and reeling from injuries. Rose is out for four-to-six weeks after a second procedure on his right medial meniscus. The earliest he will return will be with nine games left in the regular season. Like any relationship between a coach and his front office bosses, there are the typical conflicts. Like many professional sports marriages that eventually end in divorce, this one could end because of a respect gap between the two parties -- as in, each side feels the other doesn't respect it enough. Both are probably right, in a sense. Thibodeau has two years remaining on a contract extension he left sitting unsigned on his desk for months in the 2012-13 season. He's an expert at preparing his teams for games, but he chafes at the narrative that he wears players out. "While you’re talking Tom Thibodeau, he loves his team, he loves his players,” Breen said. “He wants to coach this team, and he loves this squad." "He loves -- he absolutely loves -- the city, the fans and his players," Van Gundy said. “You know how ridiculous it is we’re even talking about a coach that’s won I think 65 percent, I think it’s the fifth-highest winning percentage all-time for guys who have coached five years or more. Do you know how silly it is? But it’s obviously true, or they would’ve come out and said it’s not true at all.” The Bulls, though, believe they’ve supported Thibodeau at every stop. He might disagree. Because the main problem with tracking this story is that most of the action happens behind closed doors in offices and hallways and through text messages. It is a truly NBA story, one with no winners or losers but a lot of opinions.
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