Vinny Del Negro has been ripped hard this year. He has taken beatings from blogs, news outlets and of course, lots of fans. While those beat downs do not affirm some universal truth that Del Negro is a terrible coach, I have never seen such a concerted outcry against a rookie coach. Does anyone out there like this guy besides John Paxson? Even his own boss–Jerry Reinsdorf–gave him a little ‘what for’ recently.

Bill Simmons has come back for seconds. In his recent ‘Sports Guy’ column over at ESPN, Simmons had this to say about VDN:

“I caught the Bulls in person recently and it’s astonishing that they aren’t good or even half-decent. Of all the lousy coaching hirings recently (Porter, Carlesimo, Curry, Vincent, Theus, Iavaroni), what’s funny is Vinny Del Negro was by far the worst. It’s even scarier in person when you’re sitting behind the Bulls’ bench; I know a reader once compared Vinny’s coaching to Shooter’s taking over Hickory High that first time, but actually, it’s more like watching an old person getting ready to go through a metal detector at an airport. Just complete confusion and panic and a lot of stopping and starting and glancing around. I feel bad even making fun of it.”

Harsh. Does anyone remember a coach has taken a beating as bad as VDN? I can’t think of one except for possibly Terry Bevington. I just haven’t read nor heard one good thing about Del Negro. Isn’t that odd?

Simmons’ column is actually about players trade values as we approach the deadline on the 19th. He listed Deng as a “tough omission” to his list of players with the highest trade values, writing that Deng had shown “signs of life” lately. That was actually true until the last 2 games. Thoughts on Deng in the next post…

[tags]Chicago Bulls, Luol Deng, Vinny Del Negro[/tags]