This is Taj Gibson’s eighth year in Chicago. Eight years! Tenures that long in the NBA are rare and are usually reserved for franchise cornerstones. Not saying Taj Gibson isn’t a franchise cornerstone, but…he isn’t a franchise cornerstone. He’s simply been a good enough role player that the Bulls have never seen the point in trading him.
Just for fun, I’m going to look at what the Bulls’ roster looked like in Gibson’s rookie year. The first thing I notice is that Joe Alexander was on that team. Sorry Bulls fans. There’s also some guys named Derrick Rose and Joakim Noah. I wonder what happened to those two dudes. It seemed like they were part of the fabric of Chicago basketball for a long time and then they just, poof, disappeared.
Man. Hakim Warrick and Tyrus Thomas on the same team. Their combined basketball IQ might be a negative number. Brad Miller and Aaron Gray on the same team results in a WQ (whiteness quotient) in the triple digits to compensate. James Johnson is there too, but back then, he was just a bad player instead of the LeBron-lite he is today. And then there’s a thing named “Devin Brown”, who I’m going to assume is just the result of a clerical error by the dudes who run Basketball-Reference.
The players on that 09-10 Bulls team are all gone now, some of them long gone. Vinny Del Negro is gone too. Only Taj Gibson remains. I haven’t decided if that’s a good thing or not.
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