Knicks: Oh, sure, the Knicks didn’t win this season.  Watch for them to be extremely active trying to land a sign and trade deal with one of those 2010 free agents.  And look for them to re-sign and dangle restricted free agent David Lee (a very desirable player) and an expire contract, like Larry Hughes, for someone like Chris Bosh.  They get their trading done early enough, they could be a problem.

Do you see the Bulls getting past all of these teams?  If not, then you have no reason to switch coaches.  Best case scenario, the Bulls are a 3-seed.  They shouldn’t fall worse than a 5-seed, barring unforeseen injuries or the sign-and-trades hitting earlier than expected.

The 2010-11 season will probably see great changes, though.  Lots of high profile players will be switching teams.  If you believe in chemistry as a main ingredient of championships, that will be Derek Rose’s third year and most of the team will have been together for 4-6 years, while the superstars of the league may be getting used to new teammates.  If chemistry is your line of demarcation, it’s 2010-11 and perhaps 2011-12 seasons, where you have to ask yourself if Vinny has learned enough about coaching to get you where you want to be.

Should the Bulls get out of the first round next year?  Pending a disastrous off-season, that’s a reasonable goal.  Plugging in some veterans in 2010 and rolling the dice sounds good, but only if the young nucleus stays together and makes steady progress.  If teams really are able to pair up, for the sake of argument, Lebron and Wade or Bosh and Yao Ming, the Bulls might have a little trouble matching that and need to wait for their younger talent to mature and the older talent to age.  (Which is the dilemma of Western Conference GMs: too much young talent on the same rosters.)

The Bulls need to emphasize developing their young frontcourt talent, and a quality big man coach has been a glaring need for a few years, but there’s no need to dump Vinny until it looks like the team has an opportunity to take the next step and Vinny is still too green.  If you don’t like what Vinny’s done, be mad at Bulls management, not Vinny.  Vinny actually brought in better than expected results.  (But remember to thank assistant coaches Del Harris and Bernie Bickerstaff.)    And also bear in mind: that’s a really young nucleus.  If they develop, you can keep them around for a decade.  Unfortunately, while the backcourt players have turned out well in recent years, frontcourt development has been an issue.

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