It was October 17, 2017 when Bobby Portis’ punch was heard around the Berto Center. The beatdown of Niko Mirotic was so bad he had to go to the hospital. Two bones in his face broken. Add a concussion as well. Immediately Bobby Portis was sent home on a timeout. The league then suspended Bobby Portis for 8 games. Since then Niko Mirotic has been recovering. He is able to do some light workouts. Only when the team is not present. Meanwhile Bobby Portis served his 8 games and has come back and played very well. Seems like the rest of the team are giving their support to Portis. While stories out of Mirotic camp are he wants to be traded one day and the next day he’d like to play for the Bulls.

“Both Niko and Bobby are on our roster right now and Niko’s getting cleared to do more. This obviously is coming to a position where it’s going to have to be resolved between the two.”

Words spoken by the Bulls President of Basketball Operations, John Paxson. Again since October 17 and it’s the middle of November now and the Bulls do not have this situation taken care of. BRAVO again for a job not done. I guess Bobby Portis tried to reach out with texts and voice messages. Nothing has happened. The Bulls way is let it linger instead of cleaning the stink out and moving on to the regular season and day to day basketball operations.

I know the Bulls are in position just to release their players as it’s a team with a lot of young and unproven players who need time to get better. Both Portis and Mirotic will have to be on the court at some time. Bobby Portis is a young player that has still been developing so not really a trade market on his ability as player yet. Meanwhile Mirotic had some interest from other teams in the off season but not much as no one offered him a big contact. They kicked the tires on him and left him to another lot down the block. No one is going to want damaged goods either. If Mirotic wants a trade, he will have to get on court and show the whole league he can rebound after his face got beaten in and play well like he did towards the end of last year’s regular season. He’s got a very good stretch of games where he caught on fire.

Seriously what in the world does John Paxson or Gar Forman do over there? They should have  handled this already. I know the players are adults they are dealing with, but some way they should have these two in the office and lay out all the facts for them and tell them how this will play out. Where’s the Coach in this? Is Fred Hoiberg’s job only to come up with offensive schemes to shoot the ball from the outside? If you have to lock these two guys in a room until they kiss and make up, then do that. Maybe the Irish way, go out have some drinks and sweep this mess under the rug, so the story goes away.  I do not expect them to be riding a tandem bike singing “my buddy.” However they just need to coexist on the court and take it from there. Meanwhile someone put a sign on the Berto Center, “HELP WANTED apply with in” to take over Bulls’ management. I would even take the guy that runs the local Dairy Queen. He might be off at this time of the year as it’s their off season. Dilly bars for everyone when the team scores over a 100 points.  DILLY DILLY!!!