John Paxson tried to quit once before. As the Bulls were stumbling through the 2008-2009 season, one led by rookie point guard Derrick Rose and rookie head coach Vinny Del Negro, rumors swirled around the team that Paxson’s resignation was imminent.

At that point, Paxson had been the Bulls’ general manager for six seasons, leading Chicago out of the dark ages following Michael Jordan’s second retirement but consistently failing to trade for a superstar to take his rebuild to the next level. Paxson’s Bulls had flatlined, going from 49 wins to 49 losses the season prior, one that ultimately ended with the team winning the lottery for Rose.

Now the Bulls were staggering again, outside the Eastern Conference playoff picture when word of Paxson’s exit started to spread. Paxson had already been involved with this game and this organization for a lifetime. His son was about to join the Marines. There was no shame in any of this, just a proud man deciding perhaps he could do something better with his time than make lowball offers for Kevin Garnett. There appeared to be only one thing preventing Paxson from leaving the franchise: Jerry Reinsdorf wouldn’t let him do it.

“If there’s one person that is not responsible for what’s going on right now, it’s John Paxson,” Reinsdorf said. “I have tremendous confidence in John Paxson.”

That quote, right there, is the answer to so many questions. How does an NBA team employ the same GM for 15 years? Why does one man get to hire five head coaches without a single trip to the NBA Finals? Where is the accountability when a global brand devolves into a league-wide punchline?

“If there’s one person that is not responsible for what’s going on right now, it’s John Paxson.”

Paxson even told you this himself at the onset of the season, when he refused to set expectations for his team and outright denied culpability for its fate. Paxson is the man who put together the roster, yes. He’s the one who traded Jimmy Butler, who re-signed Zach LaVine, who made a deal for Cameron Payne, who cut Spencer Dinwiddie for Michael Carter-Williams, who let E’Twaun Moore walk, who badly overpaid Cristiano Felicio, who traded Nikola Mirotic for a weak package. He’s the one who made the worst signing in Chicago sports history with Dwyane Wade, and then essentially repeated the same mistake with Jabari Parker.

Through it all, it’s never been John Paxson’s fault, at least not to his boss who continues to make money hand over fist for the team he barely cares about. But as the Chairman was lighting a cigar and celebrating the underserved induction of Harold Baines into baseball’s Hall of Fame, his Bulls were again humiliating themselves on the national stage.

This time, it was under Paxson’s hand-picked head coach, the man he chose to lead his team because he wanted them treated like a bunch of acned suburban high schoolers instead of well-paid professionals. The Bulls are again the league’s biggest laughingstock. Even the fucking Kings are mocking them. The Kings.

This level of embarrassment for the Chicago Bulls is nothing new. It’s not a singular incident. Under John Paxson, disgrace isn’t the exception, it’s the rule.

Paxson loves to talk about Bulls culture. When the team added Doug Collins to its front office at the start of last year, he explained his own role like this:

“My responsibilities lie mostly in defining the culture of what we do every day.”

Let’s talk about Bulls culture under John Paxson.

Bulls culture is assaulting your own head coach in the locker room. Bulls culture is misdiagnosing Luol Deng’s injury and then questioning his toughness in the media when he was physically incapable of playing. Bulls culture is creating a toxic locker room with rifts so pronounced they had to be settled on Instagram. Bulls culture is one teammate punching another in the face and blaming the victim. Bulls culture is spying on your own team. Bulls culture is the classless letter this organization sent out after firing Tom Thibodeau. Bulls culture is dragging your players through the mud the moment they leave the organization.

For someone so willing to talk about the culture of this organization, Paxson sure has botched it at every step of his career. The man hasn’t just built bad teams, he’s created a hostile work environment that no player should willingly want to come into. It’s no wonder this franchise annually strikes out on free agents.

Of course, it’s never John Paxson’s fault. It’s Derrick Rose’s fault for not being a good enough recruiter. It’s Thibodeau’s fault for coaching the team too hard. It’s Fred Hoiberg’s fault for not coaching the team hard enough. It’s Jimmy Butler’s fault for wanting the money that he’s earned. It’s anyone’s fault but Paxson’s.

Blame Gar Forman if you have to, the insecure snake of an executive who Paxson has empowered and then hidden behind when things have gone south. Blame Rose’s injuries even though this team lucked into a player almost as good with Butler and still couldn’t do shit. Blame free agents for choosing to play elsewhere, as if there’s anything appealing about playing for this organization under Paxson’s watch.

The trainwreck that is Jim Boylen’s brief head coaching tenure with the Bulls only underscores how broken the Bulls’ culture really is under Paxson. It was Boylen’s idea to pull the starters with 21 minutes left against the Celtics. It was Boylen who embarrassed the franchise with a 56-point loss because he refused to put his best players back in, all so they could have a hard practice the next day during a stretch of three games in four nights. It was Boylen who lost the team within a week by treating them like children, making them do push-ups at practice, forcing them to run suicides, and both publicly and privately questioning their toughness.

Jim Boylen sucks, and the players told him as much to his face. At best, Boylen is an extension of Paxson, from the farcical military fetishizing to the assbackward way of treating pros in 2018.

No one coaches this way any more. The last man who had success with it was Thibodeau, who the organization promptly blasted the moment he was fired. It’s all more proof that John Paxson isn’t cut out for this job in the NBA’s modern era. He should have been fired years ago, and he should be fired again right now.

Problem is, it won’t happen, not under Jerry Reinsdorf’s watch. The Bulls are a family business, one that prides itself on money and loyalty while caring not a bit about the paying customer. The Bulls think you are stupid, that you’ll continue to support the team because Dwyane Wade grew up in Robbins and Jabari Parker went to Simeon. The fans, meanwhile, weren’t second guessing these moves. They were first guessing them. It doesn’t take a genius to realize John Paxson is in so far over his own head.

John Paxson has driven the Chicago Bulls into the ground. He’s taken one of the great franchises in all of sports and has turned them into a laughingstock. This should be a global brand that superstars want to play for. Instead, it’s a franchise that runs itself like a mid-market club because they can get away with it. All the while, Reinsdorf is looking at his Paul Konerko World Series ball, admiring the six titles Michael Jordan brought him, and accepting that his Bulls have had a good run during his life.

That good run expired a long, long time ago. The Bulls should be the Lakers and the Yankees. Instead, they’d rather see themselves as the Indiana Pacers and Milwaukee Bucks. Maybe a great GM could have rescued the franchise from an owner who doesn’t actually care. Paxson isn’t that GM.

John Paxson will never be fired, so he must do the only honorable thing there is left: he has to fire himself. The man has done many good things for this franchise in his time here. He can pride himself on leaving them with Wendell Carter Jr. and Lauri Markkanen, two wonderful building blocks for the future. But at this point, the Bulls’ reputation has dissolved to such a significant degree that it needs a new leader. It needs a new culture.

Paxson has spent 15 years building the worst culture in the NBA this side of the disgusting Dallas Mavericks. The league has passed him by. Fire the coach, sure. Blame the players, of course. The cycle renews itself annually. Until John Paxson leaves, nothing with the Bulls will ever change.