The Bulls' front office desperately needed a shake-up, and got one

When "The Last Dance" - a documentary 22 years in the making - debuts Sunday night, basketball fans young and old will get the chance to reminisce about the greatest run in Chicago Bulls history, and perhaps even NBA history.

After delivering the Bulls a sixth championship in eight seasons, Michael Jordan walked away from the franchise for the last time in 1998, leaving behind him expectations that could never be met. No mere mortal was going to fill his shoes in the Windy City, but even the most pessimistic Bulls fans expected better than what they've experienced in those 22 years since.

There were some blips of positivity here and there.

A young core dubbed the "Baby Bulls," featuring Kirk Hinrich, Luol Deng, Ben Gordon, and Tyson Chandler broke through in the mid-2000s. The team won at least 41 games and made the postseason in three consecutive years, emerging victorious from one playoff series. Those three campaigns marked the only postseason appearances during the first 10 years following Jordan's retirement.

Of course, the Bulls' greatest post-Jordan run came a few years later. Chicago clinched seven straight postseason berths from 2009 to 2015, peaking in 2010-11 and 2011-12 when Derrick Rose (who was voted league MVP in 2011) led a defensive juggernaut of a supporting cast featuring Deng, Joakim Noah, and Carlos Boozer to consecutive No. 1 overall seeds.

However, LeBron James' Miami Heat and a career-defining knee injury for Rose cut down any postseason aspirations. The Bulls won only four playoff series in those seven seasons, never advancing further than a five-game loss to Miami in the 2011 Eastern Conference finals.

A couple of exciting runs notwithstanding, the fact is the Bulls rank 23rd in win percentage and 19th in playoff victories in the 22 seasons since "The Last Dance." During that time, Chicago has plowed through 11 different head coaches. Yet, much to the chagrin of Bulls fans, some things have remained mostly the same, namely the front-office duo of Gar Forman and John Paxson.

Paxson, who won three championships with the Bulls as a player and knocked down the title-clinching jumper in 1993, took over as general manager in 2003. Upon his promotion to vice president of basketball operations in 2009, Paxson appointed Forman - a Bulls scout since 1998 and later the team's director of player personnel - Chicago's new GM.

In the time since, the duo appeared untouchable as they continually tried to reinvent the Bulls and shuffled through coaches all while escaping accountability for the team's failures.

Often referred to as "GarPax," the pair seemingly became out of touch with the modern NBA in recent years, famously assembling a team devoid of shooting featuring Jimmy Butler, Dwyane Wade, and Rajon Rondo in 2016. They then named Jim Boylen the team's full-time head coach in 2018 despite disastrous results in his tenure as interim bench boss.

Boylen preaches old-school work ethic and uses ill-timed teaching moments to mask the painful reality that he's in over his head as an NBA head coach. A competent executive with a tangible vision for the future could see as much.

The team may have finally found that person when it hired executive VP of basketball operations Arturas Karnisovas, who matched up against Jordan's United States Dream Team while representing Lithuania at the 1992 Olympics.

Karnisovas' hiring was met with league-wide praise, but it was Chicago's removal of the old guard that offers additional optimism. The Bulls fired Forman and reassigned Paxson to a senior advisor role.

Boylen is reportedly confident he'll keep his job, but the smart money is on Karnisovas and Co. hiring their own coach.

As unbelievable as it sounds, the addition of Karnisovas marks the Bulls' first outside hire to run basketball operations in the 35 years Jerry Reinsdorf has owned the team. And, for now, Karnisovas is saying all the right things.

"I like multi-positional players. I like guys with high basketball IQ that play off each other," the former Nuggets assistant GM told reporters Monday during a conference call.

He's also reportedly committed to hiring a person of color as the team's new general manager after the executive search that resulted in his own hiring was criticized for its lack of diversity.

Despite being on pace for a third consecutive season of at least 55 losses, part of the underlying intrigue for Karnisovas has to be the young talent at his disposal. The Bulls have plenty of it, even if it doesn't all fit.

Rookie guard Coby White was coming on strong, averaging 26.1 points on 48-43-90 shooting over his last nine games, and finally earned his first career start in the Bulls' final contest before the season was suspended. The fact it took that long for him to get the opportunity has been one of the maddening subplots of watching Boylen's Bulls.

Sophomore center Wendell Carter has promising two-way potential. Lauri Markkanen, who's the eldest of this trio at just 22 years old, averaged nearly 19 points per game during an encouraging sophomore season only to see his offensive role inexplicably reduced in his third campaign:

Even second-round draft pick Daniel Gafford showed flashes of becoming a key rotation piece as a rookie.

Is it an abomination that Otto Porter Jr., Zach LaVine, Thaddeus Young, Tomas Satoransky, and Cristiano Felicio will combine to earn more than $79 million next season? Without question. Putting together an inharmonious group of veterans is where GarPax seemed to have lost the plot, though Felicio's deal is the only true head-scratcher.

Porter, LaVine, Young, and Satoransky aren't bad players. Young and Porter are solid 3-and-D pieces, LaVine - while defensively inept - can be touted as a borderline All-Star by a franchise desperate enough to take a flier on him, and Satoransky might even make sense as somewhat of a veteran glue-guy for the Bulls themselves. Chicago could free up crucial development time for its younger talent by moving a couple of those high-priced veterans.

The Bulls also have all of their upcoming first-round picks. Will they find a blue-chipper in that mix of current and future players? Maybe not, but the playoff race isn't far out of reach in a top-heavy Eastern Conference, and the Bulls could be only a shrewd move or two away from an exciting season built upon the promise of high-upside youngsters. In a market like Chicago (the NBA's fourth-largest), sometimes that's all you need to get the ball rolling and attract the attention of a marquee free agent.

Boozer represents Chicago's biggest free-agent acquisition in recent memory, but the city can again be a glamourous destination. It will be interesting to see how a new executive with fresh ideas and no allegiances to a poorly assembled roster can mold things in a market one might consider a sleeping giant.

There's still work to do, and perhaps more short-term pain to endure. But as NBA observers prepare to indulge in memories of Chicago's glory years, Bulls fans can breathe a little easier about the team's future. All it took was the organization finally breaking free of its murkier recent past.

Joseph Casciaro is theScore's senior basketball writer.