NP: Spoon, Gimme Fiction

I'm with Morissey when he says "my head hurts. Not only do I not know how we got here, I don't know where we are."

Yesterday, Scott Skiles was so upset with the Bulls front office that he wasn't going to even get his one-year option picked up. The Trib, who was accused of carrying water for Jerry Reinsdorf in the PR game, unequivocally blamed Skiles, which was perceived as part of the problem. The Sun-Times seemed split on assigning blame.

Then, suddenly, everything changed with a phone call, and Skiles is staying for four guaranteed-salary years.

Seeing as how nobody could figure out whose fault the impasse was, responsibility for the solution is equally unclear. Sam Smith, as to be expected from his alleged role in this drama, says Skiles blinked, although he's pretty flat-out wrong when he says it's the same deal he was offered previously. When you consider that Skiles got all $17 million guaranteed, versus the $14 of the previous offer, Mariotti's amazement that Reinsdorf conceded anything to anybody seems closer to the truth.

When I first checked to see what the non-local press had to say about it, ESPN's front page, naturally, had an NFL story, on the tip of everyone's tongue in June. Now they've got a column up that seems pretty on the level, also giving Skiles credit for the win and giving him the responsibility to keep it up.