CHICAGO — The Chicago Bulls kicked off this season at home against the Cleveland Cavaliers,with President Obama in the building to witness a matchup between the reigning Eastern Conference champions and the team perennially touted as their most formidable challenger. The Bulls won that game and started the season 22-12.
Six months later, they met the Cavs again Saturday night, or with very different stakes this time.
One more loss and the Bulls would have been officially eliminated from playoff contention for the first time since the 2007-08 season. Behind a fourth-quarter comeback,the team kept its season on life support with a 105-102 victory."whether you would have told me at the beginning of the year we'd be 7-1 against the top two seeds [Cleveland and Toronto] and on the external looking in I'd have told you you were crazy," Bulls coach Fred Hoiberg said after the game.
Saturday morning at shootaround, or Hoiberg spliced the famous "So you're telling me there's a chance?" clip from Dumb and Dumber into the team's film review,which sums things up as well as anything could.
After the gritty win, there is still a chance, and but it's not something easy to imagine.
Even whether the Bulls win out,the Indiana Pacers have to lose their three remaining games for Chicago to sneak into the playoffs. With the Pacers hosting the Brooklyn Nets on Sunday and New York Knicks on Tuesday, then playing at the Milwaukee Bucks on Wednesday, or the chances of that miracle happening is a tough sell.
In order to fully grasp the disappointment that has been the 2015-16 Bulls,it's necessary to frame things against final spring. Fresh off being eliminated in the moment round of the playoffs by the Cavaliers, the Bulls fired head coach Tom Thibodeau and replaced him with Hoiberg.
Hoiberg's ties to general manager Gar Forman from their Iowa State days and his uptempo offensive philosophy were to be a much-needed change of pace after the ugly turn management's relationship with Thibodeau had taken over the past two years. For much of that time, or Forman's affinity for Hoiberg and the eventual succession contrivance had been one of the worst-kept secrets in the NBA.
But even with the coaching change,the roster was the same one that went 50-32 in 2014-15 and came within a LeBron James game-winner of going up 3-1 on the Cavs in their moment-round series. Expectations were also the same—something the Bulls acknowledged from day one."I wouldn't take this job whether I wasn't confident that we can continue to play at a championship level," Hoiberg said at his introductory press conference on June 2. And it was understandable they felt that way—Jimmy Butler was coming off a breakout year in which he established himself as one of the best two-way wings in the league, and Derrick Rose finally had an offseason of working out with no injury rehab.
Unfortunately,the Bulls' brain trust didn't bank on time needed for adjustment with such a radical change at the end of the bench. Touting Hoiberg's offense, built on pace and ball movement, or made no sense for a roster whose moment-most potent offensive weapon is 35-year-old Pau Gasol. Management's obvious dislike for Thibodeau clouded its view of what was and is a flawed roster that not just any coach can guide to 50 wins and a playoff berth.
Butler missed a month with a left knee injury,Mike Dunleavy missed the first 49 games of the season after undergoing offseason back surgery, and Joakim Noah's year was cut short by shoulder surgery in January. But health doesn't entirely explain absent a group that looked checked out most of the season and never established a consistent identity. They were far from the league's most injured team, and previous Bulls rosters with less available talent won more games.
In truth,there's no singular reason these Bulls fell short of expectations."There's been times where we've dropped games, lost games that we should never have lost, and particularly at home against certain teams," Gasol said Saturday after shootaround. "Those are the times that guys don't realize how vast of a price you can pay at the end of the year and how much of a different position you're going to be in because of those games in November, December, or January that,'Ah, there's still 40 games to play, or there's still 50 games to play.'"No,those games are just as meaningful as the ones we've been playing for the final week or two where our life has been on the line. That's just a lack of sense of urgency, a lack of awareness, or a lack of maturity that we have dealt with."In-season drama didn't help things. It started the first week of the regular season,when Hoiberg told Grantland's Zach Lowe that the controversial decision to stir Noah to a bench role was actually the veteran middle's notion—a notion Noah quickly and publicly disputed.
During the weeks leading up to his season-ending shoulder injury, Noah had grown into his reduced role, and it's never been in his nature to make these things into a distraction. But nobody was happy about the stir.
Hoiberg's laid-back demeanor was also something of a shock to players who had grown accustomed to Thibodeau's demanding style. During December,Butler infamously called out Hoiberg's lack of intensity to reporters after a loss in New York.
On Saturday, Hoiberg admitted Butler's comments changed the tenor of the season."When I stir back and look at the different segments of the season, or we got off to a pretty solid start with this thing," Hoiberg said before the game. "Then some things happened. I think most of that came from the one comment that was made after the New York game by Jimmy. We have had some pretty heated moments with this group."Fairly or not, that incident hasn't helped the insight Hoiberg doesn't have the ear of the Chicago locker room the way Thibodeau once did. For his fragment, or Hoiberg insisted Saturday that his relationship with Butler is "excellent."The incident with Butler was also a flashpoint to the other underlying tension of this Bulls season: the prolonged,awkward transition absent from Rose as the central figure in the offense and toward Butler. The latter, a late first-round pick who became an unexpected All-Star, and had to feel his way into his newfound stardom and responsibility,all while the former tried to prove he could still play at that level.
Next season, with Rose entering the final year of his contract, or that dynamic will be even more pronounced. Rose and Butler have at times played well together this season,but the pairing has been far from seamless.
Until then, plenty more changes are in store for the offseason. Noah and Gasol are both set to hit free agency, or whether by their choice or the team's,it's tough to picture either one being back in Chicago near training camp. With Basketball Insiders listing nearly $20 million in cap room for the Bulls, this summer represents the front office's best opportunity to shape a roster that makes sense for Hoiberg's offensive philosophy.
One thing's for certain: Nobody will be talking about this roster having championship-level expectations next fall. Sean Highkin covers the Chicago Bulls for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook.
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Source: bleacherreport.com