As we said several times last regular season, the Chicago Bulls window for a NBA championship was last year. They wisely kept all the pieces in place this season, and made no significant changes other than the Head Coach. With the NBA All-Star break now over, the back end of Fred Hoiberg regime year one begins, and things are headed in the wrong direction.
Now begins a very critical crossroads period for the Chicago Bulls. As one of the few teams with enough talent in the East to contend with the Cleveland Cavaliers, they can look towards making a final push, if everything somehow goes their way and it all comes together.
With their best player Jimmy Butler out for three more weeks at least, it’s not a likely scenario. We had to throw that out there to present the glass half-full approach. Now for the more realist, and then the glass half-empty outlook.
At 27-25, the Bulls are currently the 7th seed in the Eastern Conference, only a half game ahead of Michael Jordan’s Charlotte Hornets for the final playoff spot. The arch-rival Detroit Pistons are right behind the Hornets, just a game and a half behind the Bulls. Hard to believe the Bulls were actually the #2 seed in the East not all that long ago (around Christmas time).
Today the Bulls are in serious danger of falling out of the playoffs, as they enter a prolonged stretch without their alpha dog.
Maybe Jimmy Buckets will be back for March 5th versus Houston or March 7th versus Milwaukee. That’s the best case scenario.
Given that Chicago hasn’t won a home game since January 7th, I would expect to go finish far below .500 in that sans Butler stretch. It looks highly likely that the Bulls will be significantly under .500 by the time Butler returns and probably around 9th-11th place. You haven’t heard Chicago Bulls and Draft lottery in a very long time. The last time the club didn’t reach the postseason was 2008, the year they lucked into #1 overall pick and then hometown hero Derrick Rose despite lottery top pick odds of just 1.7%.
If the Bulls are the #8 seed this year and face #1 seed Cleveland in the first round, then, well you know how that ends. If you think facing Lebron in the first round of the NBA playoffs is a better situation than taking your chances in the lottery, then I’m sure you also believed everything Dick Cheney told the American public about the Iraq War.
It’s hard to quantify what the chances are of advancing past Lebron this year, but the number might actually make 1.7% look favorable.
By no means is a lottery pick a salvation, but at least it’s a wild card. Another playoff match-up with Lebron sounds so dull and tedious that to even think about it much longer gives me an ice cream headache. Through two stints with the Cavs and one with with the Miami Heat, Lebron has given the Chicago Bulls the very definition of the term “NBA Hell.”
Maybe it’s just the way things worked, maybe it’s coincidence, or maybe it’s karmic payback for what Jordan did to the Cavs, New York Knicks, Indiana Pacers and Utah Jazz in the 1990s. NBA Hell isn’t being in lottery/low seed limbo land like some define it. It’s really the experience of being Sisyphus.
No matter what you do, you can never get over the hump, and it’s the exact same obstruction in your way every single time.
So as we enter mid march with Butler back to full strength where will the Chicago Bulls be? By that point, they’ll have just a month left in the regular season to figure it out. Since everybody seems to think Pau Gasol is out of here after this season, and with Derrick Rose’s free agency coming up after next season, transitioning from contention to “blowing it up” might be the natural direction in 2016-17.
Let’s not kid ourselves, last May, we all knew this day wasn’t all that far off.
To be fair though they did the right thing in keeping the nucleus together from last season. Breaking up the band wasn’t the way to go this past offseason because it wasn’t a very good NBA free agent summer.
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net, partnered with FOX Sports Engage Network. and News Now. Banks, a former writer for the Washington Times, currently contributes regularly to the Chicago Tribune’s RedEye publication and Bold Global.
He also consistently appears on numerous talk shows all across the country. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram