For two games, I actually enjoyed watching the Chicago Bulls. Those two games happened last week, when they beat the top-seeded Boston Celtics twice at home to open up the first round.
Four games later, the Bulls season is over and done. It’s been a long time coming.
We knew Chicago couldn’t possible be good this season from the moment they signed Dwyane Wade and Rajon Rondo to join Jimmy Butler in the summer. They could be fine, maybe, and they were just that, finishing the year with a 41-41 record that was just barely good enough to sneak into the No. 8 seed in the Eastern Conference. Bulls head coach Fred Hoiberg has appeared out of his depth for two seasons now, but he also was hired out of the college ranks known for his pace-and-space offenses. Instead of players who fit that style, the much maligned Chicago front office gave him two non-shooters with star pedigree that he had no choice but to play.
It got so bad at one point that Hoiberg actually felt like he had to bench Rondo, despite everything. He did just that to begin the calendar year, benching him for five games and then bringing him off the bench for a few months, until injuries vaulted Rondo back into the starting five. Rondo will forever be one of the most interesting players the league has seen in the past decade, but his relevancy in a modern NBA is fading quickly.
So much of the work fell to Butler on a nightly basis, who shouldered the burden (albeit with the occasional complaint) tirelessly while recording his best season yet. He was better in virtually every area: points, rebounds, assists, and efficiency, all while being able to take on the lead defensive assignment with generally good results when asked to do so.
But there were more interesting one-man shows around the league this year, like Russell Westbrook. It took work to suffer through watching the Bulls only to see Butler work his magic, especially as Chicago slogged their way to a record even worse than last year’s by a game. To nobody’s surprise, Wade had his worst season to date, putting up points but only sometimes caring about anything besides that. (Even in a playoff game, he couldn’t always care.)
The most exciting thing the Bulls had going for them was a small squadron of young players: Cristiano Felicio, Bobby Portis, Paul Zipser, Denzel Valentine, even Jerian Grant. They were inconsistent as hell, sometimes hurting way more than they helped, but they sure were fun. On a Bulls team with a capped ceiling, they added unpredictability and at least some variability.
That clearly manifested itself as the vaunted #TNTBulls winning streak continued. Chicago still hasn’t lost a regular season game on TNT Thursday since 2013, and generally, they played good teams exceptionally well, good enough to beat them here and there. It was the bad teams they really struggled against.
One statistically bizarre win streak, though, can’t make up for an uninspired team built by a front office -- Gar Forman and John Paxson -- that is damn near universally hated by its fan base. They apparently toyed with the idea of trading Butler at the trade deadline, and ultimately pulled back from that idea.
That was Chicago for 82 games: poorly constructed, infrequently motivated, and actively disregarding the direction that modern basketball is headed. In Game 6 on Friday when they finally lost their first round series against Boston, their fans looked like this.
We should go back to those first two games, though, when Chicago whipped the Celtics for two games before they were inevitably crushed. For the first time all season, the Bulls were really, actually, truly ... kind of fun? Could that be right?
In those two wins, Hoiberg had loosened up the rotation a little, Rondo looked like he had never cared about anything more than these first round wins, and Butler was getting his comeuppance. Chicago probably shouldn’t have even made the playoffs, only sneaking in with a run arguably fueled by Wade’s injury absence. (It’s a simplified, but amusing, summation of their seven wins in their final nine games.) But once they got there, they did something that was pretty close to be unprecedented. That’s something, no doubt.
After that, the Bulls fell on their face, and you have to think this season was destined for that eventually. Winning a couple games against a No. 1 seed made it even better, only to fall apart afterwards, make it all the much better.
Chicago’s season wasn’t an unpleasant one because it was unpredictable, but because even when they did beat a good team, you knew they weren’t really going anywhere. The path to 41 wins might have been an airstrip lined with flares that Chicago spent the entire year circling before decided that, yeah, they were fine settling it. As if anything else was ever going to happen.
For a couple games, it looked like they might nail the landing. Now, the only question is whether Butler will emergency eject from this burning husk of a team before it’s too late to save himself.