The Bulls' Third Quarter: The waiting is the hardest part

I'll give the Bulls one decent-looking coin for this latest quarter, seeing as they did do, you know, something before the trade deadline. The moves of John Salmons and Tyrus Thomas weren't front page-type deals, but Ken Berger of CBS Sports did place the Bulls among his deadline winners for clearing the cap space they needed to in order to get at least one of those big free agents everybody will be clamoring for this coming summer. I'm keeping the two other dirty looking quarters though, because with just over 20 games to go now in this year's campaign—and just like I was feeling during the last quarter's end—I'm still not expecting anything more from this particular squad beyond the first round.

Shortly after that last write-up about the Bulls, the team had a minor notable accomplishment when they became the first team to win five consecutive road games against teams with winning records at the end of January.

Then they came home and lost to the Clippers.

The Bulls currently sit one game over .500 at 31-30 and occupy the seventh seed, which would earn them an opening round date with the Magic—a team they beat the first time they played them this season in Chicago, then got thumped by 20 points the next time Orlando came to town and have one more date in Florida next week. Of course, the Bulls are going to be in the midst of five teams fighting it out for four spots and 11 of their remaining 21 are against teams with winning records—three of those other 10 games being against teams currently at .500.

Since there's really no good idea of when we're getting that crazy bastard Joakim back from the plantar fasciitis thing, the only thing I'm quite confident I can expect in the coming weeks will be repeated nonsense about how making or missing the playoffs will have some sort of effect on whether free agents want to sign with Chicago. That, of course, is utter nonsense.

As long as the checks clear and the contract's valid, I think if the Bulls are able to outbid everybody else on at least one of those guys that keeps getting mentioned, they'll land the big name they're seeking this off-season. There's been hopes they can pick up two big names, but that's going to take a bit more wheeling and dealing than I really believe GarPax can pull off when considering the bidding war they'll be in.

If nothing else, I can just slap on my 3D glasses and watch how the whole thing plays out. Or I can keep watching this: