Final Thoughts on 2009-10 Chicago Bulls: Same Old Song and Dance

The Trib had this graphic of King James on the front page of their sports section this morning for this story, and that of course brought a great many things to my mind at once.

First, I thought back to one of the many sports magazine covers I had way back before I entered my teens—and that I had just been discussing one issue in particular that even way back then was partaking in the photographic fun that these days is more commonplace, especially during many fans' free agency fantasies. LeBron here, for example, has already been imagined in multiple jerseys. But I'm fairly certain that the issue I'm thinking of was called Inside Sports, and the issue I'm thinking of had Michael Jordan on its cover during one of the years it was still uncertain where he would end up after the season—as though there were ever any doubt. It's easy to say in hindsight, but when I brought this up last week, I was wondering if maybe that's what we're about to see now: a whole slew of LeBron speculation going all sorts of other places when the guy just ends up staying where exactly he is.

I looked for that cover with multiple images of Michael, the same shot of him driving to the basket but one almost certainly in a Knicks jersey, another probably in a Lakers jersey, and most likely another contender I'm forgetting. But I couldn't find that cover anywhere on a Google Image search, although I do remember owning this issue. And this one for some reason looks a lot like a comic book character drawing of mine I just saw.

But like I said, this image brought multiple things to mind at once, because it's so easy to get off-topic when talking about this past year's Bulls squad seeing as last season was just essentially another one that didn't count. By now, I guess we should be getting used to this.

Dan Bernstein said the Tribune illustration ruined his five-year-old son's day after his wife mistakenly exclaimed, "Oh my God! The Bulls got LeBron?!" For me, I can already see the fans I know also misinterpreting this graphic as well—not to mention what that accompanying article's actually about—just as much as that five-year-old. So my reaction was something more like this. But that might also have something to do with the additional illustration at the end of the article in the print version. It featured the writer, KC Johnson, holding a clipboard and saying how he wouldn't be coaching the team come July 1. It would be funny, I suppose, this article saying how we don't really know anything and a couple of Photoshop projects if, you know, the same writer hadn't also knowingly sat on a story in which the actual head coach got into a physical confrontation with his boss. That sort of stuff seems like it should have been news, but maybe I'm the one missing the point here.

Another thing I was reminded of was this year-end summary for the Bulls, something I've put off writing but probably should get done since I said something-or-rather about having more stuff to post between rounds of the NBA and NHL playoffs. But I've been busy. And when you consider how this past season went, I don't think it's too hard to understand why I haven't been more enthused to talk about the Bulls—seeing as it's not July 1 yet. And I'm slowly preparing for the worst. I figure at least that way, if the team does indeed make a true franchise-changing addition, we'll really be going somewhere.

But just to recap really quickly, by quarter:

1.  December 10, 2009 (7-13): The Bulls had dropped four in a row (including one inexcusably to New Jersey), already allowed an opponent to tie their shoe while holding the ball, and probably should have seen all the signs in going from ecstasy to agony in a couple tenths of a second. I had already begun asking when Vinny Del Negro would be fired.
2. January 25, 2010 (21-22): The team had won three in a row and were actually in the middle of making history. As a gift to fans, the ever-late Bulls deliver the most shameful loss of the season on the day after Christmas by blowing a 35-point lead against the Sacramento Kings. It's the second-largest choke-job in NBA history not involving John Paxson and Vinny Del Negro, of course, both of whom I'm hoping will be fired after having read this. (Seriously, this still has the record.)
3. March 5, 2010 (31-30): By moving Tyrus Thomas and John Salmons, I was more excited than ever—about free agency. So much so, in fact, that I didn't even bother complaining about Vinny Del Negro. But the Bulls were only two games into what ended up being a 10-game losing streak and then I went back to basics.
4. April 16, 2010 (41-41): The Bulls actually finish at exactly .500 for the second consecutive year—which is of course good enough to qualify for the playoffs in the Eastern Conference, but at that point everybody's really talking about this. And free agency.

So now that the Cavs got tired of playing with this year's version of Bulls basketball much faster than last year's Celtics did, the team's going to have a new look next year—except in that front office, of course, which will in all likelihood remain some sort of kabuki act of transferring responsibility and decision-making between the Gar or the Pax part of operations.

But now that Vinny will no longer be the head coach, I guess we need to start there. Considering how totally incompetent the Bulls ended up looking two years ago when we last went through this (Mike D'Antoni was heavily-rumored to be our next leader before he ended up publicly pantsing Pax and agreeing to lead the Knicks a month before Doug Collins being the next heavily-rumored hire only to decide he didn't want to sacrifice his friendship with Jerry Reinsdorf ... and then less than a week later, voilà, Vinny's suddenly our guy). I've been pretty rough on Del Negro along the way, but I can not deny that it became apparent to me before season's end that he was ultimately becoming a genuinely sympathetic figure.

Kelly Dwyer:

"So the Bulls will treat Del Negro like crap until that's figured out, and it's not like Vinny isn't used to it. He wasn't a good coach, but nobody deserved the sort of treatment Del Negro got this season. The Bulls should be embarrassed."

I can't argue with that. And I wonder how all of it will affect this next head coaching search, even though there's certainly a lot of possibilities that the legendary Sam Smith runs through here. I too would get excited about Mo Cheeks (and yes, this still rules), but in all honesty, my own primary area of concern and the area that's going to determine how many Bulls games I actually watch start-to-finish next year remains with the roster.

Hence that part of the title to this post. The big batch of free agents has been common knowledge for a while, and it's basically the same four names I hear getting mentioned:

1. LeBron James — I'm not buying into it for a second, but you saw what I led with here and plenty of Chicagoans see no reason not take up some dreaming. This website needs volunteers. The title of this site tell you just about all you need to know. A caller on the radio this morning actually takes the cake for saying that some of this friends whom he considered to be "bigger fans" than himself actually expressed concern about where a statue for LeBron would go. (Yes, really.) I can only conclude that those retro jerseys the Cavs wore so often could easily be mistaken for a Knicks version when viewed from behind, but regardless of how things play out in this year's playoffs, I still think LeBron stays in Ohio.
2. Dwayne Wade — Another highly-romanticized big name, although this notion gained some traction when it was reported that Wade bought a townhouse in his hometown here in Chicago back in August. As of late, I'm sure he'd rather talk about anything not involving that girl from Bring It On, but Chicago's not the only team working with cap space here. And really, if you had to guess which location any of these free agents would rather go between Chicago or Miami, what do you really think they're going to pick? Wade's not going anywhere.
3. Chris Bosh — Those who've dismissed the first two names as being too unlikely more often than not throw out the name of this Twitter fiend, and indeed Chicago could work out better for him than either Miami or even the closer-to-home Oklahoma City if the concern really is with not wanting to play center. But my guess is going to be a sign-and-trade deal that sends him somewhere other than Chicago.
4. Joe Johnson — This could go either way, and while Sam Smith certainly seems to be sold on the Bulls being able bring in the Hawks guard ("From everything I’ve heard, the Bulls would have to mess it up to lose Johnson."), how can I ignore Kelly Dwyer's comments from that same piece I referenced before about how "Johnson's stats at age 28 scarily resemble Jalen Rose's stats at the same age, the year before Chicago traded for him." Yeah, yikes. Still, Johnson's got the same agent as the good Rose, so this is the probably the most likely of the four.

Again, these are just the four names that I hear mentioned most often in whatever conversations there are about the Bulls. There's going to be plenty of others that are possibilities as well and Chicago should certainly have the bling necessary to be a real player. But the bigger question for me right now would be if the Bulls can avoid overspending on lesser talent. While another year of waiting for another crop of free agents doesn't sound promising, it would certainly be preferable to being tied up with a new bad contract or two.

But beyond that, I honestly have to believe it's indeed going to take a headline-grabbing level of free agent signing to really get me to make a more conscious effort to catch more Bulls games next year. The small rivalry between Blackhawks fans and Bulls fans was mentioned briefly on the radio this season, and I think that throughout most of the 1990s, I clearly preferred the basketball in Chicago to the hockey.

I can't be certain of exactly when, but seeing as the Bulls immediately followed up their sixth title by dismantling the team and proceeding in the 1998-99 season to amass a 92.4, their lowest team Offensive Rating (points scored per 100 possessions) since they started keeping track of it in the '77-78 season. The next year, the Bulls offered up their second-worst with a slightly improved 94.2 rating. And even if you prefer John Hollinger's Offensive Efficiency ranking, the results of pretty much every team since 1998 has been ugly as sin to watch with a basketball. We've talked a lot about defense in hopes you might not notice that we're not too hot on the offense.

Barring occasional exceptions (see Scott Skiles' tenure, probably before Ben Wallace started all that shit), it's been a decade's worth of lackluster results. And when you combine that year-after-year of not being the Jordan Bulls with the sudden rise and remarkable resurgence of the United Center's other resident, the Blackhawks, it's hardly any surprise that the little tag cloud on my more frequently updated blog shows that in the roughly two seasons of both teams that site's been alive, I've posted about the hockey team more than the basketball team by a roughly three-to-one margin.

Beyond sharing the same venue, the Bulls and the 'Hawks also have roughly the same times for the beginnings and endings of their respective seasons—although it appears this year that the hockey team will play on a bit deeper into the playoffs than the basketball team. Neither baseball team here's much of a factor since the season there doesn't start until the same time the NBA or NHL playoffs are starting anyway, but I don't really get fully into either Bulls or Blackhawks mode until football season's concluded. It's been like this for as long as I can remember and may continue to be like this for a while.

Still, if I were forced to declare one or the other when the Bulls and the Blackhawks are the only two acts in town, then I'm tremendously more optimistic, intrigued and enthusiastic about the 'Hawks. There's rarely a regular season game of theirs I'm not aware of or making an attempt to see. There's no such effort for Bulls telecasts, which might be on another station at the same time for all I know. At the moment, the Blackhawks are four wins away from going to the Stanley Cup Final, at which point I imagine that many more Chicagoans are going to feel quite similarly to me.

But even if the hockey team loses in this round, being this close once again marks the second straight conference finals appearance—something the Bulls haven't done in the basketball post-season since ... well, 1998. I wouldn't act as though this particular off-season alone could suddenly reverse which way my interest has been leaning ever since the late "Dollar Bill" Wirtz passed and we suddenly had home games on television sets again, but don't tell me I haven't been patient either. After six titles, I wouldn't exactly try to pass these last dozen seasons off as an unparalleled level of suffering (at least I'm not a Clippers fan?), but I don't need to hear any more about how good Derrick Rose is going to be "once we get _______."

If the Bulls end up adding the big names of a rim-rattling nature, then maybe I can work up a little more belief in what the future holds. Perhaps then I can title my 2010-11 Bulls Preview: Now or Never.