The Bulls' Fourth Quarter: Semi-Charmed Season

It was another hard-fought season of Chicago Bulls basketball, with the team holding its own despite losing its marquee player and trading away a longtime contributor as well. Tom Thibodeau once again worked his magic with this seemingly doomed roster, and the Bulls somehow end up having home-court advantage in the first round of the playoffs. Perhaps most astonishingly, it very much seemed that other teams in the Eastern Conference were doing their best to avoid having to play Chicago in the first or second round.

That speaks volumes of the type of opponent that the Bulls can be. Even though the offense is lackluster (to put it kindly), the defense remains the selling point and now win against this team comes without being earned through 48 minutes of grueling work. So does that translate to a championship threat? Of course not.

And there's sort of the rub with being a Bulls fan. We're becoming more and more used to this annual collection of scrappy underdogs overachieving without ever really being realistically in the title conversation. The signings and moves at the end of the year is fueling speculation that GarPax may be maneuvering to acquire Carmelo Anthony during the off-season, which certainly sounds good on paper. The problem it that we've been down this fantasy free agent road before, and the results rarely work out in Chicago's favor.

For now, I'll try to enjoy the prospect of the Bulls giving an Indiana or even a Miami fits, but it remains just about impossible for me to truly build up any real hopes about a Larry O'Brien Trophy being presented to this basketball team in June. They try hard and leave it all on the floor, sure, but it's only fair to admit that there remains a very real ceiling for the squad.




And so the Bulls end up exactly where I expected them to division-wise at the beginning of the year, and only one spot lower than I had them conference-wise. While the Pacers finished the season with the best record in the East, there isn't anyone that's afraid of them anymore. After losing convincingly in their opener to the anemic Atlanta Hawks last night, there's even doubts that Indiana escapes Round One.

The rest of the division fell far short of the expectations I had for them, but I'll dwell more on that in the NBA end of the year wrap-up. The playoffs do admittedly offer more enticing possible matchups than I had been anticipating, oh, a month ago, so there's a chance that a deeper Bulls run than I had been counting on could result in me watching more basketball than usual (but not more than hockey, of course). Still, I cannot stress enough that you will not hear any title talk from me if the Bulls progress past the conference semifinals. Even if they were to miraculously escape the East, chances seem good that any one of the three likeliest teams to come out of the West would surely do them in. Good effort this year, boys, but I'm already counting on saying the same thing in the year-end wrap for the team when we're talking about possible moves to improve the team before next season begins. Again.