Laying the 2015-16 Chicago Bulls Season to Rest
The Chicago Bulls finished one of the most disappointing seasons in their 50-year history, but hey … look at the upside. It’s finally over.
In the span of 11 months, the Bulls went from a 2-1 playoff series lead over LeBron James to one of the NBA’s most disappointing franchises and out of the postseason for the first time in eight years.
Sure, there’s some stuff that happened.
Actually, a lot of stuff happened.
Jimmy Butler got a new five-year deal northwards of $90 million and a brand-spankin’-new ego that would make Charlie Sheen jealous.
Derrick Rose took an elbow to the eye 15 minutes into the first practice of the year and had a slew of nagging injuries all season. This was shortly after he spoke during the Bulls media day about his upcoming free agency and not wanting to limping around his son’s future events in life.
(Reminder: Rose’s son, P.J., is three years old.)
And who could forget the supposed Butler-Rose “beef” that dominated the headlines more than Kanye West’s daily antics last summer?
Not only was Rose dealing with injuries, the bulk of the Bulls roster faced injuries all season long, including the weird Nikola Mirotic/appendectomy situation.
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Oh, and the Bulls hired a new head coach that apparently nobody but the front office duo of Gar Forman and John Paxson likes.
But wait, not only will we get to that, there’s more.
The potential final moments in Chicago for Joakim Noah was him running off the floor with his left shoulder dangling in pain, which required a season-ending surgery in January.
The Bulls were an absolute mess all season, despite getting off to a 22-12 start and wins over Oklahoma City (twice), San Antonio, Los Angeles (Clippers), Toronto and Boston.
This is where things come back to the new head coach that was hired to take the place of Tom Thibodeau.
Fred Hoiberg had a horrendous rookie campaign in his first NBA season on the sideline. Just pick something: fibbing about Noah’s role with the team, not staggering Rose and Butler’s minutes in the rotation and the after-the-timeout disasters on diagrammed plays are a few places to start.
(Before he was officially hired, I was in the anti-Hoiberg camp and wasn’t a huge fan of the hire.)
There’s plenty of instances to where you could look and see the final outlook of the Bulls this season as well.
Let’s see, there’s Jimmy Butler’s rant about Hoiberg needing to “coach harder“, there’s Noah’s shoulder injury and there’s the front office wanting to keep 35-year-old Pau Gasol as “a part of their core” and not trading his contract away.
You get the picture, right?
There’s also the youth of the Bulls. At times, the young group of Bobby Portis, Doug McDermott, Tony Snell and Nikola Mirotic showed flashes of what could lie ahead for the Bulls in the future.
But for most the year, Portis looked completely lost on defense, McDermott is a human traffic cone in front of a ball-handler, Snell is basically unplayable and Mirotic is about as streaky of a shooter as they come in the NBA today for a young player.
For a team that supposedly had a “championship-caliber” roster last summer after Hoiberg was hired, sitting on the outside looking in to the postseason doesn’t add up to the expectations the franchise had last June.
The excuse of the injury bug has been used more than the dog ate my homework.
It’s time for the Bulls — specifically the “GarPaxDorf” front office trio of Gar Forman, John Paxson and Jerry Reinsdorf — to realize that this isn’t working.
Of course, that’s if Paxson and Forman aren’t spending their summer scouting in Iowa and New Mexico specifically, while Reinsdorf is vacationing in Cabo, drinking mimosas and waiting impatiently for his daily White Sox updates.
Rose has one more year left on his monster MVP extension, there have been rumors of a few teams interested in a trade centered around Butler and the Bulls aren’t any closer to getting that first-round pick from the Sacramento Kings any time soon.
Next: Gar Forman and John Paxson address the state of the Bulls when no one was watching
Simply put, let’s bury this season six feet under the ground and never speak of it again.