It’s hard to think of a great way to describe the Chicago Bulls ride during the 2016-17 season. From the front office to the stars to the DNPs, everything has set up to be a total mess of bizarre activity. You could describe this Chicago team as exasperating. They zig when every statistic, every road trip, every Fred Hoiberg after timeout play, every disastrous media availability says they should zag. Maybe it’s time to invent a word, or at least go with a new moniker for this squad – the ImprobaBulls.
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This Bulls team isn’t a winner, but they refuse to be a loser. Everything about it fails to add up and they have no consistency as winners or losers.
At the end of January, Nick Friedell of ESPN went on The Lowe Post Podcast with Zach Lowe. Part of their discussion centered around the Bulls upcoming road trip, a six-game affair featuring the Oklahoma City Thunder, Houston Rockets, and Golden State Warriors. The two talked about their expectations for the trip, Friedell projected they could finish as poorly as 1-5 on that trip. I mostly agreed and he was mostly right.
The Bulls finished the trip 2-4, beating the Thunder and the Sacramento Kings, but dropping games against the Rockets, Warriors, Phoenix Suns and Minnesota Timberwolves. The last loss, to the Wolves, was particularly ugly. Without Jimmy Butler, Dwyane Wade, Paul Zipser and Nikola Mirotic, Chicago played some of the worst offensive possessions in professional basketball and got torched on defense for good measure. I’m certain Doug McDermott had almost as many airballs as made shots, which is kind of impressive.
The ImprobaBulls shouldn’t have crushed Russell Westbrook’s team. The ImprobaBulls shouldn’t have lost to the Suns, with Butler participating despite being less than fully healthy.
The ImprobaBulls pushed the Rockets to overtime without Butler. They beat the Kings without Butler; they lost to the Suns with Butler.
Then they returned home. After a grueling six-game road trip, facing much more stout competition than their final Circus Road Trip earlier this season, they got two home games to close out the pre-All-Star Weekend portion of their schedule – the Toronto Raptors and Boston Celtics.
Boston and Toronto are two of the best teams in the Eastern Conference, the Celtics in particular have been hard-charging of late, despite missing Avery Bradley for an extended chunk of games.
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Of course, Chicago beat both teams.
For the 11th consecutive time, the Bulls beat the Raptors. Not only is it incredibly hard to beat any combination of teams more than a couple of times in a row, Chicago has been able to put a huge ‘L’ on the Drakes every time they play dating back to 2013. That streak is completely ImprobaBull.
On Thursday, the Bulls hosted Boston. They needed a correct, last-second call to send Butler to the free throw with 0.9 on the clock to hit the tying and go-ahead free throws. When the final buzzer sounded, Chicago emerged victorious. The victory was their 17th consecutive ‘W’ on a nationally televised broadcast on TNT. That streak makes absolutely zero sense and is also extremely ImprobaBull.
Over the final eight games leading into the All-Star Break, Chicago went 4-4. They played four of those games without Butler. Wade, Zipser and Mirotic also missed a significant portion of those games.
In a lot of ways, the Bulls and McDermott are reflections of each other. It doesn’t make sense that a player drafted entirely on the premise that he was a knock-down shooter would airball almost as many shots as he would make in a single game. His ability to miss in the worst way and then knock down a corner 3 and then miss everything again is completely ImprobaBull.
This team airballs a lot of games, too. They fired off big wins against the Raptors, Celtics and Kings. They absolutely bricked their game against the Timberwolves.
When play resumes on February 24th, after the trade deadline has passed, the Bulls will take a 28-29 record into a stretch of 25 games that will cement the fate of their season-long journey being ImprobaBulls. They have the seventh seed in the East, trailing the suddenly spiraling Indiana Pacers by just one game. This is a team that could just as easily implode as make a push for home court advantage in the playoffs, however ImprobaBull that may be.