Chicago Bulls: Tandem of Jerry Sloan and Bob Love has always gone unappreciated
Breaking them each down
To fully look at the impact of the two players together we must look at them apart. Love doesn’t have much of a career outside of his time with Sloan so let’s look at only Sloan.
Before Love was a efficient scorer for the Bulls, Sloan had three seasons of him being the best player in Chicago. The team made the playoffs two of those seasons and had a total record of 95-150.
That record sounds lackluster but it used to be a lot easier to make the playoffs in that NBA. An interesting fact about Sloan’s first three years is that two teams were added every seasons.
So originally there were 10 his first year, 12 his second, and 14 his third.
Sloan had teammates that were good, such as one-time All-Star Bob Boozer, but the team had no success beyond the regular seasons. They were swept by the St. Louis Hawks 3-0 in 1967 and 4-1 the next year to the mighty Los Angeles Lakers.
Love’s first year with the Bulls saw them win 39 games, a new team record, and yet another first round loss to the Hawks. The team would break their single season win record the next two seasons and were led to a 57-win season and a second-place finish in 1972 in the Midwest Division.
The team would lose in both postseasons to the Lakers, and then again, the next year.
Three straight seasons of possibly the best basketball in Bulls history and zero series wins to show for it. Love and Sloan did their best and took the Lakers to seven games in two of the three series.
Those Lakers teams were no joke as they had Wilt Chamberlin, Jerry West, Gail Goodrich, and a great supportive cast. The Bulls had to pull of big upsets against the Lakers as they fell 2-0 and 3-2 in both series to lose by three points and ten points.
Bob Love and Jerry Sloan were their best scorers, rebounders, and overall players in each series. Their efforts weren’t for nothing as the team was still young and still learning in an expanding NBA.
The next year the Bulls shot back up to 54 wins as Love was no longer an All-Star but still lead the team with over 20 points. Sloan still brought it with 13.2 points a game and 7.2 rebounds a contest.
A back and forth series with the 52-win Detroit Pistons in the Conference semifinals saw a 3-3 game seven matchup in Chicago.
The Bulls started off with a fantastic first half and lead the contest 52-41, but a big second half for the Pistons nearly saw them lose another heartbreaking series.
They held them off much thanks to Love’s 24 points and Chet Walkers 26. Jerry Sloan had been having a great series but an injury in game six made the star sit in a crucial game seven.
Unfortunately, that injury would last the whole next series versus the Milwaukee Bucks. Love struggled as most of the shots were coming his way and the team got dominated by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
Besides games two, in which the Bucks won by two, the team had been blown out by 16 or more points in the three other games. Sloan’s absence was huge and showed how the team was molded around his play.
The Bulls were not as good the next season as they dropped down to 47 wins, seven less than the previous year. A weird thing happened though; they won the Midwest Division.
Overall, the entire Western Conference was worse than the East, as the highest winning total was the Golden State Warriors with 48. Three teams won more than that in the East, including two with 60, the Washington Bullets and the Boston Celtics.
Jerry Sloan’s body was starting to catch up to him and the next season would be his last, and Love had been on a bit of a downward slope since his height a couple years prior.
Norm Van Lier was still a good player and distributor, Hall of Famer Nate Thurmond was spending some of his last years in Chicago, Hall of Famer Chet Walker averaged more than 19 points a game during the season, and the bench player very consistent.
For the Love, Sloan, and the organization this was the last chance at a title possibly for years to come.
The team went into the playoffs as the two seed and faced the Kansas City-Omaha Kings. The teams split the first four games, with all the contests being relatively close. Then the Bulls pulled ahead with a 27-point victory.
Unlike Bulls teams in prior seasons the 1975 team took care of business in game six with a twelve-point victory.
Bob Love lead the team in scoring in every one of their six games with 30 points, 8.7 rebounds, and a solid 49 percent on field goals. Sloan stayed consistent with 12.7 points, 6 rebounds, and 43.4 percent on field goals.
The team they were facing in the next round were the Golden State Warriors, led by Rick Barry in possibly his best season so far, along with long time consistent players Jamaal Wilkes and Butch Beard.
The Warriors were a good team and had been the best in the Western Conference during the season. They also had a tough first round so the matchup between the two teams had a lot at stake.
Games one and six were blowout wins by the Warriors, but games two through five were all within ten points, those games included three wins by the Bulls. The Bulls even led in the series 3-2. However, a game seven was needed to decide who went to the Finals.
Rick Barry was dangerous all series long but was held to 8-of-23 from the field and the offense that was so hot all year long was held to just 83 points.
The Bulls even lead at half 47-36, and despite a bad third quarter they also lead 65-59 after three quarters. The momentum was not as large as it was after the first half, but they still held a firm lead.
They blew that lead and only scored 14 points in the fourth. A 24-point last quarter by the Warriors lead them to a victory and a berth into the finals.
Some things to note are that Bob Love was cold all series long, including the last game where he went 6-for-26 and scored only 17 points during the game. The weight is not all on Love’s shoulder as Nate Thurmond dealt with injuries and wasn’t at full strength.
The team also only scored three points off the bench, whereas the Warriors got a big boost in the form of 26 points.
The first season the Bulls ever won their division, and the only time they would until Michael Jordan came, ended with a close lose.
The worst part of this was that the Warriors swept the Bullets out of the Finals to win it all. Likely the result would have been similar since the Bulls were a close matchup with them.