The Bernstein Brief: No Making Sense Of These Bulls
By Dan Bernstein--
CBSChicago.com senior columnist
(CBS) Leave it to this continually baffling Bulls team to put critical thinkers in an impossible position. Those always looking for an elusive path out of the basketball wilderness and back to title contention are maddened by their seeming embrace of mediocrity, the chance to tout fleeting success as evidence of something sustainable and reliable, yet keeping them in their commercial sweet spot.
The Bulls say some things and then do others, often based on the whims of the market and the desperation of the decision-makers. Sometimes they win, as much of the time they don't, and the cycle repeats itself ad infinitum as players and coaches come and go.
Rooting against one's team is sour for sports fans, but that's what anybody with a brain was doing as this regular season dripped away, hoping the Bulls could snag a spot in a fertile draft lottery and possibly flipping Jimmy Butler for even more young assets in a real shot at a reboot. Yet they backed into the playoffs and now find themselves in complete control of a Celtics team that outperformed its talent level and is faced with serious mismatches.
And the Bulls are even interesting to watch, with this version of Rajon Rondo who decided to play and coach Fred Hoiberg not throwing handfuls of random bodies on the court, instead sticking with a rotation that seems to have renewed purpose. Whatever it has become, it works better.
I've no idea what it means when this is all said and done, and I'm fairly sure nothing that's occurring in this series is getting the Bulls closer to winning a championship, but it would be silly to want it to fail just because.
If it doesn't seem to matter anyway, it might as well keep going.
Dan Bernstein is a co-host of 670 The Score's "Bernstein and Goff Show" in afternoon drive. You can follow him on Twitter @dan_bernstein and read more of his columns here.