Baffoe: For The Bulls Nothing May Be A Real Cool Hand
By Tim Baffoe-
(CBS) What we got here with the Bulls is failure to communicate. They were supposed to fall backwards into the playoffs on fumes and likely make a quick exit, and that was before oddsmakers saw how the team was decimated by injuries and illnesses and locusts (just wait), not to mention missing for the entire season and playoffs so far he who shall remain nameless.
Instead, the motley crew Bulls up and decided to eat 50 eggs and stick it to the Brooklyn Nets before standing in front of the Miami Heat in the Eastern Conference Semifinals on Monday night. The effort this team shows in spite of everything going wrong for them has been nothing short of admirable, and we should expect nothing less in the upcoming series, even though the Bulls last legs have since passed.
"It really sucks. Plantar fasciitis sucks," according to Joakim Noah, a guy who's made his career figuratively cutting the heads off of parking meters just because. "It feels like you have needles underneath your foot while you're playing. That's what it feels like. You can imagine how hard it is when you need to run or you need to jump; all the things you have to do when playing basketball. I mean, you don't want needles in your feet, right?"
No, I don't. Nor do I want them in my back.
[tweet https://twitter.com/LuolDeng9/statuses/330396675602526208]
Yeah, but how bad can that be?
https://twitter.com/LuolDeng9/statuses/330397101567660032
Oh, that's like every Monday for me.
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Or not.
Guard Kirk Hinrich had to get new duct tape to hold himself together and missed time. And then there was Taj Gibson fighting through lingering injury and illness, Nate Robinson barfing in a trash can on the bench, and the rest of us barfing while Marquis Teague had to play actual playoff minutes.
Yet here they are a second round playoff team. And why? Head coach Tom Thibodeau, for the most part. I would poke fun at the guy who is consumed by basketball, sleeping at the Berto Center, eating and drinking game film, but his psychosis has taken a group that looks like a chain gang at the end of a day's work and won a playoff series, something an arguably better Bulls squad last season couldn't do. His method of pushing his team beyond its own limits, asking them what their dirt is doing in his ditch, if you will, works.
They stand no chance against their next opponent, the Miami Heat. If they were swept by an average margin of double-digit points, I don't think most fans with half a brain would raise an eyebrow. What is a guarantee, though, is that the Bulls will be a pain in Lebron James and Co.'s ass. It will be the prison yard fight seen between Luke and Dragline. There will be more knockdowns, and the team that trots out Uncle Nazr Mohammed will get up and get put in the dirt and get up again until we all finally walk away from its bloody staggering carcass.
Then they'll have gotten their minds right. They'll give up, relent. It seems their superstar has had his all season. Or maybe they will smile in the face of certain defeat, and let everyone who is already planning Miami vs. the winner of Indiana/New York know that what we have here is failure to communicate.
The Bulls have nothing left. That's for sure. But sometimes nothing can be a real cool hand.
Tim Baffoe attended the University of Iowa before earning his degree from Governors State University and began blogging at The Score after winning the 2011 Pepsi Max Score Search. He enjoys writing things about stuff, but not so much stuff about things. When not writing for 670TheScore.com, Tim corrupts America's youth as a high school English teacher and provides a great service to his South Side community delivering pizzas (please tip him and his colleagues well). You can follow Tim's inappropriate brain droppings on Twitter @TimBaffoe , but please don't follow him in real life. He grew up in Chicago's Beverly To read more of Tim's blogs click here.
