Bernstein: Good Riddance To These Bulls
By Dan Bernstein--
CBSChicago.com senior columnist
(CBS) Thank you to the Indiana Pacers for ensuring a certain end to the 2015-'16 Chicago Bulls, eliminating any further reason to have to watch what was a ceaselessly unfolding insult to our sensibilities.
Nobody had to keep eyes on this, of course, but some of us can't help ourselves.
This isn't to romanticize, only to give context to how remarkably unlikeable this Bulls team was from one perspective of a fan turned beat reporter turned professional observer. This particular group was notably disappointing at all points of the season and at all levels of the organization, as the fresh approach of a new head coach for a team boasting championship potential curdled into something soft and sour.
I just can't remember something quite as unappealing, considering what it was purported to be.
Whether you or I thought this was a potential title-winner is beside the point, because all that matters is that general manager Gar Forman claimed to hold this team in that high enough regard, only to watch it rot from the inside until it finally ruptured and died.
Disinfect it, now. Clean it out with bleach and sunlight or burn it.
I know plain old bad Bulls basketball, and I can handle it. I started going to games about 10 years after they came into existence in 1966, was a high school sophomore when Michael Jordan arrived in 1984 and began covering the team in 1995. I went from emerging champagne-drenched and cigar-smoke-cured from three locker room championship parties to reporting on the barren wasteland of the Tim Floyd era.
The end of the Scott Skiles run – the last time before now the Bulls failed to make the playoffs –was no fun, but it didn't look or sound this ugly.
At least Skiles knew when and how to get himself fired. I'll give him credit for being honest enough to tell his boss the truth to the point his hand was forced. But poor Fred Hoiberg has no such luck, seemingly still in nominal charge of what's left to reclaim.
And what's uniquely wrong starts with the bizarre and childish dynamic between Derrick Rose and Jimmy Butler, two separate planets of self-interest in entirely asynchronous orbit. Rose's continued detachment from the real world remains frustrating, as he began the year pining for free agency and reminding fans, bosses and teammates that a main focus was his post-career physical condition. Some nights he plays, some nights he doesn't, and that goes for when he's wearing a uniform or a suit. Whether it's due to his social insulation, unfortunate injury history or some combination, Rose has become something different and weird.
Butler thinks he's way better than he is and wasted no time in becoming off-putting after signing his max contract. He declared himself the leader of the team, then promptly led by the example of emasculating the new coach and vetoing the new offense in favor of him dominating the ball. Both he and Rose have proved capable of quitting on teammates in the heat of the moment – Rose with his pathetic pout a year ago in the playoff finale and Butler just last week as they claimed to be fighting for the postseason. Each instance was an unfathomable professional transgression. I don't trust either of them and won't moving forward.
Pau Gasol is in this too, as selfish as those two but much smarter about it. He's as smooth and skilled an operator as he is a scorer, knowing who his friends are at just the right times. His availability to the media and endless supply of useful sound provide cover for the complete abdication of defensive responsibility that has greased the skids for the Bulls' collapse.
Not much of the rest matters as significantly, whether it's the developmental stagnation of top draft picks or the disturbing pattern of injuries that has continued long after Tom Thibodeau's departure. The Bulls' entire medical and athletic training methodology needs a top-down examination itself, even involving outside consultation to ensure industry-standard best practices. No more excuses.
Forman's body of work is an objective case for his ouster, capped by his doubling down on his prized roster at the trade deadline. He made multiple bets on this team and lost them all.
So what of executive vice president of basketball operations John Paxson then, you rightly ask?
I wish I had a satisfying answer for you. I have always felt that Paxson was as intelligent a basketball mind as I have encountered, from hearing him guest-host shows on 670 The Score and broadcast games on radio to my many conversations with him as he white-boarded the opponent's playbook as an assistant coach.
That easygoing guy has since turned reclusive in the ensuing years, his public presence dwindling into an occasional appearance that features blandishments and generalities instead of the candor and detail we once appreciated. We want him to be in there somewhere, but this Paxson is now Prince Hamlet, wandering the cold and darkened ramparts of a wind-swept Castle Reinsdorf, seeing ghosts. He may emerge soon, and we hope he'll answer for this year's pitiful performance.
What ultimately gnaws about the failure of the Bulls this year is the utter lack of accountability to this point. Players jabber one cliché after the other, and a deflated and defeated Hoiberg says all the things it sounds like a coach should say, but a powerful sense of inertia still holds even after we were told that this team would contend.
None of this is good, other than it being over.
Dan Bernstein is a co-host of 670 The Score's "Boers and Bernstein Show" in afternoon drive. You can follow him on Twitter @dan_bernstein and read more of his columns here.
