More than a speed bump, Bulls becoming contenders

Although the ending no doubt lopped off several decades from my life, I was thrilled to see the Bulls hang on for the 108-106 win in Game 3 over the Cleveland Cavaliers, who after last season's playoff flame-out will be feeling a ton of pressure in Game 4. Unfortunately, the Cavs probably witnessed the Western Conference's No. 1 seed losing a Game 4 on Saturday night, when the Oklahoma Thunder blew out the Los Angeles Lakers 110-89 to tie that series at 2, so there will be no underestimating the threat Chicago poses in this one.

But you have to be happy with the way the Bulls have played thus far. While they might not have looked very good in Game 1, when they never really threatened and spent far too much time preoccupied with the officiating, since then they've been a lot like the scrappy, resilient bunch that gave the Celtics everything they could handle in last year's playoffs.

One of the biggest reasons: an engaged Luol Deng. After a disappointing Game 1 (12 points on 5-for-15 shooting), Deng, who missed that series against Boston with one of his many ailments that I can no longer keep track of, has found the range over the last two games, combining to go 16-for-31. He had a nice all-around performance in Game 2, with six rebounds, five assists, and no turnovers, and the Bulls might've stolen a win had Cleveland not made half their 3s while LeBron James (16-of-23 from the field) nailed a series of extremely difficult shots down the stretch.

After earning a reputation for disappearing into the background during crunch-time, Deng came up huge defensively down the stretch of Game 3, drawing an enormous charge on LeBron that easily could've been an and-one, and then getting a steal on the Cavs' next possession. Because Deng looked so lost for a good portion of the latter part of the season, the Bulls -- as I mentioned in my series preview -- really needed for him to deliver, and for the most part he has.

Joakim Noah's importance was also obvious in Game 3. After a 25-point, 13-rebound performance in Game 2 that still resulted in him being a team-worst minus-15 (and showed the limitations of the plus/minus stat in small samples), Noah was a team-best +13 in 33 foul-plagued minutes in Game 3. The Bulls were clearly a different team with him on the floor, and while his 10-point, 15-rebound, 5-assist line was terrific, I was disappointed by some of the terrible fouls he picked up, especially his fifth. Which is why it bodes well that after the game Noah acknowledged that they were "stupid, stupid fouls." As I said before the series, the Bulls absolutely need Noah out there, and if they are to have any hope of winning Game 4, he has to stay out of foul trouble.

Game 3 had me having flashbacks of this 109-108 win over the Cavs, the final matchup in the regular season that James conspicuously sat out. In both games, the Bulls were extremely lucky that poor free-throw shooting down the stretch didn't completely doom them, although in the regular season one the Cavs simply couldn't convert on the other end, while here they merely ran out of time. And yet, Cleveland's near-comeback also opened a scab from Game 2

In that 112-102 loss, the Bulls played exceptionally well, and entered the final quarter tied. The Cavs slowly pulled away throughout the quarter, opening up a 10-point lead with 2:17 remaining. However, with 58.7 seconds left, a pair of Deng free-throws drew the Bulls back within seven at 107-100. Inexplicably, the Bulls did not foul on the ensuing possession; when I screamed (okay, typed, but I was furious) on the Blog-a-Bull game thread, Why aren't they fouling? I got a few The game's over-type responses. Yes, the game was likely going to end up a loss. But this is the playoffs. Why were they conceding anything?

Seven points in under a minute is a lot to overcome, but teams do it with relative frequency. Hell, exactly 10 days earlier, the Bulls lost that terrible game in New Jersey after blowing a seven-point lead with less than a minute to go in the first overtime. In basketball terms, a minute can be an eternity, and some hot shooting combined with a few missed Cavs free throws might have resulted in an improbable win.

Which was very nearly what the Cavs pulled off in Game 3. A pair of Kirk Hinrich free throws put the Bulls ahead 104-96 with 38 seconds to play, but Cleveland didn't throw in the towel, and a trio of made 3-pointers combined with the Bulls' 4-of-8 shooting from the line resulted in the Cavs having a shot to win the game at the end. Sure, the 40-footer by Anthony Parker wasn't a great look -- had the Cavs held any timeouts, they likely would've gotten a better one, taken by LeBron -- but they had a chance to steal the game because they extended it by fouling, which made the Bulls failure to do so a game earlier all the more galling.

But honestly, I don't have many other qualms with coach Vinny Del Negro's tactics in the series. In Game 3, he even realized that he should be giving minutes to James Johnson, one of only six Bulls under contract for next year, at the expense of Hakim Warrick and Jannero Pargo, neither of whom played. Johnson has been foul-prone and not all that effective, but he has brought energy, and the experience he is getting will be invaluable down the road.

Speaking of which, this series has reinforced just how important making the playoffs was for the Bulls' future. There's plenty of obvious benefits, most notably the postseason reps for the young core. But for this team, which is clearly lacking another scorer, to play so well against what's possibly the best team in the NBA just has to help their chances in free agency. If I'm Dwyane Wade, and I see a team with me getting dismantled by a so-so Boston group while another that wants me gives an elite squad all that it can handle, it would have to make me think twice about my commitment to Miami. Plus just being in high-profile, nationally-televised games helps too. The TNT studio crew has raved about the Bulls; with Kenny Smith calling Rose his favorite player in the league and Charles Barkley reaffirming his love Noah, it's like an infomercial for prospective free agents.

Plus, the Bulls genuinely seem to like playing with each other. Noah's post-game comments almost always contain glowing references to Rose, and how much he loves him. In this one, noting how Rose was unfazed when LeBron decided to try to D him up in the fourth quarter -- to me one of the most encouraging images of the series was seeing Rose go right at LeBron -- Noah said, "D-Rose played huge for us. ... I'm glad he's on my team."

Before the series, I heard quite a few pundits say something along the lines of, "The teams split the season series, but that's not really representative because LeBron James sat out the last regular season game." Unfortunately, they failed to note that one of the Cavs' wins is equally deserving of an asterisk. On March 19, Cleveland beat the the Bulls -- playing without Rose, Noah, and Deng -- 92-85. As far as I'm concerned, they split the regular season 1-1, and the Bulls and Cavs have now played five games with the season series at 3-2. Clearly, this matchup is not the blowout that it was perceived to be, and although I'm not necessarily expecting the Bulls to win Game 4, it wouldn't surprise me, either. As Rose and Noah continue to develop, this team is getting better every day. And the future, regardless of if they are able to sign a marquee free agent or end up conserving their cap space to use in trades, is indeed very bright.

Go Bulls.

Lucky 7: Bulls-Cavaliers

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Well, the Bulls did it. They're in the playoffs, which seemed a virtual impossibility just a few weeks ago. They showed a remarkable amount of resiliency and gumption in pulling off a comeback from near-oblivion, which is why I don't think they will be satisfied with merely making the postseason. And so here are seven things I'd like to see in their best-of-seven first round series with the Cleveland Cavaliers:

1. Joakim Noah staying out of foul trouble
If I were the Cavs, I would hammer the ball into Shaquille O'Neal in the early going in hopes of picking up fouls on Noah and getting him out of the game. Because as we saw during the Bulls' 10-game losing streak when Noah was sidelined with his plantar fasciitis recurrence, that would have a devastating effect on Chicago's ability to compete.

The Bulls are completely reliant on Noah's defense, rebounding, and energy. Plus, his game on the offensive end has become increasingly valuable, with crisp interior passing and an improving outside shot and post game. The upshot is, they need Noah out there for as many minutes as possible; if he's limited by foul trouble, the Bulls long odds become nonexistent.

2. Derrick Rose taking over in crunch time
I'm still not sure what to make of Rose as the Bulls' end-of-game alpha dog. Sometimes he seems like he's ready to seize that role, and others -- like the recent loss to the Nets -- he seems to shrink from the moment. I am very curious to see how he does in this series. I don't expect him to be able to go shot-for-shot with LeBron James -- whose sheer force of will should prove to be the biggest difference in this series -- but I'm hoping he at least shows he wants to try.

In last year's first-round epic with the Celtics, Rose deferred to Ben Gordon in the big moments. Was that because of Gordon stepping up, or because Rose stepped aside? This series will be a real litmus test of exactly where Rose is as a player: Can he carry a franchise, or is he better suited to being the league's best second banana?

3. A shortened rotation that includes James Johnson
Johnson deserves to play for a few reasons:
A. He is possibly the only player on the Bulls -- and certainly the only one on their bench -- with the size/strength/quickness combo to at least be a minor distraction for LeBron when he's defending him.
B. He played very well in the 92-85 loss to the Cavs -- 16 points on 11 shots, 8 rebounds, 2 steals and a block with a best-among-starters minus-1 in 36 minutes -- when Rose, Noah, and Luol Deng were all sidelined with injuries.
C. The reps he (and fellow rookie Taj Gibson) get in the playoffs now could be invaluable in the future. The Bulls have virtually no chance at winning the series; so why play someone like Hakim Warrick -- who's not a part of their plans going forward -- at the expense of Johnson, who is?

4. Jannero Pargo glued to the bench
It wouldn't be one of my list posts without an item referencing Pargo's enduring crappiness and Del Negro's steadfast refusal to keep him from the court. And yet, in a triumph of the human spirit, I continue to dream of a Pargo-free world.

5. A Game 5
While I certainly don't think the Bulls will win the series, I do believe they can at least win a game. Everyone -- I'm speaking nationally here -- is looking at them as nothing more than sacrificial lambs; all seven of the TrueHoop Network's legitimate contributors are predicting Cavs in 4. But I'm hoping for just a bit more. As good as Cleveland is, I'm guessing the Bulls will show plenty of fight, and given that they are actually pretty formidable themselves when healthy, should be able to steal a game at some point.

6. A Game 6
Alright, so I'm greedy.

7. A Game 7 Luol Deng
In the Bulls final three games -- all must wins in the playoff push -- Deng appeared to be lost when he wasn't completely disinterested. Despite playing 35 minutes per contest, he averaged just 10.7 points on 40% shooting. In 104 total minutes, he did not block a shot and had just two steals. Call me crazy, but I generally want to see a bit more production from The Six Million Dollar (Per Half-Season) Man.

I don't expect Deng to recapture the magic he showed in the Bulls shocking first-round sweep of the defending champion Miami Heat in 2007 -- for whatever reason, he's no longer the player that averaged 26.3 points on 57.9% shooting in that series. But he needs to be a player. The Bulls infinitesimal chances of shocking the world hinge on Deng being an engaged and productive #3 behind Rose and Noah.

Series prediction: Cavs in 5.5

I wish someone would grab Reggie Miller's tie

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A coupla things knocking around the ol' thinkblob:

Relax Pax: Attacks Lacks Facts, Impacts Axe; Syntax Lax

My first reaction to the story about an altercation between VP John Paxson and coach Vinny Del Negro was a smart-ass one: Who hasn't wanted to punch Vinny Del Negro?

But that's not really fair. The story, if true, speaks badly of Paxson's management style, but it's also something that I don't think is all that uncommon in the testosterone-fueled world of professional sports. Be it Billy Martin challenging Reggie Jackson to a fight, or Buddy Ryan taking a swing at Kevin Gilbride, this is the kind of stuff that happens among the alpha males who dominate athletics.

Let's take the story -- the original one, not the transparent subterfuge the Bulls PR department has apparently planted in response -- as true on its face; that is, that Paxson was angry that Del Negro again went over the medically-prescribed minute limits for Joakim Noah.

Seeing as how the previous over-usage of a recuperating Noah -- in the 115-111 OT win over Portland in February -- caused a recurrence of the injury and led to Noah missing the next 10 games (all losses), is it any wonder that Paxson would be furious that Del Negro did it again? I would be.

For those (like Reggie Miller) that are saying the coach should decide playing time, that cannot be the case when it comes to injuries. I'm old enough to remember Michael Jordan coming back from a broken foot in the '85-'86 season, and his minutes were rigidly scheduled. In the beginning, he played like four minutes per half, then six, then eight, etc. A coach almost never has the player's best interest in mind, so when it comes to situations like these, the front office -- who works more closely with team doctors -- has to intervene.

Still, trying to fight your employee is probably not the best way to resolve your differences. Terminating him would be. Which I'm sure will be the end result once the season is complete. The question is, will Paxson be around to do the firing?

I have no idea how Jerry Reinsdorf is going to react to this, but it certainly hasn't made the Bulls look very good at a time when they need to be seen as a first-class organization in order to lure a marquee free agent. And it's not like Paxson has been any better at his job than Del Negro is at his: Paxson has assembled a fringe-playoff team, and as coach Del Negro has them on the fringes of the playoffs. While I want to see Del Negro let go because I believe a high-profile job like Bulls head coach deserves someone elite, he is no more incompetent than anyone else in the organization.

And that's just sad.

Marv Albert + Mike Fratello > Any other broadcast team > Marv Albert + Mike Fratello + Reggie Miller

That's how bad Miller is; he makes the entire audio broadcast borderline intolerable. He takes totally indefensible positions -- regardless of what the team doctors may have said, Del Negro should have played Noah because Noah wanted to play more; first KC Johnson shouldn't have sat on Pax-VDN story only to release it, then when Craig Sager clarified Johnson's role, he shouldn't have confirmed the original report by Adrian Wojnarowski -- and pontificates endlessly about them in a most inarticulate way, because he's roughly 37 billion times less intelligent than he thinks he is.

And I actually enjoyed Miller's antics as a player. But he should not be in a nationally-televised broadcasting role. He adds absolutely nothing; instead he merely enrages me when I'm forced to listen to him instead of hearing some actual insight / witty banter between Albert and Fratello. That TNT thought there was something wrong with the Marv-Czar pairing is inexplicable. Those guys don't need a third man, and TNT's execs have failed to heed one of sports' most inviolable precepts: If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

With this Bulls team, you never know

Tuesday's 101-93 dispatching of the Boston Celtics was a huge win for the Bulls. But their work in claiming a playoff spot is only partially completed.

Yes, it was great to see Derrick Rose really come through in crunch time, scoring 17 of his career-high 39 points in the fourth quarter, and even hitting a pair of (semi-)clutch free throws. And Kirk Hinrich had a superb shooting game in scoring 30, although it would be foolhardy to think that it is something he could do consistently.

But even though the Bulls are ostensibly that much closer to the postseason, for some reason I am not feeling very confident today. Actually, I know the reason: This season, the Bulls have too often followed a big win with an even bigger loss, as I've seen several great performances succeeded by some major defecation in their pantaloons. To wit:

Big Win	Next Game
vs. GSW, 96-91 (OT)	L vs. BOS, 106-80
vs. ATL, 101-98 (OT)	L vs. SAC, 102-98
vs. ORL, 101-93	L vs. OKC, 98-85
@ NO, 108-106 (OT)	L vs. LAC, 90-82
vs. PHI, 122-90	L @ WAS, 101-95
vs. POR, 115-111 (OT)	L @ IND, 100-90
vs. HOU, 98-88	L vs. MIA, 103-74
vs. CHA, 96-88	L vs. MIL, 79-74
vs. CLE, 109-108	L @ NJ, 127-116 (2OT)
vs. BOS, 101-93	??? @ CHA

Quite simply, the Bulls can't afford a similar letdown. Regardless of who is/isn't playing substantial minutes for the Bobcats, Chicago needs to have another performance worthy of a playoff team. Hopefully, I'm just worrying over nothing, but it would be just like this team to get everyone's hopes back up only to crush them with a pitiful showing.

8 keys to the 8 seed

With 80 games down and two to play, and despite everything that's come before this, the Bulls control their own playoff destiny. Sunday's 104-88 win in Toronto assured that.

However, the picture is not as rosy as you might think. After the Raptors surprisingly-easy 111-97 win in Detroit on Monday, the Playoff Odds are not in the Bulls' favor. And they're not even close, really. ESPN.com's John Hollinger gives Chicago just a 28.5% of edging the Raptors, which falls between Basketball-Reference.com's odds (29.5%) and CoolStandings.com's (28.2%).

I believe the Bulls' chances are, in reality, slightly better than that. For starters, their final opponent, Charlotte, has its playoff seeding locked in, and with nothing left to play for is likely to rest its regulars, regardless of any claims to the contrary. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of tonight's opponent, Boston. The Celtics still have an outside shot at grabbing the Eastern Conference's 3-seed -- they need to win their final two and Atlanta would have to lose to a Cavaliers team that only cares about staying healthy. Plus, after last year's hard-fought and sometimes acrimonious first-round playoff series, I'm sure Boston would love to knock the Bulls out of the postseason yet again.

Meanwhile, the Raptors play the Knicks at home, a game everyone (but me) is talking about as a gimme. I actually think New York will win. I have a few reasons, other than it's what I'm hoping will happen: 1) The Knicks' style is very similar to Toronto's, only they do it better. 2) While the Raptors are working on a sweep of the season series, they've won the games by eight, six, and two points, and all but one of those was with the injured Chris Bosh playing. 3) Mike D'Antoni is so superior as a coach to Jay Triano that I really think he'll have his guys amped up for the game, and the Knicks will treat it like their playoffs, while the Raptors will think they can just skate to the win.

Having said that, the Bulls can't count on getting any help, and have to assume that they need to win both games to get in. They can't do anything about the winnable games that they've dropped down the stretch; they have to look forward and do whatever it takes to come out on top in these last two. Here's a helpful list of things they can do to ensure they walk away with the eight seed:

1. Limit the turnovers
The Bulls have won four of their last six. In the losses to Milwaukee and New Jersey, they had 16 and 17 turnovers, respectively. In the four wins, they've been remarkably consistent, turning the ball over 10 times twice and 11 times in the other two. That's a difference of six turnovers per game between the wins and the losses. Keep the turnovers to 13 or less, and the Bulls will have a very good chance of winning both games.

2. Play Joakim Noah in crunch time
Look, most of these are going to fall into the Duh category. But the more I watch, the more that it's clear to me that this is not Derrick Rose's team -- it's Noah's. Noah is the leader, it's Noah's energy the team feeds off of, and it's Noah who's their best crunch-time performer.

So he needs to be out there. None of this ridiculous offense/defense thing at the end of games with Brad Miller. Sorry, but Noah is the more productive offensive player. Sure, Miller might be the better shooter, but Noah does so much more offensively, most notably crashing the boards for tip-ins. At this point, Noah is the superior player on both ends.

Besides, Noah is about the only guy on the team that doesn't wither in the clutch, making him one of the players I'd trust most with late-game free throws. And at .754 overall from the line, he basically shoots the same as Rose (.761), Luol Deng (.766), and Kirk Hinrich (.750) even when there's no pressure on.

3. Use newly-signed Rob Kurz to pull a Gillooly on Jannero Pargo
I don't know how many times I've said that Pargo needs to stop playing, but he continues to get his 15 minutes a game. So if horrible shot selection and all-around ghastly play can't take Pargo out of the lineup, maybe a lead pipe to the shins will.

4. Stop focusing on the officiating
The Bulls veteran "leaders" -- I'm thinking of Hinrich and Miller -- are two of the biggest whiners in the league. According to them, they've never committed a foul, and every whistle against them is an injustice of the highest order. When they're not arguing the calls made against them, they're badgering the refs for non-calls on their missed shots / turnovers.

Unfortunately, this attitude has rubbed off on the rest of the team. Especially Rose.

Yes, the questionable calls in the Nets game hurt, but a bigger reason for the loss -- and the Bulls blowing a 7-point lead in the final minute of the first overtime -- was that they allowed their focus to be overcome by the officiating. Instead of putting any no-calls behind them, the Bulls allowed them to fester, and in the process lost track of the important thing -- doing whatever it took to come away with the win.

5. When Derrick Rose gets frustrated, take him out of the game
More than anyone else, Rose clearly let the way the game was officiated get to him. It started with his foul-plus-flagrant early in the fourth, and continued more or less until the moment he fouled out.

I understand that he's still a kid, and prone to getting frustrated. Shit, if I were him, I'd be frustrated too. One of the great mysteries to me is how Rose can go to the hole so often, and yet draw so few fouls. Last year, I would've chalked it up to him being a rookie, except the Thunder's Russell Westbrook got to the line with nearly twice the frequency: 428 attempts in 2668 minutes (0.160 FTA/min) for Westbrook, versus 250 attempts in 3000 minutes (0.083 FTA/min) for Rose. I have no idea what it is, because they also have pretty much the same body type; all I know is that I see Rose take a ton of contact and not get the whistle.

And in the Nets game, a number of questionable calls were made -- or not made, as the case may be -- against Rose, especially on his back-to-back turnovers in the first overtime. But while his frustration is understandable, it doesn't mean that he should stay on the court when he's clearly overwhelmed by it. He's still young. Pull him out of the game briefly, talk to him, get his mind right, and put him back in there.

You know, coach him.

6. Play like champions
Just kidding. But they need to at least play like a playoff team, as opposed to one that chokes at home to the Andrew Bogut-less Bucks, loses to New Jersey (twice), and blows a 35-point lead against the Kings.

7. When a lineup isn't working, change it
In a perfect world, I wouldn't even have to say this. But in the loss to the Nets, Vinny Del Negro stubbornly kept the lineup of Rose, Hinrich, Deng, Miller, and Taj Gibson out there for basically the entire first overtime -- Noah came in for defense for all of 13 seconds -- and beginning of the second, until Rose fouled out. This was despite the fact that from the final minute of OT until that point, the lineup was outscored 11-0.

Even if Del Negro thought Noah was unavailable, he needed to make a move. Miller, who had completely expended himself in helping the Bulls come back from a 12-point, fourth-quarter deficit, had clearly run out of gas -- he missed badly on a pair of 3s in the first OT, either of which would have sealed the win -- and could have used the rest. Del Negro either should have gone small with Flip Murray or brought in Hakim Warrick. Or he could have pulled Gibson (3-of-10 shooting, plus-minus of -16) for either of them.

The point is, he shouldn't have just done nothing when the game was starting to get away from them. And he can't afford any similar inaction the rest of the way.

8. Seriously, don't play Jannero Pargo
I can't emphasize this enough.

A win's a win

And boy did the Bulls need a win.

Playing at the United Center on Tuesday night against a Cleveland Cavaliers team that decided to give it a go without an ostensibly healthy LeBron James, the Bulls overcame some late-game free throw dry-heaving to eke out a 109-108 victory and pull even with Toronto in the race for the final Eastern Conference playoff spot.

With Chris Bosh likely done for the season, it appears that even without the tiebreaker Chicago has the edge over the Raps. Of course, the Bulls (38-40) absolutely have to beat the RuPaul-of-big-men-free Raptors in Toronto on Sunday. However, with the way the Bulls just played in consecutive games against teams missing their respective best players -- Milwaukee minus the injured Andrew Bogut, Cleveland without a resting LeBron -- I wouldn't even consider calling it a gimme. Nor would I say that about their next game, Friday in New Jersey (the Raptors will be in Atlanta). The Nets have already beaten the Bulls once, and have been playing respectably of late, going 4-4 in their last eight games.

Unlike Tuesday's 79-74 loss to the Bucks, the Bulls played Cleveland (61-18) with a sense of urgency and the appropriate level of intensity. Derrick Rose dished out 10 assists and scored a team-high 24 points on 10-of-17 shooting, while Joakim Noah consistently delivered when Chicago needed a big play, finishing with 17 points, 15 rebounds, 4 assists, and 4 blocks.

Just as importantly, Noah spearheaded an inspired defensive effort -- although you wouldn't know it from looking at the box score, the Bulls played a much better game on that end than they did versus Milwaukee, despite allowing nearly 30 more points. The Cavs were just hitting difficult shots; they were almost always long and contested.

Neither team led by more than five in the first half, which ended with the Bulls up 60-56. While I would have liked to have seen the Bulls annihilate the shorthanded Cavs (who were also without Shaquille O'Neal, Delonte West, and Daniel Gibson), my biggest complaint was that coach Vinny Del Negro again went five-deep with his bench. And that included yet another appearance by Jannero Pargo, who inexplicably continues to get minutes in his valiant attempt to drive his field goal percentage into the 20s.

In the third quarter, the Bulls built and blew a 12-point lead, and Cleveland eventually went ahead ahead 85-84 early in the fourth. The Bulls then reeled off a 12-4 run to grab a 7-point lead with 7:01 to go, but the Cavs responded by scoring 11 unanswered, highlighted by a pair of long 3s by Mo Williams, the second of which put Cleveland up 100-96 with 4:45 remaining and had LeBron turning the hardwood into his own personal dance floor. Again.

But this time, instead of rebuking LeBron from his seat on the bench, Noah let his play do the talking, and took it to the Cavs on the court. On the Bulls' next possession, he went hard to the hole and got an and-one to pull them back to within 100-99. After Jamario Moon and Kirk Hinrich (23 points on 8-of-12 shooting, rock-solid D) traded baskets, Luol Deng converted a three-point play of his own to give the Bulls a 104-102 lead.

With Williams briefly going cold -- he sandwiched a pair of off-target 3s around an airballed one by Moon, with Noah controlling the boards to limit the Cavs to one-shot possessions -- the Bulls missed a chance to take a two-possession lead when Hinrich drew a shooting foul just inside the 3-point arc and hit only 1-of-2 free throws.

Unfortunately, that would be as good as it would get for the Bulls at the line.

Trailing 105-102, Williams briefly got loose in front of the Bulls bench, and nailed a 3 just ahead of the close by Hinrich and Taj Gibson. But on the ensuing possession, Noah found himself alone a foot below the top of the key, and without hesitation buried an 18-footer to regain the advantage. As TNT's Doug Collins said:

I'm sure that Cleveland will live with Joakim Noah taking that shot -- under two minutes, game tied -- but you've got to give the young guy credit, he stepped up.

Following that, Williams used an Anderson Varejao screen to get the tiniest sliver of space on Hinrich and Gibson, and drilled yet another 3 -- that's four in a span of 3:53, and 35 points for the game -- to give the Cavs a 108-107 lead with 1:31 left to play.

Derrick Rose responded by knifing through the Cleveland defense with a strong take, and although his hanging bank shot rimmed out, Noah was there to tip it home for a 109-108 lead.

Neither team would score the rest of the way, the Cavs because of some inspired Chicago defense, and the Bulls because they treated the free-throw line like a herpes-riddled groupie.

Even though the Williams 3s were the only baskets the Bulls allowed in the final four minutes in holding Cleveland to 2-for-12 shooting, it was in the final 30 seconds that the Chicago D really put the clamps down.

After Rose missed a forced 3 with the shot clock expiring, Williams took an outlet pass and tried to beat the Bulls down the floor. But he essentially had to go 1-on-4, and his layup was blocked out of bounds by Gibson, who battled foul trouble and missed his last eight field goal attempts, but still managed to log some productive minutes (three blocks, two steals).

Williams got the ensuing inbounds and missed a 16-footer with Hinrich draped all over him. Deng (22 points, 10 rebounds) grabbed the board and was fouled with 14.4 seconds remaining, and proceeded to miss both free throws.

Cleveland then had a few chances to regain the lead, but suddenly looked completely lost without James to turn to in crunch time. Varejao deer-in-the-headlightsed a 17-footer, and Moon had his attempted putback swatted away by Noah. The ball ended up in Anthony Parker's hands, and he found Varejao, who by this point had fecal juices running down his legs, and he chunked a reasonably-open jumper from 15 feet. Rose grabbed the rebound and was fouled with 1.3 seconds left.

He then went to the line and missed both free throws. These weren't in-and-out jobs, either; he completely short-armed each of them as if he were playing Kansas. But on the second miss, Noah made an extremely heady play, back-tapping the rebound so that the clock expired without the Cavs ever getting another possession, letting out a scream as he did so to celebrate what was a huge win for the Bulls.

Some might call it a moral defeat; others prefer immoral victory. But it goes in the W column all the same.

A number of reasons to be depressed

Beaten and broken down.

That's how I feel after the Bulls' 79-74 loss the short-handed Milwaukee Bucks at the United Center on Tuesday night.

Knowing Toronto had already lost, the Bulls blew a chance to pull even in the race for the final Eastern Conference playoff berth; with the Raptors owning the tiebreaker, the Bulls just can't afford to miss opportunities like this one. And yet they did, meekly succumbing to an inspired group from Milwaukee.

The reasons to be bummed out by the outcome are almost innumerable. But not quite, as I'm taking it upon myself to examine some of the critical numbers from yet another painful loss:

7: Bulls turnovers in an otherwise very good first quarter that ended with them leading 27-14. The carelessness was indicative of a team playing without a sense of urgency; despite everything at stake, the Bulls couldn't match Milwaukee's intensity and focus, and were completely out-worked by the Bucks, whose playoff berth was all but assured coming in and therefore had very little left to play for.

5: Bulls reserves on the court to start the second quarter. At a time when the team is healthy and in the homestretch of the regular season and most coaches would be shortening their rotation, Vinny Del Negro emptied his bench to start the second quarter. The unit immediately let the Bucks back into the game, giving them a glimmer of hope when the Bulls should have been putting their foot on their throats.

0: (tie)
A) Assists by Kirk Hinrich. Hinrich also shot 4-for-16 (1-for-6 on 3s), had two rebounds, one steal, no blocks, and didn't get to the free-throw line in a 44-minute stint highlighted by nine points. Unfortunately, his atrocious performance was nearly matched by Luol Deng. Sure, Deng had a double-double, but he required 17 shots to get 16 points, had just one assist as he consistently tried to go one-on-one, and played listlessly throughout, missing a number of easy buckets and getting toasted by former Bull John Salmons defensively.
B) Minutes played by the Bucks best player, Andrew Bogut. I told my friend Art before the game that I'd be more confident if Bogut -- out with a grotesquely-injured elbow -- was playing, because Scott Skiles is such a good coach that he no doubt would use it to get his troops fired up for the game, and would be completely unwilling to acccept the injury as an excuse for poor play. You know, unlike the Bulls did when Joakim Noah was out.

7,000,000: The approximate number of dollars the Bulls paid to Skiles through last season to NOT be their coach.

11: Bulls free throw attempts. Despite Bogut's absence in the middle, the Bulls continually settled for outside shots instead of trying to get to the rim.

36.2: The Bulls field goal percentage -- thanks to all those jumpers -- after a hot first quarter (11-for-16, 68.8%).

26-0: Points scored by Salmons against those by Hakim Warrick and Joe Alexander, the players he was traded for.

I suppose you could argue that it's an unfair comparison, given that Salmons played 44 minutes while Warrick played just four and Alexander wasn't even active. But the minutes alone are indicative of the disparity in the talent exchanged, and the game served as Exhibit A for why you shouldn't make a cap-clearing deadline deal with a team you are jockeying with for a postseason berth.

Was there any doubt that Salmons was the Bucks best player? That if he hadn't been on the team, the Bulls would have won the game? Salmons scored a game high 26-points -- twice as many as any other Buck besides Ersan Ilyasova (17) -- and despite being their primary ballhandler in crunch time, didn't commit a turnover in a team-high 44 minutes.

As Art wrote in a post-game email, "I'm so glad we got rid of Salmons and can now sign Joe Johnson to a horrible contract this summer. Awesome."

3: Offensive rebounds the Bulls grabbed after the first quarter. One of the biggest reason the Bucks were able to completely turn the game around and prevent the Bulls from making any sort of sustained run was that they limited Chicago to one-and-done offensive possessions.

2: Points the Bulls were attempting to get, down by three with 7.9 seconds left when Brad Miller got whistled for traveling. Why in the world weren't they setting up to shoot a game-tying 3 when the team is down 77-74? And why is the ball in the hands of the backup center instead of the team's only star, Derrick Rose, who also just happens to be a point guard? Even renowned homer Stacey King pointed this out:

And nothing against Brad right there, but there's a situation you're down 3, with about 15 seconds [actually 13, when the ball was inbounded] to go in the game, and you would think that there would be some kind of pick-and-pop situation. Not to take anything away from Brad handling the ball, but that's the last guy you want to be trying to dribble and trying to create something off the dribble.

Keep in mind that this all occurred coming out of a timeout. I can't even fathom what might've been discussed at that during that stoppage in play. But I suppose it must've went something like this:

Del Negro: Alright everybody, this is exciting. I'm beginning to think that we could actually win this game. I mean, I doubt it, but maybe. Okay Derrick ...

Rose: I'll take the inbounds, go hard to the hole while Miller and Deng set a series of screens on the perimeter, and then find the open man for the game-tying 3?

Del Negro: Hold on there, professor. You're going to be a decoy. We're going to inbound it to Luol. Lu, you're going to act like you're the last person who wants to be near the ball at this point, and you'll find Brad beyond the arc. Now, Brad ...

Miller: Coach, I can make it.

Del Negro: Take it easy, Jimmy Chitwood. You're not going to shoot it, or even think about trying to tie the game. We have to play to our strengths here, so you've got to immediately put the ball on the floor and CREATE. Lose on three, lose on three, LOSE!

I'm always amazed when I look at the stats and Miller isn't averaging 41 turnovers per 48 minutes, because it seems to me that he is constantly losing possession while trying to create something, either by throwing a terrible bounce pass, getting the ball stripped, or just flat-out losing his dribble. Remarkably, Miller averages fewer turnovers per 48 than Rose and, more surprisingly, Noah.

13.9: The percent chance the Bulls now have of getting into the playoffs, according to ESPN.com's John Hollinger, which is pretty much right between CoolStandings.com (15.1%) and Basketball-Reference.com (12.8).

4: The typical number of hours I squander finding/editing photos and creating captions. Which is why, in my depressed state, you're not getting any here. Sorry.

Mail-a-Bull II: The return of (my half-baked theory on) Phil Jackson

This was originally intended as part of my last "mailbag" column, but it became so long that I decided to break it off into its own post. It's been sitting as a draft for a while now, and it's pretty thin on its own, but whatever; this is what happens when the Bulls drop to 2 games back with eight to play.

Phil Jackson? Did I miss something recently? I don’t see ANY scenario where he would come back to Chicago. Doesn’t make basketball sense (for him), money sense (for either), or common sense.

-- NormVanBeer on Mar 9, 2010 1:31 PM CST

Aw, come on, Norm. Come over to the other side and live a little. In order to enjoy my admittedly-flimsily-premised Phil Jackson post, you have to suspend what you call common sense just a tad, and allow yourself to dream. But I will nonetheless try to bolster my case for Phil so you can more readily consider the possibilities.

There are only 3 places I can see Phil Jackson next year

1) Lakers
2) His home
3) Coaching LeBron – yeah because a guy who coached MJ and KB would want no other. I’d still like him to coach him a MJ/Kobe-less team before passing judgement on how great he is.

-- JustAnotherFan on Mar 12, 2010 8:59 AM CST

If Phil is going to leave the Lakers (which I think is becoming increasingly likely) and he doesn't decide to retire, there aren't a whole lot of places he could conceivably land. He's not going to be interested in a place like Sacramento or Minneapolis; he'll want to go somewhere big, like New York, Chicago, or Boston. Maybe Miami. But the Knicks and Celtics aren't likely to have an opening, and I can't really see Pat Riley and Phil getting together in South Beach. So that leaves three teams: the Bulls, Nets and Clippers.

I think we can eliminate the Nets because 1. They're a long ways away from moving to Brooklyn; and 2. In spite of Brook Lopez, Devin Harris, and cap space, they're a 10-win team and as close to contending as they are to moving to New York. Assuming they don't get one of the top-2 picks this year, Phil's going to want to have more chips if he's going to sit down and play a few hands.

Which brings up the crucial part of this whole scenario: How much of a draw does Phil think he is? If Phil thinks that he could lure a LeBron James or Dwyane Wade to whatever team he goes to, then he's probably just going to go where he likes, provided the team has the requisite cap space. The Bulls, Nets, and Clippers all do.

But only the Bulls can say they're not the B-team in their own city.

Still, the Clippers are an interesting possibility, in that they have a lot of talent and cap space, and it would be the best way for Phil to stick it to the Lakers if he's so inclined. But they're the Clippers, and could he really work for Donald Sterling? And moreover, would Donald Sterling really be willing to pay him?

Now I know what you're thinking: Well neither would Jerry Reinsdorf. In fact:

I don't see any way the Bulls pay a premium for coaching and Phil is on his own tier.

-- your friendly BullsBlogger on Mar 9, 2010 11:25 AM CST

-- OR --

I would enjoy a universe where Phil Jackson takes a coaching job that doesn't involve one of the 5 best players in the NBA. Or a management that doesn’t care about spending a lot of money.

-- Ozzie Montana on Mar 9, 2010 3:30 PM CST

Over the course of the last several years, the perception of Jerry Reinsdorf has gone from The only good owner in Chicago to Heartless tightwad. How, exactly, did this happen?

The main cases against Reinsdorf -- or, better yet, for his cheapness -- are the following:

1. He broke up the dynasty.

2. He hired Vinny Del Negro instead of an actual NBA coach

3. He steadfastly refuses to pay the luxury tax

As for point 1, Reinsdorf and Jerry Krause were not responsible for breaking up of the Bulls, and I'm tired of hearing that they were. After they won Title No. 6, it was clear it was over -- you could even see it in the team's celebration after clinching. Michael wanted to retire. Scottie, a free agent, didn't want to come back after feeling like he'd been dissed by the organization's ongoing refusal to renegotiate a guaranteed contract that he willingly signed. And Phil had tired of Krause's ways and didn't want to coach the team anymore, especially without Michael and Scottie. The problem was, none of them wanted to be the guy who broke up the biggest party in Chicago's history. So they all dragged their feet on announcing anything, and the organization -- knowing full well that none of them wanted any part of coming back -- was forced to make alternative arrangements, because unlike Michael, Scottie, and Phil, they couldn't afford to just wait it out. Now if the Bulls' braintrust had played its cards right, they would have publicly begged all three to come back, because it would have had zero effect, and then they wouldn't've been the bad guys. Instead, they were too proud, and were unjustly vilified for blowing up the team.

Point 2: Somewhat legitimate. However, I think it's odd that no one seems remember that Reinsdorf also signed off on a lucrative extension for Scott Skiles just a few years before, and had targeted Mike D'Antoni and Doug Collins before settling -- and never has that word been used so aptly -- for Del Negro. Once he realized that neither D'Antoni or Collins was interested, who exactly should he have paid top-dollar for? Avery Johnson? His micro-managing ways would have been terrible with this team, especially considering they were just coming off of the similar (but superior) Skiles. Given his remaining options -- and that he was still paying Skiles -- I don't blame Reinsdorf at all for trying to get someone on the cheap. Now granted, it hasn't worked. But there's no reason that it couldn't have; it's like everyone forgot that Jackson also had an extremely low NBA profile when the Bulls hired him. While Reinsdorf was thinking with his wallet, I'm sure he also thought, Hey, maybe lightning will strike twice.

In terms of No. 3, I'm sorry but not wanting to pay the luxury tax does not equal cheap. I personally don't think going over the luxury tax is a prudent investment either; does anybody honestly think that getting a dollar's worth of value for $2 is a good deal? Especially given the kind of team the Bulls have. This isn't a championship-caliber group. If I recall correctly, Reinsdorf paid through his bespectacled proboscis for several years to keep the dynasty alive; I seem to remember Michael getting $30 million -- every penny of which he deserved -- one year. Reinsdorf was willing to pay, when the product on the court was worth it.

Besides, it's not just that a team has to pay double for every dollar spent over the tax; they also lose out on the disbursement of the tax money to the below-the-threshold teams. So say a team is $3 million over the tax line and has a somewhat valuable asset making $3 million a year -- like a Hakim Warrick, only good. Last season, the teams that didn't pay the tax received a payment of $2.9 million from the teams that did. So now Warrick's $3 million a year is actually costing you $9 million. Does that seem like a sound investment to you, $9 million for a Hakim Warrick-type? I personally would be trying my damnedest to give that guy away just to get back under the tax line, because that money could be better utilized elsewhere.

Like on a coach, for instance. Remember, money paid to non-playing personnel is not included in the cap/tax calculations.

So I just don't buy that Reinsdorf's unwillingness to pay the tax is evidence that he's cheap. Though you'd barely know it given the general attitude towards ownership, the Bulls are far over the salary cap -- nearly $12,000,000 according to ESPN.com -- and if they were as tight as their reputation, they'd be hovering around the minimum, not several million dollars over the "max".

Now that reluctance to over the tax threshold certainly doesn't put him in Mark Cuban, money-is-no-object category, but it doesn't make him a tightwad either. Considering that he's paid a premium to have a great team before -- and that a coach's salary has no impact on the tax -- I think Reinsdorf would pay a hell of a lot for someone like Jackson. Maybe not as much as Phil would want, but a figure that would still leave him at the top of the coaching heap. Because that would be a sound investment, and I believe that's what Reinsdorf is all about.

If you accept on its face that Reinsdorf might pay, it again becomes a matter of how confident Phil would be in his (and the franchise's) ability to lure a star Top-5 guy via free agency. Since I don't think anyone's ever accused Phil of having a tiny ego, I'm guessing he thinks he could bring a LeBron or Wade to Chicago. Which would put him in the kind of position, talent-wise, that he is known to prefer.

Is this whole thing highly unlikely? No doubt. But it's certainly no more implausible than the Bulls overcoming a 3-game deficit (for all intents and purposes, given the tiebreakers) over the final eight games and making the playoffs, something I think many Bulls fans still believe could happen. So chew on that -- and perhaps some of these -- before you pessimistically dismiss the possibility of Phil.

Total Bullshart

Just when I was feeling pretty good about Chicago's basketball team pulling off the impossible and squeezing into the playoffs in light of Toronto's 113-87 loss to the Jazz on Wednesday -- Playoff teams don't lose home games that badly, I thought -- the Bulls proved they are not, in fact, a playoff team by losing a home game that badly on Thursday, succumbing to the Heat in pitiful fashion, 103-74.

I gave up watching the NCAA Tournament for this?

The only thing preventing me from saying It's all over but the shouting is that terrible effort by the Raptors against Utah. Still, with the Bulls down by 2 1/2 games with just 11 to play, I'd give them about a 1-in-20 chance of sneaking into the postseason at this point. I'm not even going to bother with my usual Hollinger-B-R.com-CoolStandings Playoff Odds chart; they looked so bad that it's almost impossible envision them winning the eight or so games they'll need.

Yes, it was only one game. But to be so amazingly uncompetitive and utterly flat in a game that was so important to their postseason aspiration was a hell of an indictment of the Bulls' chances. There was nothing positive to take out of that game. Not one thing.

The atrociousness of the Bulls' effort was matched only by that of their defense. Apparently nobody on the Bulls bothered to tell Jermaine O'Neal what year it was, as he time-machined his way to 18 first-half points on 7-of-11 shooting, and finished with 24 points in just 25 minutes. Joining him in turning back the clock was Quentin Richardson, who absolutely abused the Bulls in the first quarter, going 4-for-5 while showing an impressive array of post-up moves, as Heat coach Erik Spoelstra exposed yet another Chicago 3-guard lineup. Which led to me writing the following between the first and second quarters:

I understand that Luol Deng's injury (and our beloved front office's trades) have left the team woefully short at the 3, but what I don't get is the compulsion to only let a guard slide over to small forward. If it's not working, how about trying one of your 4s there? What difference does it make if you are getting killed on the matchups anyway?

Well, to Vinny Del Negro's credit -- not a phrase I type very often -- he tried to go big to open the second quarter, running with Chris Richard, Taj Gibson, and Hakim Warrick* in the front court. And that didn't work either. At all.

* During Warrick's brief Bulls tenure, he has gone from a guy who I admired from a distance (in box scores) to someone I can't stand seeing on the court. I now understand why he garnered so little interest on the free agent market last off-season; when you watch him regularly, you realize that while there are some things he does well, he's a very limited, one-dimensional player. He also plays with a lack of urgency reminiscent of Tim Thomas, though not quite to those putrid depths. While I can't quite put my finger on it, Warrick just somehow seems to be a drain on the team.

Among the more disturbing lowlights was the Bulls managing to make a Hall-of-Fame case for the Heat's 15-minutes-per-game backup center Joel Anthony. While Anthony is a very good shotblocker -- he came in leading the league in blocks per 48 minutes, with 4.18 -- his five blocks in seven first-half minutes put him into Manute-Bol-defending-me territory. But the Bulls kept shoving shots directly into Anthony's mitts, as if they had no idea that the guy coming off the Heat bench was a good defensive player.

It's reassuring to know that the advanced scouting is as useless as the rest of the organization's non-playing personnel.

Not that I'm giving the players a free pass on this one. In fact, to me the most disappointing aspect of the game's first half -- which ended with the Bulls down 63-33 -- was that the Bulls did not get booed off the floor. Their performance was as godawful as anything I've ever seen from an NBA team. The boos should have been cascading down so powerfully as to form a gale that would've literally forced the Bulls into the locker room. Instead, I could barely hear any. Talk about taking the crowd completely out of the game; the Heat even rendered the United Center faithful unable to express their disgust.

They'll get another chance to voice their displeasure on Saturday, when the Nets come to town. Because with New Jersey riding a one-game winning streak and having a previous UC triumph under its belt, I wouldn't take anything for granted.

The Bulls playoff chances: Do they still exist?

Yes.

But they aren't very good. The current playoff odds:

	Hollinger	B-R.com	CoolStandings	AVG
Bucks	100%	100%	99.9%	100%
Heat	98.8%	99.6%	99.2%	99.2%
Bobcats	98.4%	98.4%	98.4%	98.4%
Raptors	72.9%	86.0%	86.3%	81.7%
Bulls	30.0%	16.0%	16.2%	20.7%

But as the Bulls' season was irrevocably altered by Saturday's earth-shattering, 10-game-losing-streak-snapping 98-84 win over the mighty Philadelphia 76ers, could they actually overcome the 1-in-5 odds and catapult themselves into the playoffs?

For starters, let's put this in proper perspective. The projected wins of each of the other contenders:

	Hollinger	B-R.com	CoolStandings	AVG
Bucks	46-36	45.7-36.3	45.6-36.4	46-36
Heat	44-38	44-38	43.6-38.4	44-38
Bobcats	44-38	43.5-38.5	43.2-38.8	44-38
Raptors	40-42	40.3-41.7	40.2-41.8	40-42

The Bulls are currently 32-37. I'd say to get themselves clear of the Raptors -- who already own the tiebreaker thanks to a 2-0 mark in the season series -- they'll need to finish with 42 wins, so that's 10-3 the rest of the way.

The Bulls have not picked up more than 9 wins in any 13-game stretch this season.

Still, they've also rarely been healthy for that long; if they are, 10 wins seems improbable yet doable. Granted that's a huge caveat. Given the semi-emergence of James Johnson, I think the Bulls can overcome Luol Deng's continued absence provided Derrick Rose is able to play major minutes and Joakim Noah is back to stay, even if he's slowly worked back into the rotation. But since Noah's already had one false start in his recovery, well ...

Nevertheless, here's one road map to 10 Bulls wins, given their remaining schedule:

3/22 vs. Houston, W

For the Bulls to pull this off, they absolutely have to take care of business at the United Center, especially against the semi-decent teams. That means they must beat the Rockets, who they topped in Houston in the midst of that 5-game road winning streak in late January. They'll have to find a way to do it again, even though they aren't playing nearly as well now as they were then. They'll be helped by the Rockets being on the second half of a back-to-back.

3/25 vs. Miami, W

Along wiith the Houston game, one of the two more important tilts on the schedule. They'll need to beat Miami and a seemingly-healthy Dwyane Wade for the second time this year (they are 1-2 against them). The good news is, the Bulls won the only previous matchup at the UC, 95-91 on Feb. 6.

3/27 vs. New Jersey, W

God, would anything be more embarrassing than getting swept at home by the Nets? If the Bulls somehow lose this game, don't even bother with the final 10.

3/28 at Detroit, L

While this is obviously a winnable game, it's also the second-half of a back-to-back, and I just don't think the Bulls will sweep the season series against the Pistons. I have a feeling that Ben Gordon might have his I'll-show-you game in hopes of playing spoiler for the Bulls chances.

3/30 vs. Phoenix, W

There is one thing that Vinny Del Negro has done well as Bulls' coach: beat the Suns. The Bulls haven't lost to Phoenix in two years, but the Suns are a very good team, one that shouldn't lose to a team like Chicago that many times in a row. The Bulls can afford to lose this game -- which is a distinct possibility -- if they beat the Pistons in Detroit.

4/2 at Washington, W

I wasn't happy the last time the Bulls played in Washington and lost, and they simply can't afford to let it happen again. After seeing the Wizards front line run amok in that game, Chicago really needs Joakim Noah healthy enough to log significant minutes, and keeping rookies Johnson and Taj Gibson out of foul trouble will be crucial too.

4/3 vs. Charlotte, W

The long-awaited return of Tyrus Thomas. This one, from Tyrus' perspective, could go either way. He might have a monster game that would include around eight blocks, or he's going to try to do too much and he'll end up sitting on the bench after going 0-for-4 with a pair of goaltending calls in 13 minutes. Regardless, I'm sure he'll get booed in one of those inexplicable UC crowd reactions. And before you say that the booing would, in fact, be explicable, keep in mind that Tyrus' greatest transgressions were:

1. Being a supposed lottery flop (even though his per-minute and efficiency numbers were solid)

2. Getting benched (because of injury)

3. Teeing off on a coach (that most of the UC faithful consider a joke)

4. Getting traded (without requesting/demanding one, at least publicly)

5. Doing well since the deal (mostly a function of more consistent playing time)

4/6 vs. Milwaukee, W

One game after Tyrus' chance at redemption, John Salmons gets his in yet another must-win game that the Bulls could easily lose. They've dropped 2 of 3 in the season series thus far -- with the three games being decided by a total of seven points -- but have won the only other one at the UC. The problem is that Milwaukee has been on fire since the trade deadline, going 14-2 since Feb. 19, while the Bulls, as you may have heard, have been headed in the opposite direction.

4/8 vs. Cleveland, L

A game the Bulls might steal against a slumming Cavs team. But come on, it's LeBron. I'm not picking against him.

4/9 at New Jersey, W

Home or away, playoff teams have got to take care of business against (potentially) the worst team in NBA history.

4/11 at Toronto, W

The must-win game in the whole stretch. Since they'll be going head-to-head with their primary competition, this one amounts to a 2-game swing. The Bulls can still make the playoffs with a loss here, but losing this game likely would result in them needing to get to 43 wins instead of 42, which would mean picking up two additional wins (say, at Detroit and vs. Cleveland) to make it in.

In other words, they have to win this game. And they've already lost twice to the Raps this season, in pretty convincing fashion. Luckily, Toronto is one of the few teams that has been playing nearly as poorly as the Bulls, with just three wins in its last 13.

4/13 vs. Boston, W

The Celtics will be looking to avenge this ugly loss on their home floor, but they also (hopefully) won't have a lot to play for, as their seeding -- they're currently a half-game ahead of the Hawks for third in the Eastern Conference -- may be decided by then. If so, the Bulls should roll. Regardless, I expect the UC crowd to be engaged playoff-style in this rematch of last year's epic seven-game first-round series.

4/14 at Charlotte, L

If both teams are still fighting for positioning, I just don't see Chicago beating a Bobcats team that currently holds the fourth-best home record (25-8) in the Eastern Conference. However, if Charlotte's seeding is already locked and the Bulls still have something to play for, then they could get very lucky.

And that would be 10-3. Unfortunately, looking at that stretch I'd say five wins are far more likely than 10. But it is at least possible.

Really, I think the next two games are key; the Bulls simply have to put together a little momentum if they are going to make a playoff run, and it has to start by winning a few games that aren't gimmes. If they can do that, who knows? It might be a long shot, but I'll take it over no shot at all.

Mail-a-Bull*

* This post (and its title) made a lot more sense in its original spot on BlogaBull.com. Basically I'm responding to comments made on my posts there.

Because the last handful of games have been completely hopeless -- as my friend Art said following the Orlando game, it's like watching a 1-seed versus a No. 16 -- I decided to scour the comments of several posts and respond to them as if I had a fan base. Enjoy.

WHY IS HE TAKING A FUCKING TIME OUT????

-- jamaica876 on Mar 16, 2010 9:32 PM CDT

This was in reference to Vinny Del Negro's attempt to stem the momentum in the Bulls 104-97 loss to the Grizzlies on Monday that extended the losing streak to eight games. Unfortunately, the momentum he was trying to stem was the Bulls'. Beginning with Memphis leading 93-80 in the fourth quarter, these were the plays prior to the timeout:

4:54	Acie Law makes driving layup	93-82
4:48	Mike Conley bad pass
4:37	Brad Miller makes 23-foot three point jumper	93-85
4:18	Zach Randolph makes 1 of 2 free throws	94-85
4:11	Hakim Warrick makes slam dunk	94-87
3:47	Ronnie Brewer misses 19-foot two point shot
3:39	Jannero Pargo makes driving layup	94-89
3:39	Jannero Pargo makes free throw 1 of 1	94-90
3:15	Grizzlies shot clock violation

With your team on a 10-1 run over the prior 1:39, what could possibly possess you to call time out? Even Chris Webber cannot imagine a situation where you would want to call a timeout less than right there. The home team is reeling. The crowd is getting tighter than Eddy Curry's warmups. Memphis was in the process of blowing a 25-point late-third-quarter lead, as the Bulls weren't just on a 10-1 run, they'd also scored 27 of the previous 36. Grizzlies coach Lionel Hollins should have been jumping out of his suit trying to get a T.O., but instead Vinny calls one and completely lets them off the hook.

Not surprisingly, Memphis put the game away by scoring the next six points after Vinny's rally-killing decision. Look, I'm not saying the timeout lost the game, one a Bulls team minus four starters had no business being in. But they did have a tiny sliver of a chance to steal it there at the end, and the timeout sure as shit didn't help. So to answer your question, Jamaica: I wish I knew. I wish I knew.

Is Bosh the Answer? (What's the Question?)

-- leeac on Mar 14, 2010 6:32 PM CDT

Alright, so I stole that from someone else's actual blog entry; I'm sorry that I can't even abide by my own ridiculous premise. Anyway, unless the question is, Who would be your third choice among the soon-to-be free agents? then I don't think Chris Bosh is the answer.

No, that's not entirely fair. Bosh would be a great guy for them to land, someone who, while not a super-duper star, is still worth the max in a league where lesser guys like Rashard Lewis have gotten it. But I'd still want LeBron James and Dwyane Wade first.

LeBron is the no-doubt-about-it #1. No matter what a team's roster looked like -- I don't care if they already had Carmelo Anthony and Kevin Durant -- they'd still have LeBron as their first priority. Because LeBron is not only far-and-away the best player in the NBA, he's also one of the most versatile. Regardless of the current depth chart, LeBron would find a place to fit in and instantly make any team a legitimate title contender. He's the first choice, and it's not even worth discussing.

Although I get the feeling the general perception is that Wade is much older than Bosh, it's only by a little over two years. Wade will be 28 at the beginning of next season, Bosh 26. Neither guy has exactly been a paragon of health; Bosh has played more than 70 games in just one of the past five seasons, while Wade has missed at least 20 games in three of his seven years. Bosh would be a great fit position-wise -- I wish he had a bit more of a low-post game, though that's quibbling, really -- but that and the age are about the only things he has over Wade.

Now I understand that Wade isn't the ideal fit next to Derrick Rose, who would be better served having a Ray Allen-in-his-prime type shooter next to him. But what's best for Rose isn't necessarily what's best for the Bulls, and Wade would them far better than a Joe Johnson ever could. He is a transcendent player, a true franchise-carrying guy. Bosh, for all his talents, isn't; he's surrounded by far better players in Toronto, yet Wade's team has the (slightly) better record.

I think most people would rank Bosh somewhere in the 10 to 15 range if they were asked to list the NBA's best players. But you'd be hard pressed to find a single NBA observer that wouldn't have Wade in his/her top five. In his contract-drive season, Bosh has a career-best 25.60 Player Efficiency Rating this year; Wade has finished with a PER of 27 or better in all but one of the last been five seasons, an injury-plagued '07-'08.

So no, I don't care that Wade can't shoot the 3 and has a game somewhat similar to Rose. A good coach would figure out how to make it work. And hopefully a good coach is exactly what the Bulls will have come next season.

You watch games in your bedroom!?

-- CrashDavis on Mar 11, 2010 7:55 AM CST

Yes.

Yes I do.

Though I am not morbidly obese, I do most everything from my bed: watch Bulls games, eat meals, write inane blog entries, yell at my dog to leave me alone, all of it. That's just how we SKIAs roll.

Why does everything always have to be Tyrus vs. Taj? Weren't they on the same team?

-- MrSportsKnowItAll.com on March 17, 2010 6:06 AM CST

Well would you look at that! A comment that so perfectly encapsulates what I want to write about, you'd think I posted it just for this piece. Well I resent that implication, sir. (Or madam, I suppose. Do I have any women reading this crap?) It was a perfectly-appropriate comment in regard to this post, and that thread in particular.

Anyway, I think one of the worst developments of this Bulls season is that if you liked Tyrus Thomas, circumstances dictated that you became anti-Taj Gibson, because Gibson was the one that took his job, and received a ton of praise for supposedly having all of the desirable attributes that Tyrus was perceived to be lacking.

And that was entirely unfair to Taj. You know, kind of like losing your starting job to injury.

Say what you will, but people that didn't like Tyrus had their reasons; I would say they were misguided, but there were at least reasons. Things like, he plays too out of control and makes stupid decisions. Or he's a lousy help defender and disappears for stretches on offense. I don't agree with most of it, but I can at least see why thinking that would make someone dislike a player.

But most Tyrus fans -- okay, my sample size is one -- dislike Taj for basically four reasons:

1. He's not as good as Tyrus

2. Vinny insisted on starting him, the lesser player

3. They've had an assfull of the hard-hat-and-lunch-pail crap

4. They find the Taj backers to be insufferable

And really, those could be combined into two reasons; regardless, none of them are Taj's fault. All Taj has done is gone out and played hard. It's not his fault that Stacey King yammers on and on about how workmanlike he is, or that others talk about how smart he plays. Taj never proclaimed that he was better than Tyrus, or that Vinny needed to start him lest he demand a trade. He's just a young player trying to establish himself in the league, and it's tragic that he's largely viewed as the villain among us Tyrus fans.

Ideally, the Bulls would've found a way to make it work with Tyrus and Taj, and there was no reason why they shouldn't have. Given that so many teams go small in today's NBA, I thought those two and Noah would've make for a pretty good three-man rotation at the 4 and 5. But it didn't work out that way, not because of the players necessarily (and certainly not because of Taj), but because of failures of the organization and coaching staff. That's who completely gang-raped the pooch on this one.

As I've said before, good organizations value players based on what they do well; crappy ones only see them for what they can't do. So the Bulls focused on Tyrus' flaws instead of his assets, and decided he wasn't worth the trouble. This is what leads to mediocrity, as well as big contracts for guys like Luol Deng and Kirk Hinrich -- even though neither of them do anything particularly well, they don't have any glaring weaknesses, either -- while someone with a legitimate NBA skill (shot-making) in Ben Gordon is let go.*

* For the record, I supported the Bulls' decision not to re-sign Gordon. First off, even though he is a great long-range shooter, I didn't think that he was a particularly good fit next to Rose because of his defense and tendency to dominate the ball and/or lose control of it while attempting to dribble, and $58 million for five years was ludicrous. But more importantly, since the Bulls already had Deng and Hinrich under crazily-termed contracts, signing yet another non-elite player to a lucrative long-term deal didn't make a whole lot of sense, not with the looming extensions to Rose, Noah, and (ahem) Thomas. Now if you had asked me to pick one of Deng, Hinrich, and Gordon, it definitely would've been Gordon. But the organization had already made its bed with Deng and Hinrich, and it just didn't make sense to have over $30 million per season committed to a trio of barely above-average players.

If you had told me that Taj Gibson would be averaging eight-and-a-half points and seven rebounds 66 games into his rookie season and a huge chunk of fans (including me) wouldn't like him, there's no way in hell I would've believed you. It sounds totally insane. The truth is, we should all be reveling in his surprisingly-productive rookie season, but instead too many of us are letting our affinity for Tyrus get in the way.

This same sentiment goes for the other side of the coin (the Taj backers) too; just because you like the way Taj plays doesn't mean that Tyrus was a flaming turd. You may think that Tyrus had the dreaded low basketball IQ, but you should also acknowledge that did some things very, very well. Because he did, and to deny it just makes you seem horribly biased.

May you please post less?

-- Super-Structure on Feb 23, 2010 11:01 AM CST

By the time I saw this comment, some people had already jumped in to defend my posts, which I really appreciated. But I believe Super-S was misinterpreted. As his subsequent comments still rather-cryptically indicated, I don't think he wanted me to post with less frequency, but rather wanted my entries to be shorter.

To be honest, almost every time I sit down, I say to myself, Well this'll be a nice, short one. Then eight hours and several thousand words later, I've got yet another 15-minute-commitment piece. Sorry for that.

But to answer your question: I'm trying.

Come back tomorrow (or whenever the hell I get to it) for Part II, which was originally supposed to be included in this entry before it ran far too long.