I try to love the Bulls…
Chicago sports break my heart. The Chicago Bulls have never even given me a chance to love them.
This team employs Jim Boylen. I am tired.
I really could finish the piece with that but there’s a lot of pain that needs to be expressed in this.
I was born immediately after the 6th title and Mike was no longer a Bull. My parents were blessed enough to watch Mike live and would constantly tell me stories about it. “If we get to 100, we’re winning” “if the other team wasn’t up by 10 going into the 4th, they were going to lose” “[insert club reference]” and I was blessed enough to grow up watching Derrick Rose, who I will always consider a legend for what he has done for the city. But Derrick was only a Bull from June 2008 to June 2016. I still remember June 22nd, 2016, and it started off with the Cavs parade. Essentially, I’m gonna let my tweets do the talking.
You see the pain? That day, I was just happy, envisioning the future and joking around, and then boom, GarPax did some shit and ruined my whole week. And that was really the culmination of a failed experiment to make the Bulls great, and it was many different things that got us to this point. The hometown kid, who achieved every high and low with the team, traded for some peanuts. Love or hate Derrick, the man gave it his all and was still a ballplayer. He loved this team, and the team did him dirty. His 2 guard was either Keith Bogans or Ronnie Brewer. The team never loved him back.
And while the team really did luck into Derrick, I’ve been under the impression that the Chicago Bulls have been coasting off the 90s. No plan has been put into place and executed for over 20 years. And while few teams in all of sports can rival that 90s run, it doesn’t mean anything to a lot of other Bulls fans under born in the late 90s or later. We’ve been “rebuilding” since 1999 and what has it come to? One Eastern Conference Finals appearance in which we won Game 1 and then lost 4 straight. But rebuilding should begin from the draft, right?
Corey Benjamin. Elton Brand. Ron Artest. Marcus Fizer. Jamal Crawford. Dalibor Bagarić. Tyson Chandler. Eddy Curry. Jay Williams. Kirk Hinrich. Ben Gordon. Luol Deng. Tyrus Thomas. Thabo Sefolosha. Joakim Noah. Derrick Rose. James Johnson. Taj Gibson. Nikola Mirotic. Jimmy Butler. Marquis Teague. Tony Snell. Doug McDermott. Bobby Portis. Denzel Valentine.
During their tenures as Bulls, these first-round picks (or traded for on draft day) combined for 10 All-Star appearances. 1 MVP who we lucked into (we shouldn’t have gotten that first pick in 2008). And a few All-NBAs and All-Rookies. But the with this being the draft history of the Chicago Bulls from 1998 to 2016 (jury is still out the recent picks), it is easy to say that the Bulls are failures at drafting! And yes, NBA prospects are tough to gauge, and injuries or other incidents will happen, but for a team that is looking to be great, the list of players that began this paragraph is an indictment of the failure of this team and it’s foundation. I could really go further into the development of this team, but I’ll just leave off with this quick, complicated piece: we traded Gary Harris and Jusuf Nurkic for Doug McDermott, and we ended up trading Doug McDermott and Taj Gibson for Joffrey Lauvergne, Anthony Morrow, and Cam Payne. And in 2014, drafted 2 spots after McDermott? Current Bull Zach LaVine.
Now it’s time for the coaching. Phil Jackson was coach from 1989 to 1998 and seeing him coach a little more in-depth on the Last Dance, it really made me appreciate it more but also detest the moves the team has made. The Bulls have had 10 men who have coached at least 1 game since Phil Jackson left. 10 coaches in my lifetime. Longest tenured coach during that time? Tom Thibodeau from 2010 to 2015, and he ended with great tension. And now the current coach? Jim Boylen? I don’t even want to get started too much into it but I’ll just say that a week into his tenure, there was a players-only meeting. That year, Boylen went 17–41 and the Bulls finished 22–60. And when it was time to actually conduct a coaching search, to see if there is was an option out there that can help grow this team, guess what happened? A contract extension to Boylen!!! And as a fan, I think Zach LaVine echoes our sentiments on Boylen . Imagine, every single force is being done to deny the team greatness but Zach still goes out and provides greatness. It’s like being an American.
I will say, the future of the Bulls has the potential to be great. I don’t know every single step that they should take to get there, but really, the pieces are there. LaVine and WCJ and Coby White are all looking like formidable pieces. We have Artūras Karnišovas leading the front office! Anthony Davis is a free agent after this season (don’t hate my hope). We have the potential for LaMelo Ball a top pick! Essentially, this team is the Chicago Bulls. Greatness is in the DNA, and granted, those genetics aren’t showing at the moment, I have hope for the future. Our constant 7th overall picks will eventually make this team not hate pulling up a stream 82 times a season.
Originally published at https://jalencannon.wixsite.com on July 28, 2020.
