Always Be Proud

David Haugh wrote this in an attempt to puff up and inflate the Bulls season. They made the playoffs in the East-- be proud. They overcame the odds and did the unthinkable to float to the top of the Eastern Conference garbage pile. Be proud -- or are you a basketball snob?




Hawks, Bulls each come with playoff expectations
By David Haugh
April 15, 2010

I wonder if these respective expectations are realistic and fair: the Hawks must win the Western Conference and at least play in the Stanley Cup finals for this season not to go down as a disappointment whereas the Bulls can win one game against the 61-victory Cavaliers and feel reasonably content.

That's right, we can lower our expectations for the Bulls. Who wants them to be good or anything?

I wonder why Joel Quenneville and his mustache isn't a bigger hit in Chicago. Or how many of the NBA teams firing coaches will watch Vinny Del Negro a little closer knowing he's within four losses of becoming a former Bulls coach despite back-to-back playoff seasons under tough circumstances.


I always like grammar errors- that should be "aren't" not "isn't" a bigger hit in Chicago.
And no NBA teams should be looking any closer at Vinny- 4 games aren't going to show whether he's a good coach or not.

...Or if OSHA has requested a credential for the Bulls-Cavs series.

Because there's a machine that's making employees go deaf or something? OSHA doesn't cover workplace violence, right? There must be some building code violations David Haugh has uncovered.

Mostly, I wonder why more people in Chicago aren't more impressed by what Del Negro and the Bulls just pulled off.

I'll try.... "Yay Bulls. Yay Vinny. I'm so impressed." No, that's not gonna stick. I tried as hard as I can and can't fake being impressed. Maybe President Obama can show me how-- here's a collection of the President feigning interest in mundane things here
I'm sure he can show me how to be interested in this mundane basketball accomplishment.

Yes, of the 16 teams in the NBA playoffs, the Bulls statistically are the worst with a 41-41 record. Yes, we call the Bulls a playoff team in the same way we call the guy ranked last in his medical school class a doctor.

You left off "the same way we call a Tribune Sports Columnist a writer."

But none defies logic more than wondering whether the Bulls would be better off missing the playoffs and getting into the NBA lottery with a 1.7 percent chance at winning the No. 1 overall pick. Nonsense.

Nothing good ever came from the Bulls not making the playoffs. Except the year they didn't-- and ended up getting Derrick Rose. That, oddly enough, defies your logic. Nonsense indeed.

Cynics argue the Bulls will get no closer to a championship if, for instance, they get swept by the Cavaliers, as some NBA analysts predict, and that playoff experience will be of no use later.

Wouldn't last years playoff experience help them with this year's playoffs?
And they won't be any closer to a championship? The only thing they've done in the last 6 years to get closer to a championship is not make the playoffs and get Derrick Rose (Repetitive, I know. But important).

The Bulls had every reason to lose focus or lack consistency. They were hobbling on the court and squabbling off it. Yet they found a way to beat the Raptors, Celtics and Bobcats in succession thanks to the way their leaders, Derrick Rose and Joakim Noah, showed them how.

They found a way to pass a team who's best player had a broken face. Uh huh, he had a broken face. Perhaps the Pixies can make this point better:


But the Bulls beat some bad teams. Some were resting players (Lebron), others were hurt (Bosh) and other were bad (Bobcats/Tyrus Thomas). Haugh also left out the Bulls losing to the worst team in the NBA. If Haugh's point were anywhere near right, wouldn't last year's playoff experience be enough to hold off the Nets?

Without last season's playoff series against the Celtics that was deemed similarly irrelevant by many, Rose and Noah never may have known where to find the something extra every winning team develops incrementally. Returning to the playoffs represents continuity in that development.

Every winning team? Do you really want to type in absolutes? The Celtics got Garnett and won it all without developing incrementally. And haven't the Bulls been trying this? Get to playoffs, then next year almost win a series and then the next year win a series.... Yeah they have. And it hasn't worked.

A common belief is that we should be unimpressed because of the inferiority of the Eastern Conference. Well, when NBA re-alignment moves the Bulls into the West, maybe that will be a valid point. But the Bulls indeed play in the East and cannot help or change that. So no asterisk or apology is necessary.

The Eastern Conference stills plays the Western Conference in the finals, right? I'm still not impressed... its still a .500 team eaking into the playoffs of a bad conference and they have no chance of doing anything.

Scoffing at a .500 record given the limited roster Del Negro had smacks of basketball elitism, residue of the Jordan Years.

Wait, those were all those years with the championships, right? Yeah, gonna say that's better than .500. And I'm still not impressed.

Remember, this Bulls' season was designed to fail and end after the 82nd game. The Bulls didn't replace Ben Gordon. They dumped Tyrus Thomas and John Salmons with the idea of improving the salary cap more than the roster. Planning seemed more important to winning — but nobody told the players.

Really bad sports thinking here. They didn't dump Thomas for salary reasons- they dumped him because he's not a good player, he didn't learn plays, and he thought he was the best player on the team. Have you already forgotten all the "my turn" Tyrus possessions? The bad jump shots? The not running the floor? Also, John Salmons was ineffective most of the year. He went from starter to bench after a few weeks.

But the really bad thought is "the idea of improving the salary cap." They did that successfully. Paxson (or Forman or whoever is in charge) cleared enough room to sigh a top-end free agent in possibly the best year for free agents ever. In this case planning was more important than winning. Much more important-- as pointed out before, the only time the Bulls got better is when they could a star (Derrick Rose) in the off season.

Together they enhanced the brand of the Bulls, something free agents Chris Bosh and Joe Johnson and, yes, LeBron James will notice over the next two weeks.

Because they finished eighth? The free agents know that Rose and Noah are here- they won't remember the Bulls miraculously and heroically making the playoffs. And they definitely wouldn't come here if the salary cap space wasn't cleared.

David Haugh, the point is winning the championship. Finishing as a warm-up series for Lebron isn't a consolation prize or that much to be impressed with.