Bulls playing their best at right time after tumultuous season
For most of the season, the Chicago Bulls hovered around .500. That itself was a feat considering the makeup of the roster, inconsistent performances and team-issued fines and suspensions.
But a five-game losing streak and seven losses in eight games from early to mid-March dropped the Bulls to 32-37 and 10th place in the Eastern Conference, and the Bulls learned on March 16 that guard Dwyane Wade was out for the rest of the regular season with a fractured bone and ligament damage in his right elbow.
At that point, reaching the playoffs — while not impossible — seemed unlikely for Chicago.
Well, the Bulls finished strong, winning nine of their final 13 games, including consecutive wins against Milwaukee, Cleveland, Atlanta and New Orleans.
They needed to win their final two games of the season to make the playoffs, and they did that, too, claiming the No. 8 seed with a 41-41 record. They face the top-seeded Boston Celtics in the first round.
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"It was a stressful week, but we found a way," Bulls coach Fred Hoiberg said. "To get those four in a row was huge for us, and with our backs against the wall, we had to win the last two games, and our guys played really solid basketball. We found a way at maybe the most important part of the season to play our best basketball. Hopefully, we can continue with that."
Hoiberg said he wasn’t concerned as much with making the playoffs as he was with trying to help the team improve.
"You’re so occupied with trying to get your team right," he said. "When you’re going through struggles, which every team in the league at some point went through struggles, you do the best job you can to give your team confidence."
The Bulls suspended point guard Rajon Rondo one game after an incident with an assistant coach, and Rondo, Wade and Jimmy Butler were fined for a dispute that played out in the media and on social media in late January. Plus, they sent Taj Gibson and Doug McDermott to Oklahoma City at the trade deadline.
The Bulls could have folded, but they didn’t. Hoiberg deserves credit for that and for developing younger players. The Bulls have the second-youngest playoff roster (average age: 26 years old) among players who average at least 14 minutes per game, according to The Vertical’s Bobby Marks.
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Forwards Bobby Portis and Paul Zipser, guard Denzel Valentine and forward-center Cristiano Felicio all received valuable minutes and are 23 or younger, and 25-year-old forward Nikola Mirotic had a strong finish.
"They found a way to get better and give us good production," Hoiberg said.
In the final 13 games of the season:
- The Bulls scored 108.4 points and allowed 98.1 points per 100 possessions, according to nba.com/stats.
- Rondo averaged 10.3 points, eight assists and 4.8 rebounds.
- Mirotic averaged 15.4 points and shot 46% on three-pointers.
- Butler averaged 26.8 points, 7.2 assists, 6.2 rebounds and shot 51.5% from the field and 56.7% on three-pointers.
"The really impressive thing about Jimmy’s year is that he’s really played simple basketball," Hoiberg said. "He takes what the defense gives him. You can tell by the way his assist number have gone up. Look at what he’s done in the last month. He’s done everything.
"The thing that doesn’t get talked about enough is that he takes such pride in guarding the other team’s best player. He can’t relax or take time off on the defensive end because he’s always guarding the best player. To play as many minutes as Jimmy does and to do it with the amount of effort, it’s impressive."
Follow Jeff Zillgitt on Twitter @JeffZillgitt.
