Those were my words to begin my conclusion to my 300th post last Christmas Eve. Funny how much the Bulls' direction has changed in the 363 days since. We've had LeBron James knocking them out of the playoffs again, head coaches change and virtually the same roster from a year ago struggling to adjust. There are even signs of turmoil among the players and some are speculating that could be shaken up via trades before we know it.
But this is not a post to be discussing those. This is one to look back on my highlights from the past year. Just like with my previous milestone posts, I'll be counting down my five most-read posts out of my previous 99. Kind of appropriate that I'm giving you this retrospective so close to the end of 2015, no?
5) Enough's Enough and Craving Cleveland - May 1 (44 views): I don't usually combine clincher recaps and playoff series previews in one post, but I had to after I was unable to recap the end of the first-round series with the Milwaukee Bucks the night of. Most of this previewed the conference semifinal with the Cleveland Cavaliers. People were hyped to see if the Bulls could finally get past LeBron and reach the NBA Finals. It ultimately didn't happen, but anything involving LeBron will trigger some response, so people wanted to read about this.
4) Beasts in Brooklyn - Oct. 28 (45 views): This year's Bulls opened the road schedule against the Brooklyn Nets and won 115-100. Pau Gasol and Nikola Mirotic both came within a rebound of a double-double, prompting me to give a shoutout to a fellow Spaniard of theirs: my DePaul classmate and Bulls MARCA reporter Teresa Garcia Alonso, though she didn't travel with them that night. She retweeted me and many views came from their homeland. We also had an interesting exchange about me possibly learning Spanish from all three of them.
3) Jordan Moving Inside - Jan. 23 (54 views): The story that the Michael Jordan statue would be moved inside upon completion of the office building currently under construction next to the United Center caught some people's attention. My post about it was noticed by bulls72, a popular Twitter account that celebrates the 1995-96 Bulls. A pair of retweets in a tweet that linked my post helped drive the spike in traffic. Though I felt a little bad since it wasn't original reporting on my part, I still appreciated the visitors.
2) Gasol Honored for Media Presence - April 22 (70 views): During the Bucks series, Gasol won the Magic Johnson Award, a honor by the Professional Basketball Writers Association for on-court excellence and strong media cooperation. I lauded Gasol a lot here and cited an interview he did with Teresa just before the playoffs. She was happy I did so and her kind tweet got me a lot of visitors from Spain. If she helped me gain any regular readers from her side of the Atlantic as a result of her endorsements, I can't thank her enough.
1) Boom, Baby! - May 8 (157 views): When Rose hit the buzzer-beater against the Cavaliers in Game 3 to give the Bulls a 2-1 series lead, it brought excitement and my most viewed post ever with a little assistance. When Jason Patt, fellow Bulls blogger as well as managing editor for Today's Fastbreak, tweeted out his "drunk Derrick Rose thoughts," I tweeted this post back at him, which he retweeted, shooting my view count through the roof. It was a Friday night and with over 4,100 users following Patt as of Tuesday afternoon, 85 views alone came from that tweet. And to think I requested off work that night to play in an alumni basketball game, thus allowing me to write at the absolute peak of everyone's high from that moment.
These next 100 posts might contain less optimism than any previous group of 100 posts. More changes might be coming sooner than we think. But I'm going to keep talking about the turmoil and turnover as best I can. I wouldn't be doing what I set out to do when I created this blog otherwise.
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