Once I saw Mirza Teletovic's putback with 0.3 seconds left get a friendly roll, a sick vibe went through my stomach. The Bulls had just blown a 16-point lead and suffered a second straight home loss to a team they should have beaten. Both games had themes all too familiar to the Bulls this season. If you were to list poor shooting (especially Derrick Rose's 7-for-18), lackadaisical defense, careless turnovers, bad on-court communication or no intensity as reasons for these struggles, all would be valid points.
My friend Sam Hines kept saying afterward "At least we got to go and have fun." True, it's always nice to see your team with someone you've known for 20 years. But I just couldn't get the game's outcome out of my head. And the more I thought about it, the angrier I became.
You're not supposed to let a team wrapping up a long road trip in your building look like they have more heart than you. Somehow, that's exactly how the Bulls made the Suns look. Even with the superior talent and heightened playoff aspirations (which amazingly still exist to a certain degree), they completely folded by acting careless in all aspects of the game. I would have preferred a blowout defeat to the most heartbreaking loss I've ever seen in person.
I asked myself after the game why I'm supposed to believe Fred Hoiberg is a better coach than Tom Thibodeau. I still can't believe that divorce went down the way it did. Thibodeau, with his defensive prowess, never would have allowed Phoenix to score 42 points in any quarter, let alone the last one. The offense could have gone either way, as was typically the case under him, but even though the defense in his final year was lacking at times, it's doubtful it would have collapsed like how we just saw.
For the record, I'm not blaming Hoiberg's system for this or any other loss to bad teams. As much as I didn't (still don't) really like the hire, he deserves as much a chance as any NBA head coach to prove he belongs among the ranks. What's to blame is the players not adjusting to that system to the point where their record and place in the standings reflect the roster. Taj Gibson can talk about that "new system" all he wants, but talk is cheap and doesn't solve the problem of just going through the motions when you're supposed to go for the kill.
This might all just be a tease to a much better rest of the season, but even in most victories, I see a team whose 11-7 record is mostly cosmetic. They in no way resemble anything close to a championship contender. If they were, we wouldn't have to be sweating our way through every fourth quarter fearing the worst. It happened Monday and will continue to happen unless some collective light bulb goes off in everyone's head.
While I hate to toss the dreaded R-word around at anytime, a rebuild might be closer than we think. The Bulls will make the playoffs for at least the next couple of years, but exits in the first or second rounds will be inevitable. Once Rose's contract expires in 2017, we could be looking at a long stretch of young players adjusting to the NBA as well as Hoiberg's coaching. Whether they'll be bad enough to land a top draft pick remains to be seen, but the term "basketball hell" applies both now and possibly for the foreseeable future.
It's sad to think a group that was supposed to contend for a championship more often has been reduced to what we now see. With more changes in the ship's view though, depression has started to set in. If this was a club with a young nucleus coughing up big leads and losing, it'd be tough, but understandable. Seeing it from players who have been together for so long though can only leave us shaking our heads and hoping a legitimate turnaround can be salvaged.
The Bulls can only put these last two disappointments behind them and try to steal a victory on the Boston Celtics' parquet floor on Wednesday. While I'd like to say they're the better team, nothing is certain with them anymore. About the only given now is we can't just sit back and feel content at the end of games. Still, here's hoping it can feel like 2011 again.
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