The Chicago Bulls And The Problem With Now

We'll be watching the Chicago Bulls this season, but we don't know what that means just yet. They are still a relevant NBA organization, just by dint of their history, market size, and collection of personalities—tragic/electric living parable Derrick Rose, worldly giants Joakim Noah and Pau Gasol, brash and ascendant Jimmy Butler. That certainly sounds like a team worth watching, but the Bulls begin the preseason poised on the uneasy edge between reality television and competition.

A 50-win team last year, the Bulls were seen as perhaps the sole threat to LeBron James' Eastern Conference dominion—dating back to his defection to Miami, James had represented the East in the Finals for four years in a row. The Bulls ultimately weren't up to that task, and collapsed under the weight of their own injuries and dysfunction. Chicago looked downright feckless in their elimination game against James and the Cavs. More specifically, they looked indifferent—overmatched and limping and exhausted, gratefully tapping out after a season of bad luck, ill will, and the relentless rumors of a front office-coach impasse that culminated in Tom Thibodeau's dismissal.

Aside from their coach's exit, little is different for the Bulls this season. Thibodeau, a blazingly intense, work-harder grinder whose tendency to push his players was often blamed for his team's fragility, has been replaced by the ostensibly more progressive Fred Hoiberg. Bringing in Hoiberg, a good friend and Iowa State crony of Bulls executive Gar Forman, was the only card the front office had left to play. The talent (and salaries) already on hand left the Bulls with little flexibility during the offseason, and if Hoiberg doesn't have a magic touch with this roster, his team's ceiling is likely still below that of regional landlord LeBron's.

It's a testament to Thibodeau's ability that he earned high seeds in the playoffs every year in Chicago, despite all the interpersonal enmity in the front office and the star-crossed bodies of his team's stars. Yet while firing Thibs may have resolved some festering emotional issues, things have stayed fraught behind the scenes for the Bulls.

Most notably, Rose has been accused of rape, and that horrifying story will doubtless haunt the team as his civil suit with Jane Doe goes on. Rose has always been something of a cipher, and his behavior at media day last week—when he also talked pointedly and without prompting about money two years before his free agency while waxing introspective in an oddly free-associative way—further raised eyebrows. He busted his eye socket on an unnamed teammate's elbow at training camp the next day.

There are also hints that he and Butler don't exactly embrace playing together, or love sharing the spotlight. Rumors of an intra-backcourt beef seemed like unconvincing gossip in May, but got a second look in August when Butler, strangely, said he'd be ready to play Rose's position of point guard this year. As recently as this week, reports say Butler doesn't respect Rose's work ethic. Butler's recent comments about leadership, to boot, seem like quite the alpha-game joust toward Rose. "We need a guy that's going hard every night and that's going to back up what he's talking about," he said after a recent preseason game, readily evoking Rose's fall from that role. "I definitely think it's going to be me."

And then there were more health issues. Integral wingman Mike Dunleavy had back surgery, which was announced unexpectedly in September, and will be out until at least Christmas. The Bulls were 9-10 without him last year. Noah has a lot to prove after looking like half of himself on a bad knee in the playoffs, and Gasol, who missed those last two games against the Cavs, is 35 and coming off a busy summer of international competition. Backup big Taj Gibson had ankle surgery over the summer. If this list seems like it covers virtually every contributor, it's because it does; aside from Butler, all of the most important Bulls are in various states of bodily decline.

Rose's MVP season in 2010-11 was the first injection of championship hope in Chicago since Michael Jordan left in 1998. With Thibodeau shaping Rose, Noah, Luol Deng, and eventually Butler—plus, to the front office's credit, some shrewd draft picks and signings wrapped around that core—there was, for a time, reason to envision a Bulls title. Those dreams were deferred by bad luck and The King. For skeptics, last May's collapse served as the proof that they were always something of an illusion.

It's possible that playing for Hoiberg will be liberating, and that he can pull the sustained performance out of this squad that fans have long yearned for, by enabling a faster and less brutally grinding style. It's also possible that youngsters like Doug McDermott, Tony Snell, Bobby Portis, and most of all Nikola Mirotic—the future of the franchise, along with Butler—can find new opportunities in Hoiberg's regime that allow them to flourish. Maybe Rose, despite all the turmoil off the court, will finally rediscover his dominance on it. There are many maybes, here, and if none of them are terribly unrealistic, the sum of them is heavy.

We might also see that replacing one of the game's most impressive maximizers of talent with a jumped-up college coach is a dubious and largely cosmetic fix, and that the swan song for this era of Bulls basketball will find its chorus this season. The line the Bulls walk is entertaining on both sides—it's between more notable playoff competition, and a pure spectacle of personality. It is fun, but it is also the sort of thing associated with, say, the Sacramento Kings. The Bulls may backslide a bit this season, but they'll still be a primetime tabloid team.

Thibodeau's singular focus pulled Chicago together despite all the divergent goals and attitudes, despite all the ambient bullshit. Last season, for the first time, he couldn't manage it, which means that, whatever the reason, replacing him wasn't exactly the wrong move for the team. But expecting Hoiberg to do a better job of juggling these chainsaws as a rookie coach seems like a bit much.

The Bulls' title window, which was maybe never actually open, is now probably closed. Depleted though they were, there was a sense of a Bulls epoch slamming shut last year as they gave away a series against a Cavs team that was without Kevin Love. Whether they keep fighting the good fight—in vain, or in one last twilight grasp at the excellence that once seemed inevitable—or begin a transition into full-on rebuilding will define their season.