Bulls' Strong Effort Comes Up Short as Season Comes to an End

Noooooo. In the matter of less than 10 seconds, the Bulls went from forcing a Game 7 to ending their season. After a season that started with so much promise, with the desire to build off last year's success, the number 1 seed for the second consecutive year, and another year filled with great teamwork, leadership, defense, and consistency, a couple serious injuries and their impact on the rest of the team led to a first round ouster. The Bulls got great games from Luol Deng, Rip Hamilton, Taj Gibson, and especially Omer Asik, but their lack of offensive execution, and really the loss of Derrick Rose and Joakim Noah, meant an end to the possibility of a special season, whether it was last night in Game 6, a potential Game 7, or in any subsequent round of the playoffs.

Collective Effort Keeps Bulls' Season Alive

Maybe this is the time it all comes together. The Bulls have struggled to put together a cohesive effort since the end of Game 1 when Derrick Rose went down. They thought they were starting to come around in Game 3, building up a double digit lead, and then Joakim Noah goes down. It wasn't until tonight, in Game 5, where we saw a collective effort from a Bulls team that had banded together all year, through each injury to each player. I want to think that it was just a Bulls team that had become so dependent on Derrick Rose that it took a while to find their stride in his absence. But in reality, this was the first game all series where everyone (or really, those who were healthy) stepped up at once.

Sky is the Limit for Bulls

We all know how special last season was. The Bulls won 62 games and Derrick Rose became a full-fledged superstar, winning the MVP. But more importantly, the Bulls were relevant again. The play of the Bulls all year had a similar uniting effect across the Chicago sports landscape that the Hawks season had a year before that. Just like the Hawks, everywhere you went were Bulls fans that had been dormant since the MJ glory years only to be reawakened by last year's Bulls team. And we'll even include the Bulls bandwagon jumpers, those fans that self-profess themselves to be the biggest Bulls fans even though they didn't live through the early post-Jordan era of Ron Mercer, Jalen Rose, Eddy Curry, Tyson Chandler (before he was good), and finally the beginning stages of Luol Deng, Kirk Hinrich, and Ben Gordon before the basketball gods were kind enough to land Rose on our doorstep in the second-luckiest draft in Bulls history. There, the Bulls landed the 1st pick in the 2008 NBA Draft after only a .17% chance of doing so going into the lottery.

Last year was close, but not enough

But even after all of that, the Bulls still flamed out last year, losing to the hated Miami Heat in the Eastern Conference Finals. The Heat exposed the Bulls deepest flaws, forcing an early exit to a otherwise-special Bulls season. Yet, regrouping for the shortened season ahead, the Bulls have a chance to eclipse even last year and come out on top. Even the Bulls we know and love from the first three-peat in the early 90s had major obstacles to overcome before they won their first title. With the elite defense the Bulls play under coach Tom Thibodeau, the addition of a scoring guard (Rip Hamilton) to shore up the scoring problems encountered last year, and a shortened season that can only benefit a deep team like the Bulls, now is as good a time as ever to challenge the Heat and make it to the NBA Finals. Doing so is going to require more of the special team effort the Bulls seemed to have last year, when there was no team in the NBA that had quite the chemistry of the Bulls. If they can match that chemistry, keep up the same intensity (which shouldn't be a problem under Thibodeau), and above all else STAY HEALTHY, I don't see a reason why the Bulls shouldn't be right up there again. Let's take a look at the 11-deep rotation the Bulls figure to run as a way of introducing the season.