After the Bulls received good news Thursday on All-Star Jimmy Butler's visit with Dr. James Andrews to address a recurring left knee injury, they now embark on an equally dicey task: trying to make their move in the Eastern Conference playoff race. With 20 games to go beginning with Thursday night's 109-101 loss in San Antonio, the Bulls (32-31) find themselves tied in the loss column for the eighth playoff spot with Detroit and only two games ahead of Washington. This is not how it was supposed to be when Chicago dumped Tom Thibodeau after five wildly successful (though often dysfunctional) seasons and hired Fred Hoiberg. Did the Bulls make a mistake in choosing the more offensively inclined Hoiberg after five years of hardscrabble, unrelenting defense under Thibodeau? Only if you think that given their injury history over the past few seasons, the job would've been better suited to Dr. Andrews himself. Read more http://www.cbssports.com/nba/writer...-room-bulls-have-promise-this-year-and-beyond
The Bulls have gone from one of the elite teams in the NBA and a whisper away from making the NBA Finals LAST SEASON to currently not making the playoffs in the Eastern Conference. This current Bulls team is average to bad, as reflected in their negative OFF EFF - DEF EFF number. This is the miserable NBA middle. The Bulls are currently irrelevant. The Bulls offense has plummeted from the 10th rated one in the league last year to the 5th worst. Hoiberg is offensively inclined?
Thank goodness the season's not over. The injuries have been tough to take, but if the team can somehow make the playoffs, their key players should be relatively fresh.
