We All Knew This Was Coming — Celtics 105, Bulls 83 (Game 6 Recap)
The Bulls sleepwalked their way through their final home game of the 2016-17 campaign, hilariously and tragically living up to every expectation of this team since last offseason.
To be fair, this was always how it was supposed to end.
A humiliating blowout at the hands of the Eastern Conference’s number one seed on home court, boos raining down on the court from the commendable few souls who stuck with their team until the bitter final seconds ticked off the clock, with the Celtics finally mercy-killing a Bulls team that had no business playing on April 28 to begin with.
The only twist in the tale was that the Celtics were that number one team. When many of us played out the Bulls’ 2016-17 outcome in our heads last summer, most of us assumed it would be Lebron’s Cleveland Cavaliers, but hey, no prediction is ever 100 percent perfect. Most of us were damn close, regardless.
Friday night’s 105–83 loss to the Boston Celtics wasn’t a dignified final statement. It was a sluggish march towards an impending death. The Celtics took a 9-2 lead on three triples within the first two minutes of play, and the Bulls would, at no point, make them sweat from there.
The script played out as we anticipated. John Paxson and Gar Forman’s Frankenstein of a basketball team, whose big three (Jimmy Butler, Dwyane Wade and Rajon Rondo, a mismatch of talent from the word “go”) might have posed a legitimate threat in 2013, whose bench corps threw away more games than they won, whose albatross of a head coach provided the charisma of aging drywall, lived precisely up to its eighth-seed expectations.
This is an aggravating fact, as the front office will probably pat itself on the back for even getting to the playoffs and tell us all whatever jigsaw puzzle of a plan we’re supposed to believe they have is headed in the right direction, as if making the postseason in the back-end of a top-heavy Eastern Conference has been something to take pride in for the last 15 years.
None of this is okay, and to a Bulls fan, 2016-17 was an unmitigated disaster of predictable proportions. Predictability is exactly what made enduring the 82-game season and unnecessary six-game playoff series so frustrating. Fans, for some reason, went to the games and watched the games, knowing exactly that tonight was going to be the outcome and endgame.
It’s a testament to the loyalty of the Chicago Bulls fanbase, which has put up with way more than it should have since the magical 60-win 2010-11 season, and it’s a statement of just how substantially the front office is willing to exploit that by staying stuck in neutral. As GarPax finds solace in purgatory, Bulls fans remain in hell.
There’s no point in breaking down the numbers from Friday night’s game, since we’d all scripted this from day one. But for funsies, let’s look at some of the performances we saw in the Bulls’ swan song:
- Boston shot 49 percent from the field, compared to the Bulls’ 39 percent
- The Bulls went 4-of-19 (21 percent) beyond the arc; Boston shot 16-of-39 (41 percent)
- Boston had 28 assists and nine turnovers; the Bulls had 13 of each
- Jimmy Butler led all Bulls scorers with 23 points, but logged a -20
- Dwyane Wade shot 10 percent (1-of-10), scoring only two points with a -28
- Rajon Rondo, DNP (thumb injury)
- Isaiah Canaan, Rondo’s replacement, had one assist and a -28
It was a miserable night of basketball in which Boston outplayed the Bulls in every facet of the game. Did Rondo’s absence play a role? I’m sure it did. I’m also not sure one man could have saved this kind of effort.
Bulls fans enter the 2017 offseason exactly where they were one year ago: frustrated and confused, supporting an organization with no direction or focus, bloated contracts and a mid-level draft pick that, given the scouting team’s track record, probably won’t amount to much. Now that the book is closed on this season, we can look back to one year ago, compare it to where we are now and realize this year was one enormous waste of time for all involved.
And there’s no sign it’s going to improve. The Bulls are stuck with hometown hero Dwyane Wade, who wants to be here as much as the fans want him here (hint: not a whole lot) but would be foolish to decline his player option given his abysmal season. If they decline Rondo’s option, they’re left with the black hole that has plagued them at the point guard position for seemingly an eternity, but there’s also no good reason to bring Rondo back.
Then there’s Jimmy Butler, who seems to just be floating through his Bulls tenure. Nobody can deny how excellent he’s been on the floor, as he basically carried the Bulls into the playoffs and there’s little doubt he was playing through injury against Boston, weakening his impact.
But what’s that future, exactly? Does he continue to toil away on a Bulls team where GarPax are going to squander his best years, or does he get moved on draft day for a higher draft pick and help kickstart the rebuild of this team from the ground up?
Given the track record of this front office, the former feels overwhelmingly inevitable. A fan at this point would be hard-pressed to imagine GarPax being savvy enough to move that massive Wade contract and build a winner through free agency in one offseason.
Nah. What’s more likely is that someone—whether that’s me or someone else—will be tasked with writing another post-mortem at this same time in 2018, be it in the wake of another embarrassing playoff defeat at the hands of a more well-built, better team, or just missing the playoffs in another middling season with another middling group of uninspired players.
Maybe they’ll prove me wrong. I’m not getting my hopes up.
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