Top Ten reasons why no one is talking about the Bulls

I don’t think I’m going out on a limb here by saying that there is very little excitement surrounding the Bulls, even though they are a virtual lock to make the playoffs after missing out last year.

Despite the Cubs and Sox just starting this week and the Bears not playing a game of consequence for another five months, the Bulls have taken a back seat to all three of these teams. Here are 10 reasons why this has been the case.

10. Not an exciting team to watch Now to be fair, there aren’t a lot of NBA teams that are fun to watch, since so much of the game now is throwing the ball into the post and having the other four guys stand around and watch.

But the thing that hurts the Bulls the most is that they don’t have a LeBron, D-Wade, Chris Paul, Kobe, or Dwight Howard type star, or even a second tier guy like Brandon Roy, Paul Pierce, Steve Nash, or Yao Ming.

Derrick Rose is the closest thing they have to a guy where you can say “I love watching him play” and even that is sort of a stretch. And to me, Tyrus Thomas is more maddening to watch than exciting.

9. People still remember the glory days To this day I’ll still watch all those championship videos or tapes of classic games like Game 6 of the ’93 Finals or Game 5 of the ’97 Finals. It will be tough for the Bulls to ever again capture the city’s attention like they did in the Jordan era, no matter how good they might be five or so years from now. Jordan, Pippen and Phil Jackson transcended not only the city, but the entire NBA en route to those six championships.

8. The core from two years ago has taken a big step backwards When the Bulls won 49 games and swept Miami in the first round, the young nucleus of Gordon, Deng, Hinrich and Nocioni looked like one of the best in the league. Now, Nocioni is gone, Hinrich is a backup, Deng is a joke (but still quite wealthy) and Gordon is and always will be the same player he was two years ago.

If you had asked people in October of 2007 what they expected of the Bulls come April of 2009, most would have said they would be one of the East’s best teams. Not too many would have predicted they’d need a late season spurt just to get in the playoffs.

7. The team is non-controversial There’s nothing close to an Ozzie Guillen, Lou Piniella, A.J. Pierzynski, Carlos Zambrano, Milton Bradley, or to a lesser extent, Rex Grossman, on this Bulls team. Vinny Del Negro shows very little emotion, at least publicly, and the team’s best players, Rose, Gordon and John Salmons are all very even keel guys who aren’t going to create major headlines on or off the court.

The closest thing the Bulls have had to a controversy all season was when Gordon reportedly lashed out at Del Negro back in January after being upset about being fined for breaking a team rule.

6. They are three games under .500 This one’s pretty obvious. It’s hard to get too worked up over any team that is 37-40, even though the Bulls have won eight of their last 11 games. They haven’t been over .500 on the year since they were 2-1. And the Bulls didn’t produce their first three game win streak until the middle of March. Up until these past few weeks, the Bulls were consistently inconsistent.

5. They still aren’t close to being a contender And that’s because they are still searching, as they have been ever since Elton Brand was traded, for a consistent inside scorer. Sure, Salmons and Brad Miller have both provided a much needed spark and have helped the Bulls get over the hump and into the playoffs.

But this is what most people see when they look at the Bulls: a future star point guard, and then a bunch of spare parts. If the Bulls want to generate some serious interest, Paxson needs to pull a Jerry Angelo and trade for Chris Bosh this summer.

4. People think the Bulls have underachieved this season I can’t understand why some people feel this way. If anything, the Bulls have overachieved this year. At the beginning of the season, if you had said the Bulls would finish right around .500 and make the playoffs, I think most people would have been very happy with that.

Also, the East has been much better than in year’s past, so that makes the Bulls’ record even that much more impressive. Taking a close look at the roster, this is not a real talented team. Bottom-feeders Toronto, New Jersey or even Milwaukee (when healthy) have more individual talent than the Bulls.

3. Jay Cutler I wanted to do a post about Cutler, but then I thought, what could I write that hasn’t been said or written about him already? It’s not everyday that an NFL team trades for a young Pro Bowl quarterback who has the ability to change the direction of the franchise. This is first and foremost a Bears town, no matter how well Chicago’s other teams are doing. Adding Cutler only gives people more reason to start dissecting the Bears five months before their season starts.

2. Cubs and Sox getting underway All I can say about this is, thank god. Reading the same boring articles every day for the last month and a half on the Cubs and Sox has made me cringe. Here’s something the other day that bugged me: in the sports section of Sunday’s Sun-Times, the Bulls’ crucial win over the Nets got just a brief game story towards the back. By comparison, the Cubs and Sox had five pages combined all to themselves, including a long story on how Carlos Quentin is quietly driven to succeed.

1. The Bulls will lose big in the first round anyway Regardless of whom you think would be the best matchup for the Bulls, the Cavs, Magic or Celtics (my personal choice), one thing is fairly certain: they will be lucky to take two games from any of these teams in a best of seven series.

Everyone realizes that the Bulls making the playoffs just means that Del Negro and John Paxson get to keep their jobs and that the Bulls can say they are on the right track after missing the playoffs the year before. The playoff experience for Rose would be the only positive that I can see.