The United Center, where Chicago’s Bulls and Blackhawks play is affectionately known as “The Madhouse on Madison.”
The ‘Hawks have a chance to keep that name in good standing this season. Anytime you begin a year with Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews on your team, you are at least in the mix.
The Bulls are a different story. They aren’t good. Like, change ‘Madhouse’ to ‘Outhouse’ bad.
There will be memes.
If you could give their ownership or their management one wish, it would be for nothing less than the number one overall pick in the 2018 NBA Draft.
But there is no genie ready to grant that wish. There will be no frozen or folded envelope conspiracies.
Chicago’s success or failure through this season rests entirely on their own shoulders.
And they need the success to be minimal and the failure to be plentiful and they need to do it without people crying, “TANK!”
Because the Bulls must follow the model of their co-tenants, the Blackhawks who used to be so bad that you could buy a ticket to see a game and then switch seats ten times before it was over. You just picked another empty section to move to. It got to the point, no one even tried to stop you.
The Blackhawks’ futility saw them select inside the top seven in the draft for four consecutive years. They even missed on their first two picks, taking Cam Barker third overall in 2005 and Jack Skille with the seventh overall selection in 2005. Skille could have been Anze Kopitar. Barker could have been Mike Green. Both Skille and Barker are now toiling in the KHL.
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But then came Toews in 2006 and Kane in 2007 and with a few other key pieces from earlier, the ‘Hawks began to soar. By 2010, they had won the Stanley Cup. By 2015, they had won two more.
And it was all predicated on being very bad, but being so bad that no one paid attention.
That is the path the Chicago Bulls are now on.
And so far, they are actually doing a fabulous job. It began the moment that general manager, John Paxson, speaking to NBA.com, said the following words at the 2017 Draft:
The key is to do it without being obvious.
If you get too close to the end of the season and stuck somewhere between the bottom five and a playoff spot, you have done it wrong.
The Bulls moved their most trade-ably attractive player, Jimmy Butler, to Minnesota for young point guard Kris Dunn, Zach Levine and a draft pick that very quickly became Lauri Markkanen.
Levine was the perfect piece for a team trying to lose a whole lot more than win. At 22, he is young, exciting and a two-time slam-dunk contest champion. He also tore his ACL last February and was not going to be ready for the start of the season.
That takes talent out of Chicago’s lineup without anyone having to do it manually.
Dunn is coming off a rough rookie season with the Timberwolves. He needs time to develop. He needs to make mistakes and then learn from them. Perfect.
Markkanen is a rookie who is in the exact same boat. Even better.
The youth and NBA inexperience doesn’t end there: Cameron Payne, Jerian Grant, Paul Zipser and others have fewer than three years in the league. More mistakes. More learning.
Robin Lopez was kept to be the glue and the big brother. He is passionate and fiery, but also a high-character guy who can ease the tension that a whole lot of losing can bring.
And then came a very strange gift. A fight, in practice. 6’11 forward, Bobby Portis decked 6’10 forward, Nikola Mirotic. The incident landed Mirotic in hospital with facial fractures and a concussion. He is gone four to six weeks. The Bulls made the decision to suspend Portis for eight games.
Two more players who have good skill levels, now seeing less playing time without Chicago doing anything out of the ordinary to make it happen.
With a lottery, there are never any guarantees. Even without a lottery, there are never any guarantees.
A long time ago in a world with Sam Bowie, the Bulls managed to find Michael Jordan.
They are doing all the right things to try to make a similar move again.
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