While the Detroit Pistons are at a point in their evolution where they’re just getting started, the Chicago Bulls have traveled many miles and years along the path of an NBA contender.
The Pistons are young pups, just beginning to taste what it’s like to compete for a postseason berth. They haven’t even confronted an actual playoff series. Stan Van Gundy’s team is going through its NBA catechism on the way to being baptized by fire.
Merely making the playoffs represents a significant achievement at this stage of the franchise’s development. Relative to expectations, pressure, and the experience of the team’s roster, merely snagging a playoff spot makes this season for Detroit an unqualified success. Even a four-game sweep at the hands of the Cavaliers or Raptors wouldn’t change that.
On the other side of the divide, a franchise such as the Chicago Bulls has had to view the world in very different terms.
For the past half-decade, the Bulls have tried to climb the mountain in the NBA. They came somewhat close in 2011 and had a top-seeded team in 2012, but the Big Three Miami Heat (2011) and Derrick Rose’s body (2012) wouldn’t cooperate. Tom Thibodeau pushed Joakim Noah and Jimmy Butler and a lot of average-to-slightly-above-average players beyond their capabilities at times. The Bulls fought through injuries and the rigors of NBA seasons to beat more talented opponents in the playoffs — think of the P.J. Carlesimo Nets — and push superstar-laden teams such as the Heat and the 2015 Cleveland Cavaliers.
However, the Bulls never could scale that mountain.
Limited talent, limited knockdown jump shooting, and a limited Derrick Rose all held back the Bulls. Thibodeau might not have maximized what he had, but he certainly got his players to play above their pay grades. When Fred Hoiberg was hired to replace Thibs last year, the thought process was not that the Bulls would rebuild; this team was supposed to take the next step.
One can see how faulty that thought process was from Bulls management… but not because of the coaching change itself. The more precise reason Gar Forman and John Paxson were so shortsighted is that they handed Thibs’s team to Hoiberg, instead of radically remaking a roster which needed a transformation.
In the coming summer, that transformation — one year too late, and under very murky circumstances — could very well occur.
For the Bulls, merely sliding into an 8 seed isn’t the victory it would be for the Pistons. The Bulls — as an extension of culture, experience and expectations — are supposed to win at least eight playoff games per season, not make the 8 seed and meekly lose in round one.
After Saturday night, Chicago might not even get to that point.
Jimmy Butler did everything he could, but without Rose and enough production from his supporting cast, the Bulls watched the Pistons and two core acquisitions — Reggie Jackson and Tobias Harris — make late-stage buckets to lift the visitors to a 94-90 win in the United Center. The Pistons took a giant step toward that postseason berth, moving 2.5 games ahead of the Bulls for an Eastern Conference ticket. Chicago absorbed a damaging blow, falling two games behind eighth-place Indiana with only six games left to play.
It is impossible to process this result and not feel deeply for Butler. On the night this season when his team needed him most, Butler was there. He recorded his first triple-double — 28, 17 and 12 — plus 3 steals and 2 blocks. The problem was a familiar one in Chicago: Not enough help from the wings and stretch fours.
Mike Dunleavy, Nikola Mirotic, Doug McDermott, and E’Twaun Moore — all on the Bulls’ roster for multiple seasons, all needed to supplement what Butler and Rose do when those two familiar names are healthy enough to be at or near their best — combined to hit just 7 of 25 shots on Saturday. No one would say that Fred Hoiberg has done well this season on the bench in the Windy City, but it’s just as clear that his roster just isn’t good enough to be an Eastern Conference finalist, let alone an NBA Finalist or league champion.
The story of the Detroit Pistons is likely to become a success in 2016 — Stan Van’s plan is just a few more wins from achieving its first goal in a longer-term process.
The forecast for the Chicago Bulls after Saturday night: Cloudy with a 100-percent chance of change.
