Through thin and thinner

Seeing as the NBA regular season has wrapped up, it seems like a good time to reflect a little on the 2004-2005 Chicago Bulls.

The Bulls' marketing campaign for this year, which seemed especially ridiculous when the team was 0-9 and then 4-15, was "Through Thick and Thin," essentially implying that the organization deserved a mulligan for as long as necessary because they won 6 championships in 8 years.

And there's actually a certain logic to this.

That is, if the teams since the last championship had been even competitive. Even competed for, say, the 8th playoff spot. Even finished within, say, 20 games of .500. But no... over the last 6 seasons we've been treated to teams that have gone a combined 119 - 341, a .260 winning percentage. (The "best" team in this span finished 30-52, although many of the wins came in meaningless games towards the end of the season.)

We've been treated to Tim Floyd, Rusty LaRue, Corey Benjamin, Matt Maloney, Ron Mercer, Marcus Fizer, A.J. Guyton, Jake Voskuhl, Dalibor Bagaric, Jalen Rose, Eddie Robinson, Jamal Crawford, and Paul Shirley.

If your response to the above list was "who?" then a) you're in the majority of Chicagoans, and b) you obviously haven't been there "Through Thick and Thin."

I am (not) proud to report that I, myself, have been there through thin and thinner. Through the "Ron Mercer-as-our-go-to-scorer" years. Through trading Elton Brand. Through the charade that was Tim "Pink" Floyd. Through the triangle-offense-without-Michael-Jordan years.

My friend AJ and I have made a point of following every team, every year, no matter how bad they were. And now the time has come when we can, again, proudly say we're Bulls' fans. Basketball is the one sport in which I have some playing experience. I'm not very good at it, but I do "get" it intellectually. I've always been able to surpass my given athletic ability by 1) playing hard and 2) playing smart. I can generally recognize and distinguish between good and bad basketball. And I think basketball is the perfect sport for television, namely because you can see all the players, all the time. Football is great, but you can't see the entire field on the TV broadcasts. If you want to watch the receivers running their routes and how the defense is adjusting... well, you're probably out of luck for most plays because the camera will be on the QB until he throws the ball.

So I really enjoy watching basketball on television because you can see the plays, the motion, the defense, the rebounding... everything. And this Bulls' team is just fun to watch. I'm sure there are a lot of Monday morning QB's on this season, but I can say that I had a feeling about this team even when they were 0-9 and 4-15. I distinctly remember exchanging a few emails with AJ around the time the Bulls were 4-15 in December, looking at their schedule, and plotting out, almost to the week, when the team would hit .500.

So there.

That and $1.75 will get me on the train. Of course by summer it'll probably take $3.00 to get me on the train.

Anyway, I don't think we anticipated they would win 47 games and finish with the 3rd best record in the East, but still... you could see something different about this team from the top down almost immediately.

And at the top is GM John Paxson. I don't think it's possible to overstate what he's done in such a short time as GM. One measure of how much of an impact he's had: since taking over the team before last season, he's turned over the entire roster with the exception of Eddy Curry and Tyson Chandler.

His draft picks have been nothing short of brilliant. In two drafts, he's picked Kirk Heinrich, Ben Gordon, Luol Deng, and Chris Duhon. He signed Andres Nocioni as an undrafted free agent.

That means any team could have had him.

To boot, he gave the Bulls' first round draft pick next year to the Phoenix Suns for the right to draft Luol Deng with the 7th pick of the first round this year. The Bulls' first round pick next year will be the 21st pick in the draft.

In the NBA draft, the difference in quality between the 7th and the 21st pick is... well, this year it was the difference between Deng and Pavel Podkolzine. Paxson's trade dealings have been saavy. He started with a group of big-salaried/under-producing/often-injured players like Eddie Robinson, Jamal Crawford, Jalen Rose and Jay Williams.

He cut the lemon-like Eddie Robinson outright and ate the salary.

Ditto the injured Jay Williams, even throwing in a million dollars the team didn't have to as a gesture of goodwill.

He traded Crawford for what turned into Othella Harrington and Eric Piatkowski, two solid vets who work hard on both ends of the court.

He traded Rose to Toronto for Antonio Davis, a good rebounder and solid role-model for the young big guys.

In considering Paxson's approach to refortifying the roster, I'm even more impressed. He knew his two big men were 1) under contract until after this season, and 2) still developing as young college-aged players. So he decided to start with adding talent to the backcourt, an area that has been dominated with selfish/ineffective/injured players like Crawford, Rose, Mercer and Williams, and letting his big guys develop.

I still say you can't judge a player until the season that would have his first had he gone to college for four years. That will be next season for Eddy Curry and Tyson Chandler. And if Sean May can dominate the NCAA tournament at 6'9", what would Curry be doing at 6' 11" with more touch and range? He'd be the first pick in the draft this year, if he had gone to DePaul for four years, no doubt.

So Paxson was patient with Curry and Chandler and took the time to evaluate them and see how they would respond to a real, proven, demanding head coach like Scott Skiles. And that brings us to Coach Skiles. What a great choice. I love that even towards the end of the season where the Bulls have doubled if not tripled their expected win total and done so in part without Eddy Curry and Luol Deng, there's still a buzz in the Chicago sports' media about replacing Skiles with... Taaaaa-Daaaahhhh: Phil Jackson. Or Pat Riley. Or Larry Brown.

Okay, so maybe it was just Sam Smith in one of his Monday Morning "Shit, I have to write a negative column on the Bulls?" moments, but still: the advance press on Skiles being an overbearing, micro-managing, distant, hot-head who alienates players by demanding unreasonable things like, I don't know, playing defense and running the offense, is, in retrospect, hilarious.

Has Sam Smith watched any games? When they show the Bulls' bench going crazy during a victory or Skiles as the first guy on the court hugging his players during a timeout, does it look like he's alienating them or has trouble relating?

Nothing builds chemistry like winning. What has made this team so interesting to me is how from the beginning they've bought into Skiles' approach 100%, even when it looked like it wasn't working. They've kept on trying, kept on hustling, settled into their roles with an incredible unselfishness, and just generally played as a team all year.

Through thick and thin.

So maybe the Bulls' marketing campaign isn't quite a laughable as we thought: there is something to the idea of "Through Thick and Thin" in this team.

To quote Jim Mora: "Playoffs?"

jbg