BDL 25: The perpetually-aching Chicago Bulls

The NBA offseason has brought many changes to rosters, coaching staffs, and the list of championship contenders. As we draw closer to opening night, it’s time to move our focus from the potential impact of each offseason event and onto the broader issues that figure to define this season. The BDL 25 takes stock of, uh, 25 key storylines to get you up to speed on where the most fascinating teams, players, and people stand on the brink of 2015-16.

On one hand, it’s hard to feel sorry for Chicago Bulls. A healthy chunk of those fans got to live through the team’s dominant, title-laden turn in the 1990s, and for the younger folk summertime viewing of NBA TV and casual reading of NBA websites provided a constant reminder of the franchise’s past glories. Even with the championship drought that preceded 1991 and the ongoing ringless-ness that has been the team’s post-Jordan turn, the Bulls’ six titles still rank third all-time amongst NBA franchises. To compare Chicago’s recent woes the decades-long injury woes of the Portland Trail Blazers or the nearly half-century long ineptitude of the Clipper franchise would be off.

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There has been mis’ry and woe, however, and it was ongoing even before two Bulls starters were put on the shelf due to surgery in late September. Chicago has worked through a stunning display of major injury hits to big contributors since the NBA locked out its players in 2011, forcing the league into a 66-game schedule where less than 50 games should have gone.

Most pratfalls you could see coming a mile away, such as when former Chicago coach Tom Thibodeau listened to the medical staff and asked Omer Asik to play on a fractured tibia. Or when Luol Deng (who had played with a torn wrist ligament in 2011-12) wore out in the 2012 and 2013 playoffs after playing a league-leading minutes per game mark during the regular season. Or when the world noticed that Joakim Noah, who had a history of foot troubles, was being asked to play nearly 40 minutes a night while (literally) running more than anyone in the NBA in 2012-13. He, expectedly, broke down in the 2013 and 2014 playoffs, and missed the last two games of the 2012 playoffs with a major ankle sprain.

Of course, none of these postseasons really mattered, in a way, because Derrick Rose was out for all but one game of them. Rose tore his left ACL in that one contest, late in his top-seeded Bulls’ win over the Philadelphia 76ers in May 2012, and the team has been reeling ever since.

There have been some inspirational moments during the Rose-less years. They famously ended Miami’s 27-game winning streak in 2013. It slugged out a seven-game series win against the favored and star-filled Brooklyn Nets in that year’s playoffs prior to taking Game 1 of their series with the Heat with Noah hobbled and Deng and Kirk Hinrich out of action. Thibodeau ran his players ragged throughout, while the Bulls’ training staff and front office didn’t seem to mind in the slightest. Because that front office mined for the same character traits on the squad’s draft pick-heavy team – gutty, loath to complain – no player raised a public peep.

That all changed in 2014-15, when the Bulls’ front office issued minutes limitations for Noah and Rose, limitations Thibodeau publicly groused about all year. Rose was coming off a second knee surgery, this time for a torn meniscus, one that would require surgery again midseason.

Noah? After limping through the playoffs following a year that saw him average 35 minutes a game, he underwent what was laughably (to keep from crying-ably) described as a “minor arthroscopic procedure” that would leave him out for “eight to 12 weeks.” It should be reminded that “minor arthroscopic procedures” don’t usually knock a player out for two or three months, and some seven months later Noah admitted that he was still less than 100 percent, and that the operation was “more than a scope.”

Noah was still hobbled in May, when the Bulls turned in an absolutely apathetic performance in its last few losses to the Cleveland Cavaliers, and Thibodeau was shown the door in favor of the cheerier Fred Hoiberg in the weeks that followed.

To many, however, Hoiberg’s presence comes years too late. Not just for the worn-out Bulls players, but for his (to date) inability to hop in a time machine, dash off to 2012, and demand that Tom Thibodeau take Rose out of a 12-point game with 70 seconds left against Philadelphia.

Fred Hoiberg brings the blue skies. (Getty Images) If anything, Rose should be worried about his right knee – the one he’s undergone two meniscus surgeries on. There was the sense that the Bulls, with their backs against the wall, went with the quick-fix version of a meniscus repair last winter in order to stop the run of season-ending injuries. In the past, that type of procedure has deadened the knees of several NBA players. Players have come back from ACL tears to work at full strength, but the less-severe meniscus tear might be more damaging in the long run.

Nobody knows how Noah, a full 17 months since that minor operation and four and a half months since his crushingly-poor play in the postseason, will react. He’ll turn 31 just after the All-Star break, and he’ll have to work to save a Bulls front court that doesn’t look as deep as it once did.

Taj Gibson, who played through a series of severe injuries with Thibodeau on board, underwent major ankle surgery following the season, and it may take Taj (who turned 30 over the summer) until the end of the 2015 calendar year to return to full health. Pau Gasol, ironically, had his healthiest year since the lockout year under Thibodeau in 2014-15, regaining his All-Star status. The 35-year old also played 34.4 minutes a contest last season, faded in the playoffs, and spent a goodly portion of the summer helping his Spanish team win the Eurobasket title (with a dominant turn).

Mike Dunleavy spent his summer attempting to find every way to avoid the back surgery that he so clearly needed, and he underwent an operation just days before the start of training camp. The Bulls, as they do, listed him out for eight to 10 weeks, but the 35-year old Dunleavy assured reporters that this reported time frame seems rather optimistic.

And, infamously, in one of the first practices of the team’s season Derrick Rose took an elbow to the face and suffered an orbital fracture, knocking him out for the foreseeable future (though Hoiberg won’t rule him out for opening night on Oct. 27). Rose just as infamously doesn’t like to play when anything is less than perfect with his body, which means the prospect of him having to wear an annoying facial mask is a bit daunting.

Deng was long since traded for what could amount to two second round draft picks, so of course Jimmy Butler led the NBA in minutes last season. No cracks in his armor so far, fingers crossed.

Meanwhile, Noah is a free agent in 2016. Gasol could turn down his reasonable $7.7 million player option next summer in order to potentially make more money in his next culture-rich destination. A tone-deaf Rose already brought up his 2017 free agent turn to the media prior to the facial surgery. It’s one thing to want to secure as much money as you can in a career gone wrong due to injury, it’s another to discuss it on record in front of fans that have seen you miss two-thirds of your games (including three postseasons) over the last three years, while making nearly $53 million along the way (not including endorsements).

As such, you have a brittle team that just can’t seem to get it right. Outside of the obviously poor work by the coaching and medical staff in limiting minutes (Bulls starters not only played through injury, but deep into blowouts under Thibodeau), there just isn’t a whole hell of a lot the Bulls can do so many years later.

Which is a shame. Because no amount of fun in the Grant Park sun in the mid-1990s can make up for the last few Chicago winters.

Previously, on BDL 25:

Kevin Durant is back to score at will and dominate headlines

What the heck will the Dallas Mavericks even look like?

Paul George tries to reclaim stardom and Indiana’s contender status

Will DeMarcus Cousins and the Kings even make it to January?

Can the Golden State Warriors be that perfect again?

Are the Cleveland Cavaliers going to price themselves into oblivion?

The Grizzlies know exactly who they are, and that might be enough

Kevin Garnett’s last run

Are the Knicks building something or just biding time before a blow-up?

Paul Pierce, journeyman