Ball don't lie B-R-U-T-A-L
The evisceration should follow. It really should.
It wouldn't matter, as any pretense regarding any sniff of hope or potential or attempt at a warm glow gleaned from the idea of a Chicago Bulls team with a roster that slightly resembles the 2009-10 version somehow one day competing for a championship has been lost. Forever. Thing is, it ain't happening. Plug LeBron in, add a new coach? No way.
But that's not the battery acid, spewing out of this battered esophagus. I'm not going to lie and pretend that I'm bemused by what happened Monday night, but I'm also not going to act like I didn't see it coming. I'm not going to lie and fake a haughty sense of indignity either, and I can't help but relay that, after switching to watch a slate of other NBA contests with the Bulls safely up 30, I wasn't shocked in the slightest when I turned back to see the teams locked at 96, late in the fourth quarter.
Nor was I shocked to see how it all fell apart, upon the re-watch.
Nor will I pretend like this doesn't hurt. Longtime readers know where my personal obsession lies.
Nor will I pretend like this changes anything. A good two-hour drive around town did that. As did the work of a couple of my favorite tenor and alto saxophonists.
For those of you that missed the wire, the Dwyer, the crier? Chicago went up by 35 points, in the third quarter, and lost the game. To the Sacramento Kings.
I've little interest in going behind the box score on this one, if you wouldn't mind. If you do, show your ticket stub to Glen, the doorman. Refunds are available, presuming that you paid to get in.
It's a big mess, innit? One worth really having a hard time with. This thing that keeps us coming back, hoping for the best. "Thing" is, this mess is one that just about every fan of every team goes through during a good 90 percent of his lifetime fandom. Third-largest city in America? You have to keep that in mind.
This isn't to tell you that these Bulls haven't messed this up, beyond belief. The most profitable team in the NBA for the last 20-plus years has managed to turn in the least-successful run of the last 10 years mainly by refusing to care about the game, proper.
It starts at the top, where the team's owner could clearly give a rip about the basketball side of holdings unless it comes time to work a deal with a highly paid employee; which allows Jerry Reinsdorf a chance to try and swing things like he used to. Back when he was good at making money by himself.
He isn't, anymore, obviously. He's your typical high school legend that played a bit of A ball before retiring to the BP cages for the rest of his yak-yak life.
And, really, that comp would seem apt if Jerry weren't so pathetically obsessed with pretending that he wouldn't tie every White Sox cleat every morning for 162 games, as opposed to selling the world (not specific chunk of the Chicagoland area, mind, but Bulls-obsessed parts of the WORLD) a load of twaddle along with the promise of another lottery pick (working under, no coincidence, an economical rookie contract) to keep us stringing for the jones that is a 60-win season.
It's our fault, too. We bought the promise. While remaining overtly cynical, to no end, but with little impact. How could that cynicism change anything, mind you, when nearly every seat in the United Center is (paid to be, because they don't always show up) sold out with corporate-funded season tickets that get passed on and on and on and on and on until most any client could care about is a fried piece of soy burger with an extra bun bottom and thousand island dressing add-on gifted as a result of the hometown team possibly passing a hundred points.
This is all old news, of course. Ardent followers know the drill. I should stop. But I cannot.
Because I spent a good chunk of Monday morning looking at Toni Kukoc highlights on YouTube. Because I was after a clip of a behind the back pass sent from Toni to a fella named Jason Caffey (whose per-minute numbers I used to obsess over before I was able to legally buy a lottery ticket) for a throwdown in this game, a bit of action that would put Eddie House(notes) and Tony Allen(notes) to shame.
Now, any fan of any team could probably look up their squad's third-leading scorer from 1995-96 on YouTube, and find a fair amount ... but we had something different.
We had the Bulls. The red and the black. The team that meant something. The team that every fan waited for, the squad that had to finish of its own accord. The team that won 72 of 82, and was one of six championship teams in that glorious run.
This isn't to say that Bulls fans, in 2009, don't deserve to be treated better. Any batch of fandom deserves to be treated better than how Jerry Reinsdorf has treated the basketball end of his sporting endeavors.
We just know what it is to love; to love something special. Not to love something for being plucky, or entertaining, or right there. Or out in the second round.
This isn't to brag, but we know what it is to know dominance. Continued, and unrepentant dominance. Dominance that made every game an event. And while I had to sound like the old man that I am, those games were events. Even to everyone else. The two best franchises of the post-1998 era haven't even sniffed that. That idea that every regular season game counted. That it was yet another chance to win by 35.
And if I have to shuffle off, only being handed that turn? I'm OK with that. I really am. I'll never forget that feeling. Knowing that you supported the best. Knowing that they were working to make themselves — and, by extension, you — proud.
This is why I can't forgive the current Chicago Bulls organization. It's why I see right through Reinsdorf. It's why I have no hope in the personnel department. It's also why I know that someone who is coaching for the first time in his life shouldn't try to learn on the job on the game's biggest stage, for one, but also why I know why a guy like Vinny Del Negro was given his job.
He was a good player, he made the right impression on a lot of people; and while he wasn't ever really very good at anything he did on the NBA level (relatively speaking), he hung long enough to give off the impression that he was an NBA guy.
VDN probably still is. An innocuous, if often terribly wrong, color "analyst." A front office guy who talks long enough to seem like he's helping. A possible future assistant coach despite a career-long inability to develop a jumper worth jumping at.
I don't blame him. And I don't blame the players. They're not that good, and after dealing with some pitiful coaching over the last three or four years, they probably don't know any better. Kirk Hinrich(notes) may be a coach's kid, but he still thinks that 20-footer with the hand at his wrist is a good shot.
This organization? The people that are paid to study and to work and to read and to watch and to know better?
I blame them.
Not that it matters.
I wonder if Jason Caffey has any clips online ...

Chicago Sun
"There's no way of knowing for sure, but the Bulls might be the first team in NBA history to be booed off their home court in a game in which they had a 35-point lead. Then again, teams with 35-point leads in the second half usually don't lose. That's right, the Bulls had a 35-point lead Monday night at the United Center and ended up with a 102-98 loss to the Sacramento Kings. According to a quick postgame review by the Elias Sports Bureau, it's the biggest comeback in the NBA since the Utah Jazz rallied from 36 points down to beat the Denver Nuggets in November 1996. [...] Some of the grim numbers: Besides scoring only 10 points, the Bulls were 2-for-10 from the field with nine turnovers in the fourth quarter. They scored their last field goal with 10:15 left on an 18-footer by Kirk Hinrich for a 92-74 lead. Said Del Negro: 'We're not good enough to take a minute off, never mind a half. Just not good enough.'"

By The Horns
"My mind is still boggled by what happened. The Kings committed their fifth personal foul with 7:45 to go in the fourth quarter, which meant the Bulls would be shooting free throws on every foul from that point forward. After Salmons knocked down his freebies from that foul, Chicago was still up 94-79. All the Bulls had to do to secure the win was be aggressive, attack the basket, and force Sacramento to foul them. You want to know how many foul shots they earned in the next seven minutes? Four. And they missed two of them. Instead of pressing their advantage, the Bulls got sloppy. How sloppy? Chicago gave up 23 points off 20 after the first quarter. They committed nine of those turnovers in the fourth quarter, including two shot clock violations, a three-second violation and a carry."

Blog a Bull
"The team is just poorly coached all around. They were able to (literally) run out to a lead off of Sacramento's first-half turnovers, but when it came time to run a real offense they had no clue. When it got close, one team knew they had a star guard who needed the ball at all times, and how to get it to him in the best place to operate, and that guard was Tyreke Evans and the team was the Kings. They similarly seemed to have little clue on defense as to how to handle Evans besides putting their 'stopper' (cough) Kirk Hinrich(notes) out on an island. But it's even bigger than that. VDN sees the need to keep the starters in because he was given such a deplorably incompetent bench. They pretty much have to go small (and it cost them some key defensive boards) due to a lack of depth as well (though if Tyrus Thomas(notes) was healthy, he'd likely still be sitting). Everyone knows that Derrick Rose(notes) is the future star of this team, yet he's not even made a captain."

Dime
"In all honesty, we'll be surprised if Vinny Del Negro still has a job by the time the Dime crew makes it up to Madison Square Garden tonight for Knicks vs. Bulls. Just when you thought the Bulls were getting their act together and had put together some well-played games, they went out on Monday and - whatever you want to call it - did something that deserves a new word other than "collapse." If it doesn't ultimately cost Del Negro his job, it at least has the hot seat burning a hole in his drawers. (And remember, this is the same organization that fired Scott Skiles on Christmas Eve a couple years back. Don't think Del Negro can use the holidays as a stay of execution.)"

CBSSports.com
"Firing the chef and appointing the guy who bought the groceries is the new fad in the NBA. The Hornets did it, sending GM Jeff Bower into the trenches to replace Byron Scott. The Nets did it, handing the keys to Kiki Vandeweghe — and, ironically, former Bulls assistant Del Harris — after throwing Lawrence Frank overboard. Why not the Bulls? Why not Paxson, who relinquished the day-to-day GM duties to Forman last summer? 'I doubt it very much,' said a person familiar with the Bulls' situation, citing how Paxson's relationships with certain players are frayed. But at least he has relationships with certain players. How can Del Negro command respect in the huddle — and vice versa, frankly — after what happened to this team Monday night?"

NBA FanHouse "... yes, Del Negro did take a bunch of fourth-quarter timeouts that only resulted in worse execution. But this is really a dark mark on all the Bulls who played that final stretch, except for perhaps Deng, who did all he could to limit Evans. Before Udoka's 3s, Kirk Hinrich effectively dribbled out a 24-second violation in isolation, one of the worst turnovers I've seen this season. Derrick Rose (who was brilliant early in the game) faced tough defense in the closing frame, but still had the means to get his team a couple baskets. Evans delivered in the end, proclaiming 'This is my house!' after the jumper to put the Kings up three. Careful viewers of Reke's reaction to his own game-winner at the Bradley Center Saturday will note that at that point he said 'This is my city!' So Evans, 10 weeks into his NBA career, has now claimed the city of Milwaukee and the United Center. That's two-thirds of a Monopoly, y'all! Get them hotels ready!"

MPS
"Sometimes you just can't analyze, or moan, or complain. What happened happened. Sometimes you just bow to the Basketball Gods and realize that for one night, no matter how much you thought it was yours, it was not. That, sooner or later, the odds - those incredibly slim odds - of such a moment happening in the game of basketball, in life, will show up at your doorstep, and you just have to accept your fate."

Deadspin
"... I think the state of the Bulls is not summed up by the home fans booing them off the court following this putrid fourth quarter collapse, but the AP game note that claimed Andres Nocioni(notes) 'was one of the Bulls' most popular players of the post-Michael Jordan years.' Andres Nocioni? That is quite a lifeline to be stretching out for."

ESPNChicago
"How do you blow a 35-point lead? In the third quarter? Against a team that you have been completely dominating all night? Those are the questions that the Bulls have to answer now. Those are the ones that will haunt them for the foreseeable future after the Kings came back to stun them 102-98 on Monday night. And, ultimately, those are the questions that could Vinny Del Negro his job. 'It's tough,' the embattled Bulls coach said after the game. 'We had it going pretty well in the first half. We just stopped being aggressive. Stopped moving the basketball in the third quarter I thought. It kind of just got contagious.'"

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