NEWSLETTER
Whether it be the energy inside MSG, the endless shouting at TD Garden, the non-stop joy at Ball Arena, or even the agony inside the Staples Center (I’m not calling it anything different), I’ve watched these NBA playoffs with loads of jealousy.
The city of Chicago deserves the intense emotions that come with postseason basketball. While they got a taste of it last season as the Bulls faced the Milwaukee Bucks in the first round, to say the battles at the United Center provided an authentic playoff atmosphere would be a blatant lie.
Take it from somebody who sat in the building during the team’s 111-81 Game 3 loss. Not only was the game the furthest thing from competitive, but a sloth on Xanax had more energy than the crowd by halftime. And things didn’t get any better from there. The Bulls lost their two home playoff games by a combined 54 points. When they only lost by 16 in Game 5 up north, it felt like a borderline miracle.
The hope was that Chicago could right their wrongs in 2022-23. The hope was that this veteran group would learn from their mistakes. Instead, fans didn’t even get a chance to build up false optimism for a home playoff game. The Bulls finished 9th in the Eastern Conference after falling to the Eastern Conference Finals-bound Miami Heat in the Play-In Tournament. And, with that, the Bulls’ home playoff victory drought continued.
Since I hate myself, I decided to look at how many home playoff games the Bulls have won over the past decade. The answer is an absolutely unsurprising FIVE games, and the most recent one came a gut-wrenching EIGHT years ago.
Here’s the list of home playoff wins since the 2012-13 season:
Yes, that’s right, the last playoff victory at the United Center was when Derrick Rose sank his iconic buzzer-beater against LeBron James. Think about how freakin’ long ago that is.
We’re talking about an almost impressively crappy decade for one of the most renowned franchises in the NBA. And things only feel that much more brutal when we remember the Bulls have the 4th-worst win percentage in the NBA since the Three Alphas Era in 2016-17.
I know they entered a rebuild in the latter half of the 2010s, which plays a role in that poor league-wide record. But the rebuild was also supposed to bare far better fruit by now. The fact it hasn’t remains a major indictment of the entire organization. And it also puts that much more pressure on Arturas Karnisovas to put the franchise back under the spotlight.
Speaking of which, here’s some more on what the Bulls might do this summer …
