Chicago Bulls Have Annoying On/Off Switch, but That Might Not Be All Bad

This isn’t the same Chicago Bulls team we’ve gotten used to in the Tom Thibodeau era. Things are changing.

The relentless "win at all costs, no matter the time of year, no matter the opponent" approach that characterized past seasons seems gone from the Bulls now. In 2014-15, they have a visible on/off switch, clearly getting up for premier opponents and often playing far below their ceiling against cupcakes.

Their recent losing spell illustrated this. In January, Chicago has lost games to four squads with inferior records, including the lowly Utah Jazz and Orlando Magic. They haven’t exactly crushed elite Eastern Conference foes—it’s been a bad month—but the Bulls at least compete against the likes of the Atlanta Hawks and Washington Wizards.

David Goldman/Associated Press

They’ve also won every game they’ve played against top Western Conference teams in 2015, taking down the vaunted Texas trio of the San Antonio Spurs, Houston Rockets and Dallas Mavericks. Their 104-81 win against the defending-champion Spurs was especially impressive, as the Bulls turned in their best defensive performance of the season.

Equally unimpressive, however, were their home falterings against the Magic and the Jazz. It’s been a down year at the United Center in general for coach Tom Thibodeau’s squad (they’re just 13-11 on Madison Avenue), but these losses were especially telling; defensive execution, this season, is a wildly fluctuating variable for the Bulls.

When the Magic piled up 121 points on January 12, it was the most their franchise had scored since Dwight Howard was on the team. Thibodeau wasn’t exactly thrilled about that. ‘‘Either you’re in the circle or you’re out of the circle,’’ he said to reporters after the loss. ‘‘You want to be in [the circle]? Let’s go. You don’t want to be in? That’s fine, too.’’

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http://t.co/wfY7NQsmbV Chicago's midseason swoon has coach Tom Thibodeau fuming (Ball Don't #Magic #NBA http://t.co/FF6pU0x3eR

— I Get It (@OrlandoMagicX2) January 13, 2015"

And while defense has been the biggest variable for the Bulls, there have been other issues coming from their apparent lulls in motivation, too. On their bad nights, their offense stagnates too, as they settle for too many so-so jumpers and don't push the ball in transition aggressively enough.

These sorts of results were unthinkable for the Bulls in the first four years of Thibodeau’s reign. The Bulls have been a regular-season wunderkind, running other teams into the ground with their intensity even through the dog days of winter.

For fans, the Bulls’ game-to-game dedication gave them a great reason to tune in every night, even during seasons when championship hopes were dashed due to injuries to Derrick Rose and others.

The silver lining of the new-look Bulls, though, is that their inconsistency could be a signal that they’re just pacing themselves differently as they prepare for a postseason run, in a year marked by huge expectations.

You don’t get remembered forever for what you do in January—perhaps the Bulls realize that now.

The big question in the midst of this transition, though, is this: Is everyone on the same page? It’s hard to believe that the work-obsessed Thibodeau is alright with bleeding out losses on any night.

If the roster is exercising some self-preservation in relatively meaningless games, it’s unlikely that Thibodeau approves such behavior—no game, in the universe of the 2010-11 Coach of the Year, is meaningless.

Whether or not he loves what’s going on, Thibodeau’s team definitely seems to be measuring the season in relation to the playoffs. And their health—the No. 1 cause of their struggles in seasons past—can only benefit from some shrewd shifting of speeds.

While it may be comforting to experience each game in a vacuum where every minute, play and opponent matters the same, such a circumstance simply ignores the reality that the NBA season is too long for most of the league’s human bodies to survive.

Whether you’re in on the Bulls on/off switch, and in their coach’s circle or not, the team’s momentum is toward a pace that means a lot of middling and uninspired regular-season performances. As Thibodeau has noted, this can be dangerous: Skipping steps of the process, particularly with a team many new pieces, can lead to bad, losing habits.

But in the Bulls' golden 2014-15 moments, they almost look good enough to transcend all the workaday hustle that defined them in years past. A modal switch that recognizes which games matter could be the very best thing the Bulls could have added this year. But it could also be the straw of hubris that breaks the championship camel's back.

We’ll see if it pays off come springtime.